Great Victorians. By T. H. S. Escott. (T. Fisher Unwin.
12s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Escott has known so many eminent people and remembers so many anecdotes about them that his discursive books are always readable. In this new volume he flits, as usual, from flower to flower, lingering for a little while on Wellington, Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Sir Donald Stewart, Disraeli, Abraham Hayward, Dickens, and others, but leaving us rather breathless. It is a book to dip into, not to read continuously. The first chapter, on Bishop Phillpotta of Exeter, to whom the author in his boyhood was taken, is the most amusing of all. Fhillpotts was once discomfited by Talleyrand. Meeting the veteran at the Athenaeum, Phillpotta ventured to address him in French on foreign affairs. Talleyrand turned away and remarked to Bernal Osborne : " His Lordship displayed a courage which surprised me, oven in him, by delivering some half a dozen words on a subject about which he
knew little in a language of which he knew nothing." .
Previous page
