CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Age of Pericles. By W. Watkiss Lloyd. 2 vols. (Macmillan.) —This is the work of an industrious and well-informed scholar, and, what is more to the purpose in the case of such an undertaking, an able and original thinker. It may seem ungracious to criticise work that has been well done as being in any respect superfluous. Still a writer must not suppose that the leisure of a busy generation is in proportion to the ample time that may be at his own command, or to the copious stores of material that he may have collected. Much of the ground which Mr. Lloyd traverses must bo already familiar to any student who can be considered competent to read this book. His account of the battle of Platna, for instance, is not wanted, after Thirlwall, Grote, Curtius, and Cox. Nor, generally, do wo see any novelty in his literary and political history of Athens between the repulse of the Persians and the entrance of Pericles into political life. The hero of the book indeed makes his first appearance very nearly at the end of the first volume. We do not indeed regard as superfluous all that precedes this appearance, for it contains some of Mr. Lloyd's happiest efforts. In nothing does he show greater power and origin- ality than in his discussion of the relation between the Athenian drama and the history of the period. No one could desire a finer piece of constructive criticism than his restoration of the trilogy of which the Perm is the solo remnant, or the chapter in whioh he traces the fate of Themistocles, the greatest and the worst requited of the benefactors of Athens, in the Prometheus Demotes. The second volume is less open than the first to the criticism on which wo have ventured. Here, at least, Pericles is the prominent figure, and is, in- deed, so large a part of Athenian history, both internal and external, that to describe his career is almost equivalent to writing this history. Yet oven here a reference might, wo think, have often advantageously sufficed, where a full account is given. Tho chapters which are most truly Mr. Lloyd's own, "The Danaid Trilogy of /Eschylus," "The Periclean Conception of Civilisation," "The Chryselephantine Statues," to name a few out of several, are the best parts of the volume. And these have a value and an interest which every scholar will appreciate. Wo might venture to suggest that at some future time these more distinc- tive portions of Mr. Lloyd's work might bo collected in a volume, which would be better suited than those two handsome octavos to the limited time and easily exhausted purses of ordinary students. If, in the mean- time, the author could improve a style which is now unusually cumbrous, it would be well.
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