“JOHN EGLINTON.”—Mr. “John Eglinton” has been called “the Irish Emerson”; but the description of the “Irish Thoreau” would fit him much better. He is transcendental, like Emerson, but after a different, and a less high-falutin’ manner—the manner of transcendental common sense. On the other hand, he shares with Thoreau the quality of passionate independence, and what may be called adventurous solitude. “John Eglinton” names his essays _Anglo-Irish_, and they answer even more accurately to the description than the compound implies; for they are essays upon the hyphen that joins them. Exactly as Thoreau was most completely at home in no other man’s land between the world and the wood, “John Eglinton” is at his easiest somewhere between England and Ireland. He is not Irish, nor is he English. He is not Anglo-Irish either; but, once more, the hyphen between them. It is this sense of difference from both elements that makes of “John Eglinton” at once so attractive, so significant, and so illuminating a writer and thinker. Being between two worlds, and with a foot in each, he understands each world in a double sense, from within and from without. To each in turn he can be both interpreter and critic; and in these delightful essays he is to be found alternately defending and attacking each of the national elements between which his perch is placed. “Candid friend” would, perhaps, be a fair description of his attitude towards both nations, if the phrase were not associated with the disagreeable. But since “John Eglinton” is anything but acid in his comments, and writes of both nations in a spirit of mingled admiration and judgment, I can think of nothing better at the moment than my image of the hyphen. He is alone between two worlds, friendly but critical equally of both.