of quality? No: it is too precise. Let us be content with welcoming this book because of the beauty, the sublimity, of its suggestion. Everything is possible in God's immeasurable universe. So why not a communion of life as close as this we live on the world, yet so vast in its compass as to comprise spiritual relations with the ultimate stars? A mighty and infinite theory, as the universe is mighty and infinite with diversity and wonder.

Such bright interest of life, human and otherwise, in our world is brought out brilliantly in Dr Charles Hose's study of the tribes and village communities of Borneo, entitled 'Natural Man' (Macmillan). The author has given to this study the experience of twenty-five official years spent there; and during that time he was able to make careful research, using not only his trained faculties as a man of science, but his rich humanity, his sense of artistic values, and his humour. This work is at once revealing and fascinating; for those Bornean people, the unusual Punans, the Kayans, and the Kenyahs, with all their differences and distinctions, have personal charm which, largely through the spell of Robert Louis Stevenson, had hitherto been regarded as the monopoly of the lotus-eaters of the Pacific. Not only does Dr Hose point the attractiveness of these Asiatics; but also he shows how it has been brought about. It is a triumph for civilisation. Seventy or so years ago these natives of Borneo were absolute savages, fierce, tumultuous, guilty of all manner of treacheries and brutalities, and possibly even of cannibalism; whereas now they are law-abiding, prosperous, happy, content in their industry and government, and an example of what can be done when considerate insight and true liberty have play. Much of this success is due to the Brookes of Sarawak.

For pretty well twenty years Korea has become almost as completely forgotten by the gossips and wiseacres of Europe as it was in the days when it was called the Hermit Kingdom; and this renewed condition is due to the good government of Japan. Happy the country which has no history, is an adage generally applicable to this ancient state of Chosen. In 'The New Korea' (Dutton, New York), a volume written by Mr Alleyne

Ireland, the facts of the regeneration of Korea under Japanese guidance and influence are lucidly and judiciously put. It is a plain statement made without any literary embroideries. Those who wish to apprehend the personal side of the Korean people, country, and history, must still go back to Mrs Bishop's authoritative volume; but for an honest account of rational facts and prospects in Korea we commend Mr Ireland. An important little book on 'Contemporary Thought of Japan and China' (Williams and Norgate) has been written, and excellently written, in English by Mr Kyoson Tsuchida. It seems to be the first briefly comprehensive endeavour yet published to estimate the general philosophy of those ancient peoples of Asia, who yet must be considered as probably still young in comparison with the future that is opening to their renewed energies of mind and physical effort. Inevitably on reading this book one's thoughts revert to the writings of the late Okakura Kakuzo, who emphasised the assertion that in Asia thought was one; that despite differences of race and circumstance there was in the East an inherent and inevitable unity of philosophy and outlook. Well, that is not so now, as Mr Tsuchida proves. The progress of industrialism and of science, with the spiritual, rather than the material, havoc of the Great War, have shaken the foundations of Asia as well as of the rest of the world, so that Matthew Arnold's vision in 'Obermann Once More' of the Asiatic falling to sleep again after the thunder of the legions was past is no longer true. The East is awake, and this volume proves it.

In a manner characteristic of the frank American spirit, Mr Elmer Edgar Stoll in his 'Shakespeare Studies' (Macmillan) has examined certain aspects of the supreme dramatic genius of the British race. He takes a commonsense view of things, and in so doing is conspicuously helpful; for so much of sentimental and imaginative, as well as of destructive, bosh has been written about Shakespeare, that it is well to come to plain facts and possibilities. The playwright studied in these numerous and compact pages is shown as the man of his age and day, penning his scenes and portraits without a pose and with no idea that hundreds of years afterwards his writings would be a hunting-ground for commentators,

and his personality the dummy for a deal of absurd conjecture. Instead he was concerned to please his audiences and to give them the entertainment wanted. Sometimes, of course, his genius ran away with his pen; and we had those passages which lift the reader to the golden heights. If he had possessed the gift for 'blotting,' the absence of which Ben Jonson deplored, he would almost certainly have deleted those passages, because the groundlings would rather have had in their place such dismal humours as the back-chat of the Dromios or the fopperies of Osric. In keeping with that view the Shylock whom Shakespeare portrayed is shown as not the pathetic figure which many modern actors have represented, but plain vengeful villain, through his absolute discomfiture made a mockery to the Gratianos of the pit. This volume holds much interest for students of Shakespeare. The analysis of the villains, children of Machiavelli; the frank revelation of the true character of Falstaff, a different 'mass of mummy' from him portrayed by Prof. A. C. Bradley in his 'Oxford Lectures,' are instances of the insight of the book. It is a little ruthless of Mr Stoll to bracket O. Henry with Wainwright, the murderer, as among the criminals with genius; for there was a world of difference in the seriousness of their offences; and how is it that eager students of Shakespeare are so often blind to his clearest words? Mr Stoll asks, 'Why in "King Lear" should the Fool vanish with the tempest, nevermore to be thought of or mentioned by Lear or by Cordelia?' when as clear as print Lear says in the last scene, 'And my poor fool is hanged.' The reference is, of course, to the brave boy who helped the King with his wit and chidings, and to no one else, although sometimes the too-clever have said that it referred to Cordelia. Let us add to this appreciation of a Shakesperean book a note that among the newcomers to the Everyman Series (Dent) is an excellent reprint of 'Holinshed's Chronicle as used in Shakespeare's Plays.'

