Essays in Imitation. By Algernon Cecil. (John Murray. 3s. net.)—Mr.
Cecil dedicates his book to " The Memory of Thomas Carlyle, Jonathan Swift, and Charles Lamb." In which imitation, it may be asked, has he been the most successful ? Most readers will answer, we imagine, that the Swift comes first; that might be expected, for, after all, it is the easiest. The Gulliver stories are readable in what may be called their first intention, and this characteristic is preserved in the "Voyage to Isotakia." Carlyle presents the difficulty that he has more styles than one ; and Charles Lamb is really beyond imitation. On the whole Mr. Algernon Cecil has achieved a considerable success. Only, one would ask, if this success were to be permanent, was it well to make the imitation with events which will become more or less dim in the memory? "The English Revolution" has to do with the Government now in power, and already we are growing some- what indifferent to speeches and acts which moved us much a year ago.
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