given better form to the general conclusions resulting from the study of Greek thought as expressed in Greek poetry. Such a passage as the following, for example, is wholly admirable: "We must imitate the Greeks, not by trying to reproduce their bygone modes of life and feeling, but by approximating to their free and fearless attitude of mind. While frankly recognizing that much of their liberty would for us be license, and that the moral progress of the race depends on holding with a firm grasp what the Greeks had hardly apprehended, we ought still to emulate their spirit by cheerfully accepting the world as we find it, acknowledging the value of each human impulse, and aiming after virtues that depend on self-regulation rather than on total abstinence and mortification. To do this in the midst of our conventionalities and prejudices, our interminglement of unproved expectations and unrefuted terrors, is no doubt hard. Yet if we fail of this, we lose the best the Greeks can teach us." A book so sane in its essential doctrine may well be pardoned a few outbursts of florid rhetoric and a certain amount of exuberant verbosity. It is doubtless open to much minor criticism, as, for example, in the passage which speaks of Moliere's "courtly and polished treatment of disgusting subjects" a comment that does not come with good grace from one who censures Hallam for precisely the same sort of comment upon Marlowe; but criticism of this sort we are willing to forego, contenting ourselves with an emphatic protest against the publication of such a work without an index.
A diagrammatic treatment of English Literature.Mr. William Renton's "Outlines of English Literature" (Scribner) is a "University Extension Manual," and, as such, hardly appears to fulfil its purpose. As an introduction to the subject it would be found confusing, although it has much suggestiveness for readers who already know the history of our literature. Its defect, as far as beginners are concerned, is found in its insistence upon a rather obscure system of philosophical classification and criticism. It professes to deal with types, schools, and epochs rather than with individuals, but the interest of the beginner is only to be awakened by an extremely individual method of treatment. He is told, for example, that Marlowe's chief discovery was "that in the universal and a posteriori, not the exceptional and the a priori, is to be found the true source of human interest and interpretation"—from which statement he is not likely to learn much. Mr. Renton makes use of many ingenious formulas and diagrams in illustration of his subject. The formula for Shakespeare, for example, is this: (s + p) S + (v + h ) T, which, being interpreted, means "spontaneity and pregnancy of Suggestion combined with variety and harmony of Treatment." When the scientific treatment of literature culminates in such pseudo-mathematical forms of expression, it is time to call a halt. The variety and ingenuity of the author's diagrams—for he makes much use of the graphic method, as well as of the algebraical—defy any attempt at mere description. One of the less complicated of the figures gives us the abstraction Nature as a centre, and groups about it, at quadrant intervals, the four other abstractions, Will, Soul, Sense, and Spirit. The names of eight nineteenth century poets link together the circles representing these abstractions; thus, Byron is the poet of Nature and Will, Shelley of Nature and Soul, Keats of Nature and Sense, Wordsworth of Nature and Spirit. In an outer circle, Spirit is linked with Will by Mr. Roden Noel (whose name had to be dragged in for the sake of diagrammatic symmetry), Will with Soul by Browning, Soul with Sense by Mr. Swinburne, and Sense with Spirit by Tennyson. The description of such a diagram is its best reductio ad absurdam. The structure of literature is too organic to admit of being thus mechanically explained. The author seems to be fairly accurate as to historical fact and sane as to criticism, although we do not agree with him in making Balzac inferior to Thackeray, in singling out Mr. Swinburne's "Tristram of Lyonesse" as one of the poet's most remarkable works, or in a. number of other and minor matters. And it is at least amusing to be told that Berkeley, in "The Querist," "anticipated the Political Economy of Smith and Ruskin." Mr. Ruskin would not thank the author for that.
A condensed history of the Italian Republics..Sismondi's "Républiques Italiennes,", in ten volumes, albeit a work which fascinates, is some what formidable to one who is seeking a general knowledge of the Italian city republics of the middle ages. Miss Duffy has done well to give us a portion of all this in a single volume, in her "Tuscan Republics and Genoa" (Putnam). Considering the length of centuries that she deals with, and the lack of unity involved in a history of five states—Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, Florence, and Siena,—she has produced a very successful narrative. She truly emphasizes the fact that communal institutions here did not come down from the Roman time, but sprang up amid the confusion and neglect of the Germanic settlements and the early feudal period. Florence, as is right, gets the largest treatment, and the narrative is well handled as it passes from consuls to podestas, podestas to Signoria, and as the power is snatched by popolani from grandi, only to be handed over to Medici patrons and tyrants. It is a pity there is much slovenly writing in the volume, for a good book is worth making slowly. Such writing as, "In other places, notable in Lombardy," "conferred sole possession to the property," "Pisa's wealth and outlaying interests," "a change came over the government," is not creditable. An interpreter is needed for such sentences as, "Florence owed its final great prosperity to its position midway between the Mediterranean coast and Rome" (a map will not elucidate it), or "Henry IV. had conferred on Lucca the privilege of trading freely
