September 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



261 



uncultivated powers of observation, and possessed of a share 

 of coarse humour which was more appreciable in the 

 Jacobean age than it is in the Victorian one. As affording 

 a picture of life in Tudor and Stuart times this edition of 

 Taylor's works may be read both with advantage and profit. 



Percy Bjsshi Shdliy : a Monograph. By H. S. Salt. 

 (London : Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co. 1888.) — 

 %lr. Salt has given us a really readable and agreeable, if 

 somewhat partisan, history of the remarkable poet and 

 original thinker who flashed like a meteor across the sky of 

 the early part of the present centuiy. He retells, always 

 in Shelley's interest, the story of his marriage with Harriet 

 "Westbrook, and of his subsequent connection with Mary 

 Godwin, carefully suppressing much that was wholly in- 

 defensible, and exaggerating everything for which any 

 excuse can be advanced. It is this too obtrusive advocac}-, 

 and the absence of anything approaching the judicial spirit, 

 that weakens the effect of so much that our author advances 

 in Shelley's defence ; while every now and then his blind 

 admiration of his idol's Socialistic opinions betrays him into 

 the expression of ignorant utterances concerning Ireland, 

 which will only excite derision in those personally familiar 

 with that unhappy country. The true history of Shelley 

 has yet to be written. 



At Evening Time it Shall he LigJit. By Lewis Lacriston. 

 (London : The London Literary Society.) — In this wishy- 

 washy religious novelette Mr. Lauriston, like others of his 

 school, constructs his own giants with the express view to 

 their subsequent demolition. " The Hon. Edward Fanshawe," 

 who is an agnostic of the most feeble type (and whose 

 obvious incapacity to give a reason of the hope that is in 

 him renders his opinions after his conversion as valueless as 

 those he professed before it), loses his wife, and subsequently 

 hLs son, while holding materialistic doctrines, and is plunged 

 into despair. "While in this state he wanders into a church 

 where a mission service is going on, and hears a man utter 

 a string of evangelical platitudes — and so on. Those who 

 care for " goody -goodiness " must consult the volume itself 

 to learn what happens to Mr. Fanshawe at the end of it. 



The Life, Tinns, and Writings of Thoracis Cranmer, D.D. 

 By Chas. Hastings Collette. (London : Gsorge Eedway. 

 1887.) — Professing, and undoubtedly intending, to write in 

 a strictly impartial r.nd judicial spirit, Mr. Collette's 

 evangelical principles cause him to view the whole story of 

 the Reformation through coloured spectacles ; and to con- 

 vert him, posing as a judge, into a fervid and altogether 

 one-sided advocate. Nor does it make any difference in 

 the attitude h^ assumes that the evils of Popery are un- 

 happily but too undeniable, and that we have only to enter 

 any country whatever under priestly domination to find 

 sloth, filth, and degradation, physical and intellectual, ram- 

 pant. That Cranmer was a potent factor in the English 

 Reformation blinds our author to all his faults and short- 

 comings, and prompts him to invent a series of excuses for 

 various acts now become historical, which we venture to 

 think he would scarcely otherwise have aired to justlf)', and 

 which assuredly he would have reprobated in Gardiner or 

 Bonner. But, having said this, we would add that Mr. 

 Collette's work should be read by every one whose ideas of 

 Cranmer's life ai-e derived from such sources as Dr. Little- 

 dale's "Ritualistic Innovation," with its low and vulgar 

 scurrility and abuse. The reader approaching the subject 

 with no prepossession will study both, and strike a mean 

 between them. And the partisanship which detracts from 

 the weight of our author's estimate of Cranmer is perhaps 

 even more apparent in his defence of Henry VIII., whose 

 acts and motives are alike presented in a light which would 

 scarcely bear the ordeal of any searching historical criticism. 



