A Fine Old English Gentleman, Exemplified in the Life and
Character Davies makes "his fine old English gentleman" the occasion of
some fine new English writing, which wo do not by any means admire. His opening sentence, which begins with, "In an age when morality is regarded as a branch of speculative science," and goes on for nearly forty lines without a period, gives us a warning of what is to come. The facts of a noble life, which could not be told too simply, are over- laid by such inflated rhetoric as this :—" Then England assorted itself ; her voice was not an empty sound, a tinkling cymbal, but it rang through stolid [why stolid ?] plank and shroud and rigging. through smoke and cannon-thunder, till all England reverberated the roar with a noise that quelled the heart of tyranny, and made the usurper tremble to his footstool." Nothing can wholly obscure the interest of such a career as Lord Collingwood's, but Mr. Davies, with his "biographical study," as he calls it, goes a long way towards it.
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