Folk-Lore/Volume 31/Review/Sir Roger de Coverley and other Literary Pieces

by James Drummond Anderson

Sir Roger de Coverley and other Literary Pieces, by Sir J. G. Frazer. London, Macmillan & Co., 1920. Price 8s. 6d. net.

Sir James Frazer in these essays, a by-product of a life’s work devoted to more serious studies, shows that he is saturated with the spirit and style of the Augustan period of English literature. As a recent critic has said of Charles Lamb, “his style is not so much an imitation as a reflexion of the older writers: for in spirit he made himself their contemporary.” For all lovers of pure literature the continuation of Sir Roger de Coverley will provide lasting delight, and the sympathetic account of the sad life of William Cowper is equally acceptable. Students of ethnography will specially value his account of the life and work of William Robertson Smith, and the discussion on Australian problems in his paper on Fison and Howitt reprinted from the Twentieth Volume of Folk-Lore.

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