A unique career like that of Lenin attracts and deserves
a multiplicity of biographers ; and after the sensational pane- gyric of Mr. Marcia and. the scholarly study of Prince Mirsky, there is still room for Mr. Veale's essay in light journalism. —The Man from the Volga : A Life of Leant. (Constable, 10s.). Mr. Osborn exceeds, indeed, the degree of puerility permitted to writers of complimentary forewords when he suggests that this will " become the standard work on its subject.' Mr. Veale has not burdened himself with research ; and when he tells us that the influence of lkis Kapital is " difficult to explain," or that the origins of the revolutionary movement in Russia are " obscure," he merely means that these are matters which he himself has not found time to study. But this biography has the great merit of books which are easily written. It can be read easily ; and, despite a host of minor inaccuracies, it gives a clear, unbiassed and often thrilling record of Lenin's career. Mr. Veale is not ° without discernment. " In his forecasts relating to Russian affairs," he sums up, " Lenin was generally amazingly correct, i but he was invariably mistaken in his estimates of the men- tality of foreign peoples." And if he sometimes exaggerates, for the sake of picturesque effect, the specifically Oriental element in his bero's m8lce7up, he.proVides his own corrective in the host of historical parallels which come so readily from his pen, and which prove that there is nothing new under the sun, and least of all class-warfare and revolutionary autocracy. On Lenin's private life, Mr. Veale is as meagre and unsatisfying as other biographers. Scarcely any material for this aspect of the.subject is yet available.
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