SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved fur review in other forms.) POETS AND POETRY.—A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. By Lilian Whiting. (Gay and Bird. 5s. net.)—This is at once a biographical notice and a criticism. No one could be a more thoroughgoing admirer of Mrs. Browning than the author. We might even object that her criticism is too one-sided. The poet had serious faults, one of them being the inability to see when she had said enough. The book is a carefully studied and sympathetic piece of writing.— With this we may mention Burns's Representative Poems with Carlyle's Essay on Burns (Ginn and Co., Boston, U.S., 2s.) ; and in the series of "British Anthologies" (H. Frowde, 2s. 6d. per vol.), The Dryden Anthology, 1675-1700, and The Pope Anthology, both edited by Professor Edward Arber. We must remind our readers that the names Dryden and Pope are representative. Each volume contains selections from many authors, some sixty or more, and a few are common to both. Many names will be new to the general reader, and some that he knows he will know only by the contemptuous references of the masters of satire who give a title to the volumes. Shadwell, most of us remember, "never deviates into sense." Nevertheless, this is not so bad :— "' Long absence, like a Greenland night, Slade me but wish tor sun the more And that inimitable light
She, none but slit, could e'er restore • She never once regards thy lire ;
Nor ever vents one eigh tor thee I 'I must the glorious bun admire,
Though he can never look on me!'"
—Another anthology of a different kind is A Book of French Song, selected by Bernard Minssen, M.A. (J. M. Dent and Co., 4s. 6d. net). Beranger, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Th. Gautier, Alphonse Daudet, C. Nether, Arsene Houssaye, Chateaubriand, Alfred de Musset, and Paul Deroulede, are among the best-known names- M. Deroulecle's name is so much in all mouths now, and not always in respectful terms, that we quote part of his Chanson :— "0 r5le immense ! 0 tfiche satiate 1
Marchant sans erls, tombant sans plaints, Qui travaille a uotre rachat Le soldat.
Et our sa tombe obscure et Sere Pour recompense et pour priere, Que voudralt-11 quo ion gravat? • Cu suldat.'"
Besides the literary extracts there are some popular rhymes. Altogether we have a very interesting volume.
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