Mr. Kaye tells us that he had no particular design when writing these papers; no purpose, that is, of illustrating any special philosophy. They were not to him a serious work—they were 'holiday tasks, written by snatches, and sent off piece by piece as they were written; the loose thoughts of a loose thinker, desultory, discursive,' written away from books, 'in country inns, or sea-side lodgings, or other strange places far away from home.' Criticism is exonerated from dealing in any serious way with a book so produced. Literature is not thus achieved. Cameo-cutting should be as artistic and patient as genre painting. Mr. Kaye is pleasantly garrulous, and intelligently superficial. He writes as one would write good letters; and what he writes is very pleasant to read. He throws the regulating good sense of a sober well-informed man upon such matters as Holidays, Work, Success, Growing Old, Toleration, &c. He has done and can do good work; therefore we accept with a certain degree of interest these 'chips.'
A Book of Golden Thoughts. By Henry Attwell, Knight of the Order of the Oak Crown, &c. Macmillan and Co.
This is one of the most charming volumes of the Golden Treasury series. The author, with rare discernment and fine taste, has selected the richest, sweetest thoughts of our greatest and wisest teachers on a marvellous variety of themes, but all tending in the direction of high spiritual culture. The apothegms or longer passages extracted from French or German writers are translated with delicate tact and placed in an appendix. The words of Pascal—J'ecrirai ici mes pensées sans ordre, et non pas peut-être dans une confusion sans dessein: c'est le veritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet par le désordre même—are placed at the head of the volume. It would take a long time to try and unravel the design of Mr. Attwell, but whoever wishes to have the choicest words of Bacon, Pascal, Montesquieu, Goethe, Ruskin, Helps, and many others, may find them here brought together into small compass, and presented in a very attractive form.
Publications of the Early English Text Society. 1870. Extra Series. Trübner and Co.
X.—The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, made by Andrewe Boorde, of Physycke Doctor.
A Compendyus Regyment, or a Dyetary of Helth. By the same Author.
Barnes in Defence of the Berde.
XI.—The Bruce. By Master John Barlowe, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, A.D. 1375.
These issues are not quite according to the Society's programme in their report of January last, which, stated that three or four other works besides the first part of the 'Bruce' were in the press for their extra series of 1870, and made no mention of the volume which Mr. Furnivall has edited. Indeed, the opportunity for his undertaking this work did not, he tells us, occur until February, when he purchased an early copy of the Dyetary at Mr. Corser's sale.
Dr. Andrew Boorde or Borde, was a Carthusian monk of Henry the Eighth's time, who 'was dyspensyd of the religion,' whatever that may mean—a point obscure to Mr. Furnivall—travelled over a great part of Europe, and returned to practise as a physician, having for his patient the Duke of Norfolk, when that great noble was in the Royal favour. Of several works which the Doctor wrote, Mr. Furnivall has printed two; in a preface and epilogue which he is pleased to style 'Forewords and Hindwords,' are collected many particulars of the author's life, and long extracts from others of his writings. 'The Introduction of Knowledge' is a book of travel, partly in rhyme, giving characteristics and specimens of the languages of the several countries the author had visited. The Dyetary is a book of hygiène, containing many prescriptions which modern physicians would approve. Both tracts abound in quaint, curious, and shrewd remarks. One of the Doctor's last works was a treatise on beards, which he seems to have condemned, and to have advocated shaving. For this Mr. Furnivall, who 'left off the absurdity some three years before his neighbours,' thinks him 'a noodle,' as it seems did 'Barnes, whoever he may be,' whose defence of the Berde is here printed. There is, however, some reason to suppose that the learned editor thinks Barnes was a noodle also. The subject is clearly a pet with him.