It is indeed impossible to open this book anywhere without alighting on some most discreditable blunder or absurdity. Thus we are informed that Macaulay’s essay on Burleigh treats of the time of James I.--Burleigh, as we need hardly say, dying nearly five years before James came to the throne, and Macaulay’s essay having no reference at all to James I.’s time. “There is,” says Mr. Raffety, “no more stirring lyric than _The Cotter’s Saturday Night_,” a remark which shows that Mr. Raffety does not know what a lyric poem is. But to look for blunders in Mr. Raffety’s pages would be to look for leaves in a summer forest. His critical remarks and biographical notes are truly delightful. We wish we had space to quote some of them. Of their general quality the following profound remark is a fair specimen:--“Dante requires study, and an endeavour after appreciation.” Mr. Raffety is always anxious to conduct his readers by short cuts and to save them trouble. Macaulay’s _Essays_, for example, should be read before his _History_; “they will be more easily tackled,” he says, “than the _History_ in the first instance.” But on the subject of Gibbon Mr. Raffety is adamant, being fully of the late Professor Freeman’s opinion--“Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be read.” How Gibbon is to be read, or why Gibbon is to be read, or in what edition he should be read, Mr. Raffety does not explain. Now, what possible end can be served by books like these, except to misguide and misinform? Here is a writer, who certainly leaves us with the impression that he cannot read the Greek and Latin classics in the original, setting up as a director of classical study, and pronouncing _ex cathedrâ_ on the merits of translations of these classics. His knowledge of the modern literature is, as is abundantly manifest, though we have neither space nor patience to illustrate, equally insufficient and unsubstantial, and yet he undertakes to initiate and guide the inexperienced in these studies. This book is presented to the public in a most attractive form, being excellently printed on excellent paper, and will naturally be taken seriously by those to whom it appeals. It is for this reason that we also have felt it our duty to take it seriously. And, as we believe that every bad book stands in the way of a good one, we can promise Mr. Raffety, and writers like Mr. Raffety, that we shall continue to take them seriously. THE NEW CRITICISM[21] [Footnote 21: _Retrospective Reviews._ A Literary Log. By Richard Le Gallienne. 2 vols.]