14 FEBRUARY 1925, Page 17

The week, indeed, is a very notable one in the

publication of literary history and criticism. There is also Mr. Osbert Burdett's The Beardsley Period (Bodley Head), a beautifully urbane and level-headed account of the 'nineties. The Cambridge University Press send a new edition of the Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, by Hester Lynch Piozzi, a book which is to Boswell's biography (if we may be profane) rather as Xenophon's account of Socrates is to Plato's. There is a good deal to show that the portraits are of the same man ; there is that retort to the " disrespectful" young man, for example : "I would advise no man to marry, Sir, who is not likely to propagate understanding " ; but Mrs. Piozzi's is a lighter, less responsible kind of book.