Virgirs " Gathering of the Clans." By W. Wardo Fowler.
(Black- well. 3s. Od. net.)—There must be others who, like Dr. Warde Fowler, seek in evil days some distraction in great poetry which by its merits and associations can grip and fortify their minds for a time. They will welcome in this small book a disquisition upon a hundred lines of the VIIth Aoneid. It is a fino passage, treated with much more poctio art than Homer's catalogue in Iliad IL, and was certainly the principal inspiration of Milton's pageant of Satan's hosts in the first book of Paradise Lost. There are no means of knowing upon what legends Virgil based his tale of local heroes (" ad nos vix tennis famao periabitur aura "), but ho plainly intended to arouse local patriotism when Augustus was consolidating the first united Italy. Dr. Fowler 'is never dry, and writes both as a scholar and a real lover of poetry and no less of
Italy. Many Italian scholars must a year ago have turned to this passage to road the stirring account of the arming of their nation.
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