The preface
to this attractive little edition is from the pen of Mr. J. Logie
Robertson, and the simple, straightforward style in which it is written
contrasts favourably with the silly pompous manner affected by so many of
the other editors of the series.

Ramsay's life is worth telling well, and Mr. Robertson tells it well, and
gives us a really capital picture of Edinburgh society in the early half
of the last century.

Dante for Beginners, by Miss Arabella Shore, is a sort of literary guide-
book. What Virgil was to the great Florentine, Miss Shore would be to
the British public, and her modest little volume can do no possible harm
to Dante, which is more than one can say of many commentaries on the
Divine Comedy.

Miss Phillimore's Studies in Italian Literature is a much more elaborate
work, and displays a good deal of erudition. Indeed, the erudition is
sometimes displayed a little too much, and we should like to see the lead
of learning transmuted more often into the gold of thought. The essays
on Petrarch and Tasso are tedious, but those on Aleardi and Count
Arrivabene are excellent, particularly the former. Aleardi was a poet of
wonderful descriptive power, and though, as he said himself, he
subordinated his love of poetry to his love of country, yet in such
service he found perfect freedom.

The article on Edoardo Fusco also is full of interest, and is a timely
tribute to the memory of one who did so much for the education and
culture of modern Italy. On the whole, the book is well worth reading;
so well worth reading, indeed, that we hope that the foolish remarks on
the Greek Drama will be amended in a second edition, or, which would be
better still, struck out altogether. They show a want of knowledge that
must be the result of years of study.

(1) The Master of Tanagra. Translated from the German of Ernst von
Wildenbruch by the Baroness von Lauer. (H. Grevel and Co.)

(2) Moliere et Shakespeare. By Paul Stapfer. (Hachette.)

(3) Annals of the Life of Shakespeare. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co.)

(4) Poems by Allan Ramsay. Selected and arranged, with a Biographical
Sketch of the Poet, by J. Logie Robertson, M.A. 'Canterbury Poets.'
(Walter Scott.)

(5) Dante for Beginners. By Arabella Shore. (Chapman and Hall.)

(6) Studies in Italian Literature. By Miss Phillimore. (Sampson Low,
Marston and Co.)

A CHEAP EDITION OF A GREAT MAN

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 18, 1887.)

Formerly we used to canonise our great men; nowadays we vulgarise them.
The vulgarisation of Rossetti has been going on for some time past with
really remarkable success, and there seems no probability at present of
the process being discontinued. The grass was hardly green upon the
quiet grave in Birchington churchyard when Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. William
Sharp rushed into print with their Memoirs and Recollections. Then came
the usual mob of magazine-hacks with their various views and attitudes,
and now Mr. Joseph Knight has produced for the edification of the British
public a popular biography of the poet of the Blessed Damozel, the
painter of Dante's Dream.