Turn where we will we are confronted with blunders. Take the account given of Shakespeare. He began his metre, we are told, with the lumbering “fourteeners.” He did, so far as is known, nothing of the kind. Again: “It is only by guesses that anything is dated before the _Comedy of Errors_ at the extreme end of 1594.” In answer to this it may be sufficient to say that _Venus and Adonis_ was published in 1593, that the first part of _Henry VI._ was acted on 3rd March, 1592, that _Titus Andronicus_ was acted on 25th January, 1594, and that _Lucrece_ was entered on the Stationers’ books 9th May, 1594. This is on a par with the assertion, on page 315, that Shakespeare was traditionally born on 24th April! On page 320 we are told that _Measure for Measure_ belongs to the first group of Shakespeare’s plays, to the series beginning with _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ and culminating with the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_. It is only fair to say that the Professor places a note of interrogation after it in a bracket, but that it should have been placed there, even tentatively, shows an ignorance of the very rudiments of Shakespearian criticism which is nothing short of astounding. Take, again, the account given of Burke. Our readers will probably think us jesting when we tell them that Professor Saintsbury gravely informs us that Burke supported the American Revolution. Is the Professor unacquainted with the two finest speeches which have ever been delivered in any language since Cicero? Can he possibly be ignorant that Burke, so far from supporting that revolution, did all in his power to prevent it? The whole account of Burke, it may be added, teems with inaccuracies. The American Revolution was not brought about under a Tory administration. What brought that revolution about was Charles Townshend’s tax, and that tax was imposed under a Whig administration, as every well-informed Board-school lad would know. Burke did not lose his seat at Bristol owing to his support of Roman Catholic claims. If Professor Saintsbury had turned to one of the finest of Burke’s minor speeches--the speech addressed to the electors of Bristol--he would have seen that Burke’s support of the Roman Catholic claims was only one, and that not the most important, of the causes which cost him his seat. Similar ignorance is displayed in the remark (p. 629) that “Burke joined, and indeed headed, the crusade against Warren Hastings, in 1788.” The prosecution of Warren Hastings was undertaken on Burke’s sole initiative, not in 1788, but in 1785. A few lines onwards we are told that the series of Burke’s writings on the French Revolution “began with the _Reflections_ in 1790, and was continued in the _Letter to a Noble Lord_, 1790.” _A Letter to a Noble Lord_ had nothing to do with the French Revolution, except collaterally as it affected Burke’s public conduct, and appeared, not in 1790, but in 1795.