BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
PEI:111PS this week's most immediately attractive book is Mr. Newman Flower's Life of George Frederick Handel (Cassell), It introduces us to a society which to almost every age has seemed singularly attractive : Bononeini, Farinelli, Horace Walpole, Mrs. Cibber, and finally, Faustina and Cuzzoni, the two women whose rivalry repeated that of Handel and Bononcini. Mr. Flower's is not a well-written book—for instance, it gives the reader a jar to learn that Handel " wandered about London spluttering his few words of English and trying every organ worth while." However, the excursions of the book are delightful—for example, the account of Thomas Britton, the musical coalseller, who entertained company such as the Duchess of Queensberry, Handel and Wollaston, the painter, to concerts. They were held in a loft which was so low that a tall man could not stand upright in it and which was reached by a ladder.
Mr. Santayana publishes a new book called Scepticism and Animal Faith (Constable) which looks interesting, and is, as usual, admirably written. Mr. H. J. Massingham writes some essays on English natural history, Untrodden Ways (Fisher Unwin). Messrs. Blackie and Son publish, in a well- produced volume, Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden, edited with introduction and notes by Professor R. F. Patterson. The notes, however, are so many that it is a book for the scholar rather than for the general reader. But there is much amusing gossip in it—for example : " S. P. Sidney was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being spoilled with pimples, and of high look, and long : that my Lord Lisle now Earle of Leister his eldest son resembleth him." Or, again, the famous and alarming passage : " Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass ; they painted her, and sometymes would vermilion her nose. She had allwayes about Christmass evens set dice that threw sixes or five, and she knew not they were other, to make her win and esteame herself fortunate."
Messrs. Stanley Paul publish a critical study of William Dean Howells, by Delmar Gross Cooke ; while The Dominion of Afrikanderdom, by Sir James Tennant Molten (Methuen), seems interesting. Messrs. Batsford publish an attractive book on English Interiors in Smaller Houses from 1660 to 1830, by M. Jourdain, a book full of admirable mantelpieces. Messrs. Methuen publish The Life and Principate of the Emperor Hadrian, by Mr. Bernard W. Henderson. Messrs. Fisher Unwin publish what seems to be an official history of The Fascist Movement in Italian Life. It is by Dr. Pietro Gorgolini, and has a preface by Mussolini himself. Mrs. Ethel Sidgwick has a new novel called Restoration (Messrs. Sidgwick and Jackson).
But perhaps the book which will have the largest public will be Commander Frank Wild's Story of the Quest,' Shackleton's Last Voyage (Messrs. Cassell). It is full of unusually excellent photographs, both of natural history
Previous page
