A BOOK OF ESSAYS.
A Book of Essays. By G. S. Street. (A. Constable and Co. 6s.)—We shall not attempt any general review of the opinions which Mr. Street expresses on topics literary and social. He is at his worst, we think, in his nine essays on "London." These are very much of the " Smellfungus " kind. London "is not to me," he writes, "the centre of art, literature, and intellect: in which regard one can only say that it contains the National Gallery and the British Museum." Yet where does an artist or an author seek recognition but in London? Why is the Strand said to have "malodorous restaurants and uninteresting shops, and loafing, soulless crowds " ? It is at least as good as other London thorough- fares. In the province of literature, there is a defence of Byron, and an appreciation of Anthony Trollope. As to Trollope, we take it that the critics and the public are at variance. People will not read him, though very possibly they ought to. Mr. Street singles out for praise "The Three Clerks," and is, we think, right. But would a sixpenny edition of it pay ? "Twenty Years Since" tenches on themes too grave to be hastily referred to here ; but we may say that it seems to us the best thing in the volume. What Mr. Street lacks more than anything else is style, and the successful essayist, whatever he may have or not have, must have style. But a practised writer who can use the phrase "his virtual and virtuous expulsion from his country" is almost hopeless. How strange the phrase that "dislike and jealousy and disapproval came to a head and set up a prolonged howl !" We read, "It was the custom in his lifetime —echoed since." How can custom be "echoed"? What, again, could be more cumbrous than this?—" How could a man who died at thirty-six and left behind him such a mass of written work— the quality even apart—as did Byron—to say nothing of his reading, and Mr. Prothero'a eight columns of authors—be a libertine steeped in vice and the rest of it?"
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