ence, as one would have imagined.' Antony Wood
describes Sir Richard Lovelace as being, at the age of sixteen, 'the most
amiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld.' Nor need we wonder
at this when we remember the portrait of Lovelace that hangs at Dulwich
College. Barry Cornwall, described himself by S. C. Hall as 'a decidedly
rather pretty little fellow,' said of Keats: 'His countenance lives in my
mind as one of singular beauty and brightness,--it had an expression as
if he had been looking on some glorious sight.' Chatterton and Byron
were splendidly handsome, and beauty of a high spiritual order may be
claimed both for Milton and Shelley, though an industrious gentleman
lately wrote a book in two volumes apparently for the purpose of proving
that the latter of these two poets had a snub nose. Hazlitt once said
that 'A man's life may be a lie to himself and others, and yet a picture
painted of him by a great artist would probably stamp his character.' Few
of the word-portraits in Miss Wotton's book can be said to have been
drawn by a great artist, but they are all interesting, and Miss Wotton
has certainly shown a wonderful amount of industry in collecting her
references and in grouping them. It is not a book to be read through
from beginning to end, but it is a delightful book to glance at, and by
its means one can raise the ghosts of the dead, at least as well as the
Psychical Society can.

(1) Leaves of Life. By E. Nesbit. (Longmans, Green and Co.)

(2) The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. By W. B. Yeats. (Kegan
Paul.)

(3) Dorinda. By Lady Munster. (Hurst and Blackett.)

(4) Four Biographies from 'Blackwood.' By Mrs. Walford. (Blackwood and
Sons.)

(5) Word Portraits of Famous Writers. Edited by Mabel Wotton. (Bentley
and Son.)

MR. WILLIAM MORRIS'S LAST BOOK

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 2, 1889.)

Mr. Morris's last book is a piece of pure art workmanship from beginning
to end, and the very remoteness of its style from the common language and
ordinary interests of our day gives to the whole story a strange beauty
and an unfamiliar charm. It is written in blended prose and verse, like
the mediaeval 'cante-fable,' and tells the tale of the House of the
Wolfings in its struggles against the legionaries of Rome then advancing
into Northern Germany. It is a kind of Saga, and the language in which
the folk-epic, as we may call it, is set forth recalls the antique
dignity a