30 DECEMBER 1949, Page 26

The Personal Art, An Anthology of English Letters. Selected and

Edited by Philip Wayne. (I ongmans. i is.) This collection of letters begins with one from Dorothy Osborne in 1653 and ends with one from A. B. Ramsay to E. V. Lucas in 1932, giving an entertaining description of the shifts to which the writer was put in order to return a stolen piece of marble to the Acropolis for the Vice-Provost of Eton. Mr. Wayne tells us that the letters are " chosen for their human and not their historical interest." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu saying to her daughter in 1749, " You are no more obliged to me for bringing you into the world, than I am to you for coming into it," or the delicious gaieties of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1906 will delight all who read them