It seems impossible to open this book anywhere without alighting on some blunder, or on some inaccuracy. Speaking (p. 277) of Willoughby’s well-known _Avisa_, the Professor observes that nothing is known of Willoughby or of _Avisa_. If the Professor had known anything about the work, he would have known that _Avisa_ is simply an anagram made up of the initial letters of _Amans_, _vxor_, _inviolata semper amanda_, and that nothing is known of Avisa for the simple reason that nothing is known of the site of More’s Utopia. On page 360 we are told that Phineas Fletcher’s _Piscatory Eclogues_, which are, of course, confounded with his _Sicelides_, are a masque; on page 624, but this is perhaps a printer’s error, that Robertson wrote a history of Charles I. On page 482, John Pomfret, the author of one of the most popular poems of the eighteenth century, is called Thomas. On page 550, Pope’s _Moral Essays_ are described as _An Epistle to Lord Burlington_, presumably because the last of them, the fourth, is addressed to that nobleman. On page 587 we are told that Mickle died in London: he died at Forest Hill, near Oxford. On page 556 we are informed that Prior was part author of a parody of the “Hind and Panther,” and that he was “imprisoned for some years.” The work referred to is wrongly described, as it only contained parodies of certain passages in Dryden’s poem, and he was in confinement less than two years. On page 358, Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, is actually described as the son of Æneas. If Professor Saintsbury were as familiar as he affects to be with Geoffrey of Monmouth, with Layamon and with the early metrical romances, he would have known that Brutus is fabled to have been the son of Sylvius, the son of Ascanius, and, consequently, the great-grandson of Æneas. Many of the Professor’s critical remarks can only be explained on the supposition that he assumes that his readers will not take the trouble to verify his references or question his dogmas. We will give one or two instances. On page 468, speaking of seventeenth-century prose, he says, with reference to Milton: “The close of the _Apology_ itself is a very little, though only a very little, inferior to the _Hydriotaphia_.” By the _Apology_ he can only mean the _Apology for Smectymnuus_, for the defence of the English people is in Latin. Now, will our readers credit that one of the flattest, clumsiest and most commonplace passages in Milton’s prose writings, as any one may see who turns to it, is pronounced “only a little inferior” to one of the most majestically eloquent passages in our prose literature. That our readers may know what Professor Saintsbury’s notions of eloquence are, we will transcribe the passage: