SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week es have not been reserved for review in other forms.] The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, Author of " Erewhon." Selec- tions arranged and edited by Henry Festing Jones. (A. C. Fifield. 6s. net.)—A certain number of these passages from Butler's notebooks have already been published in the New Quarterly. We are delighted to have them and many others besides in a more per- manent form. They touch upon every conceivable subject, and vary in length from a single sentence to several pages ; but they are all alike in being the expressions of a truly original and living mind. Butler is, of course, frequently irritating, and especially when he is upon one of his hobby-horses. For instance, it is hard to tolerate him on the subject of Handel. Everyone is agreed nowadays that Handel is among the great composers. But Butler found it necessary not merely to asseverate that he was far the greatest of all composers, but to descant continually upon the wretched inferiority of all the rest, including Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. So, too, his scientific theories become tedious. Yet in spite of these obvious demerits, the hotch-potch is a most fascinating one. Partly this is due to Butler's great gift of expression, which makes one forgive the occasional perversity or banalitit of the thought expressed. Here are a couple of instances. "When I was a boy at school at Shrewsbury, old Mrs. Brown used to keep a tray of spoiled tarts which she sold cheaper. They most of them looked pretty right till you handled them. We are all spoiled tarts." "Definitions are a kind of scratching, and generally leave a sore place more sore than it was before." Perhaps, however, it is in his anecdotes that Butler is at his best; in them may be found the essence of his kindly cynical gift of observation. We may quote his account of one of the three occasions on which he saw a really tragic expression upon a face:— "Once at dinner I sat opposite a certain lady who had a tureen of soup before her and also a plate of the same to which she had just helped herself. There was meat in the soup, and I suppose she got a bit she did not like ; instead of leaving it, she swiftly, stealthily, picked it up from her plate when she thought no one was looking and, with an expression which Mrs. Siddons might have studied for a performance of Clytemnestra, popped it back into the tureen."
The volume also contains Butler's few poems, including the delightful "Psalm of Montreal," which, it is interesting to recall, was first published in these columns in 1878.
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