“It is their naturalness, their contagious freshness and vivacity, rather than their learning, which strike the reader first.”
| + + | Spec. 94: 179. F. 4, ‘05. 1630w. |
Buxton, E. M. Wilmot. Ancient world: outlines of ancient history for the middle form schools. [*]$1. Dutton.
A “wonderful story” of the civilization of bygone days. The “author writes about the first ages of man, the history of Egypt, ancient Babylonia, the Medes and Persians, Phoenicia, the land of the merchant carriers, the Hebrews, the story of Carthage, the Hindu people, China, the story of Alexander, and of Parthia, and gives some glimpses of the ancient Romans and Greeks.... For those who wish for a bird’seye view of the great landmarks of the history of the ancient world, the author has provided a full summary, with approximate dates, embracing the period from 4400 B.C. to the Christian era.” (N. Y. Times.)
“Gives a striking picture of the mind, manners, customs, myths and legends of the different ancient nations and describes the influence exercised by these nations on one another.”
| + + | Ind. 59: 265. Ag. 3, ‘05. 30w. | |
| N. Y. Times. 10: 89. F. 11, ‘05. 280w. |
Byles, C. E. Life and letters of Robert Stephen Hawker. [*]$5. Lane.
“A visionary, a poet, a humorist, a priest.... His love of fighting was perhaps the only quality in which he differed from the gentlest of the saints. There are still some who believe that modern science is a tool the devil has put into the hands of sinners, but Hawker’s certainty of that is only equalled by his belief in witchcraft, charms, pixies, mermaids, evil eyes, the immediate answer of prayers, the damnableness of dissent, and much else allied to these. But he made his parish of Morwenstow. He rescued and tended the shipwrecked, he consoled the wicked, he spent his income on charity.... He was a very wild, naughty boy, and, as a youth, full of practical jokes and uncomfortable animal spirits.”—Acad.
“The Reverend R. S. Hawker has left behind him no literary remains which point to the possession of any extraordinary genius, and yet a baffling and beautiful soul leads us to examine every record and study every poem for a key. In ‘The life and letters of R. S. Hawker’ just published we turn page after page and only manage to catch the flying skirts of the vicar. Of Hawker’s own poems, his fragment of the ‘San Graal’ is worthy to be compared with Tennyson’s treatment of the subject, and his ballads earned the praise of Sir Walter Scott.”
| + + | Acad. 68: 168. F. 25, ‘05. 2310w. |