2 DECEMBER 1911, Page 14

The Book of the Seven Ages: An Anthology. Compiled by

Henry W. Clark. (Herbert and Daniel. 3s. 6d. net.)--Mr. Clark's idea for another anthology is a very good ono. He takes the famous passage from As You Like It, " All the world's a stage," as his scheme, and illustrates each division with a number of appropriate passages. He does not keep too closely to each text, as it may be called. The seventh, for instance, is not by any means "second childishness and mere oblivion." That is not the spirit in which Cicero discourses on old age, in which George Macdonald declares, Age is not all decay ; it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk," and which we have in the last words of Colonel Newcome " Adsum " (we might have had the scene in Cooper's Pioneer, from which this was taken, when Natty Bampo salutes and says " Present "), Mr. Clark's is a happy idea well carried out.