The Development of Australian Literature. By H. G. Turner and
A. Sutherland. (Longmans and Co.)—Under this rather ambitious title Messrs. Turner and Sutherland have collected their stray essays on a number of Colonial writers, with biographical sketches of Gordon, Kendall, and Marcus Clarke. The entire book is rather designed for the local Australian reader, but a number of English admirers of Gordon may be pleased to glance at the biography of the "Bush Bard" by Mr. Sutherland, which is much the most valuable chapter of the book. The newer school of Colonial poets, such as Mr. Paterson, the author of "The Man from Snowy River," is very insufficiently dealt with by Mr. Turner in his bald and commonplace introduc- tory sketch, in which he has the dubious taste to bepraise his collaborator's verses in a very fulsome and " provincial " style. Mr. Turner should bear in mind that "The Man from Snowy River" went through four editions in Sydney before it was published in London, and that these " horsey " verses, so redolent of the Australian bush, have been widely read and admired beyond the Colonies themselves ; whereas his colleague's "Love and the Law," which he ranks with "Enoch Arden," is probably not known to a dozen persons even in Melbourne itself. It is this lack of all "proportion," which marks the provincial spirit.
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