The English Language and its Early Literature. By J. H. Gilmore, A. M., Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and English in the University of Rochester. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 138., Price, 60 cents.
This is a small book, but a valuable one. It assumes that there is need in our schools of a much more thorough study of English, and it opens the way to this study by a rational method. The usual study of language, as an isolated and arbitrary acquisition—an accumulation of words in the memory in their mere verbal relations—is one of the driest and most repulsive of mental occupations. Grammar is undoubtedly more responsible for that hatred of the schoolroom, and all that belongs to it, which is one of the common results of education, than any other subjects. The laws of mind, like the physical laws, vindicate themselves. The young intellect instinctively revolts at the drudgery of grammatical word-grinding, and in all history the teacher tries to counteract this tendency by the use of the rod. There is no reason or necessity for this; it is simply the result of a vicious method. The subject is capable of deeply interesting all minds of sufficient maturity to begin to recognize the relations and meanings of things. As Professor Gilmore says, the study of English literature "may be made one of the most interesting by associating the literary with the political and social history of the people; by withdrawing attention from the minute details of literary history, and fixing it only on salient points; by studying authors as well as studying about authors." The professor cuts the knot at once by taking the evolution point of view. He says: "We propose, then, to consider the origin and development of the English language; and to approach that subject—as, indeed, it can only be intelligently approached—from an ethnologic and historic point of view. In studying the philology of a people, we must at the same time study their ethnology and history. We can have no just conception of English literature unless, as we trace its progressive development, we couple with it the gradual unfolding of English political and social life." He goes on in the same strain; "The present character of a people is largely determined by the character of their ancestors, and the circumstances in which those ancestors were developed. The political institutions of a people are but the unfolding of a germ implanted centuries ago, and matured by all the influences to which that people has since been subjected. So it is with the literature of a people. All the past enters into the present, and makes it what it is. The present will enter into all the future, and give it character. A nation's literary history records the germination and growth, through shade and sunshine, of seeds which were implanted in the soil centuries ago—the development of principles which are as old, to say the least, as the language in which they are to-day embodied. Hence, to apprehend fully the literary character of any age, we must submit ourselves to the formative influences which have made its literature what it is. Thoroughly to understand the dramas of Shakespeare, the essays of Bacon, the poems of Milton, we must go back into the dim and dusty past, and learn how Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton came to think and speak as they did; for no one even of these master minds was sufficient unto himself—they were all more or less indebted to the past. What has been said with reference to English literature is equally true—indeed, rather more true—with reference to the English language. In order thoroughly to comprehend and effectively to use the English of the present day, we must study the English of the past—we must know the language, not merely in its developed form, but in its germinal principles."
The book is obviously the result of wide and critical reading, and much experience in teaching. It makes no formal claim as a text-book, but competent instructors will find ways to make it useful. It contains copious notes, and many references to works suitable for consultation by students,
Darwinism and Other Essays. By John Fiske, A. M., LL. B. Macmillan & Co. Pp. 283. Price, $2.
This volume consists of various articles contributed by its author to the periodicals, and he has done well to collect them in this convenient and accessible form. The book opens with three or four papers on various aspects of "Darwinism," but its chief con-
