English Literature. By the Rev. STOPFORD BROOKE, M.A. Macmillan and Co.

This is one of the series of Literature Primers which, under the general editorship of Mr. J. R. Green, Messrs. Macmillan are publishing. It is lifted at once by its singular merits out of any mere rank in which it may stand, and may well be regarded as almost a classic. Within a hundred and twenty pages Mr. Brook has compressed a lucid, sufficient, and eminently readable account of our English literature, its sources, main streams, chief works, and diversified characteristics. He does not say a single superfluous word nor pass over a single important matter, while his inaccuracies are singularly few. As a primer for schools and students, and as a handbook for the desk of the literary man, this little shilling volume is simply invaluable.

The Works of Charles Lamb: Poetical and Romantic, Tales, Essays, and Criticisms. Edited, with Biographical Introductions and Notes, by CHARLES KENT. The Popular Centenary Edition. George Routledge and Son.

Although we must confess to years when small-type editions became rather distasteful, they are the true tests of popularity, and when cheap centenary editions of a writer's works are published, his stamp is irrever sible. Almost every year produces new editions of the works of this most charming of English essayists. Here, in seven hundred pages of small but legible type, we have a complete collection of Lamb's Works, well edited and annotated.

In the sensible memoir prefixed, Mr. Kent corrects some misconceptions and casts light upon some obscurities. He gives the true date of Lamb's birth, mistaken by both Barry Cornwall and John Forster; it was February 10, 1775. He shows that there were two or three children besides Charles and Mary. He publishes a letter from Miss Kelly, and a facsimile of a note of Lamb's, proving that she, and not Mrs. Crawford, was the original of Lamb's charming sketch of Barbara S. He disproves Hazlitt's charge of drunkenness and his affirmation of insanity, and of course tells the true story of his domestic tragedy, which, by the way, was first given to the world in the pages of this Review in May 1848, just after Mary Lamb's death. Large numbers of miscellaneous scraps are also gathered from Hone's 'Table Book,' the 'Athenæum,' and other sources.

The volume is compendious and useful, well got up, and carefully edited.

Essays in Criticism. By MATTHEW ARNOLD. Third Edition. Revised and Enlarged. Macmillan and Co.

As a subtle, graceful, and incisive critic Mr. Arnold will probably take a permanent place among English essayists, a certain sub-acid of cynicism notwithstanding, and if the tendency to dwell upon ephemeral and

obscure matters does not hinder. We are glad to see that certain passages of this character are excised from this edition. When we read his poetry we regret that he should forsake the Muse even for essays so graceful and discriminating as these; but it is a thousand pities that he should forsake either for crude and transient theological polemics. We welcome this revision of a very favourite volume.

Lectures, Addresses, and other Literary Remains. By the late Rev. FRED. W. ROBERTSON, M.A., of Brighton. A New Edition. Henry S. King and Co.

In this new edition the preface is considerably abridged by the omission of the long extracts from Mr. Robertson's letters, and several interesting pieces are added, viz., a lecture on The Church of 'England's Independence of the Church of Rome;' notes of a lecture on the progress of the working classes; and some translations from Lessing on the 'Education of the Human Race;' and, what will be greatly prized by many, his analysis of Tennyson's ' In Memoriam.' There are few who will not be glad to possess this complete collection of Mr. Robertson's miscellanies. It is proof of the profound and penetrating truth and great power of this greatest of our modern pulpit teachers that, in addition to the spirit of earnest, unconventional truth which he has diffused, which is independent of opinions, and which has entered men of almost every school, many of his views, for which when first uttered he was so severely denounced, have come to be accepted even by the more thoughtful of the Evangelical school of theology. Robertson was a divinely gifted seer, and in many things he has taught others to see.

The Complete Angler; or, the Contemplative Man's Recreation. By IZAAK WALTON. Elliot Stock.

