The English Illustrated Magazine, 1890 - 91. (Macmillan.) — This yearly volume continues to
display a really extraordinary wealth of good matter. It opens with a poem by Mr. Swinburne, written in verse which, whatever its other merits, comes as near to the roll of the Homeric hexameter as anything in this language. The periodical story which runs through the year is Marion Crawford's "Witch of Prague," of which we have given an estimate elsewhere. The miscellaneous articles are of great and varied interest; always heightened by the admirable illustrations. One of the best is Mr. F. G. Kitten's "Dickens and Punch." Mr. Kitten remarks on the strangeness of the fact that Dickens, great humorist as he was, never contributed to the chief humorous publication of the day; but he points out that the indirect contributions were many. Nothing could be a better proof of Dickens's popularity than that his characters—Fagin, for instance (Benjamin Disraeli), Mrs. Gummidge (Gladstone), Oliver Twist (Lord Brougham)— could be used for jokes which everybody, it could be taken for granted, understood. Mr. F. Gale contributes a very pleasing article on "Winchester," and another on "Cricket," adorned with some portraits of great worthies of the past Mr. William Wing's "River Cherwell," Mrs. Oliphant's "Edinburgh," Mr. Philip Norman's "Inns and Taverns of Old London," and "The Russo-Jewish Immigrant," by the Rev. S. Singer, may also be mentioned.
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