TWO VOLUMES OF THE "REGENT LIBRARY."
William Cowper, by Edward Storer (Herbert and Daniel, 2s. Od. net), is a volume of the "Regent Library." We doubt whether the "Romantic movement in English poetry has temporarily come to an end," as Mr. Storer thinks. Still, we do not deny that this is an opportune, even peculiarly opportune, moment for publishing an edition of Cowper. But the editor does not quite believe in his anther as a poet, for he gives SA pages to selections from his Poems and 200 pages to his Letters. We do not object; the letters are delightful ; but it is a strange way of dealing with a poet whom we are asked to think of as entering or re-entering into his kingdom. Mr. Storer, as an anti- Romantic, thinks that he can criticise his author without "a lurking sense of apology." Perhaps such a sense would not bo wholly out of place when he speaks of Cowper's "parade of religion" and of some of his sacred verse as "a trifle vulgar and even comic," with the doubtful excuse that these repetitions of sacred words and phrases were "footholds by which his terrified spirit clung breathlessly to sanity."—Another volume in the same series is Blaise de Monluc, by A. W. Evans. The inclusion of a book which has not appeared in this country for two hundred years and more —Charles Cotton's translation was published in 1674—is a new and praiseworthy departure. Blaise de Monte.° was a famous French soldier of the sixteenth century. Most of his service he saw in Italy, the chief achievement of his career being his defence of Siena in 1555. Nineteen years afterwards ha was made a Marshal of France, and seems to have set about writing his " Commentaries " in the last year of his life (1579). They are well worth reading. Monluo was of the Old Faith, and gives a somewhat lurid picture of Huguenot goings-on. Ho declares, for instance, that he was offered 40,000 crowns if ho would stand neutral while they carried out their plans. Elsewhere he prides himself on not having used the opportunities of enriching himself which had come to him. "I have been seven or eight times Captain of Foot, and I have known several captains in my time who have enriched themselves merely out of their soldier's pay. I have been three times Camp- Master, and could have discovered where anything was to be got as soon or sooner than any man in the army. I have been often Governor of a place ; . . . with a little good husbanding, good God! what a mountain of gold I might have had." There is money made out of war oven now, but it is not made by the men who fight, rather by the contractors who feed—or do not feed— them.
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