THOMAS SHAW (First Lord Craigmyle) By His Son
The late Lord Craigmy!e's many friends will welcome his son's interesting little book (Nicholson and Watson, 2s. 6d.), for which the Prime Minister has written a preface. It recalls very pleasantly the witty veteran who retained his alert step and his intellectual cur:osity, and at eighty-seven—shortly before his death last summer—could go fishing in the Highlands. Thomas Shaw in middle life was perhaps a harder-hitting poli- tician than the author suggests. The services to his party that were rewarded by high judicial office exasperated his opponents. But he mellowed in old age, and his books and addresses, as well as his talk, showed his essential kindliness. It is now no surprise to be told that he regarded magnanimity as the noblest of virtues. His son's chapter on " Church and State" pictures the strict Sunday observance to which he long remained faithful and mentions that he found him- self unable to follow the great majority of the United Presbyterians into union with the Church of Scotland—for reasons that only a Scottish theologian can rightly appreciate. A characteristic portrait is prefixed to the memoir.
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