of the epistles. It is a wonder that more such practical and available helps for the study of the Old and New Testaments have not been produced. They would in no way diminish the importance of elaborate commentaries, and they would supply a kind of help which is in its own way as necessary, and do much to prepare the way for the appreciative use of more extensive works. GEORGE B. STEVENS. HUTHER ON THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES.*—This volume completes the American edition of the Meyer series, thus placing the whole work before the American public at about one-third the cost of the English edition of T. & T. Clark. No commentary on the whole New Testament compares with this great work for the purposes of the scholar and critic. It is a mark of progress in American theological study that a work so rigidly scientific and offering so little ease or comfort in the way of interpretation presented ready to the student's hand, but rather demanding the closest attention and most patient tracing of acute argument, should meet a wide and increasing demand among teachers, stu dents, and clergymen. President Dwight has greatly enhanced the value of all the numbers of this series which he has edited, by the addition of notes sufficiently connected and extended to make almost an additional commentary on the text. It need hardly be said that these notes have an independent value of their own and can be used to good purpose by the student of the text who has not time to go through the more extended exposition of Meyer and his continuators. Particularly is this true of the volume under review, in which the notes are gathered together at the end of the volume, instead of being, as in all previous cases, placed directly after the chapters to which they relate. Dr. Dwight's annotations refer solely to the exposition of the text and do not take up the questions of Introduction. It will be of interest to New Testament students to know what positions Dr. Huther takes upon some of the vexed questions connected with the Catholic epistles. Regarding the "brothers of the Lord," he says: "According to the New Testament, the brothers of Jesus, to whom James belonged, are the children of * Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Hand-book. Commentary on the Epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude, by J. E. HUTHER, Th.D., with supplementary notes by PRESIDENT TIMOTHY DWIGHT. Funk & Wagnalls. New York. 1887. Mary born in wedlock with Joseph, after the birth of Jesus" (p. 6). The writer of the epistle is James, the Lord's brother, the "bishop " of Jerusalem, who figures so prominently in the Apostolic conference at Jerusalem. Respecting the genuineness of II. Peter, the author expresses no confident opinion, but seems to lean toward an unfavorable judgment. He says: "If, then, the grounds for and against the authenticity are thus evenly balanced, there is here presented a problem which is not yet solved, and which perhaps cannot be solved" (p. 371). The author holds that Jude, the author of the epistle, is a brother of the James whom he believes to have written the epistle bearing that name; that he was, therefore, the brother of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels. (Matt. xiii: 55; Mark vi: 3.) GEORGE B. STEVENS. MACLAREN'S "COLOSSIANS AND PHILEMON.*"--This volume is one of the early numbers of a series of expository treatises issued under the name of "The Expositor's Bible," edited by Rev. W. Robertson Nicoll, editor of "The Expositor." The contents of the book appeared as articles in the magazine just named, begining Jan., 1885. They are in the form of lectures or sermons and have doubtless served the purposes of the pulpit as well as of the magazine before their appearance in book form. They have doubtless proved useful in all these ways, but we think chiefly so in the pulpit. They are sermons, whether called so or not. They are good specimens of expository preaching, but we do not think that any of them reach the height of some of Dr. Maclaren's sermons published in other volumes, "The Secret of Power," and "The Pattern of Service," for example. Maclaren is one of the best living examples of an essentially expository preacher, and this volume will do good service if it shall stimulate the clergymen into whose hands it may fall to undertake the practice of this much-neglected art. Dr. GEORGE B. STEVENS. In "SEÑORA VILLENA" Mr. Wilcox again brings forward the characters which won so many friends in "Real People." There is much boldness and originality in his departure from conven* Colossians and Philemon. By ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D. A. C. Armstrong & Son. New York. pp. 493. + Señora Villena and Gray: An Oldhaven Romance. By the author of "Real People." New York. White, Stokes & Allen. 1887. And this sug tional rules in the construction of the new story. gests one of Mr. Wilcox's strongest points: he is never an imitator. If he is to obtain success it shall be by no catering to the tastes of an audience already created by some one of the fashionable writers of the day. The successful writer, the one who inspires enthusiasm among his readers, must make and win his own audience. It is natural then that, as in the case of all independent beginnings, the value of his work has received various and most contradictory estimates. "Real People" won a company of ardent admirers, his new volume will hold them and add to their number. In Spanish-American fiction we recall no one who may be called a rival. Edward Everett Hale has long held the field as his own, but Mr. Wilcox has created a new field, and in method, manner, and matter the work of the two authors suggests but the slightest comparison. Both Señora Villena and Gray: an Oldhaven Romance, have a certain artificial interest for New Haven readers because their scenes are for the most part laid in the Elm City. The second story, while containing nothing of the Spanish-American flavor, is yet slightly linked after the manner of Balzac to the chain of earlier stories. In some respects it is his best work. There are powerful scenes, characters, and plot conceptions in it, and the written style seems better than in