28 DECEMBER 1907, Page 25

With Shelley in Italy. By Anna Benneson McMahan. (T. Fisher

Unwin. 5s. net.)—" No attempt," writes Miss McMahan in her preface, "has been made to set [Shelley's] poems in their original environment, or to conduct the reader himself into that very Italian atmosphere where they were born." This defect in the criticism of Shelley she supplies in this volume. Poems and letters are given year by year, and some introductory matter is prefixed by which we are enabled to appreciate the circumstances in which both were written. Some illustrations of Italian scenes have been added. It is a modest scheme which has been intelligently carried out. Shelley is made in a way to interpret himself, and the reader is not a little enlightened.