SOIVIT BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books the week as have not Dem reserved for review in other forms.]
Charles Lamb : his Homes and Haunts. By S. L. Bensusan. (T. C. and E. C. Jack. 1s. 6d. net.)—It is one of the many things that can be said in praise of Charles Lamb that his life and work furnish the very best of subjects,—if the writer has the root of the matter in him. Mr. Bensusan's book, not quite eighty looiely printed pages, does not pretend to be exhaustive ; sub- stantial volumes may be filled with what is well worth saying about Elia, as he was in the flesh and on paper ; but a sketch has always its charm and its uses, so it be done by the right hand. We have only one criticism to make : it might have been better to say all that had to be said about Lamb's habit of drink- ing and be done with it. It recurs here too often. It is not that Mr. Bensusan is unkind; it is his repeating the excuse that we do not like. Generally the appreciation of the man's character and of his literary quality is all that could be desired. One little anecdote is new to us : Elia when a clerk at the India House bad sometimes to write to Mr. Bensusan's grand- parents, and would address them as " Sir and Madam."— Belonging to the same series of "The Pilgrim Books," and by the same author, is William Shakespeare : his Homes and Haunts. These latter words, if we may judge from the title of the series, suggest a prominent subject. We do hear in the Lamb volume about different regions in the Temple, about Islington and Enfield and Edmonton. In the case of Shakespeare there is little to be said. Time and the malice of man have made it impossible. Of the "haunts," we may see or imagine some- thing as long as Stratford-on-Avon and the Borough exist ; but the " homes" are not even to be imagined. But Mr. Bensusan has done his best: if he has not achieved the impossible and reconciled the Stratford burgess with the Shakespeare of the plays, he has yet written a pleasant and instructive little volume.
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