literature," Mr. Birrell remarks urbanely, "should be taken seriously, but not too seriously." He has, you sce, returned to the attack, "There is an immense deal of clap: trap talked, and more written, about books and reading—the Ministry of Books, the Consolations of Literature, nnd I know not what other fine' phrases." And in another ince: "As for the consolation, who was ever consoled in real trouble by the small heer of literature or science?" But when we turn to the date of this particular essay (for all the essays in this little collection are dated), we notice that it is gentle gibe at Quarterly Reviewers written in 1890! In this year of grace, Mr. Birrell would find a difficult task to discover persons more bookish than himself whom hho could startle into attention by is occasional iconoclastic remarks.
Thirty-four years have gone by and now it is ourselves and not literature that we are in danger of taking too seriously. Bat Mr. Bir-tell, with his sturdy common-sense and salty phrases, remains as grea!
tonic as ever. Writing of one: of our most admired works, 9 other than Mr. Strachey's "Eminent. Victorians," he says: "Elderly folk who are beginning to move slowly above the ground, with figures, grown convex,' may find in its! pages just a little too much, despite the prevailing note of a dexterous urbanity, of that unkindness of rigment which is characteristic of critics who have not yet been judged by their juniors. Reason, as was shrewdly said by a great scholar of our own day, is the philosophy which is in vogue for' the moment, and, ax such philosophies are of necessity short-lived, even the test of Reason should be applied cautiously, and—possibly. humbly, to the lives and creeds of our predecessors."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.