Staying Power. By the Rev. Peter Anton. (Alex. Gardner, Paisley.
3s, 6d. net.)—Mr. Anton begins these" Reconsiderations and Recreations" with a very doubtful statement. "I follow," he says, "the example of that great Apostle who loved to hang round the ropes inside which the young and the strong contended, and who eagerly frequented the gymnasium, dm." Nothing, we venture to say, was less to St. Paul's mind than any such way of spending his time. Greek speech was full, of metaphors and similes taken from the palaestra, and St. Paul found them serviceable; but it is extremely unlikely that he aver looked on ; that during his stay at Corinth, for instance, he went to the Isthmia. This is not a happy beginning for Mi. Anton's essays, but they are better than the 'promise. They cover a wide range of subjects, and they, show, for the most part, strong common- sense and no little literary insight. (It is a good simile when he compares Byron to a solitary mountain peak. It is not so high as others, but it impresses by standing alone.) There is an essay on Burns, to which we turned with some appre- hension, always justified when the theme is handled by a Scotsman. But this is generally sensible. Its chief purpose is to show that no small part of Burns's genius was an immense capacity for taking pains. He was no improeisatore; he laboured at correction till the right shape came out. "I do not mind much about iteeing, Burns when his song ie ended." The root of the matter is there. Burns the man is better forgotten. It is scarcely in accord with this, however, when he says: "It was an ill-regulated world in which the 'best o' chiels' had to go starving." Burns might have prospered but for his fatal weakness. Mr. Stopford Brooke's dictum that "the dignity art gives to the commonplace is the meat:rare of its greatness" is more than the "plausible crudity" (not a happy phrase) which Mr. Anton pros flounces it. It is much -the same as the proprie dem/mania dicer* which Horace thought se great an aelzievement:
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