Courage in Politics, and other Essays. By Coventry Patmore. (H.
Milford. 7s. 6d. net.)—The greater number of Patmore's articles, mostly reprinted from the St. James's Gazette of 1885-88, are concerned with literature and architecture. He was a kindly critic of his fellow-poets, like William Barnes, or Francis Thompson, or Sir Robert Bridges, but he could write forcibly when he was angered, as in the paper on " Unnatural Literature." A few political articles are given in the opening pages. The argument of the paper which gives its title to the book is as true now as it was in 1888. A democracy, said Patmore, respected its leaders for their courage, and assumed that a courageous man was also a wise man. Gladstone, he main- tained, was respected for his courage, not for " his incomparable power of saying or implying the thing which is not." Patmore told his Conservative friends that their leek of courage had " been followed by failure of insight and intellectual ability."
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