Papers of the Manchester Literary Club. Vol. XVIII. (Heywood, Manchester.)—This
volume contains the Manchester Quarterly for 1892 and also the Report and Proceedings of the Club. The thirty essays forming the bulk of the work are of very varied merit, but the greater number exhibit a considerable amount of literary ability. Six short papers on Oliver Goldsmith by different writers take precedence of the rest, and do not merit this honour. If there be anything fresh to say of this delightful author, the estimate of one competent critic might have made an interesting article. There is no poet whose genius and character are less comiliox, and to treat him as a social reformer, as a. poet, as a song-writer, and as an impecunious Bohemian, is to break-up a subject too simple to bear such divisions. An attractive paper on Edmond° do Amide by Mr. Gannon will repay attention, for one of the most popular of living Italian authors is not known in England as he deserves to be known. Mr. Peel's essay on " Mozart" is written with ability, and may serve to strengthen the argument of Mr. Hills in his paper called "The Radicals of Literature," in which he undertakes to controvert what he calls the new creed, that genius is not genius, but opportunity. One of his illustrations is unfortunate. It may be admitted that the poet of "The Seasons" could not by any amount of application have written "Tam O'Shanter ; " but does Mr. Hills mean to assert that Thomson, whom he calls "a man of talents," was not a man of genius P As well might he deny this gift to Burns, because he could not write like Milton. In Mr. Foard's "Random Recollections of London Club-Life," a number of H. J. Byron's puns are recorded, bad enough even to justify Dr. Johnson's contempt for that species of wit.
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