Books to Bead and How to Bead Them. By Rector
Macpherson. (W. Blackwood and Sons. 7s. 6d. net.)—An author who takes so wide a subject as books is as a guide who should profess to con- duct travellers through all the cities in the world. Mr. Macpherson is a well-informed person, and as likely to perform the impossible as any one. Failing a book in which the main divisions of human knowledge should be treated by specialists, his volume will do well enough. Possibly there is too much of his own speculations in it, but it will be helpful. The chapter on Biblical criticism is comprehensive and fair. The reader will get from it materials for considering both sides of the question. The classical chapter is weak ; the recommendations are not very happy. Blackie's translation of Aeschylus does not "hold the field." Mr. Lang had two collaborators in translating the Iliad. "Symonds," not " Symond," was the name of the author of "Studies of Greek Poets." Whitelaw and Young are both to be preferred to Plumptre as translators of Sophocles, and Mr. Way's translations of Homer and Euripides ought not to be omitted in even a brief survey of the subject.
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