• Selections from Steele's Contributions to the " Tatter." With an
Introduction. and Notes, by L. E. Steele, M.A. (Macmillan and Co.) —Despite the contempt cast upon Steele by Macaulay, his genius in recent days has been fully recognised. He has had his friendly essayists and biographers, and his best papers have been rek printed in a popular form. Eleven years ago Mr. Austin Dobson published an ample selection from Steele's essays in the Clarendon Press series ; three years later a volume of ,about one hundred and twenty selected essays from the Tatter, edited by Mr. Ewald, appeared in the Chandos Classics ; and now Mr. Steele's little volume of twenty essays claims the attention of the public. It is difficult to know for whose benefit it is compiled. Young readers are not likely to be attracted to Steele, and it is only very youthful readers who need the instruction conveyed in the editor's notes. There we are told that a taw is a special kind of marble, that the principal occult sciences are astrology and alchemy, that Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, that Westminster Hall was originally erected by William Rufus, and that the Rank of England was founded in 1694. Such are the facts with which Mr. Steele's notes abound—useful facts, no doubt, in a, school-book—but the. volume is unfitted for boys and girls, and the editor does not state that it is intended for their service.
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