Literary critics of importance to-day are Edward Dowden, Richard Garnett, George Saintsbury, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen, and Andrew Lang--all of whom are happily living and writing. =Edward Dowden (1843- )=, who is an Irishman, and a professor of Trinity College, Dublin, has a genius for accuracy and is a master of detail. For textual criticism of Wordsworth and Shelley he has no superior. He has an immense knowledge of the literature of many languages, and holds without dispute the first place among living students of German literature in this country. His knowledge of English literature is profound, and in "Shakspere, his Mind and Art," and "Studies in Literature," he has said some singularly illuminating things about books. With his "Life of Shelley" one observes a certain deterioration; Professor Dowden, with all his profound love of literature, has scarcely the qualities which would find attraction in the curiously impulsive character of the poet Shelley. Dowden was happier when writing about Southey, and he is still more at home with great impersonal literary figures like Shakspere and Goethe. =Richard Garnett (1835- )=,--better known to the world to-day as Dr Garnett--has also written on Shelley, not merely with sympathy but with partisanship. Dr Garnett, who is honourably associated with the British Museum Library, is a most acute critic, a biographer of Carlyle and Emerson, a translator from the Greek and German, and, like Professor Dowden, a poet. =George Saintsbury (1845- )=, who is Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, has been an industrious critic for many years, and his knowledge of French literature in particular is profound. His acquaintance with English literature in the seventeenth century has, however, considerably vitiated his style. It is not easy to tolerate the phraseology of the seventeenth century in modern books. This defect of style is regrettably noticeable in two volumes of literary history which Professor Saintsbury has published, one dealing with the seventeenth and the other with the nineteenth century. It is in certain brief biographies of Sir Walter Scott and others that Professor Saintsbury is most excellent; but his wide knowledge and his genuine grasp of the most salient characteristics of good literature are indisputable qualities which rank him high among the bookmen of his day.