sometimes, and comes to the myrtle, the willow, and the cold graveyard stone. The Elizabethan was probably our greatest age; in poetry certainly it was so. The glow of the period aroused the songsters; the minstrels fluted and sang. There was glory enough to make aristocracy and democracy joyously one. Kings and beggars they had their share of the sunlight and the flashing, spangled beauty of the hills:

'The world is ours, and ours alone;

For we alone have words at will;
We purchase not, all is our own ;

Both fields and streets we beggars fill.

Nor care to get, nor fear to keep,

Did ever break a beggar's sleep.

Bright shines the sun; play, beggars, play!
Here's scraps enough to serve to-day.'

The only thing treated harshly in this jolly anthology is the new vice of those times, Tobacco. In a hitherto unpublished poem:

'What cheating devil made our gallants think

Thee physic, wenches, company, meat and drink,
And money?'

Well, perhaps that anonymous doubter was right. It was a prophetical age and he may have foreseen the 'gasper.'

In this rapid survey of recent books we endeavour to notice only the acceptable, the readable; but sometimes one of little value comes along, and here it is for this occasion. Miss Edith M. Almedingen's authorised appreciation of 'The English Pope, Adrian IV' (Heath and Cranton), would have been long enough at a quarter of its present length; for take away the unimaginative surmises, the artless conjectures as to what Nicholas Breakspear thought of this episode or that, and some of the elaborate quotations, printed in the original and then fully translated, and the book would have been of better worth. Instead of this prosy and unilluminating padding the author might have built in the historical background to the English Pope's activities, for Adrian's career covered a critical and complicated period in the history of Europe and the Church; whereas the atmosphere, the movement, the personalities of the time are

only feebly suggested, and are not seen at all. Adrian was a great-hearted man and a powerful influence for good. His achievement in being the only English Pope was itself remarkable, and suggests the wonder that, if the Church of Rome wished, as she must do, to use the best minds and hearts in her service, she does not break the Ultramontane rule which insists on filling the vacant throne with an Italian cardinal. An excellent subject; an extraordinarily poor book.

The next to appear is, in the circumstances, vastly ambitious. Mr S. F. Pells is a private student of the Scriptures, who has published at his house, St Mary's, in Hove, this volume, 'The Church's Ancient Bible,' which advocates a new translation of the Septuagint; for the reason that not only the Authorised Version but all the English translations of the Bible are insufficient. Even the Douay version, the author claims, is truer to the Hebrew original-which Christ quoted in His ministrythan that commonly read in the churches. Mr Pells is naturally anxious that his summary of the history and characteristics of the Septuagint, the old Latin version, the Latin Vulgate, the Bible in the Book of Common Prayer, and the English Bibles, should be examined by scholars and Churchmen, and we are very willing, by mentioning his desire and purpose here, to help it forward. He is certainly patient and more mannerly than were the ways of the commentators of once-upona-time. Yet from his Appendix it almost appears as if, rather than anything else, he would urge his theory as to the whereabouts of the tomb of King David. 'Worthy of the Nobel Prize,' says he. It is rather a pity he should have produced this second interest as his plea for a truer version of the Scriptures is large enough for one small book.

The works in prose and verse of Mr W. B. Yeats have ever been uneven at times barren and affected, at other times touched with a high and true inspiration. This revised reissue of his 'Early Poems and Stories' (Macmillan) shows that in the beginning as now, the essential qualities and characteristic insufficiencies were there, and suggest the thought that much as he has written since The Rose' and The Celtic Twilight' came to delight the world over thirty years ago, little that he

has done since has greatly excelled those products of his unspoiled youth. Where, after all, in the greater body of his verse is there a completer poem than his very wellknown, yet never-to-be-hackneyed stanzas, beautiful in their simplicity, on the Island Lake of Inisfree; or where in his prose is there a jollier little story than, say, 'The Man and his Boots,' wherein the doubter of Donegal, who would not hear of ghosts or fairies, entered a haunted house and made a fire? He had taken off his boots and stretched his feet to the warmth, when one of the invisible beings, whose existence he had denied, put on the discarded boots and kicked him out of the house. There is plenty of force and humour, seriousness and poetry, in these pages. It is good to meet again Red Hanrahan and such creatures of Ireland and fantasy as the Outcast, Cumhal; but-oh, that Mr Yeats had grown as far beyond these beginnings as in the golden days he promised to do, for then he would have won a greatness of imagination and achievement as would have heartened the world mightily in these confused and materialistic times!

Lastly, tragedy. How long, O Lord, how long! Not only from Russian hearts does that plea go up, for, indeed, the continuance of the worst, the bloodiest tyranny that man has ever suffered-an organisation of cruelty, lust, and treachery, unexampled in the chronicles, and still strongly effective, in spite of prayers and curses -is almost to be numbered among the miracles. Much has been published of the blood-rule of the Bolshevists; so much that those who have read tend to avoid a further reading. It all appears so odious, horrible, hopeless. Yet still the tale is told of new and unending horrors. Mr Sergev P. Melgounov's book is the latest to detail some of the evils wrought by the tyrants of the Soviets. 'The Red Terror in Russia' (Dent) is a document, searching, terrible, and convincing. Let those few-the flabby sentimentalists and the obstinate who refuse to learn— look at the photographs of this book, and realise how murder has stalked through Russia and strewn its pathway with multitudinous victims. The bones of the innocent cry out: How long, O Lord, how long!