DUBLIN UNDER THE GEORGES, 1714-1830
Current Literature
By Constantia Maxwell - - Dublin enjoyed its heyday in the eighteenth century. It was then that its importance as a European capital was most evident, that its political life had the greatest appearance of order and even of permanence, that its social life was most gay, that its art, was most flourishing, and—most important to us now--:that its finest buildings were erected. In this book (Harrap, 12s. 6d.) Miss Maxwell publishes the results of years of research on this fascina subject. It is,
within its limits .aa-good book ample • pa ly, thorough,
and sensible. But it could have been h better book.
Miss Maxwell's writing is innocent at- ee, humour, or imagination ; this does not matter much is ien Miss Maxwell is writing of >concrete . subjects, but it-becomes a serious disadvantage when, for example,- she come_ 'teal with
fashionable life or the drab existence of the both cases she is generous with het inforniation,-bit pages
have little more evocative power than page44 Statistics, and the: reader has to put his own imiginatiOn' heavily into commission if Wants to get any idea of avluifit can actually have felt like to •live in Dublin in either class during the period. But as- a whole -the book must‘eeitainlY be recom- mended, for it. is. wider in scope and More reliable in its information than any other on the subject: • It` a•pity that the illustrations, which are well chosen; conk' 'not: have been' better reproduced.
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