Books.
Volume 7, 1896, pg. 750-754
Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. Barrie (Cassell, 6/-). Tommy is unique, a new figure in literature, and destined to keep his place there. Like Caleb Balderstone, Othello, or Maggie Tulliver, Tommy is a personality, outlined nowhere else, and to stand evermore as a type of character. "He'll find a wy," and the delight of watching him evolve this "wy," and the certainty that deliverance will come to him in his worst moments, are as real and exciting as if one knew Tommy in the flesh. The curious thing is, though Tommy is a brand-new delineation, one is constantly catching a glimpse here and a glimpse there of every boy one knows in turn. He is a boy before he is Tommy, and he is Tommy apart from every other boy. Mr. Barrie knows his own power. He leaves Tommy in the very dregs of his fortunes, sure of the reader's confidence that, "he'll find a wy," and be at the top of the tree yet. The understudies are delightful, too--Elspeth is very tender and sweet, Grizel has the makings of a splendid woman, Miss Ailie might be a "Crauford" lady. All the characters are touched in with a master hand; but in Tommy Mr. Barrie appears to us to have outdone himself in the presentation of child-life and character. This is not a book for children, but one for parents to read and inwardly digest to their profit and pleasure. (See extract in Christmas Plays for the Children, page 744.)
A Child-World, by James Whitcomb Riley (Longmans & Co., 5/-).
"The child-heart is so strange a little thing,
So mild, so timorously shy and small.
When grown-up hearts throb, it goes scampering
Behind the wall, nor dares peer out at all!
It is the veriest mouse
That hides in any house,
So wild a little thing is any child-heart!
Child-heart! mild heart,
Ho, my little wild heart!
Come up here to me out o' the dark,
Or let me come to you."
As the above extract will show, Mr. Riley does occasionally more than touch the hem of poetry, but his knowledge of children is wonderful, and a delight all through the volume. Every rhymed tale in it will give pleasure to parents, and will afford material for profitable study. We have long been of opinion that psychology is a science which none but a poetic mind is capable of expounding, for no other has the breadth and insight, the readiness to receive a flash without attempting to classify it, which should be brought to the study of the infinite in human nature.
The Animal Story Book by Andrew Lang (Longmans, 6/-). Mr. Lang has long worked for the Christmas delight of children, but we believe that he has never done them more service than in this Christmas volume. He tells us frankly in the preface his private opinion of some of the tales. Most of them he vouches for. Everyone who loves animals will love these stories. There are stories about rats and snakes and ants and bears, monkey stories and cockatoo stories, stories of grateful dogs and loving dogs, stories of animals that have found a place in history, and of pets of to-day; and all the stories are well told, simple, and without adornment, as tales should be. M. Dumas and his beasts afford very charming chapters with inimitable illustrations. The snake stories are highly exciting, even if one may not pin one's faith seriously upon Baron Wogan.
The Piebald Horse, and other Stories, by Arthur Burrell (Fisher Unwin, 2/6). Those of our readers who recollect The Church of the Hunted Stag and The Man with the Seven Hearts will require no persuasion to induce them to read a volume of stories by the same author. We wish the book had a title which did some justice to the grace and charm of the stories. Charles Lamb himself could not have told the tale of My Grandmother's Holiday with more tender fun. From the Well of Bethlehem is a very beautiful tale, told as only an accomplished littérateur could tell it. We wish Mr. Burrell would give the world more work of a kind which is rare in these days of the making many books.
The Mind of the Master, by John Watson, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton, 6/-). Though some of us may feel that the sacred subject of this volume is handled with a shade too much familiarity, and that we do not quite catch the mind of our Master imaged in a way that responds to the image in our own souls, yet we cannot lay down this volume without hearty gratitude to the author for very clear teaching on difficult points, The essay on Faith, the Sixth Sense, for example, should do much to clear our minds as to the simple and practical nature of the "faith" which is commonly presented as a rather mystic virtue. Every chapter contains suggestive teaching. Mr. Watson's book is an important attempt to bring the teaching of the gospels into line, as it were, with the thought of the day.
