CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
The Light of the World. By Sir Edwin Arnold. Illustrated after Designs by W. Holman Hunt. (Longmans.)—It is not necessary for us to say anything on this occasion about Sir Edwin Arnold's poem, which was reviewed at some length in the Spectator shortly after its publication. It will suffice to say that it now appears with all advantages of paper and type, and with a binding that is simple and handsome. The illustrative designs by Mr. W. Holman Hunt give the volume a character of its own. The frontispiece is naturally the famous picture bearing the same title with the book. That, too, is beyond criticism. Yet we can hardly help feeling a certain incongruity. The artist is eminently imaginative, the poet as eminently realistic. There is much more harmony between text and illustration in "The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple," for here the picture gives us the realism,— " That sweet boy in the Syrian ronntry frock.'
Other well-known pictures that are here reproduced are: " The Triumph of the Innocents," "The Shadow of Death," "The Plains of Esdraelon from the Heights above Naza- reth." There are eight others. "Bethlehem" is a curious landscape of the " bird's-eye-view " kind, not very effective, it seems to us. "Glory to God in the Highest" is a fine piece of imaginative work, the amazed shepherds below, the heavenly hierarchy above. We venture to doubt the judgment of the artist in presenting the figure of the Risen Christ as undraped. The others are : "Jerusalem," a view of the Temple Hill ; "Pyre," allegorical and imaginative. "Christ before Pilate is more academical than Mr. Holman Hunt's work commonly is. "The Importunate Neighbour" and "Did some Man find hid
Shekels in a Field ?" are, on the other hand, more characteristic. No one will question the general increase of interest and value which the work of so eminent an artist brings to a poem itself of no small distinction.
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