the least inadequate. Certainly letter-writing to the illustrious dead comes easily enough; though the task never satisfies my sense of reverence. To this edition, "by special request" of the American publishers, four new letters have been added-letters to John Knox, Increase Mather, Homer, and Mr. Samuel Pepys. To be printed in a pretty form tempts industry; yet more is it stimulated by the thought of producing a sister volume to Mr. Stevenson's "Virginibus Puerisque." Only in format, paper, type, binding, is there any sisterhood or similarity. All the Muses came to Mr. Stevenson's cradle, and gave him the gift of story-telling, the enchantments of style: charm and genius. There is no thought of rivalry in this little book, which is content to admire and delight in great writers dead and gone, to smile sympathetically at Chapelain and Increase Mather, men not so great, but very human. If any who read this book about books are moved to read the books themselves, it will not have been written quite in vain. But we are apt, in these matters, to remain content at two removes from reality. ANDREW LANG. |