though single incidents may well have developed from the common stock of savage ideas. It would have been more useful if he had had space to narrate a few of the more typical stories and not been obliged to content himself with a mere list of variants, too many of which are expressed by letters and symbols cryptic to the reader who is ignorant of previous enquiries in the F.F. series and elsewhere, and many of which also are to be found only in collections not easily accessible in this country.
It is, however, a compliment to students here that the author has had his work translated into English. The translation is by a lady, obviously not an Englishwoman, though congratulations are due to her and to the author on the large measure of success she has attained in this laborious work. More attention might indeed have been given to the correction of proofs, always specially necessary where the printers are not familiar with the language employed.
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.