The Clarendon Press again has justified itself by issuing a definitive and handsome edition of the 'Poems, English, Latin and Greek,' of Richard Crashaw. Sympathetically introduced by Mr L. C. Martin, a permanent addition is hereby made to the shelves of lovers of

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books; for Crashaw's work endures. His quaintness of utterance, which sometimes, indeed, only narrowly escapes over-fancifulness, but yet more the exalted sincerity of the spirit of his religion, despite his changeable views, have maintained his place among English poets; and with this scholarly volume as its treasurehouse his work should endure. How touched and gratified he would be at this implicit tribute from the University of which he was not a graduate, if only he could know! We cross at once the Atlantic and the English Channel. A great deal of valuable work in literary research is being done by American Universities, whose professors and students combine to make particular study of some writer of established influence. From the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore has come an excellent volume written by Prof. Lewis P. Shanks on 'Flaubert's Youth, 1821-1845.' It is a work of value; for, as Flaubert was the founder and supreme apostle of realism, it is useful to have traced and lucidly described the record of his youthful experiences and their reflexion in his early fiction, with the reactions on his crowning and depressing triumph, Madame Bovary.' Dedicated to the 'happy few' who require beauty, either of form or context, in the novels they read, this work is worthy of acceptance; for in its pages we meet the man Flaubert, although it is the young man racked and stimulated with his temperamental impulses, enthusiasms, weaknesses, and depressions, all of which contributed to his work, the work of a great artist.

The extraordinary richness of formal and informal documentary evidence relating to medieval Florence is illustrated by 'A Florentine Diary' (Dent), kept for some sixty to seventy years by an intelligently observant apothecary, Luca Landucci. The writer had the fortune to live at the most picturesque period in the history of Florence, and regularly he wrote on parchment from his personal experience or hearsay the diverse doings of those strange times. He witnessed the glory and downfall of the Medici. His moralising on the passing of the brilliant Lorenzo recalls the similar thoughts of Evelyn after the death of Charles the Second; but then Landucci was a man of serious heart, for he was a follower of Savonarola, and his accounts of the mission and martyrVol. 249.-No. 494.

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dom of that great spiritual leader-'the wicked have been more powerful than the good-have already been used by historians. A fascinating volume which stands the test of all the great diaries that, open it where you will, at once the interest is caught by the spell of movements and living personalities. It is not often that the accepted and popular writer of romance is able to control his inventive faculty sufficiently to write good history; yet Mr Rafael Sabatini has done so time and again. His study of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition' (Paul) is an attractive volume, and the better because wide reading, fortified by much practice in writing, has enabled him to regard things, whether nominally evil or supposedly good, with a wide and tolerant spirit, and to express his findings vividly. Torquemada is, of course, one of the figures of history, even whose name is horrid, because of that awful instrument of his invention which made multitudes of martyrs of the good and the bad. Fanatic and genius as Torquemada was, Mr Sabatini makes a man of him; and the monster humanised, however cruel his works and influence were, becomes thereby less the monster than before. A terrible book telling a dreadful chapter of what is called, with irony unconscious, religious history.

Mr R. B. Kerr is seriously perturbed over the future prospects of the people of these islands. 'Is Britain Over-populated?' he asks in a handy little shilling book published by himself at Croydon. He paints a dark picture of our lost trade, diminishing returns, dwindling resources; and sees only one way of escape from the trouble that beset us, and that is through a decrease in the population brought about by birth-control and emigration. The booklet is worth reading, for its points are put reasonably and clearly; but there are solutions to the problem other than those he advocates: such as a determined avoidance of industrial troubles, strikes, and lock-outs, with resolute economy in national finance, and the consequent release and increase of capital for industrial ventures. As a chapter contributed to a vast and complex field of study his view is welcome; but it is merely one small chapter after all. As to emigration, we pass to one of its pioneers. It is curious that, even with the much that has been written about him, 'Captain John