Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/513

 1899.] LITEEATUEE. 89

are, few readers of literary taste would willingly spare any of the copious extracts which he gives from his father's diaries and corre- spondence. Another biography which falls under the same class and should not be overlooked is the Rev. H. L. Thompson's picture of a great Oxford figure in the Memoir of EL Ch Uddell, D3>. (Murray).

Our second division is that of autobiography. The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant (Blackwood), edited by Mrs. Harry Coghill, gives such portion as the novelist completed of her own life's story. There is a pathos about it, arising from her domestic afflictions, and also from the rather sombre view which she took of her lot in life. But it is an interesting self-revelation, and it contains glimpses of many well-known literary men— particularly of Tennyson and Carlyle. The Memoir* of a Revolutionist (Smith, Elder) are by Prince Kropotkin, the Russian noble who after suffering imprisonment in Russia and France as a revolutionary found a refuge in England, where he could continue his studies in socialism and in those geo- graphical and geological studies for which he has become famous. Personal reminiscences of Indian life fill the pages of two books written by well-known public men— in both cases forming further instalments of autobiography begun in previous volumes. These are Notes from a Diary (Murray) kept chiefly in Southern India, by Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, and Auld Lang Byne— second series— My Indian Friends (Longmans), by Professor Max M tiller.

•The two last but by no means the least entertaining books of reminiscences which call for notice are Recollections, 1832-1886 (Smith, Elder), by Sir Algernon West, and Reminisoenoes (Chatto <fc Windus), by Justin McCarthy, M.P. Both these writers have had advantages such as few compilers of autobiography can boast of. Sir Algernon West's birth and training, his position for some years as Mr. Gladstone's secretary, and his subsequent tenure of permanent office in the public service, have brought him into constant connection with eminent men. He describes with both wit and observation the social and club life of the early Victorian period, and provides an abundance of anecdote illustrative of the characters of well-known politicians. His "Recollections," too, like Mr. Justin McCarthy's " Reminiscences," have the merit, which similar works do not always possess, that their good taste is unimpeachable. Mr. McCarthy, during his long career as journalist and politician, has gained the acquaintance or the friendship of almost every contemporary man of note in Parlia- ment or in the literary world, and he utilises his store of material with the skill of a practised writer.

The past year has been remarkable for the number of interesting collections of letters which have been published. Those which aroused the greatest interest and also the greatest controversy were The Xietters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (Smith Elder). Mr. R. B. Browning, who edited them, had a very difficult problem presented to him in deciding whether to publish or to withhold them. If not published, they would have passed eventually into the hands of others who would have far less right to decide the question. If they were destroyed, an immense mass of most interesting literary matter and