philosophical writings, he would have known that the _Sylva Sylvarum_ never was and never could have been completed, for it was in itself a fragment--a mere collection of materials to be incorporated in the _Phœnomena Universi_, a work which was to have been six times larger than Pliny’s _Natural History_. In giving an account of Tillotson, he speaks of “the serene and insinuating periods” of the elegant latitudinarian who “was assiduous in saying what he had to say in the most graceful and intelligible manner possible.” A more perfect description of the very opposite of Tillotson’s style could hardly be given. Those who are acquainted with Fuller’s writings will be equally surprised to find him classed with Jeremy Taylor and Henry More, and to learn that his style is ‘florid and involved,’ distinguished by its ‘long-windedness’ and ‘exuberance.’ Has Mr. Gosse no apprehension of his readers turning to the originals and testing his statements? We have another of these bold assertions in the account of Lydgate, derived, we suspect, from a hasty generalization from a remark made about him in Mr. Ward’s _British Poets_. “Lydgate,” says Mr. Gosse, “had a most defective ear; his verses are not to be scanned. His ear was bad and tuneless.” Any one who has read Lydgate knows that, if we except his heroic couplets, a more musical poet is not to be found in the fifteenth century, or, indeed, in our language; the softness and smoothness of his verse, wherever he writes in stanzas, as he generally does, is indeed his chief characteristic. These remarks are minor illustrations of an accomplishment in which Mr. Gosse has no rival.