There is little of any great value in the volume of reviews collected by his executor; little, that is to say, that raises them above the level of reviews written by far less gifted men. Here and there are fragments that he improved and used again in more lasting works. Here and there are perfectly charming sentences, that show what sort of man would be found if we could lift the mask of the reviewer. Throughout the book are uncertain indications of the theories of art that were later to be expounded in _Intentions_. But that is all. There is, however, an historical interest in learning what Wilde thought of the writers of his time. He railed at the shocking bad grammar of Professor Saintsbury, and got an undergraduate enjoyment from laughing at Professor Mahaffy. When he could, he piously drew attention to the works of his father and mother. He was polite to his cousin, W. G. Wills, who had happened to be delivered of an epic. Among greater men, he had excellent praise for William Morris, a just appreciation of Pater, an enthusiasm for Meredith, the expression of which he afterwards used in _Intentions_, and a perspicuous criticism of Swinburne. The volume is full of clues to the sources of the inessentials in his later work. The original of the passage in _Dorian Gray_ on embroideries and tapestries is to be found in a review of a book by Ernest Lefebure. The Starchild's curls "were like the rings of the daffodil." This curious and delightful phrase may be traced to a review of Morris' translation of the Odyssey, where Wilde noticed the line, "With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil," and quoted another version published in 1665, "Minerva renders him more tall and fair. Curling in rings like daffodils his hair." It would be possible to make a long list of such alibis.