literary history of Great Britain and the literary history of the United States. By putting his few notes at the foot of the page, Mr. Whitcomb has been able to find space for a column devoted to British literature. He has also greatly elaborated the list of books in other languages; he has noted the dates of certain masterpieces in the allied arts; and he has strengthened the column set apart for the record of salient facts in political history. While Mr. Whitcomb has taken the scheme of Mr. Ryland's chronology, he has not adopted the same scale. The briefer history of American literature has allowed him to enlarge his list and to broaden his standard. It would be possible to maintain the thesis that American literature began in 1809 with the publication of Irving's "Knickerbocker's History of New York"; and certainly, with the exception of Franklin's "Autobiography," the "Federalist," and Brockden Brown's romances, scarcely any American book written before 1800 is to-day read for pleasure or by any one except special students. What was published in these United States while they were still colonies of England is of little interest from a literary point of view. Yet it is well that a chronological table should first record a few and the most typical of the many essays in religious polemics which were the chief product of the early American presses, and then that it should show also how political discussion thrust aside theological as the Revolution loomed nearer. Mr. Whitcomb has also been more liberal than Mr. Ryland in cataloguing the writings of contemporary authors and for this liberality the reason is sufficiently obvious, I think. Especially has he been careful to note freely the "local fiction," as it must be called, perhaps, - the frequent recent efforts to lay the scene of a story in parts of the country where the landscape has never before served as a background for a narrative of human life. And he has also recorded a certain number of those spasmodic successes like "The Prince of the House of David" and "The Lamplighter" and "Rutledge and "Helen's Babies," - unique triumphs of the singlespeech Hamiltons of fiction, yet not without their significance as dates in the history of literary development. The impending revival of the drama in the literature of our language, more obvious now than it was five years ago when Mr. Ryland prepared his book, has led Mr. Whitcomb to give more space to the plays of the past decade or so. Mr. Whitcomb requests me to say that his book like Mr. Ryland's - is not a bibliography, and that it has carefully avoided completeness. Comprehensive it ought to be, of course, but its chief merit must be that it is a selection of the writings most truly representative. In any list of men of letters most worthy of record, many an author must be omitted; nor, except for good and sufficient reason, need all the works be catalogued of even the greatest author. Any principle of selection must needs be personal; and no doubt any lover of American literature will find in the following pages names omitted that seem to him to demand inclusion, and names included that, in his view, were better omitted. Yet the more the book is studied, the better satisfied the student will be, I believe, with Mr. Whitcomb's choice, and the more grateful for his immeasurable labour. BRANDER MATTHEWS. COLUMBIA COLLEGE, |