The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins. By Robert Pollock,
of Lincoln's Inn. With a Preface by A. H. Millen. (Reeves and Turner.) —Peter Wilkins is so old and well-known a story that any detailed criti- cism of it would be superfluous. Pallock's fame, as Mr. Bullen observes in his preface, is firmly established. Coleridge pronounced the work to be one of uncommon beauty, and it takes rank as one of the minor classics of our language. Yet there are doubtless many readers to whom the book is strange, and to them the present edition, which consists of two portable, well-printed volumes, may be cordially re- commended. It is, however, well they should know that Pallock wrote in an age when it was not held ill-mannered to call a spade a spade, and that though Peter Wilkins is as superior in morality as in diction to the novels of some lady writers of the period that are found in respectable houses, and enjoy a questionable popularity, there are one or two passages in the book which could not very well be read aloud in the presence of young people.
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