The Eversley Series (Macmillan and Co., 5/- each). We should like to note our sense of the valuable service Messrs. Macmillan and Co. are rendering in the production of the Eversley Series. They are giving us in a handy, pleasing, inexpensive form, works, which in every case so far as we know, reach the high-water mark of literary excellence, but which would have been lost to the general reader in the expensive library editions, or as the equally expensive and ephemeral book of the season. We advise our readers to note the Eversley Series and possess themselves of desirable volumes as they come out. We are apt to forget that the issue of such a series is an opportunity which may pass before we have made up our minds to seize it.
[The Eversley Series published volumes such as The Pleasures of Life by Avebury, Essays in Criticism by Arnold, Boswell's Johnson, English Literature by Brooke, The Soul of a people by Hall, Stories and Poems of Thomas Hardy, The Life of David Livingstone by Horne, On Compromise by Morley, Greek Studies by Pater, Selections from Pepys Diary.]
We have received the following numbers for review:--
Dante, and other Essays, by R. W. Church. Dean Church's essay on Dante is profoundly interesting and helpful. The vivid life of mediæval Florence stirs in the page. We are enabled to trace the causes which helped in the development of the great poem of the age of faith; and to recognise that which is over and above all external causes, and makes the Divina Comedia a poem and a lesson-book for all time. The essay on Wordsworth is full of insight and instructive appreciation, and the reader feels that Wordsworth is not the less great because his failings and his excellencies are duly considered. The essay on Sordello, with which the volume concludes, makes this great poetic puzzle, if not clear, certainly illuminating. We perceive, as we read, that there is a theme in Sordello, a life-lesson very good for us all.
Miscellaneous Essays, by R. W. Church. Dean Church's essay on Montaigne is sparkling, as befits the subject, and entirely sympathetic. The charm, the piquancy, and the sincerity of Montaigne are presented in a very living way. The reader could not have a better introduction to the writings of the French sage who, if he proposes to himself to think outside the domain of Christian thought and to pose as a practically pagan philosopher, writes with a shrewd gentleness and grace which is always charming, and does not deserve to be regarded, as he so frequently is, in the light of a mere man of the world reflecting the thoughts of the world. We have not space to notice the most interesting essay on Brittany, which brings us face to face with the earnest and rather sombre but heroic Bretons, nor that on the Letters of Pope Gregory the First, and the contemporary light they throw on early Church history. All the essays are deeply interesting and instructive, and well adapted for the daily hour's reading aloud, a tradition to be kept up in most families.
Historical Essays, by Bishop J. B. Lightfoot. Probably the most instructive and interesting of the Essays in this volume are those on Christian Life in the Second and Third Centuries and on the Comparative Progress of Ancient and Modern Missions. We feel we are in the hands of an author of profound historical knowledge, equalled by his power of insight and by his intellectual grasp. The Christians of the early centuries live before us. In face of the depression that comes to those who work abroad and pray at home for foreign missions, of the scoffs of the traveller who assures us that the result of missionary labour is nil, and of the superior attitude of the present-day philosopher who tells us that to leave every man to his own creed is the part of wisdom, it is truly solacing to read Bishop Lightfoot's carefully formed opinions on the subject of modern missions. We go on with our work with good cheer when we learn that, pari passu, the progress of Christianity in the early centuries and in our own day is about equal. In face of such problems as the rapid conversion of Uganda and the tardy progress of Christianity in India and China it is good to learn that, in this matter also, history repeats itself; that the highly civilised nation, with its own systems of religion and philosophy, has far more obstacles to overcome than the ruder peoples for whom civilisation and Christianity come hand-in-hand. It is good, too, to be assured by such an authority as Bishop Lightfoot that the slow conversion of nations of the former type has its element of hope, that the leaven is leavening the whole lump, and that a time is probably coming when these nations also will be born in a day. The whole volume is very interesting and instructive, but we have seldom read any treatise on modern missions so cheering and so conclusive as that on the Comparative Progress of Ancient and Modern Missions.
Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, by Richard Holt Hutton (Vols. I and II). These two are valuable volumes for a father's bookshelves. The wise editor of the Spectator is very well fitted to be a guide to youth, in the matter of first opinions on the subjects of contemporary thought. The essays are short, and would afford capital half-hour daily readings with father and mother during the holidays. Perhaps parents do not sufficiently bear in mind that the holidays give them opportunity to educate the opinions of their young people on matters of public interest, and these short essays afford matter for discussion on many questions from The Conscience of Animals to Agnosticism, from Cardinal Newman to M. Renan, from Ants and Their Policy to John Stuart Mill's Philosophy. These volumes do not contain milk for babes, but when boys and girls are sixteen or seventeen it is time that they begin to face the questions of the hour.
Poems of William Wordsworth, edited by William Knight (16 vols.). Vol III "To students of Wordsworth these volumes are dedicated." A new edition of the works of Wordsworth, edited by Mr. W. Knight, claims the respectful attention of all lovers of the poet. The editor tells us that the present is not a reproduction of the library edition of 1882-1889. It is not only that the volumes are more convenient to handle, but that the present edition has every improvement which scholarly and enthusiastic editorship has been able to suggest. The publishers have done their part well; type, paper, and arrangement are all inviting. The volumes are published monthly, and this is an opportunity to get a complete edition at no unreasonable price. The poems are included in the first eight volumes. For a first introduction to the poet, perhaps, The Poems of Wordsworth, chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold, price 2/6, is to be preferred.
Essays in the History of Religious Thought in the West, by Bishop [Brooke Foss] Westcott. "Splendid visions burst upon us from unexpected quarters, and we find they are included in that view of God, the world, and man, which lies in the fact of the Incarnation." This sentence from the preface gives the key-note to the purpose that runs through this volume. We have here illuminating essays on Plato, Æschylus, and Euripides, because, says Bishop Westcott, "Their hopes and their desires, their errors and their silences were likely, I thought, to show how far the gospel satisfies our natural aspirations and illuminates dark places in our experience." It would be difficult to speak too strongly of the extreme interest of these essays. Parents who had studied that upon Æschylus, for example, even without the help of a translation of the poet, would have quickening ideas for their schoolboy son which should make the Greek class something more than a grind, more even than it is in the hands of a master who does justice to the Greek poet as a poet and as an interpreter of his times. Here we have a key to the unity and continuity of the revelation vouchsafed through, what Bishop Westcott calls, the prophetic Masters of the West, and, in the very light of the richness and suggestiveness of this revelation, we perceive its inadequacy until it is completed and interpreted by the gospel of Christ. The essays on Browning as a Teacher and on The Relations of Christianity to Art are full of instruction, insight and masterly criticism.
We have also received for review:--
Modern Guides to English Thought in Matters of Faith, by Richard Holt Hutton (Macmillan & Co.., 6/-). Mr. Hutton's list of our modern guides in matters of faith is interesting and suggestive. They are Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal Newman, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Frederic Denison Maurice. The insight, incisive criticism, and entire appreciation with which these essays are written make them delightful reading; and a discussion of the influence which each of these "guides" still exercises upon modern thought is instructive and useful; especially so to parents, who should know, as far as possible, to whom the loose opinions which are in the air at any given moment owe their origin.
French Poets and Novelists, by Henry James (Macmillan & Co., 6/-). Probably most of us feel that we require the guidance of those who know before we can even dip safely and wisely into French literature. Mr. Henry James knows, and tells what he knows with the grace, care, and epigrammatic force which belong to him. Perhaps most of us regret our ignorance of the literature of Continental nations, and we could hardly have a happier introduction to the dozen or so of authors, whose names represent current French literature, than Mr. James has given us here. This is a book that mothers should read to make them better able to guide their girls in the choice of French literature.
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