SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent review.] The London Mercury for June contains a spirited article by the late Mr. E. W. Hornung on Charles Reade, and a thought- ful study of " Three Philosopher-Prophets "—Dr. Inge, Mr. Bertrand Russell, and Mr. Santayana—by Mr. Arthur McDowell. Mr. Edward Shanks has some " Reflections on the Recent History of the English Novel," and Mr. Edmund Blunden, using the unpublished correspondence of Taylor the publisher and John Clare, casts some " New Sidelights on Keats, Lamb, and Others " between 1820 and 1837. It is odd to read Taylor's remark on Keats's death : " He used to say he should effect nothing upon which he would rest his fame till he was thirty, and all our hopes are over at twenty-five." Taylor recorded Keats's epitaph for himself as " Here lies one whose Name was writ on Water "—and not " in Water " ; the idea was taken from the line in Bacon's " Poem on Life," " But limns on water or but writes in dust." Mr. W. B. Yeats writes at length about his youthful experiences of Bedford Park, 1887-1891. Among the poems Mr. Kenneth Ashley's " Goods Train at Night " is unconsciously amusing.
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