King Olaf s Kinsman. By Charles W. Whistler. (Blackie and
Son.)—Mr. Whistler here follows up the "Thane of Wessex" with another excellent story. King Olaf, the " Broad " or the "Saint," as he is variously called, is known to have helped Ethelred and Edmund Ironside, not so much, it may be, out of love for them, as out of hatred for Cnut and the Danes generally. Disposing of Cnut meant securing Norway for himself. One Redwald, son of an East Anglian Thane, sees his father killed and his lands harried by Danes ; not long afterwards he falls in with Olaf, to whom he is related, his grandfather having been one Thoralf, cousin to King Olaf's wife, who had married an East Anglian lady. To Olaf the young man attaches himself, and so becomes an actor in the great struggle which ended in the accession of Cnut. Ethelred, Edmund, the Danish King himself, and that strange character, Edric Streona, the Mephistopheles of the time, with his innumerable treacheries, are excellently well portrayed. The book has, in fact, a fine literary quality about it far beyond what is continually found, or indeed is needful, in volumes of this kind. There is a well-managed love- story, for Redwalcl has been betrothed in his boyhood to the daughter of a neighbouring Thane. How he is tempted to break his troth, and how he wins through the struggle, is well told. Mr. Whistler has studied the authorities with much care. We may suggest that" iron lance" should read "golden lance" on p. 35. Had the lance been of iron the epithet would not have been given.
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