VII-A Key to the Narrative of the Four Gospels. By John Pilkington Norris, M.A., Canon of Bristol, and formerly one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. VIII.-Recollections of Past Life. By Sir Henry Holland, Bart., M.D., D.C.L., &c., &c., President of the Royal IX.-1. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, concern- ing the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East. By Colonel Henry Yule, C.B. London, 1871. 2. Visits to High Tartary, Yârkand, and Kashgar (formerly Chinese Tartary), and Return Journey over the Karakoram Pass. By Robert Shaw. London, 3. Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce in Pigtail and Petticoats, or an Overland Journey from China towards India. By T. T. Cooper. London, 1871. 4. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society X.-1. Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry. 8 vols. 3. Pastoral Address of the Archbishops and Bishops of 4. Charge to the Clergy of Armagh by the Archbishop XI.-1. Political Problems for our Age and Country. By 2. The Rights of Labour and the Nine Hours' Move- ment. By a Lady. Edinburgh, 1871. 3. Chambers' Social Science Tracts. Edinburgh, 1864. I. 1. The New Courts of Justice. Notes in Reply to Criticisms. By George Edmund Street, R.A. London, 2. The New Law Courts and the National Gallery. Facts relating to the late Competitions. By Edward 3. A History of the Gothic Revival in England. By 4. Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain. By George Edmund Street. London, 1865. 5. The Choice of a Dwelling. A Practical Handbook of Useful Information on all points connected with Hiring, Buying, or Building a House, &c. By Gervase Wheeler, Architect. London, 1871 III.-1. Journeys in North China. By the Rev. Alexander Williamson, B.A. 2 Vols. London, 1870. 2. Pekin, Yeddo, and St. Francisco. By the Marquis De Beauvoir. Forming the concluding Volume of a Voyage round the World. London, 1872. 3. Reports on the Provinces of Hunan, Hupeh, Honan, Shansi, Che Kiang, and Nganhwei. By Baron von Richthofen. Shanghai, 1870 and 1871. 4. Report of the Delegates of the Shanghae General 7. The Tientsin Massacre. By George Thin, M.D. 8. British Policy in China. By a Shanghae Merchant. 9. Correspondence respecting the Revision of the Treaty 11. The London and China Telegraph. 1871 IV. The Life of John Milton, narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical and Literary History of his Time. By David Masson, M.A. Vols. I. and -- - - VII. The Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson, K.C.B., from the Peace of Amiens to the Battle of Talavera. Edited by Lady Jackson. 2 Vols. London, 1872 - 494 VIII.-1. The Bible in the Public Schools. Arguments in the case of John D. Minor versus the Board of Education of the City of Cincinnati, with the Opinions and Decisions of the Court. Cincinnati and London, 3. The Marquis of Salisbury's Speech at a Meeting of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor held at Liverpool, April 5, 1872 IX.-1. The Case of the United States to be laid before the Tribunal of Arbitration to be convened at Geneva. 2. Case presented on the part of the Government of Her Britannic Majesty to the Tribunal of Arbitration constituted under Art. 1 of the Treaty concluded at THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-The Kembles: an Account of the Kemble Family; including the lives of Mrs. Siddons and her brother, John Philip Kemble. By Percy Fitzgerald, M.A., F.S.A. Author of The Life of Garrick.' 2 vols. London, 1871. TH HE Lives of the Kembles by Boaden and Campbell are undoubtedly poor specimens of biography. This may, as the author of these volumes says, be a very good reason why a fresh work on the subject should be written; but, for the same reason, it especially behoves the writer who avails himself of the plea to prove his right to do so by the excellence of his own work. Boaden and Campbell had at least the advantage-a great one in the writers of all biographies, and a paramount one where actors are concerned-of having not merely known both John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons intimately in private life, but studied their performances, and also the performances of a race of highclass actors during a long series of years. Their books, therefore, although overloaded and tedious, are full of authentic information. They have the interest and value of contemporary records, and a tolerably vivid picture can be formed from them of the professional qualities, good and bad, of these great artists, as well as of their personal history and character. Neither are their books destitute of passages distinguished by the graces of good writing, by graphic force, and picturesqueness of style, which it will be wise in no one to overlook who may hereafter have occasion to deal with the same subject. Mr. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, never saw any of the Kemble family, nay to all appearance never even saw any really great English actor of the higher drama. A man in this position could only hope, therefore, to interest by a broad grasp of his subject, and an unusually vivid power of presenting it. Having no experience of his own to offer, he was bound to justify the intrusion on the public of a fresh book upon the Kembles by literary skill in presenting a compact and brilliant monograph of all the essential facts and characteristic features, which could be gathered from Boaden Vol. 132.-No. 263. B or * sees no or Campbell, and the many other sources of information which they either neglected or had not at command. In place of this, Mr. Fitzgerald's work is destitute of every literary merit. It is a jumble of clumsy patchwork, to which paste and scissors have contributed more than deliberate study and workman-like skill. Whatever new matter has been added is either absolutely worthless, or, as in the case of some hitherto unpublished letters from Mrs. Siddons to Lord and Lady Harcourt, of the most insignificant kind. The book swarms with blunders. Indeed, so habitually careless is Mr. Fitzgerald, that he is inaccurate even in correcting in the preface the blunders of his text. So little conscious is he, too, of the vitreous character of his own residence, that he throws stones vigorously at others where he is himself most vulnerable. Thus the style of Campbell and Boaden is condemned in his preface with overcharged severity, and this by a writer who, even in his Dedication, absurdity in inscribing to Mr. Sothern this history of the two great lights of the English stage, both as a token of personal regard, and as a cordial admirer of Mr. Sothern's A gentleman, who describes his own 'history' of 'lights,' as at many talents.' once a token' of regard, and an 'admirer of talent, scarcely surprises us by an ignorance of the commonplaces of Shakspeare; but in a champion of the poetical drama like Mr. Fitzgerald such ignorance takes one a little aback. And yet he deliberately quotes the phrase, 'sound the very bass string of humility" as an expression of Campbell's, illustrative of the inflation and grotesqueness of his diction! While doing so, moreover, he commits the double blunder of charging upon Campbell the use of these words as his own, which Campbell avowedly cites as a quotation used by Boaden, and of ignoring the fact, that the words drop from Prince Hal in probably the best known of all the scenes in which that 'mad wag' figures. (1 Henry IV., . The same vices of style, and the same untrust 2, Sc. 4.) Act worthiness of statement and quotation pervade the whole work, and it will certainly never supplant the volumes of Boaden and Campbell, which it aims at superseding. Instead, however, of pursuing the immediate subject of these volumes, which we worthy occasion, we shall take the opportunity, which they suggest, of presenting some considerations as Mr. Fitzgerald has only two blunders to correct. It would be easy to swell his One of the two which he admits, is the use of the name of Mr. Tom Taylor instead of that of Mr. John Taylor, from whose Records of my errata by scores. Life,' published in 1823, he has borrowed most ment; and the other, the omission of an ་ extensively without acknowledgeimportant date, which he says should be to |