Cylchgronau Cymru

their author hoped for them. To quote another Note: If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by my own success." The reviewers in his lifetime felt no need to understand him, but-another Note-" when I am dead there will be other reviewers and I have already done enough to secure that they shall from time to time look me up." We hereby do public penance for the blindness of our ancestors who damned his books as fast as he could write them. If there are left among our readers any who have not read Erewhon they should make a New Year's resolution and refuse to listen to any nonsense from preachers of thrift. It costs half-a-crown, but we warn them that they are in for an intellectual spree, and that crowns will follow. Life of Viscount Bolingbroke." By Arthur Hassall. Published by Blackwell & Co., Oxford. Price 3s. 6d. net. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, is one of the most remarkable figures in English politics of the 18th century. Of him Dr. Johnson said, Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward." While Voltaire, after his visit to him in 1721 wrote I have found in this eminent Englishman all the learning of his country and all the politeness of ours. He is as well acquainted with the history of the ancient Egyptians as with that of England. He knows Virgil as well as Milton." Pitt, who knew him only in his later years, thought so highly of his powers as an orator that when the conversation rolled upon lost works, and some said they should prefer restoring the books of Livy, some of Tacitus, and some a Latin tragedy, he at once decided for a speech of Bolingbroke." Nor was his merely a brilliant surface without application to sustain it. Swift said that he would plod whole days and nights like the lowest clerk in an office." Yet save for the Treaty of Utrecht, as to the exact wisdom of which opinions yet differ, he left no monument of statesmanship by which he can be judged. Why he was mistrusted, why he failed, is one of the problems which every student of the period must strive to answer. Doubtless, in order to do so, he will consult Mr. Hassall's new and revised issue of his short life of Bolingbroke. And to the undergraduate the book will be doubly welcome, because of its excellent index, combined with a summary of contents at the head of each chapter. This plan, almost universal among French historians, is frequently not employed by English authors, especially of small books of the handbook type in which it is, of course, particu- larly important to be able to find at once the special point required. These features, and the low price. will ensure Mr. Hassall book a place on many bookshelves. But not on those of the general reader-and that is where this, like so many other modern books on history, fails. In Bolingbroke, if in any one, was an opportunity for a brilliant study, both sound his- torically and interesting in style. We have followed too closely the German fashion, and made our history a matter of text books, unattractive to any but the specialist. The greatest histories are those which appeal to others beside those who study a definite period, too often with an examination in view. There is no reason why this book should not have been of great interest to a large circle. It need not have been longer or more elaborate. It is almost entirely a question of manner. Mr. Hassall's style is uninspired at the best. At the worst it is careless. Several times he offends by unnecessary repetition. While he admits his enthusiastic admiration of his subject, using even the phrase Of his transcendent ability there is no question," he does not succeed in arousing the admiration of his readers. Yet, if ever there were a figure calculated to awaken real feelings of sympathy or of dislike, it is that of this acute and brilliant politician. The remarkable personal influence which made him friends as different as Swift, Pope, Dryden, Chesterfield and Voltaire; the literary tastes and extraordinary mastership of a prose style which, though occasionally even florid, is often really magnificent the rhetorical powers which Walpole so dreaded that he kept the orator from the House of Lords, by refusing to allow the sentence of attainder to be fully repealed these qualities combine to form a character which can never fail in interest to any intelligent reader of history. Therefore, it is unfortunate that Mr. Hassall's book should be no more than it undoubtedly is-a useful text book. M.L. The Teaching of Christ." By Rev. E. G. Selwyn, M.A. Longmans, Green & Co. (Layman's Library). This book is not a compendium of the teaching of Christ, but rather "an attempt to appreciate the main lineaments of the teaching of Christ in their historical proportion." Had the style been more concise and clear one could have said that the book was an excellent production, for its point of view is very helpful and its thought suggestive. For those who are facing the critical problems of the New Testament, it is one of the freshest boob published