of entertaining matter, certainly not all "new," and presumably not
all "true," but making some quite tolerable reading. It strikes us that the author is not very profoundly acquainted with the subjects of which he treats. No one who knew much about Socrates would say that he solaced his "solitary hours with literary pursuits." Socrates never wrote a line, as far as is known. Galileo was not "incarcerated in a dungeon at Rome" when Milton visited him. He was released in 1634, and it was more than four years after this when Milton saw him. " Southwell, a Romanist living in the middle of the sixteenth century," is, to say the least, curiously worded. He was born in 1560, and was executed in 1595. It is strange to be told that Sir Walter Scott beard without remembering his authorship, a " canto " from "The Pirate." Of course, the writer means a "song."
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