Simplicity and conciseness are combined in a remarkable degree with
picturesqueness of style in Mr. Laurence Binyon's Landscape in English Art and Poetry -(Cobden- Sanderson, 7s. 6d.). In this volume, enriched with many reproductions from our great painters, Mr. Binyon reprints six lectures delivered at the Imperial - University of Tokyo. He surveys in outline the whole field of English poetry and art in relation to Nature from the Middle Ages to the present day. He follows the tardy growth in Europe, 'prior to the nineteenth century, of the conception familiar to the-Orient from ancient times—namely, that of Nature regarded as something not outside the spirit of man, but pervading it, He also emphasizes the peculiar virtues and defects of English poetry and art due to the mingling in our culture of Latin discipline with Northern freedom. By reason both of space and of the audience addressed, the book is necessarily elementary. But, written by a poet of fine and subtle quality, it has many delightful touches of individuality and penetration ; while the comparisons between Western and Eastern art add as much to the enjoyment of the English reader as they must have done to the Japanese listener.
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