is excellent except, perhaps, that on the Progress of Allegory. The Rise of the Drama is sketched rather perfunctorily, but we are glad that the work is to be made complete by its inclusion of dramatic poetry. Some of the individual poets mentioned are treated altogether too briefly in our judgment—for for example, Robert Henryson. Poems, too, that are strikingly good, like Dunbar's "Lament" for his brother bards, remain unnoticed at least we have caught no reference to them. A certain lack of sympathy, too, is apparent in the treatment of poets like Skelton and Alexander Barclay who, while not lending themselves to enthusiastic commendation, are surely more interesting figures than Mr. Courthope has represented them to be. But no one can quarrel with our author's estimate of that delightful personality, King James I. of Scotland.

To sum up, we regard Mr. Courthope's first volume as the work of a scholar and a lover of poetry who has approached his subject in a worthy way and written of it in a manner to attract respect if not admiration. We believe that as the author proceeds with his task and enters upon periods that are more interesting in themselves and about which his own knowledge is greater, his treatise will gain steadily in value. In fact we look forward with eagerness to his account of the age of Dryden and Pope, where he is likely to be at his best, and we have to thank him for many an interesting hour already spent with him, and many a profitable thought derived from a volume which may be safely commended to all lovers of English poetry.

Professor Hugh Walker's book is of a very different genre from that of Mr. Courthope. It is the monograph of a specialist and is saved from narrowness only by the fact that the three poets with which it deals cover between them a very wide area in the domain of the human spirit. Tennyson, Browning, and Matthew Arnold are, too, very far removed from Chaucer and Langland, which of course accentuates the contrast between the two books. In our opinion the chief value of Mr. Walker's study lies in the fact

that he so boldly advocates the right of Matthew Arnold to stand beside Browning and Tennyson as a great Victorian poet. But Mr. Walker's boldness is after all not so remarkable to anyone who has noted the slow but sure rise of Arnold's poetical reputation in the last twenty years. Few critics are now likely to be caught napping as Mr. Stedman was in his notice of him in the first edition of the "Victorian Poets."

Our author treats his wide and important subject in twelve chapters, the first eight of which deal with the poets individually, and with their works more or less concretely, while the last four deal with such general topics as "The Poetry of Nature," "The Influence of Science," "The Social and Political Aspects of the Poets," and "Faith and Doubt." Browning and Tennyson, as is proper, have more space devoted to them than Arnold has, but the latter is evidently very near to Mr. Walker's heart, a fact which is most creditable to him. Although he tries to hold the balance even between the two older poets in the attention he pays to each, it is quite evident that it sways in the direction of Browning, which is again in our opinion quite creditable to him. But it is not often that one can discover any preference sufficiently pronounced to warrant one in labelling Professor Walker a Tennysonian, a Browningite, or an Arnoldite. Indeed, as we shall soon see, his endeavors to hold his balance so even may be said to have caused his criticism to suffer, painstaking and conscientious impartiality being too often a solvent of enthusiasm.

Speaking generally, Professor Walker strikes us as a safe and thoughtful critic, though not an original or specially interesting one. If there is one quality that he lacks as a critic more than another it is the quality of enthusiasm. He evidently admires and understands the poets of whom he writes, but if he is enthusiastic about them, he has not succeeded in making his enthusiasm contagious, at least to one reader. One reads on and on, and assents or dissents, gets a new thought or meets an old one, and yet is never stirred

unless it be by some noble quotation from the poet under examination. Of information about Browning, Tennyson, and Arnold the book is full, but of inspiration about them it is empty at least to us.

But we are doing Mr. Walker and his book an injustice. We are practically assuming by our tone of comment that unless a man can write with humor and enthusiasm, he must hold his tongue. If a censorship of the press were established on such lines, there would be an almost universal smash in the publishing business. There is room for just such sound, sober, intelligent, and reverent criticism of master poets as Professor Walker has given us, and there are thousands of readers who will be both edified and interested by what he has to say. Any one of his chapters would make a good popular lecture or a magazine article, if editors could bring themselves to publish serious literary studies, and his whole volume will be found very useful by any college class engaged in the study of modern poetry, or by any busy man who wishes to inform himself in an expeditious way about these great modern authors. Special students of these authors will of course consult it and with profit. We cordially recommend it for use also by Chatauqua and University Extension students-by everybody in short who is not unreasonable enough to demand that every author whom he deigns to read shall be capable of speaking disrespectfully of the equator.

X.

JOWETT'S COLLEGE SERMONS.'

What strikes us at first glance and what continues to the end to constitute the chief charm of these sermons by the late Master of Balliol, is the wonderful sympathy of the preacher with his audience. His intimate knowledge of college life, his keen insight into the peculiar temptations and difficulties to which the average college man is exposed, enable him to speak out of the fullness of his own experience with a directness and applicability to present conditions which it is difficult for one not having an acquaintance with college life to appreciate.

The author of these sermons knows the young man's heart, as one who has lost none of the freshness of youth with his increasing years. His ability to analyze motives, to sum up the various forces for good or ill, which constitute the undergraduate's social and intellectual environment, his reputation as a scholar, his broad culture and thorough knowledge of the world, his well-known moderation and dislike of exaggeration, give to these addresses a weight of authority and ripeness of judgment which no other book of the kind, with which we are familiar, posTo the casual reader, many of the subjects treated of in this volume may seem commonplace and beneath the dignity of sermons addressed to university men. But this, no doubt, is the very reason why they were so cordially received and appreciated.

sesses.

The student-body felt that they were aimed not so much at their heads as at their hearts. That the preacher was not one who thought it necessary, because he was addressing college men, to air his knowledge or to tickle their fancies by the flow of his rhetoric and the eloquence of his rounded periods. He appealed to them. as one who By the late Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Master of BalNew York and London: Macmillan & Co., 1895.

› College Sermons. liol College, Oxford.

thoroughly understood them, and was sincerely desirous of helping them in some definite and practical way. A glance at the contents will show how practical and to the point

these sermons are.

Among the subjects treated, we find most excellent advice given on the "Art of Conversation," "The Value of Correct Speaking," "The Advantages to be Derived from Temperate Eating and Drinking," "The Use and Abuse of Money," "Excessive Shyness," "College Friendships," "Late Hours and Overwork," "The Value of Undergraduate Years." This last was the preacher's favorite theme. He repeatedly recurs to it, and upon every possible occasion seeks to impress upon his hearers a sense of its importance. On the very first page we are met with the somewhat paradoxical statement that "youth is the most solemn period of life." The meaning of this is more fully explained elsewhere, when the author tells us that there are no years in a man's life of equal importance to those spent in college. To quote his exact words: "I think we may say without exaggeration, that there are no years of equal importance, and that we shall never have such another start or beginning in life, in which all things (including the recollection of our faults and follies of youth) pass away and all things become new." Jowett's method, though sometimes varied, was first to outline in a broad, general way his subject, frequently stating categorically the different heads under which he proposed to treat his text, and then to fasten definitely upon a single point and to spend his whole strength in illustrating and developing it.

The many points of view from which a subject is looked at, as well as the preacher's ability to see both sides of a question, give a breadth and largeness of outlook which must make these sermons appeal to men of all shades of religious belief. The language is as simple and direct as possible. His editor tells us that Jowett was extremely careful, even fastidious, in the use of words, as is evidenced by the frequent alterations, erasures, and additions in the man