Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers, 1704-1750. By Elizabeth O. Cook.—Aaron
Hill. By Dorothy Brewster.— Learned Societies and English Literary Scholarship. By H. H. Stemma. (New York : Columbia University Press. 6s. 6d. net each.)—Each of these monographs "has been approved by the Department of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia University as a contribution to knowledge worthy of publication." If all books bad to earn a similar imprimatur, the task of the humble reviewer would be made greatly pleasanter. These three mono- graphs reflect high credit upon the scholarship—at once exact and humane—of the English Department at Columbia. Miss Cook, we think, has been happiest in her choice of a subject; she draws a most amusing picture of American journalism in the first half of the eighteenth century, which was hitherto a dead-letter to the English reader—with, of course, the one exception of Benjamin Franklin. Miss Brewster hes devoted herself to a very minor author, who is chiefly remembered through the " Dunciad"; if the thing was worth doing at all, it could hardly have been done better. Mr. Steeres must have given an immense amount of labour to his somewhat arid field, from which he has raised a valuable, though not very digestible, crop.
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