Portfolio _Papers. By P. G. Hamerton. (Seeley and Co.)—Mr. Hamerton,
who has edited the Portfolio since its foundation, now nearly twenty years ago (to be exact, it completes its twentieth year next December), has here collected some papers contributed by him to it. No writer on Art habitually makes himself more intelligible and more agreeable to the outside reader than does Mr. Hamerton, and this volume will not fail to receive its welcome.
It is divided into four parts,—" Notices of Artists" (Constable, Etty, Chintreuil, Adrien Guignet, and Goya), "Notes on /Esthetics," "Essays," and "Conversations." This last head, which deals with one topic only, "Books and Illustrations," is peculiarly interesting. Most readers must have speculated from time to time on the theory of illustrated books, by which we mean, not books that exist for their illustrations, and in which the letter- press is quite subsidiary, but books in which the literary element is predominant, but in which art is called to explain or commend the written matter. It is not too much to say that the great majority of these illustrations are absolutely valueless, and that the cases where the literary matter receives any real help from
the drawings are very rare, such works BA dictionaries, &c., being excepted. Mr. Hamerton has a good deal to say on this topic, and
though we cannot always agree with him—(as we do with his obiter dictum, put into the mouth of his "Poet," that "Rogers is really dead," and only lives by virtue of Turner's vignettes)—we can
certainly say that he is well worth reading. We must not forget to mention a very pleasant preface, relating a few facts about the Portfolio, facts that are equally honourable to editor and publisher. By-Ways in Book-Land. By W. Davenport Adams. (Elliot Stock.)—There is little to be said about Mr Adams's book except that it is quite readable. He has nothing very recondite to say; his " by-ways " are such as most readers at all worthy of the name have traversed ; but he is a pleasant guide; he points out
spots that are worth noticing, and does not allow the traveller to grow weary. We do not always agree with his criticism, which seems to us touched now and then with a little Philistinism,— witness his finding what he is pleased to call "a gentle lacry- moseness " in the poems of Adelaide A. Procter ; but he quotes, for the most part, judiciously. Altogether, this is an agreeable little volume.
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