Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/586

564 with the physiological explanations of hallucination, the influence of the mind upon the bodily functions, and allied phenomena, and he accepts some and rejects others according as they happen to run with or counter to his speculations. Other results of scientific research he treats in the same arbitrary fashion.

The second volume to appear in the four volume history of English literature, which is being published by Macmillan & Co., is A History of Eighteenth Century Literature (1660-1780), by Edmund Gosse, M. A. ($1.75). The first great writer of this period is Dryden, and the other prominent names which come in the scope of the present volume are Pope, Swift, Steele, Addison, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Johnson, Hume, Goldsmith, and Gibbon, the period ending with Fanny Burney, Junius, and Burke. In regard to the critical opinions expressed in the work the author says: "In every case I have attempted to set forward my own view of the literary character of each figure, founded on personal study. Hence, in a few cases, it may be discovered that the verdicts in this volume differ in some degree from those commonly held. A few names which are habitually found chronicled are here omitted, and still fewer which are new to a general sketch are included. . . . In the final chapter I have stated my theory with regard to the mode in which the philosophical, theological, and political writing of the period should be examined. But I may explain here that it has been my object, while giving a rough sketch of the tenets of each didactic specialist, to leave the discussion of those tenets to critics of the specialist's own profession, and to treat his publications mainly from the point of view of style." The work is provided with an index, and a brief bibliography designed to refer the student to the most accessible text of the chief writers mentioned.

Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans, edited by Benjamin W. Wells (Heath, 65 cents), has been adapted for the class-room by a copious accompaniment of notes and other information. The text is prefaced by an introduction of fifteen pages dealing with the composition of the drama, editions and manuscripts, meter and rhyme, and the divergence of the play from history, and includes some biographical notes on the historical characters in the drama. The text has a clear, attractive look, although the stage directions and foot-notes are in rather small type for German print, which is trying enough to the eyes even when large. Thirty-eight pages of notes—grammatical and historical—are appended.

Prof. B. Perrin's edition of Homer's Odyssey, Books I-IV (Ginn & Co.'s "College Series of Greek Authors," $1.50), is based on the edition of Karl Friedrich Ameis and C. Hentze, with adaptation to what the editor believes to be the requirements of American college classes. Considerable material has been furnished for the higher criticism of the poem, in which the first four books are of special significance. At the same time, enough assistance of an elementary sort has been provided to enable a good teacher to use the volume in introducing students to the study of Homer. Certain interpretations characteristic of the Ameis-Hentze edition have been retained in the current notes, while the editor expresses in the appendix his preference for other views. On the other hand, he has incorporated in the notes views at variance with those of the German edition. Variations in the manuscript, readings of other editors, and other data appropriate to a text-book of the kind, are given in the appendix.

John Charáxes (John B. Lippincott Company, $1.25) is a tale of the civil war in North America, by Peter Boynton, an author whose identity is left indefinite in a prefatory note by his "literary executor." The plot affords room for considerable variety of situation and incident, and the management is lively. The history of the title character is invested with a degree of mystery which adds to the interest and complexity of the story; and a negro woman from the slave-markets of the South, having decided individuality of character, is introduced with some skill.

The Beginner's Reading-Book, by Eben H. Davis (Lippincott, 42 cents), starts with short sentences, in both script and Roman type; new words are not arranged in columns on the page, nor does the alphabet appear by itself in the book. The "Teacher's edition" contains a chapter on how to teach reading, in which the teacher is advised to