30 JANUARY 1909, Page 12

COURSES OF STUDY.

Courses of Study. Edited by John M. Robertson, M.P. (Watts and Co. 6s. not.)—This work was first published in 1904, and now appears in a revised and enlarged form. Seven hundred new books have been included, and a course on "Geography" has been added. It is beyond question a useful book, and would have been more so if the editor had been less of a partisan and had not attempted so much. (He speaks in his preface of competent assistants, but gives no names.) When Mr. Robertson is engaged in his polemic against Christianity he might appropriately speak of the "pagan myth of the Virgin Birth," but the expression is an indecency in a book of this character. As to tho range of Mr. Robertson's knowledge, it may be noted that in 1904 ho had never heard of J. G. Frazer's monumental work on Pausanias (published in 1898)—" well translated in the Bohn Library" is all that he has to say of Pausanias--and that no "coadjutor in the first edition" or "intelligent reader" has enabled him to repair tho omission. Dr. Frazer's work is incomparably the greatest addition made of late years in this province of classical learning. One might as well give a bibliography of evolution and omit the name of Darwin.