the H.E.I. Company during the years under review in this volume, and therefore their record is that of the Company itself, and all the great names of that period of Indian history are to be found in connection with them. This book must have involved great labour on the part of the compiler, for a full account is given of each officer's career; and it will rank with the other important family records on which is built much of the history of our race. Sir Richard Temple's introduction supplies the necessary historical background.

THE LIFE OF THOMAS HOLCROFT; Written by Himself, continued to the Time of his Death from his Diary, Notes and other Papers. By WILLIAM HAZLITT; and now newly edited, with Introduction and Notes by ELBRIDGE COLBY. In Two Volumes. Illustrated. Constable. 42s. net.

It is because Holcroft's personality was more impressive than his work as dramatist and novelist that his biography is so interesting, and Mr. Colby's new edition contains a good deal of new material to bridge the gaps left by Hazlitt and a later editor. Holcroft was something of a best-seller" in his day, and the success of "The Road to Ruin " somewhat obscured the more remarkable points of his personality from his contemporaries. They saw in him a man of rather facile cleverness and a capacity for making himself talked about by his Radical activities; but few of them discerned the real stuff of which he was made, and the capacity that raised him from stable-boy to Radical reformer, novelist, poet, journalist, critic, translator and editor. Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and Thomas Paine were his friends, and he certainly impressed his personality upon them, and upon others with whom he came into intimate contact.

In his biography the strength of his will and the vividness of his character are clearly marked, and Tom Moore's remark a hundred years ago that this autobiography was one of "the two most interesting specimens in the language" needs little dilution to-day. It still remains an impressive account of a remarkable man, and therefore a

new edition is welcome.

CLOWNS AND PANTOMIMES.

By M. WILLSON DISHER.

With Illustrations. Constable. 42s. net. The fine production of this volume must at once strike the reader, who, as he turns the pages, will discover that it is not only "fair to outward seeming," but extremely interesting within. With great industry and a sound critical judgment, Mr. Disher has selected the salient facts from a mass of information comprised in old play-bills, theatrical broadsheets, prints and the like scattered sources, and to this information he adds the fruits of his investigation of the psychology of " clownship." He traces the history of clowns from those of Greece and Rome through the ages to our own Grock and Charlie Chaplin. He gives us much fresh

information about the great Grimaldi, and reproduces some of his songs, including the famous "Hot Codlins." which opens :

"A little old woman, her living she got

By selling hot codlins, hot, hot, hot."

He tells us the life-story of the inimitable Grock, and analyses his philosophy of laughter, by which he knows the exact moment when he has so played upon the laughter of his audience that he can obtain full effect for a serious musical performance. Mr. Disher's book is remarkable for its clear statement of the place in the evolution of drama occupied by "clownship" and pantomime, and is a worthy memorial to a moribund art and craft. The fine production, already referred to, includes the reproductions in half-tone and line of many rare old prints and woodcuts.

SILHOUETTES. By Sir EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. Heinemann. 8s. 6d.

net.

It would be a foolish enterprise for the humble reviewer to criticise Sir Edmund Gosse's reviews, here reprinted from The Sunday Times. All he can do is to draw attention to the mastery of style, the profound knowledge of literature, which have gone to the making of them, and to marvel at the continued freshness of outlook in all that Sir Edmund writes. To the general reader, perhaps the most interesting of these essays will be that on Mrs. Humphry Ward; but there are others that come near to it, notably those on "The House with the Green Shutters," on Herman Melville and on Louis Couperus.

MORE CULLODEN PAPERS. Volume II (1704-1725). Edited by DUNCAN WARRAND. Inverness: R. Carruthers & Sons.

215. net.

Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, the most wily politician of that period, appears in this second volume of the additional Culloden Papers which Mr. Duncan Warrand is editing. At this time Simon was still collecting support for his claim to the estate and title of Lovat against the rival claim of Mackenzie of Fraserdale, and there are several characteristic letters in which he recalls the attention of such great nobles as the Duke of Gordon to his need for support by the recital of certain small services he has been able to do them. There is also a fulsome memorial in praise of his services during "The '15," and several amusing family letters written by him, in which he invariably breaks into French when he wishes for emphasis. The remainder of the letters deal with the troubled politics of the time; but unfortunately none are extant dealing directly with the military operations of " The '15." This is a serious gap, but there is still much of historical importance in the earlier and later letters.

WILLIAM ROWNTREE

No. 495 will be published in January, 1926.

INDEX

Titles of Articles are printed in heavy type

411

Bryan, J. Ingram, Japan from Within, 261 Coal trade-national importance, 190;

Budget (1925), 196

Bureaucracy, growth of, 195

Burke, Edmund-and Warren Hastings,