A SOUTH AFRICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY.* THIS magnificent work, on which we
desire to present our sincere congratulations to the author, appears at an opportune time. The opening of the first Parliament of a United South Africa synchronises with the issue of a bibliography on a scale which no Colony has yet approached. Eleven years ago Mr. Mendelssohn began to collect South African books, and as he catalogued and annotated what he bought the idea came into his mind of an ampler collection and a great catalogue raisannd. He has formed a huge library, which he has devised by his will to the Union Parliament of South Africa, together with a sum of money sufficient to maintain and add to it. His aim is purely patriotic, for he wants political union to be the beginning of a school of South African arts and letters, and the library and catalogue are his con- tributions to this end. The catalogue is of greater scope than the collection, for it includes many works which Mr. Mendelssohn does not yet possess. Each book is very fully annotated, and there is generally added some account of the author. Further, there are complete lists of South African Blue-books, a cartography, and bibliographies of South African periodical literature and of articles on South African subjects in periodicals throughout the world. The labour involved must have been enormous, and so far as we have tested it the work seems to have been very carefully done. Mr. Ian Colvin, whose South African writings are not unknown, has written by way of introduction a delightful survey of the field of South African literature. Bibliography is becoming a very important science nowadays, and Mr. Mendelssohn has rendered a very real service to the land where lie spent the best years of his life.
• Menstelasohn's South African Bibliography. By Sidney Mendelssohn. With a Descriptive Introduction by Ian D. Colvin. 2 vols. London ; Regan Paul, Trench, and Co. [P2 2a. net.]
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