Mr. Stock has added to his facsimile reprints that of the first edition of 'The Complete Angler,' published in 1653. This edition is extremely scarce, and it is to R. S. Holford, Esq., that the publisher is indebted for a copy. The reprint is curious and interesting. The 'Angler's Song,' printed in the square notes familiar to students of old psalmody, and with the opposite pages reversed, to permit two persons opposite to each other to sing from the same book-a device also familiar to those acquainted with old madrigal books,-some of the obsolete types, the vigorous little cuts, and the title-page, have been reproduced by photography. It is a very interesting bibliographical curiosity. The publishers are laying bookworms under very great obligations.

Re-Echoes. By FRANCES POWER COBBE. Williams and Norgate. Miss Cobbe has selected these fifty-two papers from upwards of a 'thousand' contributed to the 'Echo' newspaper from its commencement until its change of proprietorship in 1875. There are few writers whose newspaper articles we should care to have gathered into a book; but Miss Cobbe always writes with so much thoughtfulness, wisdom,

incisiveness, and kindliness, that we do not willingly let her words fall to the ground. It is much to say that these short papers will be re-read with most interest by the most sensible. They are on topics general and permanent enough in interest, and they rarely fail to shed new lights and furnish noble suggestions: e.g., in the paper on Church and Chapel 'Building,' she urges us to look away from the rivalries of sects to the grand spectacle of a common striving to supply the growing population with means of worship. Her little book is full of things both wise and good.

The Literature of the Kymry. By THOMAS STEPHENS. Second

Edition by the Rev. D. SILVAN EVANS, B.D. Longmans. There is no nobler achievement of the human mind than the production of a national literature. Its materials are more varied, its sources more numerous, and its life more real and enduring than that of any other product of the conscious or unconscious energies of man. In dealing with the literature of a country one has to do with the most subtle forms of thought and feeling, with a finer and more delicate matter than either marble or canvas, and yet far less darkened or tarnished by the wearing touch of time. It is also more catholic and instructive than any of the sister arts; for, being the product of the national mind, it mirrors forth the progress, tendency, and attainments of the race. A nation's literature is therefore mainly useful in representing the innate character, the external conditions, and the acquired habits and bias of those who produce it. The function of the historian of such a literature is to portray those ethnic characteristics of the people which distinguish them from the rest of mankind, the physical circumstances, the political accidents, and the social status which have determined their life; and to seize the fluctuations which have characterised their life-impulse during the period under review. In one word, he has to tell the full story of a nation's mind. The merit and service of Mr. Stephens's book depend upon the success with which he has conceived and solved this psychological problem. We venture to say at the outset that he has been fairly successful, considering the circumstances of his life, the difficulties of his task, and the capabi lities of his subject. We do not wish our readers to imagine that we place him in the same rank with Müller, Bähr, Bernhardy, Mure, Donaldson, Taine, and Motley. His work resembles, in many respects, Craik's history of the rise of the English language, and the successive periods of its literature. Mr. Stephens was a chemist by vocation, but a littérateur by nature. His education was limited, but his energy and application prodigious; and the result is as creditable in its degree as any of the works of the above-mentioned authors, which were produced under widely different circumstances.

The subject did not present anything like the scope and magnitude of the literature of Greece; and the author probably did not possess the critical and analytical power of disentangling and unravelling the confused materials before him, much less the still higher power of constructing the scattered elements of truth into a grand and symmetrical fabric. But

he accomplished wonders in his way. His patience was above all praise, and his judgment sound. His impartiality in matters of national history earned for him the designation of arch-heretic.' To the humiliation of national pride he rejected the antiquity of the Triads, denied the validity of the Prince Madoc claim to the discovery of America, and the massacre of the Welsh bards by Edward I. The present work originated in an essay, which gained the prize of £25 offered by the Prince of Wales for the best essay upon the subject, competed for at the Abergavenny Eisteddfod, 1868. In that form it raised its author to the position of a leading authority among all Celtic scholars, not only at home, but abroad. It secured the highest commendations from Count Villemarqué, Henri Martin, and Matthew Arnold, and received the honour of being translated into German by Professor Schültz. The publication of the larger work gave rise to an extensive correspondence with Continental scholars upon Celtic literature and traditions, which, together with Mr. Stephens's other occupations, brought about the natural result, viz., that his energies were overtaxed, and his life cut short. Not before he had done a good day's work, however, did the night of death come upon him.

