Fifty Years of an Actor's Life. By John Coleman. 2
vols. (Hutchinson and Co. 24s. net.)—These two volumes would have been the better for a severe editing. Compression was greatly. needed; everything in any way worth recording might have been easily put into half the space; and it would have been well also if, apart from this consideration, there had been some omissions. More than once the " Actor " leaves himself in situations which are, to say the least, ambiguous. What he says, too, about his. father is sometimes unseemly. The maxim de mortuis, &c., is abused, but there are cases in which it is imperative., There are amusing things in the book, as, for instance, the courage of the lad when he offers himself for the most important parts. Neither the dignity of the manager whom he interviewed,. nor the difficulty of the part which he proposed for himself, nor, his own tender age, seems to have abashed him. A lad who ,felt himself equal to Hamlet at fourteen ought to have gone far. The thread of narrative is not distinctly kept; it is, in fact, e case of not being able to see the wood for the multitude of the trees. But there is some reasonably good reading; some picturesque b'te of description ; and some instances of good sense and good feeling. Still, we cannot honestly recommend the book as a whole.
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