The author may fairly claim to have accomplished what few previous historians have so much as attempted. He has woven together the threads of religion, politics, war, philosophy, literature, painting, architecture, law and commerce, into a narrative of unbroken and absorbing interest.
The book is a world-book. Scholars will reconstruct their ideas from it, economics examine the gradual fruition of trade, statesmen devise fresh creative plans, and the general reader will feel he is no insignificant unit, but the splendid symbol of a splendid world.
CHARLES CONDER: HIS LIFE AND WORK. By Frank Gibson. With a Catalogue of the Lithographs and Etchings by Campbell Dodgson, M.S., Keeper of Prints and Drawings, British Museum. With about 100 reproductions of Conder’s work, 12 of which are in colour. Demy 4to. 21s. net.
⁂ With the exception of one or two articles in English Art Magazines, and one or two in French, German, and American periodicals, no book up to the present has appeared fully to record the life and work of Charles Condor, by whose death English Art has lost one of its most original personalities. Consequently it has been felt that a book dealing with Conder’s life so full of interest, and his work so full of charm and beauty, illustrated by characteristic examples of his Art both in colour and in black and white, would be welcome to the already great and increasing number of his admirers.
The author of this book, Mr. Frank Gibson, who knew Conder in his early days in Australia and afterwards in England during the rest of the artist’s life, is enabled in consequence to do full justice, not only to the delightful character of Conder as a friend, but is also able to appreciate his remarkable talent.
The interest and value of this work will be greatly increased by the addition of a complete catalogue of Conder’s lithographs and engravings, compiled by Mr. Campbell Dodgson, M.A., Keeper of the Print-Room of the British Museum.
PHILIP DUKE OF WHARTON. By Lewis Melville. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. 21s. net.
⁂ A character more interesting than Philip, Duke of Wharton, does not often fall to the lot of a biographer, yet, by some strange chance, though nearly two hundred years have passed since that wayward genius passed away, the present work is the first that gives a comprehensive account of his life. A man of unusual parts and unusual charm, he at once delighted and disgusted his contemporaries. Unstable as water, he was like Dryden’s Zimri, “Everything by starts and nothing long.” He was poet and pamphleteer, wit, statesman, buffoon, and amorist. The son of one of the most stalwart supporters of the Hanoverian dynasty, he went abroad and joined the Pretender, who created him a duke. He then returned to England, renounced the Stuarts, and was by George I. also promoted to a dukedom—while he was yet a minor. He was the friend of Attenbury and the President of the Hell-Fire Club. At one time he was leading Spanish troops against his countrymen, at another seeking consolation in a monastery. It is said that he was the original of Richardson’s Lovelace.
THE LIFE OF MADAME TALLIEN NOTRE DAME DE THERMIDOR (A Queen of Shreds and Patches.) From the last days of the French Revolution, until her death as Princess Chimay in 1885. By L. Gastine. Translated from the French by J. Lewis May. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and 16 other Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.