The Throne of Eloquence (Hodder and Stoughton) is one of
the most satisfactory performances of that indefatigable book-maker, the late Mr. Paxton Hood. It is a collection of facts and opinions on great preachers, ancient and modern, and is less marked than most of Mr. Hood's other books by that peculiar rhetoric of which he had so large a command. Chrysostom and Jeremy Taylor, Henry Melvill and Chalmers and Hall, Whitefield and Bossuet, Robertson and Money, and the secrete of their success in the pulpit—not to speak of the success of minor men—are all dealt with by Mr. Hood after his own somewhat too enthusiastic fashion. Besides, there are in Mr. Hood's volume some nuggets of good advice, mixed up, it must be allowed, in too many cases, with the quartz of declamation, on such subjects as the use of humour in the pulpit, and solitude as a training for the preacher's work. By the ordinary reader, however, The Throne of Eloquence will be found most interesting for the anecdotes it contains.
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