CURRENT LITERATURE.
The British Quarterly Review. October. (Hodder and Stoughton.) —The first article in this number is Dr. Gibb's essay on "The Life and Times of St. Anselm," for such it is, only two or three pages being devoted to a brief notice of writers who have recently dealt with the same subject. The brief summary of Anselm's doctrine of the Atonement given in the concluding pages is especially excellent. Mr. Ralston deals with a topic in which he is thoroughly at home in his " Indian Stories," and gives an account of this very curious litera- ture which will please many readers. Another important article is " Cromwell in Ireland," in which Mr. Denis Murphy's work is die- cussed, and, we think, very fairly discussed. Cromwell was not naturally cruel, if we may judge of him by the rest of his life, and he certainly approached nearer to true religious toleration than any of his contemporaries ; and it is only reasonable, therefore, to conjec- ture that there must have been something exceptional in Ireland to make him, as he certainly was in his dealings with that country, both very intolerant and extremely cruel. Probably he recognised, as Elizabeth had recognised before him, that England was fighting for its life against the Papacy. If Rome had conquered, we should have had, he thought massacres compared to which Drogheda and Wexford would have been nothing. It is a pleasure to turn from these painful themes to an ad- mirable essay by Mr. A. M. Clerke, on " The Dog in Homer." The dog the Iliad, says Mr. Clerks, is an object of loathing and disgust. He is domesticated, indeed ; witness the dogs of Priam and Patroclus, but he is ready to devour his master. The dog in the Odyssey is a miracle of fidelity, is made the subject of a most pathetic episode, and receives, for the first time in literature, the crowning honour, in the Iliad vouchsafed only to the horse, of a name. In this Mr. Clerke thinks that he finds a convincing argument for the theory of the Chorizontes. And he proceeds to conjecture that the author of the Odyssey was a native of western Greece, familiar with the most famous breed of dogs in ancient times,—the mastiffs of Molosans, a breed that still, it seems, exists in ancient purity. The writer on "Life In- surance Finance " exposes the injustice of the " loading " system. Why should insurers be overcharged, and then compensated with a chance (which, of course, is as unprofitable to some as it is profitable to others) of getting back the excess at the quinquennial division of- profits ? The other articles are, " Among the Mongols," "The Four Hundredth Birthday of Luther," " Mr. Roden-Noel's Poems," "The Second Part of Faust : a Study," and the " Ilbert Bill." The writer of this last quotes Macaulay, who seems to have looked forward to the admission of natives to the highest civil and military positions. That is certainly "thorough" It would be a little startling to have a native commander-in-chief, with, say, another Mutiny in prospect.
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