Naw Eprnorre. — The Works of John Ruskin. Edited by E. T.
Cook and A. Wedderburn. (G. Allen. 21s. net each vol.)—The second volume of this library edition contains Ruskin's poems, and is enriched with many reproductions of those exquisite drawings of mountains and architecture which in their own style are unrivalled. The third and fourth contain Vols. I. and II. of "Modern Painters," with the various prefaces, and at the end the replies to some of the critics. It is difficult now to realise how new and how important such a work as "Modern Painters" was. If modern criticism does not accept the work of Ruskin as final in all things, at least in one respect he must be acknow- ledged of supreme importance by all. It was he who made average cultivated English people realise as they had never realised before that art was a great serious intellectual and emotional reality, as great as literature or scholarship. If English people cannot be called artistic as a whole, at least they have learnt to treat • art with respect ; and it is mainly by the work of Ruskin that this has been brought about. —In the series of "The World's Classics" (Grant Richards) The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne (1s. net), and The History of Civilisation in England, by Thomas Buckle, Vol. I. (1s. net).—In "The Little Library" (Methuen and Co., Is. net) The Minor English Poems of John Milton, edited, with Introduction and Notes, by H. C. Beeching, MA. Canon Beeching's is very informing criticism, we may say.—Comic English Grammar. (Same publishers. 2s. 6d. net.)—The kind of humour of which this is a specimen does not appeal to us very strongly now ; but Leech's illustrations do not lose their attraction. We may contribute a comic instance of the eccentricities of English accidence. A foreign student expressed his astonishment to the writer of this notice that "a man-of-war" was treated as a feminine noun.—In the "Authorised Edition of the Prose Works of W. M. Thaokeray," edited by Walter Jerrold, with Illustrations by Charles E. Brook (J. M. Dent and Co., 3a. net), Christmas Books, &e.
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