22 DECEMBER 1923, Page 14

BOOKS.

THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.

Tins seems to be a gala week for the Cambridge University Press. All but two of the books we have selected this time as the most noteworthy have been published by them. Fore- most of the lot is Milton's hymn, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, with hitherto unpublished illustrations by William Blake. The original drawings are in water-colour, and are in the possession of the Whitworth Institute in Manchester. The drawing of " The Shepherds and the Choir of Angels " is one of the finest Blakes we have seen. The next book on the list is John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. These were written during a serious illness in 1623, two years after his appointment to the Deanery of St. Paul's. They were first published in 1624, and have not been reprinted since about 1840. From Elkin Mathews has come the reprint of Amanda, a Sacrifice to an Unknown Goddesse, or a Free-Will Offering of a Loving Heart to a Sweet-Heart, by Nicholas Ilookes. These poems were first published in 1653. It is a pity that this edition does not include a note about the author.

To return to the Cambridge Press, we have also Mr. J. G. Robertson's Studies in the Genesis of Romantic Theory in the Eighteenth Century. The author, who is the Professor of German Language and Literature in the University of London, holds that the movement which led to the dethronement of Reason in favour of the Imagination is to be credited primarily to Italy. The Miracles of Henry VI. are accounts and trans- lations of twenty-three miracles taken from the manuscript in the British Museum and introduced by Father Ronald Knox and Mr. Shane Leslie. Volume IV. of the Cambridge Mediaeval History, dealing with the Eastern Roman Empire (717-1453), has just appeared. Strabo on the Troad (Book XIII., Chap- ter 1) has been edited, translated and commented upon by Dr. Walter Leaf. It is concerned with a district of Asia Minor of which Strabo made a particular study—a district interesting through its relation to Homer and the Iliad. The Hellenistic Age is a volume of essays upon a somewhat neglected period, by Pro&ssor J. B. Bury, Mr. E. A. Barber, Dr. Edwyn Bevan, and Mr. W. W. Tarn. Mr. John Long has published a popular history of Fascism, called Rome or Death, by Mr.