Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/512

 88 LITEEATUKE. [i899.

sonality of Donne needed elucidation. Dr. Jessopp has carefully studied him from the theological side. Walton's well-known life contemplates him as the saintly dean. But his poems and his voluminous prose writings mainly supply the key to his complex and many-sided nature. Mr. Gosse has discovered some of Donne's letters hitherto un- known, has subjected the whole of his writings and of the scattered materials for his biography to an exhaustive investigation, and has produced a work which for the first time puts before us a consistent portrait and an authoritative criticism of Donne both as a man and a writer. Mr. Gosse has devoted a large part of his literary life to the preparation of this work. An even greater devotion, a devotion perhaps unparalleled among biographers, was displayed by Dr. W. I. Knapp, an American scholar, in tracing the life of George Borrow. Borrow was his engrossing study for something like fifty years, and he was lavish in spending labour, time and money in collecting every detail of his hero's career. The result is two volumes entitled Life, Writings, and Oorros nondenoo of George B orrow (Murray), which probably contain all there is to be discovered about the author of " The Bible in Spain." Other books of literary biography are Francis Turner Falgrave (Long- mans)— the compiler of "The Golden Treasury "—by Gwenllian F. Palgrave ; the Memoir and Correepondenoe of Susan Ferrier ( Murray X which contains some excellent criticisms on the novelist and her work by the editor, Mr. J. A. Doyle ; a very interesting book of reminis- cences by Mr. Ellis Yarnall called Wordsworth and the Coleridge* (Macmillan), and the excellent, if somewhat too prolix, account of the authors of " The Rejected Addresses " contained in James and Boraoe Smith (Hurst & Blackett) by Mr. A. H. Beavan.

Three important lives of men of the present generation belong to 1899. Mr. J. G. Millais acquitted himself well of the task of chronicling his father's career in Tlie Life and Letters of Sir John Xverett Millais (Methuen), a book which derives its attraction not so much from the variety of the story it tells, for Millais' record was one of almost un- broken success, as from the fact that he was in touch with a large number of interesting friends and correspondents. The Life of William Morris (Longmans), on the other hand, is that of a man who as artist, craftsman, poet and socialist, was so various and many-sided that a single biographer could hardly treat him adequately. Mr. J. W. Mackail depicts him, rather from the external than the personal point of view, with the skill that might be expected from a distinguished scholar, and with particular appreciation of Morris's literary side. The life of Xdward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury (Macmillan) was written by his son, Mr. A. C. Benson, who is also, like Mr. Mackail, known as a writer with a fine literary taste. This prevents him from producing either a mere string of letters and diaries or an indiscrim- inate eulogy. A man whose life comprised four distinct and success- ful careers, at Wellington and Lincoln, at Truro and at Canterbury, presents an opportunity for a biography of the highest interest ; and Mr. Benson, while he writes as a devoted son in full sympathy with his father's work, does not shrink from criticism. He thus presents us with a living and complete portrait ; and bulky as his two volumes