1899.] LITERATURE. 87
it was completed by the publication of volumes ii. and iii. They treat only of the public life of Peel, and cover the twenty-three years before his death — the most important portion of his political career. The memoir is based on, and largely consists of, the private memoranda and letters of Sir Robert Peel, and they afford all possible material for forming a judgment on Peel, and particularly on his conduct in 1829 and 1846.
The Memoir* of the Verney Family, from 1660 to 1696 (Longmans), which are now concluded in a fourth volume, have a merit of quite a different kind. Miss Verney, the editor, .here presents us with the treasures that have been fortunately preserved at Claydon House in the form of manuscripts and letters about the Verneys of the seven- teenth century. They give a graphic picture of the daily life of the period and for the student of manners they must have an attraction equal to that afforded by the Paston letters of an earlier age. An entertaining picture of the social life of a century later is provided in i from the Diaries of lira. Philip Lybbe Fowya of Hardwiok , Oxon., 1756-1808 (Longmans), edited by Emily J. Climenson. Mrs. Powys was a daughter of a wealthy surgeon in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Though not a person of great parts herself, her position, both as her father's daughter and as the wife of the squire of Hardwick, brought her into connection with many of the notabilities of the day, and she gives us an amusing picture of a life of incessant social gaiety in London and in the provinces. With Mrs. Climenson's book we may connect Lady Louisa Stuart (Douglas), edited by the Hon. James A. Home. Lady Louisa was the daughter of George III.'s Prime Minister Bute, the granddaughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott. About half the book consists of a memoir, written by Lady Louisa, of John Duke of Argyll — the Argyll of " The Heart of Midlothian " — but its most interesting portions are the letters of Sir Walter Scott and of Lady Louisa herself.
Of the prominent men in French history one has received attention from two writers, whose books appeared almost simultaneously. Mr. A. H. Beesly's Life of Danton (Longmans) is not without merit, but the fact that the author is an extreme democrat, glorifying one of the heroes of the Revolution, somewhat impairs its historical authority. Mr. Hilaire Belloe, a young Oxford writer, in his Danton (Nisbet) is able to keep his extreme views more consistently in the background. He has also the advantage of being himself of French extraction, and of possessing a faculty of vivid portraiture. For its graphic delineation of the figures and scenes of the Revolution the book deserves high praise.
Continental history of an earlier time is well represented by the biography of Ooaimo de Medioi (Macmillan), from the pen of Miss K. D. £wart. This monograph, which forms one of the "Foreign Statesmen Series," gives an excellent account of the founder of the Medicean dynasty in his public and private life, and of the state of Italian politics during the thirty years when he was master of Florence.
Among the literary biographies The Life and Letters of John Donne (Heinemann), by Edmund Gosse, stands by itself. The baffling per-
