THE ENGLISHMAN. By Richard Steele. Edited by Rae Blanchard. (Oxford,
50s.) CENTURIES-OLD political controversy is dreary stuff, scarcely worth reprinting, and this cdl- lected edition of Steele's newspaper. published in 1714 and 1715, is no excerftion. Both Swift and Addison managed to give even their slight- est essays a universal significance: Swift by the magnificence of his passions, Addison by the limpidity of his style. Steele, however, was commonplace both in feeling and in expression, and no amount of meticulous scholarship will ever make him anything else. His articles are useful to the scholar for the explanation which they give of the Whig Party's attitude at difficult time in its history. They were, how- ever, available in all great libraries and one can but regret that the time, energy and money Which have been lavishly spent on this book Were not used for a worthier object.. Exact scholarship becomes an obsession and loses contact with reality. Does it really matter if 'the' in the octavo edition reads 'this' in the folio and duodecimo versions? • One can imagine Miss Blanchard's thrill of discovery, but it is difficult to share it. In her edition of Steele's Correspondence and his Occasional Verse such meticulous accuracy was under-
standable, and perhaps valuable; in this book it is a Waste of time and makes a mockery of
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