In the volume before us we have not simply the history of poetry, but of tales, romances, chronicles, moral and historical Triads and Mabinogion— in fact, a complete survey of the literature of the country. The Welsh language seems to have passed its meridian. It resembles at present the Latin of the decline of the Roman Empire. The grace and vigour of the earlier tongue has given way to a modern dialect less pure, but probably more adapted to the growing wants of the nation. Up to a recent date, however, the Welsh had been preserved uncommonly pure and undefiled by additions from foreign sources. From the time when the Roman power was compelled by intestine troubles to relax its grasp, to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the native language seems to have remained almost entirely intact and distinct. The literature of a great portion of this period is handled in the work before us. Mr. Stephens refers only en passant to the bards of the sixth and seventh centuries, Taliesin, Aneurin, and Llywarch Hên, but treats fully of the literature of the twelfth and two succeeding centuries. The specimens given are accompanied by a faithful translation. The author has selected only those which possess some intrinsic merit and beauty, and such as furnished some pointed illustration of the national character.

Mr. Stephens admits, what cannot be denied, that the bardic poets do not possess the transcendent merit many have foolishly claimed for them, and that there is nothing in the ancient poetry of Wales to be compared with the Greek, Roman, and English Muse. It was the product of a state of society which, though in advance of surrounding nations, was, nevertheless, far inferior to the best days of Greece and Rome. The Celtic, like most poetry, has war and love for its theme. But the fact is, Wales had no siege of Troy, and no Salamis, Marathon, or Thermopyla; and consequently it has no such poems. The country has several mountains, but no Alpine or Himalayan ranges; many small streams, but not one grand, broad, majestic river; many of its poets have attained to more than

mediocrity, but none to decided pre-eminence. Their war-songs lack poetic fire and sentiment, and their elegies, as Mr. Stephens observes, frequently substitute petty conceit for genuine tenderness. What is true of the poetry of the twelfth and two succeeding centuries is true in a great measure of Welsh poetry from that time to the present day. Much poetry has been written and a great deal more produced since the fourteenth century. The mass of it is very poor, some of it tolerably good; but none of it transcendently excellent. And one is tempted to ask the reason why; for no doubt the land has produced many genuine poets, men of real poetic genius. We think that the lack of such external influences and surroundings as Greece and Rome enjoyed will not altogether account for the result; to this must be added their linguistic exclusion, which cuts them off from that communion with thought and things which is essential to the highest kind of poetry, and their unnatural metrical system, which has weighed down their imagination and limited their similes. The internal and final rhyme, the various forms of alliteration, and the cyrch, are enough to strangle all lofty imagination and original power. The whole power of the mind is expended upon the jingle of words. It makes the bard a man of ingenuity and skill, rather than of fancy and genius; a man under the control of sounds, rather than of deep and earnest thought. We must, however, in justice state that although Welsh poetry has never reached the uniform and self-sustained sublimity of thought and diction which characterise the works of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, it has never sunk to the level of the puerile, prolix, and sickly productions of the Troubadours. Mr. Stephens closes the volume with the question, Were not the Kymry among the most 'intelligent and intellectual of the inhabitants of Europe during the period ' under consideration?' We would ask another, of greater importance,— What about their position at the present day? No impartial judge can shut his eyes to the fact that they have been unable to keep pace with the remarkable advance of science and other kinds of progress, and that they are slowly but surely falling behind other nations. They are struggling under social, political, and commercial disadvantages, from which it is time they freed themselves by adapting themselves to the circumstances of the age. It is useless to fight against the inevitable. Poetry and music are very well as pastime; but when they constitute the sole and serious occupation of a nation they become positively injurious. Just let the Welsh devote their attention to that which will raise them to the level of the present civilisation and culture, and then let them have as much music and poetry as they please. To be able to sing is, we must admit, something; but it is of very little value compared with the power to create. Nations living in the constant roar and music of the natural elements are generally able to do the former, but seldom the latter. But enough.

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The work has an important historical value, on the ground of which we most strongly recommend it. It sheds a flood of light on the manners and traditions of a people who have hitherto been involved in signal obscurity. Its value to the ethnologist is decidedly great, and it is