Cross Lights. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—We have in this
volume six essays of considerable merit dealing with literary subjects. The second is a vigorous defence of the genuineness, or, it should rather be said, the partial genuineness of Macpher- son's Ossian. The author's view is probably right; meanwhile, the fact, which he does not fail to recognise, remains that Ossian, as Macpherson has presented him to us, is wholly unreadable. There are veritable Celtic thoughts and images in him, but they are almost lost under eighteenth-century trappings. The fourth essay, " A Litterateur of the Eighteenth Century," is a sound piece of criticism. But Blair is, in his way, as unreadable as Ossian. " Wordsworth's Successor " has a more vivid interest, for whether or no we agree with the author's estimate of Mr. Browning, the subject is anyhow alive. " Love and Language " is a vigorous and interesting defence of " idiomatic " English. The two other essays are " The Study of Classical Archaeology " and " Shakespeare on the Stage."
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