Robert Buchanan, and other Essays. By Henry Murray. (Philip Wellby.
5s.)—There is much that we wholly disapprove in this " appreciation " of. Robert Buchanan ; but on the whole it seems to us the best thing that we have seen up to this time on the subject. Mr. Murray did not see Buchanan at his best, his acquaint- ance having began in 1885 ; but he saw the best side of him. There had been a crossing of literary swords between the two, and Buchanan behaved with a magnanimity which. savage and even brutal as he could sometimes be, was characteristic of him. But Mr. Murray wanders off to other themes. There are several pages, for instance, about the Christianity or non-Christianity of Robert Browning which are scarcely relevant. It is but an indifferent connection that Br wning was a poet and Buchanan was a poet, and both, thinks Mr. Murray, likely to live. The real reason is that Mr. Murray wants to parade his own dis- belief We say "parade" of set purpose, for his language on p. 109, e.g., is distinctly arrogant and offensive. But he is a hot- headed person, who can hardly mean all that he says. His last essay he calls " De Prof undis," and in this he runs amok at the
world. "The mob 97 or so per cent. of English men and women has no conception of what English litera- ture ie." Wbo is this very superior person P Is he the avatar of all the genius of the ages P Even then, such an utterance would be a little startling.
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