CURRENT LITERATURE.
excellent "Famous Scots" Series, to which it belongs, and one of the fairest and most discriminating biographies of Boswell that have ever appeared. It is no easy task to execute a portrait, as distinguished from a caricature, of "the noisy, ugly, foolish, drunken Scotch lawyer and laird," who yet, as an eminent critic has said, "had in him something of the true Shakespearian secret." Mr. Leask has managed to do this, not so much by ignoring the weaknesses of Boswell—his egotism, his susceptibility to feminine influence, his want of self-control, and his tendency to dissipation—as by setting down naught in malice. It is also greatly to the credit of Mr. Leask that he is able to do justice to that Boswell who was the friend of Paoli, as well as to the some- what different Boswell who was the biographer of Johnson. Above all things, Mr. Leask takes special pains to combat the famous and fascinating but essentially indefensible theory of Macaulay. "The truth is," as he says, "Macaulay had no eye for such a complex character as Boswell's. Too correct him- self, too prone to the cardinal virtues and consistency to follow one who, by instinct, seemed to anticipate Wendell Holmes's advice, Don't be consistent, but be simply true,' and too sound politically in the field where Boswell and the Doctor abased themselves in absurd party spirit, Macaulay can no more under- stand sympathetically the vagaries of Boswell than Mommsen or Drumann can follow the political inconsistency of Cicero. He had no Beswellian delight in that intellectual chemistry which can separate good qualities from evil in the same person." Boswell's imperfections as a man sometimes seem positively intolerable—particularly his habit of repenting of a sin and not amending—and yet they have no doubt contributed to his strength as a biographical realist. Boswell is the nearest approach that Scotland can show to a Rousseau. Rousseau said of himself, "If I wish to produce a book written with care like the others, I shall not paint, I shall rouge myself." Rousseau did not, like "the others," rouge himself. No more did Boswell. Mr. Leask has done well not to put any of his rouge on Boswell; and the result is this very satisfactory biography. Mr. Leask should, however, be more careful in giving the sources of his quotations. It was not Horace Walpole who said of the ladies of the Paris salons that they "violated all the duties of life and gave very pretty suppers." Nor was it Mr. Gladstone who "pro- posed a Parliamentary vote of thanks to Lord Napier for having planted the standard of St. George upon the mountains of Rasselas."
We have received from Messrs. Veale, Chifferiel, and Co., The Baptist Handbook for 1897, published, we are informed, under the direction of the Council of the Baptist Union. The Baptists claim, we see, to have 2,917 churches in the United Kingdom, 353,967 members, and 513,638 Sunday-school scholars, while the baptisms for the year have been 15,795. With a mortality of 22 per thousand—and as the members are adults this figure is low— increase by admission of new members and decrease by the death of old would be precisely balanced. But this would make no allowance for secessions and ejections, if such take place. The Handbook contains an able address by the President, the Rev. T. Vincent Tymms. But surely such talk as this is very nnphilo- sophical :—" We have no tears to shed over the ancient monarchies or so-called republics." We may admire their literature and ac forth, but "when we reflect upon their constitutional despotism and all the crimes against humanity that were sanctioned by their laws, we can only rejoice that they were broken in pieces," ecc. Yet all had their part in the education of the world. We see this plainly—this even Mr. Tymms would allow—in the art and literature of Greece and the law of Rome. But were Assyria and Egypt merely monstrous growths ?
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