NEW EDITIONS—The History of England. By Lord Macaulay. 5 vols.
(Chatto and Windus. 2s. and 3s. net per vol.)—Mr. Justin McCarthy's preface avoids all but the most perfunctory notice of the History, and is occupied with a statement of the plan by which Mr. McCarthy's own historical works are to be brought into line with Lord Macaulay's. There is an obvious Idiscrepancy in the scale on which the two parts of the work are constructed. Lord Macaulay's five volumes are occupied with the history of seventeen years (1685-1702). There are two preliminary chapters, it is true, which fill something less than a ,half of Vol. I.; but, on the other hand, there is a gap in Vol. V. Mr. McCarthy's five volumes cover a period about ten times as long, from the accession of Anne to the Diamond Jubilee of Victoria. We need not go any further to find reasons for thinking Mr. McCarthy's publishers ill-advised in proposing, and that gentleman in accept- ing, the idea of making a Macaulay and McCarthy combination after the manner of "Hums and Smelled." We have no wish to depreciate Mr. McCarthy's unquestionable abilities, but we can- not help feeling that there is something almost bizarre in the combination. Fortunately, the two writers cannot come into direct comparison; still, imagination will play with the possibility. Fancy Mr. McCarthy describing the siege of Londonderry ! 'Fancy, again, Macaulay contemplating his continuator !—In the "Bohn Library" (G. Bell and Sons, 5s.) we have Vol. VII. of The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Edited by Temple Scott. The volume contains "Historical and Political Tracts : Irish." There are between forty and fifty of these (the " Drapier Letters" have appeared in an earlier volume), and they throw a curious light on Irish history at the time when " Ascendency " principles had reached their highest development.—The same publishers send us Swift's Journal to Stella, Edited by Frederick Ryland, M.A. (2s. net). It is a volume in the "York Library."—Tales and Fantasies. By R. Louis Stevenson. (Chatto and Windus. 6s.)— Some Notable Hamlets. By Clement Scott. With a New Chapter on Mr. H. B. Irving by Mr. W. L. Courtney. (Greening and Co. is.) (For Publications of the Week see page 94.) LIBERTY'S CATALOGUE OF REDUCTIONS FREE SALE
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