MANY-COLOURED ESSAYS.
Many-Coloured Essays. By Charles I. Dunphie. (Elliot Stock. 5s. net.)—Mr. Dunphie is always readable. He pleases us least when he is in his paradoxical vein, as in the "Delights of Discontent," "The Absurdity of Constancy," "The Advantages of being Disliked," and the like. Here he reminds us of a master in the art of essay-writing with whom it is dangerous to provoke comparison. His literary and his pathetic essays are more to our taste. He quotes well, and quotes correctly. "The Fascination of Sorrow" is a specially good piece of writing. "Lost London," again, has great attractions, especially to those who remember the great city as it was in the first decades of Queen Victoria's reign. We would also mention the essays on "Friendship" and "Our Friends." We venture to doubt whether Horace's scrota friremis was a "stately warship." We do not expect that care should be absent from such a ship. Surely it was a yacht, called aerate because it was highly ornamented. We cannot forbear quoting four admirable lines, which we should attribute to Mr. Dunphie himself, who has a talent for this kind of expression, but that he pays them a well-deserved compliment
"Forgive and Parrot were twin maxims of old, Only one have I mastered as yet ;
The theft of uay heart I can freely forgive, But the thief I shall never forget."
Previous page
