TRENT, WILLIAM PETERFIELD, and WELLS, BENJAMIN WILLIS, eds. Colonial prose and poetry. il *$2.50 Crowell 810.8
The present volume is a reprint on thin paper and in one volume of an earlier three-volume set under the titles: The transplanting of culture (1607–1650); The beginnings of Americanism (1650–1710); The growth of the national spirit (1710–1775). The object of the anthology is to give the critic of literature an opportunity “to study the effects of environment upon the literary powers and products of a transplanted race.” (Introd.)
TREVELYAN, GEORGE MACAULAY. Lord Grey of the Reform bill; being the life of Charles, 2d Earl Grey, 1764–1845. il *$7 (*21s) Longmans
20–7584
“It was a happy chance that caused the authorized life of the second Earl Grey to be left half finished sixty years ago, and that induced the late Lord Grey to assign the task to Mr George Trevelyan. The Lord Grey who passed the reform bill of 1832 has always been an enigma to later generations. His political career was like a drama in which the hero holds the stage in the first act and has a brief and effective scene in the second act, but then is seen no more till the fifth act. Entering Parliament in 1787, when he was twenty-three, he attached himself to Fox, and made himself notorious by founding the Society of the friends of the people and by moving annual resolutions in favour of parliamentary reform. He succeeded to his father’s peerage in November, 1807, and felt that his career was ended. Three-and-twenty years had passed when all at once England discovered that the retired statesman was, like Cincinnatus, the one man who could extricate her from a dangerous situation. Lord Grey tore himself from his country pleasures, took command of a mixed and quarrelsome team of Whigs, radicals, and Canningites, and set himself to achieve parliamentary reform with such skill and determination as few ministers have ever displayed.”—Spec
“The proportion of the text of 369 pages bearing directly upon Grey is too slight to give unity to the whole, and too scattered for focusing into any but a vague image. This is what Mr Trevelyan’s volume really is: an indictment of Tory administration during the era in which Grey lived—an indictment conceived in the unmeasured violence of a political antagonist.” C. E. Fryer
+ − Am Hist R 26:90 O ’20 760w
“It is a fascinating story, excellently told, and even the reader who knows little of English political history will find it interesting on account of the light and hope that it sheds on modern conditions.” A. G. Porritt
+ Am Pol Sci R 14:733 N ’20 560w