Recreations of a Book-Lover. By Frederick W. Macdonald. (Hodder and
Stoughton. 2s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Macdonald has done well to share his recreations with others. Comnaseel seria ludo ; both kinds of ingredients are of excellent quality, and the mixing is judiciously managed. First in importance, to give precedence to the graver element, is "Bishop Butler and John Wesley : a Comparison and a Contrast." "Butler's influence was as much separated from his personality as possible." We might even say that what we know of his personality is somewhat difficult to reconcile with his philosophy. " Wesley's personality was the chief cause of his influence." Possibly his figure would be even more commanding than it is if we had none of his books. The whole essay is admirable. After this should be read "The Bio- graphy of Herbert Spencer" and the two papers on Dr. Samuel Johnson, the second, on his "Religion," being especially good. The literary criticism is always sound. The volume begins with letters addressed to a friend who has spent five pounds on one of the popular series of reprints with which this ago is enriched. Mr. Macdonald points out what a contrast there is between this possibility and the conditions of book buying which prevailed less than fifty years ago : Gibbon— and nothing is better worth reading than Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"— for seven shillings, and Pope's "Iliad" and " Odyssey " for two. Gibbon originally cost six guineas, and Pope eleven. All the papers are good to read. Mr. Macdonald, like most people who wander far, sometimes goes a little astray. It was not a living divine who published " Last Words " and "More Last Words," but the friends of a dead one, Richard Baxter. It was not a worm but a frog that Izaak Walton would have the angler *fasten to his hook "as if he loved him."
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