24 SEPTEMBER 1898, Page 24

Macaulay's Essay on Addison. Edited, with Notes, by Herbert Augustine

Smith. (Ginn and Co., Boston, U.S.A.)—A good school edition of Macaulay's celebrated essay. The notes have been carefully compiled, and the biographical sketch displays much critical insight ; but we think that the editor would have been wiser if he had qualified a little his eulogy of Macaulay's style. It is scarcely safe to hold up as a model for students of composition a writer whose very merits, great as they are, are certain to degenerate into faults in his imitators.