29 OCTOBER 1910, Page 28

Essays and Studies. By Members of the English Association. Collected

by A. C. Bradley. (The Clarendon Press. 6s. net.)— Mr. Henry Bradley discourses on "English Place-Names" in a paper fall of interesting information. Here is a specimen :— Dorchester. The British name was Durnovaria (" v " = "w "). This means swordplay. The Saxons added " oeaster " : so Dora- coaster: so Dorchester. Mr. Robert Bridges gives a scheme for a new spelling; Professor Ker supplies a most attractive essay on Browning, with some personal reminiscences, though, indeed, vidit tantum ; Mr. G. Neilson writes on "Blind Harry's ` Wallace ' " ; Professor Saintsbury on "Shakespeare and the Grand Style"; Miss Edith Sichel is very entertaining and instructive in her "Suggestions about Bad Poetry " ; and Mr. C. E. Vaughan contri- butes in his "Carlyle and his German Masters" some valuable knowledge about the teachers of the great English prophet: chiefly they were Goethe, Fichte, and, through Fichte, Kant. But we must not forget that, to quote Mr. Vaughan's concluding words, "Carlyle may have learned from Fichte ; he may have learned from Goethe. Bat, in the last resort, he is the man who has seen the vision with his own eyes ; who has drawn the water, not from the pitchers of other men, but direct from the source."