Professor Tuerck, a very normal German, has been writing critical essays since the end of the eighties, and he has not changed a bit—the same good old idealist of the sissy category. In this book he makes a study of Genius, and comes to the magnificent conclusion that the chief characteristics of a genius must be goodliness, loving kindness, respect, and loyalty to existing institutions, obedience to the law, objectivity, and truth. Naturally, those who do not possess these delicacies are villains. The professor demonstrates two groups of thinkers, one in angelic white, the other in devilish black. Among the first, the real geniuses, we find beside Christ, Buddha, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, also Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon. But oh, Mr. Wilson, what German atrocities! Mr. Tuerck mercilessly disfigures his victims and pastes upon them with his saliva accurate, uniform labels. In _Hamlet_, in _Faust_, in _Manfred_, in the mentioned law-givers and warriors, the author manages to discover goody-goody traits of exemplary burghers. In the Black Gallery we face the lugubrious sinners—Stirner, Nietzsche, and Ibsen. “Woe to him who follows these modern antisophers!” cries Mr. Tuerck, for they are enemies of humanity, of the state, of society, of reality, of truth, for they are selfish and subjective. “The Devil, the Father of Lies, is great and Friedrich Nietzsche is his prophet.” A word of reassurance for Mr. Thomas Hardy. This Sauerkraut-gem, _The Man of Genius_, has had _seven_ editions in Germany, and has aroused wide enthusiasm there, as witnessed by the numerous press-notices exaltingly praising the great idealist Tuerck, written by professors, Geheimraths, Hofraths, catholics, protestants, and even by socialists! Now, pray, ought there be any fear for the Nietzscheanization of the Fatherland? K. Kilmer’s Confession _Trees, and Other Poems_, by Joyce Kilmer. [George H. Doran Company, New York.] Mr. Kilmer furnishes the following prose account of his convictions: “I am catholic in my tastes and Catholic in religion, am socially a democrat and politically a Democrat. I am a special writer on the staff of the _New York Times Sunday Magazine_, the _Times Review of Books_ and the _Literary Digest_. I am bored by Feminism, Futurism, Free Love.” This is perhaps a more succinct expression of his facility of faith than can be found in his verse. Readers should thank him for it, because it renders unnecessary any further attempt to discover what he believes. At the opening of the volume, Mr. Kilmer quotes the following stanza from Coventry Patmore: Mine is no horse with wings, to gain The region of the Spheral chime He does but drag a rumbling wain, Cheered by the coupled bells of rhyme.