REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Sunday Snowdrops. Lay Sermons, more especially for the use of Boys. By WALTER L. BICKNELL Masters and Co.

THERE are few modern improvements in matters ecclesiastical which have exercised a wider-reaching influence than the provision of special services for the boys in our great public schools and the delivery of sermons or addresses suited to their capacity. To Dr. Arnold, first and foremost, belongs the honour of making a great advance in this respect, but in later years Dr. Butler and Dr. Farrar, and many of their contemporaries, have followed the Rugby "use," and have not only laboured to make " Chapel" attractive from an æsthetic point of view, but have devoted much time and thought to the preparation of sermons for their young congregations. Happily in our own time the children of the poor have also benefited by the efforts made to supply religious teaching for the children of the rich, and not only in the public school chapel, but in nearly every parish there are now children's services suited to those for whose teaching the Church is manifestly responsible. While, however, there has thus been a general advance in the care for children and in the provision for their spiritual wants, there is often a desire to establish such services where the clergy are unable personally to conduct them, and hence the duty falls upon the laity. This system involves in its turn the delivery of addresses by the layman who takes the service, and in the volume before us we have the fruits of an effort in this direction to which we can award the highest praise. Mr. Bicknell, we gather from the preface, has addressed these "sermonettes" to the boys in a preparatory school at Henley, in Arden, and he has, it seems to us, contrived very happily to mingle sound teaching on matters of doctrine and practice with many attractive illustrations calculated to arrest and sustain the attention of an audience of boys. The style of the sermons is eminently bright and forcible, and the references to current events and contemporary characters, and the quotations from standard works, all serve to raise the addresses far above the common level. Mr. Bicknell evidently understands the importance of making religious teaching palatable by giving it the garniture of apt illustration, and not only are his subjects in themselves well chosen, but their treatment is for the most part judicious. Although

the work of a layman, the clergy may find much which will be of value to them in this little volume, while to those lay-folk who have undertaken the responsibility of conducting children's services, or services for the poor, we can most heartily commend it.

The Poet Laureates of England. By WALTER HAMILTON.
Elliot Stock.

THERE are few bye-paths of literary history better worth travelling over than that to which Mr. Hamilton directs the reader's attention in this most pleasant volume; and apart from his introductory essay on the Laureate's office, and chronological list of those who have filled it -which have much historical value-his book forms pleasant reading as a series of sketches of great poets, of whose works we know more than we know of their authors. From Chaucer, who five hundred years ago first assumed the title, down to Alfred Tennyson, its present popular holder, we find the names of Ben Jonson, Sir William Davenant, John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Lawrence Ensden, Colley Cibber, Richard Savage, William Whitehead, Thomas Wharton, H. J. Pye, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth, of each and all of whom our author has much to tell. Although it is true as a rule, as Mr. Hamilton point out, that "with a few exceptions the Laureates have been sur. passed as poets by their contemporaries," it is also true that even the weakest of the crowned heads has some point of interest in his career or its associations, if not in his verse, and thus by a careful examination of contemporary records an entertaining series of sketches has been provided. In addition to the notes on what may be termed the legitimate Laureates appointed by Royal letters patent, and commencing with Ben Jonson, the author gives some gleanings from the history of what is termed the volunteer Laureates, who dubbed themselves poet-kings before the great dramatist came upon the scene. The personal details in each sketch are remarkably interesting; and we are also supplied with critical opinions from trustworthy sources as to the men and their works. It will thus be seen that the book has a double claim on the attention of the lovers of English poetry, for it is not only valuable as a contribution to the history of our national literature but it is also a pleasant budget of biography and criticism.