Page:Edinburgh Review Volume 158.djvu/12

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EDINBURGH REVIEW, JULY, 1883.

No. CLVIII.

I. — Don John of Austria; or, Passages from the History of the Sixteenth Century, 1547-1578. Illustrated with plates and numerous wood engravings. By the late Sir Author:William Stirling-Maxwell, Baronet, K.T. Two volumes folio. London: 1883.

The publication of these volumes is a fitting tribute to the memory of a highly accomplished Scottish gentleman, and, in our opinion, it places the late Sir William Stirling Maxwell in the first rank of the historians and writers of this country. Such as it is, this memorial is the result of his own industry and genius. He brought to it the unremitting perseverance of five-and-twenty years. In accuracy and abundance of research, in purity of style, in brilliancy of descriptive power, and in a just, though somewhat sarcastic, estimate of human character and actions, it seems to us to be inferior to no work which has issued from the press for many years ; and we are convinced that it will confer upon its author no mean amount of posthumous fame. Our admiration of so finished a performance is only dashed by our deep regret that he who had already given the final touches to these pages did not survive to witness their reception by the world.

The history of the book itself partakes in some degree of the mystery and romance that attach to the illustrious subject of this biography. William Stirling of Keir, the son of Archibald Stirling and Elisabeth, daughter of Sir John Maxwell, was born in 1818. He graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1839 ; sat in Parliament as member for Perthshire from 1852 to 1868 ; and succeeded to the baronetcy of Maxwell of Pollock in 1866. The house of Keir, hard

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