When, after much pestering, the old woman got her minister 

 to pray for rain, and a hailstorm came and cut up all her 

 cabba,'es, it is recorded that she exclaimed, " Ah I that's 

 just like Mr. Jones — he always overdoes everything I " May 

 we hint that, in this respect, Mr. Collette has been taking 

 an easy lesson from ft[r. Jones ? 



Ballads of Books. Edited by Andrew Lang. (Long- 

 mans & Co.) — Whoever possesses Mr. Ireland's " Book- 

 Lover's Enchiridion," with its gems of thought on the 

 solace and companionship of books gathered from ancient 

 and modern writers, from Socrates to Louis Stevenson, 

 should not fail to put this delightful anthology of verse in 

 praise of books, from Catullus to Dobson, by its side. The 

 one volume Ls complementary to the other. 



Our Sentimental Journey. By Joseph and Elizabeth 

 Robins Pennell. (Longmans & Co.) — As none of the 

 dead authors to whom Mr. Lang addressed his letters have 

 .shown signs of offence at the liberty thus tiken with them, 

 Mr. and 3Irs. Pennell have felt emboldened to dedicate this 

 book to the late Mr. Laurence Sterne, whose route by the 

 old post road from Calais to Lyons they followed, and whose 

 title to his volume of travel they have unblushingly appro- 

 priated. But they may rest assured that the Recording 

 Angel of whom that reverend sentimentalist and plagiarist 

 di.=coursed will drop his tear upon their peccadillo and blot 

 it out for ever. They have told the story of their journey 

 on a tandem tricycle in language which has an apposite old- 

 world flavour. "They deserve all the enjoyment which they 

 got out of the trip, for what with drenchings, head-winds, 

 damages to the m.achine, whose wheels, like those of 

 Pharaoh's chariots, " drave heavily," especially when the 

 top of the oil-can came off, so that " the can was in the oil 

 instead of the oil in the can," and other drawbacks, their 

 course did not run smooth. 1'he map of France is very droll, 

 and the sketches are admirable in their vividness and delicacy. 



Vere Thornleigh's Inheritance, by A.M. Hopkinson ; The 

 Trance of Fitzerse, by Alfred Fitzerse ; They Ticain, by 

 Mary H. Pickersgill-Cunliffe. (London : The London 

 Liteitiry Society.) — In " Vere Thornleigh's Inheritance," 

 Miss (or Mrs.) Hopkinson tells how a young woman of 

 gentle birth was brought up by an au-nt in an o]d manor 

 house (in reality her own, though she was ignorant of it) to 

 do farm-work, the said aunt and a woman-servant called 

 Hannah being its only other occupants. Not wholly satisfied 

 with her lot, and in utter ignorance of her parentage. Miss 

 Thornleigh wanders out to an unoccupied house belonging 

 to some people named Tresidder. To her there enter (as 

 the old stage directions have it) one young man, one ditto 

 woman, and one older woman, all singing parts from an 

 opera. These are the Tresidders, who have lost theii- way 

 to their own house. Vere directs them, and, catching up 

 their song, walks home only to find her aunt in a fit. The 

 old lady dies without revealing the secret of her niece's 

 origin. That niece is found the next morning by a barrister 

 friend of the Tresidders absorbed in grief, and Tresidder 

 pere volunteering his aid, discovers a pocket-book in a chest 

 in the cellar, containing the name Le Mesurier, which he 

 promptly secretes. Then Miss Thornleigh goes to live with 

 the 'Tresidders. How the secret of her parentage is sub- 

 sequently discovered, and her aunt's irrational behaviour 

 more or less satisfactorily explained ; how she meets her 

 mother, and how happily the story all ends, the reader must 

 go to the book itself to ascertain. He will find it superior 

 to the run of ordinary novels, and decidedly more interest- 

 ing than our jyrecis of its improbable opening incidents 

 would induce him to anticipate. 



" The Trance of Fitzerse " has fairly puzzled us, as, after 

 the most attentive and deliberate perus;il of it, we wholly 



