GIFT-BOOKS.
FROM DAY TO DAY,
Lawns who like to possess small volumes suitable as birthday books or diaries with a quotation for each day will find a new one in The Boc:Intender Book of Days, arranged by Mildred Gentle (Duckworth and Co., 2s. 6d. net). The pages are divided for three days each, and opposite to each blank page are three quotations from the gently noble, philosophical, or religious writings of "Michael Fairless " and other writers in the " tioadmender " Series.—Another book in which a daily page is allotted is The Daily Biographer (Skeffington and Son, 5s. net). The compiler, the Rev. J. P. Shawoross, is evidently • Arms and ilea Map, B7 Inn O. Hannah, Loudon 3 T. Fisher Uuwtn.
• td. net.]
annoyed by the " tear-off " calendar which gives each day the name of some one who died or was born on that day of the year, and leaves the tearer-off exactly as wise or as ignorant about the distinguished person, for to know the day of the mouth on which he or she "ob." or was "nat." is no increase of wisdom. So Mr. Shawcross lets found three hundred and sixty-six people who died or were born on different days of the year, and offers their biographies on one octavo page for each. One page does not add much to our knowledge of Shakespeare, Pitt, or Lincoln ; in the last case there is not room to mention his Messages or oratory. For some others it is a liberal space. The selection is wide and reasonably interesting. Peter the Great alone repre- sents Royalty: poets and painters are the most numerous classes, followed by musicians, among whom are several hymn composers. Germany is not barred, but is represented by Meer, Grimm, Mendelssohn, Tischendorf, Kepler, and Bach, to whom no one would grudge their places. We com- mend the book to those who would dread a school " general " paper asking for information upon Susanna Centlivre, C. M. do l'Epee, Antoine Galland, Prescott Joule, William Mompesson, and Edward Steers. To read the volume through is not, of course, a fair test. The only consecutive Lives that • one can read without feeling a jerk between them are those of Cr. E. Street and Inigo Jones in Juno. Lander is there, cheek by jowl with Spurgeon ! One cannot resist imagining conver- sations between other pairs who face each other upon opposite pages. In September, Pusey and Smollett! Woolman and Shelley—could they have understood or borne with one another P Barham (Ingoldeby) and Hobbes would have got on better together. But pity Cowper cowering before Defoe, who would have found in his ghost-stories a ready instrument for terrifying the timid poet. Incidentally, Mr. Shawcross enlivens his account of Cowper with this sentence: " When Cowper's unfitness for any profession had become apparent, his friends procured him a clerkship in the House of Lords." By a slip George Eliot appears as assistant-editor of the Westminster Gazette, not Review. But on the whole these biographies are correct, though not inspiring. It is difficult to inspire three hundred and sixty-six times in a year, but incorrectness in the British Lives would be unforgivable with the Dictionary of National Biography at hand.
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