28 SEPTEMBER 1901, Page 24

Some Recollections of Jean Ingelow. (Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.

3s. 6d.)—This is a very pleasing little book. Miss Ingelow was Lincolnshire born, and some of her best verse is inspired by her birth-land. On the whole, she never wrote any- thing better than the "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," a curiously prosaic title, by the way. There is not much said here about the literary side of her life. The account of "Her Books" in chap. 9 is brief and colourless. Would there have been any objection to a little more information about the financial side of her literary work ? That she had an unusual success in this direction is commonly supposed. It has been said, indeed, that Lincolnshire has had the honour of producing the best paid of poets and of poetesses. Of the personality of Miss Ingelow we have a very attractive picture. There was a certain peculiarity about her—how strange, for instance, her childish fancy of moving stones about to give them a change of air—but it was of the most amiable kind. It would be rash to try to put into a few words what the intimate friend who has put this volume together tells us. Readers must go and look for themselves, and they will find something very gracious for their pains.