The essays of Mr. Eric Partridge are not remarkable for
grace or great originality, though the latter quality may be granted his paper on " The Origin of the Drama," in which he seeks to detach drama from its alleged religious origins and found it on the previous instinct of make believe. Yet what more psychologically probable desire could there be in primitive people than the desire to act the parts of gods and devils ? Does he not think that the primitive dramatic instinct is the religious instinct ? For the rest this curious collection of essays, Literary Sessions, by Eric Partridge (Scholartis Press, 7s. 6d.) summarizes baldly the general movement of criticism from the romantics until the present day and in timely brevity "places " Mr. I. A. Richards ; while there are articles on best sellers and the relative publics of " high-brow," " middle-brow," and popular fiction. As long as the best work reaches what he calls the significant public he does not despair. He writes to the point on literary censorship and hesitatingly offers an ingenious proposal for catching the pornographer and at the same time pro- tecting the serious writer from the ignorance of magistrates and the " stunt " moralists of the popular Press. An essay on Ambrose Bierce, too much neglected in England, notes on some forgotten Victorians, and a few papers on curiosities of medicine, complete a distracting but readable miscellany.
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