FROM A CORNISH WINDOW.
From a Cornish Window. By A. T. Quiller-Couch. (J. W. Arrowsmith, Bristol. 6s.)—We have often been delighted by " Q's " romances, and we have admired his deft and scholarly verse, but no work of his has given us greater pleasure than this journal of random criticisms and reflections. Some years ago lie contributed to a monthly magazine a similar journal, from which some of the material in the present book seems to be taken. With a manly and robust philosophy of life, great knowledge of litera- ture, and a style of singular delicacy and charm, " Q " is the most entertaining of talkers. He is the foe of all cant, the preacher of sanity and moderation and good taste in art and conduct. But there is always the Stevensonian note, the love of romance and strange deeds and strange characters, to relieve his orthodoxy. Sometimes he condescends to parodies, as when he burlesques the style of the ordinary newspaper correspondence, or works out a proposition in Euclid in the manner of " Sir Patrick Spens," or in his famous " Ballad of the Jubilee Cup" unites all sporting jargons in a glorious and rhythmical confusion. There are chapters, too, of fine criticism,—of Treberne, of T. E. Brown, and of Keats's odes. And sometimes he becomes serious indeed, and preaches forgotten truths in a style so admirable as to make the reader almost unconscious of the gravity of the text. In all his manners he is urbane, kindly, and tolerant, half moralist, half wit, and wholly scholar. It is a book which we dare not begin to quote from, if only because it is so extremely quotable; but all lovers of good literature will find it a treasury which they will not readily exhaust.
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