English Literature in the Nineteenth Century. By Laurie Magnus, MA.
(Andrew Melrose. 7s. 6d. net.)—Commonly we find it unprofitable, or at least unadvisablo, to criticise criticism, and consequently pass over books of this kind with very brief notice. We make no exception with Mr. Laurie Magnus's volume. It is of no small value; the outcome of an ample knowledge and of careful study. We do not know of any book dealing with the same subject in which the reader anxious to improve his knowledge of modern literary history will gain more. We cannot accept all Mr. Magnus's dicta, that Tennyson, for instance, held that "men's efforts towards good are red fool fury." " His whole treatment of Tennyson as a teacher is, we think, defective. It was not the poet's business to be revolutionary ; his work was done by suggestion, that we may well believe is still working in the minds of men. Mr. Magnus has some very careful analysis of Tennyson's metrical effects which may be studied with advantage by those who are interested in the mechanism of verse.
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