CURRENT LITERATURE.
Studies and Romances. By H. Schutz Wilson. (H. S. King.)—The best among Mr. Wilson's sketches are the two in which he describes the perils and pleasures of Alpine climbing. The greater part of the rest are of just the average merit which finds a place in a magazine not quite of the first class. "Harry Ormond's Christmas Dinner," for instance, is the sort of thing which the compilers of Christmas annuals think a seasonable food for the mind about this time of the year. It strongly reminds one of the little dinner which David Copperfield and Dora give or attempt to give to Truldles ; here the scene is laid at Christmas time ; and with an illustration of Gray's Inn Square, covered with that snow which the imaginary Christmas always rejoices in, it would do admirably well for an annual. A "Romance of the Thames" has something of the same merit as have the Alpine sketches, for Mr. Wilson manifestly loves the river as he loves the mountains, but the love story is distinctly tame. So, indeed, is most of Mr. Wilson's writing when it deals with persons. The essay on "The- Loves of Goethe " somewhat provoked us. Surely there is something immoral in this talking of the "many-sided man," who could not find another nature which could wholly satisfy him? With all his supremo genius, the man, it seems to us, had not a heart, or had one as shallow, and volatile, and selfish as ever existed in human breast, though all the while his genius produced an imago of a heart which deceived those about him, and possibly himself. Mr. Wilson does not indeed approve of his here's relations with women, but he seems to take it for granted that a great poet somehow stands outside the laws of faith and honour which bind ordinary men. As for the German idea which suggested the essay of " Goethe-Anstellung," it was spoilt, we think, by the introduction of the portraits of all the women whom Goethe deceived—and he never spoke a tender word to one whom he did not deceive. It would be well to be as silent as possible about these things.
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