SIR EDWARD RUSSELL'S " MEMOIRS."
That Reminds Me—. By Sir Edward Russell. (T. Fisher Unwin. 12s.)—It seems ungrateful to criticise such a collection of good stories as Sir Edward Russell here brings together, but we cannot but wish that he had given them a little more arrange- ment. As they stand they are not so much a string of beads as a heap of beads unstrung. Sir Edward Russell tells us that they "have little in them that is autobiographical, and nothing that is intentionally autobiographical." This is quite true, but we should have liked it to be a little less true. With a thread of autobiography, however slender, running through it, the volume would not have been so invertebrate as it necessarily is when the heading of every story begins with "Of." But as an intellectual lucky bag into which the reader cannot dip without bringing out something which will interest him, That Reminds Me— takes a high place. Sir Edward Russell has long been the editor of a great provincial journal, and this book is a portion of the many "-incidents and conversations" which live in his memory. His fellow-journalists may well envy the memory in which so much lives. It is difficult to quote where every page supplies materials which have an equal claim on him who has to make the choice, eo we will content ourselves with three. Two are of John Bright. He was supposed to be a total abstainer, but once when Edward Miall was very nervous at the prospect of having to make an important speech in the House, Bright said : "Well, Miall, if I were you, I'd for once go and have a pint of champagne." Mr. Miall did as be was told, and the result may be judged from the narrator's comment that "champagne on an unaccustomed interior is not always a curative or a tonic." Bright "rarely had any difference with his wife," but occasionally they were not at one about the children. When they came to a point of absolute disagreement, he used to say : "Now, I tell thee if thou doesn't do what I wish, I'll go straight to Mr. Gladstone and ask him to make me a knight," to which Ihe answer invariably was : "Oh, anything rather than that." Our third quotation relates to another Parliamentarian. " Harold Frederic had a very pretty and precocious and charming little girl of ten. One day a friend was telling her
stories. He said : 'But you don't seem interested. don't think you like me as you used to do." Well,' said she, 'to tell you the truth, Mr. Healy has spoilt me for all other men.'" The picture of Mr. Healy as a child-enslaver comes as a pleasant variant on some of his more public appearances.
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