CHRISTIAN MORALS. By Sir Thomas Browne. Edited by S. C.
Roberts. (Cambridge University Press. 6s.)— The pamphlet of religious maxims and considerations which is here reprinted does not give us Sir Thomas Browne at his roundest or most fanciful : he needs a larger field and a longer breath for his most impressive effects. But we find an occa- sional richness of phrasing that recalls his bigger works; and there is at least one very pleasing piece of fancy. He is men- tioning the limitations that history suffers, since historians cannot see with their own eyes events of past ages, and must take second-hand accounts of them ; and he declares that the only times of real historians were when Adam could talk through the day to Methuselah, and Methuselah to Noah. Mr. S. C. Roberts has done a considerable service in tracking down the allusions; in the text ; for Sir Thomas Browne was one of our most allusive writers, with a natural appetite for queer learning. It is the - first time the pamphlet has been reprinted apart from Browne's other writings ; and Mr. Roberts has made use of Johnson's life of Browne for a preface.
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