Tax Hosts TfravErtsrry LlutgART.—Of the new volumes in this series
just issued readers are likely to turn first to The Victorian Age in Literature, by Mr. G. K. Chesterton. It is written with all the freshness and the somewhat self-conscious originality that we always expect from him. The paradoxes are as plentiful as tabby cats ; in fact, there are so many that the editors of the series have felt obliged to issue a kind of dinsenti at the beginning to explain that the book " is not put forward as an authoritative history of Victorian literature." Very different in character is Mr. John Bailey's sober appreciation of Dr. Johnson and his Circle. He writes of. Johnson with true sympathy, and we are glad to find a chapter devoted to the destruction of Macaulay's absurd onslaught upon Boswell. The remaining purely literary volume among those before us is Professor J. G. Robertson's comprehensive account of The Literature of Germany ; but a kindred subject is dealt with by Mr. G. Binney Dibblee in his book upon The Newspaper. This is a most interest- ing study, which lets the public behind the scenes, as it were, of the great business of journalism. Mr. Dibble() gives a brief historical sketch of his subject, but the main part of his book is devoted to describing the organization and the technical pro- cesses of newspaper production. We have only enough space to refer very briefly to one or two other volumes of the present batch. History is represented by Mr. Herbert Fisher's biography of Napoleon, and by Mr. David Hannay's study upon The Navy and Sea Power; Science is represented by Professor Raphael Meldola's widely generalized Chemistry, and by Professor Benjamin Moore's discussion of the perplexed question of The Origin and Nature of Life. Under neither of these heads, though connected with both of them, may be mentioned Professor J. Estlin Carpenter's Com- pare/ire Religion. We notice, by the way, that neither among the volumes already published nor among those announced is there any that deals even indirectly with music. This, in a series which sets out to cover the whole field of human intellectual activity, is surely a serious omission. It should be added that the price of each volume in the library is Is. net, and that the publishers are Messrs. Williams and Norgate.
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