The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Edited by Augustine Birrell,
Q.C., M.P., and Frederic Kenyon. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)—These well-printed volumes contain the whole of Mr. Browning's poems, dramatic and lyrical, didactic and narrative. Mr. Birrell has supplied a short preface and a few notes, but his editorship is in no way intruded. This is not the place to discuss Browning's poems, but the public are certainly to be congratulated upon having the whole of the poet's works in two moderate-sized volumes.
Mr. Coon° Monkhonse has reprinted his studies in the Earlier
English Watercolour Painters.—It is an interesting book well illustrated.—Mr. J. Lane has published a volume of Southern sketches, by Mr. Kemble, Kemble's Coons. These drawings of niggers are clever, and give us the humorous side of the negro children especially.—Mr. J. Lane has published another American picture-book, In Vanity Fair, by A. B. Wenzell. The pictures can
only be described as screamingly clever, but the unreal vulgarity of these over-dressed people is such that we turn from them with a
feeling of nausea.—Mr. Max Beerbohm's Caricatures (Leonard Smithers) are undoubtedly clever. The irresponsible drawing reminds us of Edward Lear, with the exception that his sunny humour has been replaced by a vulgar satire.
In the Pageant (Henry and Co.) Mr. MacColl gives an interest- ing account of one of those extraordinary youthful geniuses of the Italian Renaissance, Giulio Campagnola, the engraver. Imbued with the spirit of his great contemporary, Giorgione, Campagnola produced some fine designs ; two of these are repro- duced ; one, " The Woman of Samaria," is indeed worthy of the master.
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