any former work. It takes hold of one powerfully; a well known Boston critic said to a friend that after reading it late at night it was only by a strong exercise of self-control that he could stay in his haunted room alone that night. This, however, does not suggest its best strength. We do not believe it will be rightly appreciated by half its readers because too much is demanded of the reader. While this might not indicate a fault in a poem it does not indicate virtue in a novel. The novelist's motto should be, "He that runs may read." The novel reader seeks for recreation; the novelist should endeavor to give the best of recreation and at the same time ennoble or better his reader as he may. But as the average reader gives only passing attention, a simplicity and directness which might seem impertinent under other circumstances is really necessary. Too much analysis and interpretation may be a fault, as in some of George Eliot's later works, where an occasional chapter reads like one of Shakspere's plays with the observations of German critics cleverly worked into the context. But the noble moral allegory in Gray suffers in effectiveness from a lack of what we have seen may become faulty in excess. It is only after attention and thought, which few stop to give, that the whole purpose and force of the work is realized. Hawthorne would have enjoyed and praised the story, but he would not have allowed the reader to miss the effect of a point in it. If Mr. Wilcox has done so it is because he has preferred to give his own method a fair trial. GEORGE SAINTSBURY'S "HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE." It is too much for one man to make an extensive and adequate history of so vast a literature as ours. Taine, Craik, Morley, and others, with all their excellencies, have established the truth of this. Macmillan & Co. for some time past have held forth in their catalogue the promise of a History of English Literature from which much is expected. It is to be made on the coöperative plan, and the names of the four specialists chosen for the work are such as to heighten every expectation. Mr. Stopford Brooke is to trace the development of our literature down to the Elizabethan age; Mr. George Saintsbury has done the second part of the work in the volume now issued; the Eighteenth Century is assigned to Mr. Edmund Gosse; and Prof. Edward Dowden will complete the series with a volume on the Modern Period. As the first published part, Mr. Saintsbury's share of the important work will be read with attention. "My only excuse," he says, "for undertaking to write on the greatest period of the greatest literature of the world is that I have been diligently reading the productions, small and great, of this period for some five-and-twenty years with ever increasing admiration, and that I find the increase of my admiration due in no small degree to the comparison with other periods and and other literatures, ancient and modern, which I have been enabled to make in the meantime." And one feels that he has read the literature as one should read any good novel or poem, for its own and his own sake. His reading, also, seems to have included the best part of what has been written about the Elizabethan age and its men. With such preparation he aims to give independently and originally a descriptive and critical history, and he wins our respect at the very beginning. There is, in the book, an indifference to dates and details, upon *A History of Elizabethan Literature, (being Volume II. of a History of English Literature). By GEORGE SAINTSBURY. Macmillan & Co., London and New York, 1887. which he does not set so high a value as many do. In his own words he is nothing if not critical, and the criticism is "warranted" to be Mr. Saintsbury's. Of course when more emphasis is given to matters of opinion than to matters of fact, an author is free from such an attack as the Quarterly made upon Mr. Gosse a year or so ago, there is no final court to settle disputes over matters of opinion. And it is plain to the reader that Mr. Saintsbury never expects anyone to agree with him in all his literary judgments; probably they are not entirely the estimates he himself held twenty years ago, or will hold twenty years hence. But what of it, provided one does not depend wholly upon Mr. Saintsbury for knowledge of the Elizabethan age? If a critic should catalogue his particular objections to the author's conclusions, likely as not the next reviewer would differ from each. It is ordinarily conceded that every one may respect his own opin ion in literary taste at least, but Mr. Saintsbury occasionally seems to dispute this, as when he anticipates possible disagreement with such words: "This estimate will only be dismissed as exaggerated by those who are debarred from appreciation by want of sympathy with the subject, or distracted by want of comprehension of it." In fact, generally he writes with a breezy freedom from humility, and as one having great authority, and the force of the work generally gains thereby, but not in all cases. Such valuable and at the same time such sincere and independent criticism is too rare in books of the kind, and there are few faults in it which the most critical would not forgive for the sake of the whole. Advance is continually made in the study of Elizabethan literature by the band of enthusiastic men devoted to it, and this book is abreast of the times. As it is only within a few years that it has been possible to treat at all some of the topics here included, one finds matter contained in no similar work. Again, in dealing with subjects long familiar, Mr. Saintsbury gives suggestions, observations, and expositions of fresh and stimulating character. The work is evidently not intended as a text-book for ordinary classes, but for the reading courses for more advanced students it is the best of its kind. The style, purposely unpretentious, is straightforward and business-like though many of the sentences must be followed with slow and careful footing under penalty of missing the way. And the writer has a peculiar and regrettable fondness for "seld-seen," but not therefore"costly" words. To use one of his favorite phrases, there |