The Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright.
By William Robertson. (Rochdale, published by the Author.)—This compact and handy little volume may ho described as a triumph of local hero-wor- ship. It is written and printed and published in Rochdale, by a Rochdale man, in honour of the man who has probably made Rochdale famous for all time. It contains a good deal of curious information about Mr. Bright's ancestry and their struggles, photographs of Mr. Bright and his house and factory, and the Quaker burying-ground at Rochdale,—and has, moreover, a very elaborate family-tree, which includes even Mr. Bright's grandchildren. For the most part, the book itself is made up, we imagine, of carefully collected newspaper extracts, and notes of matters which have come under Mr. Robertson's personal notice as a local reporter. Thus it will be seen that what he furnishes us with is rather a miscellany of biographical materials than a biography. In apology for the inadequacy of his account of Mr. Bright's private life, our author refers to his well-known dislike of beimg " trotted out," so to speak ; the recollection of this dislike might, we think, have stayed his hand when chronicling the details of his hero's early averages at cricket, particulars of his later triumphs as a fisher- man and a billiard-player, and the tastes of his sons and other members of his family. If" 'tis fit the many-headed boast should know " how Mr. Bright spends his Sunday evenings, it should be left to "journals of Society" to tell us. We hope that the printing of all these things may not tend to lesson the value of a free, a very free Press, in the eyes of the subject of them. We recommend Mr. Robertson to relegate his verses (on page 512) to some "Poets' Corner," where " bold " may be made to rhyme with "furled," and the poet, perchance, escape criticism.
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