LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

"THE ANNUAL REGISTER"

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."'

Sin,—The enclosed remarks appeared in the Spectator (August 23rd) during my, and probably during your holidays also. As

I well know the futility of making any public protest against the dicta of a newspaper, I should not have asked you to publish any reply from me. Still less, therefore, do I so now at this distance of time ; and I should be ready to let the matter rest, did not your remarks on the "Annual Register" impute bad- faith to the editor, as well as doubtful motives to Messrs. Rivingtons. I am quite willing to submit to the tacit implica- tion of the Spectator that the volume is not worth criticism or detailed notice, although the foreign history is in nearly every instance written by natives of the countries, and by men who have attained distinction, either in politics or literature, in their respective countries. In other cases I have had the co-operation of English residents, and have endeavoured in all cases to give information which was at once accurate and unbiassed. That I have not been altogether unsuccessful in some cases is proved by the wholly spontaneous testimony of such persons as Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Sir Julian Panncefote, &c., as to the value of the chapter on "Mexico "—written in the country by the only Englishman who had been able to follow the course of events during the past year.

But if the volume is so insignificant as I am led by yonr remarks to believe, I might surely have hoped that it would have escaped notice altogether, instead of being made the vehicle for insinuations which, if not calumnious, are, to say the least, malevolent, OA well as unfounded. To these I must be allowed to reply, if only in the hope that on some future occasion the book may reach the hands of its destined reviewer with some more accurate knowledge of how it is produced than is shown in the notice of the last volume.

1. Daring the five or six years I have been editor of the "Annual Register," I have never received the slightest hint or suggestion from Messrs. Rivington as to giving space in the "Retrospect" to notices of their books. 0 n the contrary, whenever there has been question of reducing the bulk of that chapter, they have suggested the omission of their own works.

2. Messrs. Rivingtons are not the sole proprietors of the "Annual Register," although published by them inter atios. The nomea of the other London firms who own the periodical appear on the title-page.

3. If the majority of the writers of theological works publish with Messrs. Rivingtons, it is no affair of mine ; but the writer of the notice, who is otherwise carefully arithmetical, might have added that out of thirty-four pages devoted to literature, not quite two refer to the publications of Messrs. Rivington.

4. I am acquainted with the Foreign Theological Library published by Messrs. Clark of Edinburgh ; but in spite of their value, translations do not fall within the scope of the "Retrospect."

5. I have no more expressed approval of Dr. Blunt's estimate of Cranmer than the Spectator expresses approval of Lord It. Churchill when it cites a specimen of his lordship's view of Mr. Gladstone. The quotation does give a fair idea of Dr. Blues attitude towards Cranmer,—and that was my sole object.

6. It will be interesting to my orthodox friends to find me even by implication classed with any Church party, and may give them tardy hopes of the condition of a Galli° who for thirty years has taken the Spectator regularly as his Sunday sustenance..

7. I am not so confident in my own judgment and taste as to pretend to decide, on the strength of a few months' popularity, what works of fiction are likely to become permanent parts of our literature. I therefore omit notice of all, as well as of other works which by their nature have only an ephemeral interest.

I trust you will pardon this lengthy appeal to your sense of justice. I should not have troubled you with it, had not an almost lifelong (dating from the close of school-life) attachment to the Spectator made me wince under the feeling of being unjustly treated in its columns.—I am, Sir, &c., LIONEL ROBINSON.

19 Kensington. Square, W., September 24th.

P.S.—I do regret the omission of H. Drummond's "Natural Law," but it reached me too late for notice in last year's volume.

[Mr. Robinson is clearly acquitted of partiality, but scarcely of inadequacy to his task. We recommend him to extend to theology the modest reserve which he exercises in fiction

and 2. We willingly accept these statements. 3. It is not the fact that "the majority of the writers of theological works pub- lish with Messrs. Rivington," though the majority of a certain important school of Anglicans do so. Mr. Robinson should examine the lists of Messrs. Longman, Macmillan, Kogan Paul,. Bell and Sons, Hodder and Stoughton, Williams and Norgate, not to speak of Scotch and Irish publishers. 4. If " transla- tions do not fall within the scope of the 'Retrospect,'" why notice the translation of Rosmini's "Five Wounds of the Church " P 5. Mr. Robinson is curiously at fault. The quota- tion from Mr. Blunt begins thus :—"Happily for the Reformation, Archbishop Cranmer was not a Presbyterian by birth and country,. and so was not so distinctly a foe to the Church of England as some of her later rulers have been." Any one familiar with the ecclesiastical controversies of the last twenty years will see- in these words a savage attack on Archbishop Tait. It was a commonplace in the polemics of his adversaries to call him a Presbyterian. He is the "later ruler of the Church" who was "so distinctly its foe." The attack seemed to us to become positively brutal when repeated after the Archbishop's death. But Mr. Robinson knows nothing of its real meaning, and thinkg that we objected to a harsh judgment on Cranmer ! He is, indeed, too much of" Gallio " to undertake a "retrospect of theology." P.S.—There is every reason for the regret, as Mr.. Drummond's book was published before May 5th, and reviewed in the Spectator on August 17th. (The translation of Rosmini did not come out before June 1.)—En. Spectator.]