One of the crowning events of the tercentenary celebration of the death of Shakespeare will be the publication this month of the VARIORUM EDITION OF THE SONNETS. Professor Raymond MacDonald Alden is the editor. He has used the text of the quarto of 1609 verbatim et literatim, and each sonnet is followed by the variant readings of the most authoritative editions and by interpretive notes from the leading commentators. A full bibliography, which is in itself an important contribution to Shakespearian literature, completes the volume.

Another interesting and valuable contribution to English literature is Mary Augusta Scott's "ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ITALIAN," one of the volumes of the Vassar College Semi-Centennial Series. In the same Semi-Centennial Series is Margaret F. Washburn's "MOVEMENT AND MENTAL IMAGERY," an illuminating discussion of some of the conclusions of the hypothesis that all memory may be fundamentally motor memory, and the association of ideas the association of movements. The book is written in a style which assumes no previous acquaintance with psychology on the part of the reader.

A picturesque and valuable contribution to the literature of American history is the "MEMORANDUM WRITTEN BY WILLIAM ROTCH In the Eightieth Year of HIS AGE." William Rotch was a Quaker, who at the outbreak of the Revolution made a strenuous endeavor to keep the island of Nantucket neutral. His narrative of this affair and of his journey later to England and France on a quasi-diplomatic mission is of fascinating interest. The book will be published in a limited edition.

Edward Morlae's "A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION" will hold its own among the thrilling and graphic accounts of war incidents, and in its vividness surpasses most of the war stories heretofore published. "FOR ENGLAND," a new collection of patriotic verse and prose by H. Fielding Hall, and "GENERAL BOTHA," a well

written biography of the great Boer lease by Harold Spender, will also be publishe this month.

SUMMER FICTION

Readers who are looking for summe novels will find three stories which wi attract immediate attention. In June w appear "THE Grasp of the SULTAN," 1 Eastern story published anonymously In July "THE UNSPEAKABLE PERK," t Samuel Hopkins Adams, will be ready, an in August, "TISH," a collection of stories by Mary Roberts Rinehart, about her famous character, Miss Laetitia Carberry.

LINCOLN AND THE SOUTH

Among the many prominent men who have been attracted to Mr. John T. Richards' "ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE LAWYERSTATESMAN," is Jacob Dickinson, Secre tary of War under President Taft. Mr. Dickinson says, in part:

Mr. Richards has succeeded in making an interesting, instructive and substantial his toric contribution. No other work has brought together the facts illustrating Mr. Lincoln as a lawyer and his statesmanship based upon his legal attainments. In this respect this volume stands unique.

That part under the head of "The LawyerPresident" which portrays Mr. Lincoln's attitude toward slavery, emancipation, reconstruction of the southern states, the extension of the elective franchise to the negro, and the future relations between the white and black races in the United States, is of profound interest to all the people of the United States, and especially so to the people of the south. It is illuminating not only as to the conflicts of the past, but instructive as to one of the greatest of our national problems.

Mr. Richards shows conclusively by documentary proof that Mr. Lincoln understood thoroughly the point of view of those who fought in the cause of secession, that he realized that the right of a state to secede had been proclaimed by eminent statesmen North and South for many decades, that he never ques tioned the good faith of those who professed a belief in it, that he deemed it unwise to confer the elective franchise upon the great mass of former slaves, who had at the close of the civil war no proper conception of the duties of citizenship, that he believed that not only the happiness of the colored people, but the peace of the Republic could be best secured by the separation of the white and colored races, that the question of suffrage should be left to the

pective states, that he opposed the radical ws of many of the public men in regard to onstruction, and that he entertained no ought of revenge. . . .

It is difficult to present, in a short review, e merits of this valuable book. It should be d by southern people, for Mr. Richards thfully says:

-Yet, after the lapse of nearly fifty years, ere are many among the descendants of the ave men who for four years fought in the use of secession who have not learned the e worth of that broad-minded, generous end of all the people, whose great mind was nstantly occupied in the solution of the most ficult problems ever presented to any atesman in ancient or modern times; whose art-beats were ever quickened by thoughts of e misery inflicted upon both sections of his loved country by years of fraternal strife."

REMARKABLE SELF-EXPRESSION

No biography since Mr. Thayer's "Life f John Hay" has attracted so much atention as CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS'S UTOBIOGRAPHY. The New Republic sums p adequately the impressiveness of the ook, in the following paragraphs:

The Adamses are the nearest thing to ristocrats that we have in the North. From eneration to generation the family has prouced men of high character and intellectual orce. To be in contact with great affairs and o lead other men are Adams traditions. Anther family trait is a kind of loneliness in usy life, a curt unexpansiveness that keeps eople at a distance. Charles Francis Adams ad the family traits and traditions, the habit which he calls introspective, the industry, the onconformity, the inability to play. To read is autobiography is to feel that you have been n the same room with these things. It is an extraordinarily interesting book, candid, selfcondemnatory, self-respecting, filled with a pungent valor, with a humility that stands on ts own legs.

...

With a stouter belief in himself Mr. Adams would have been a greater man, but his character could hardly have been more individual, more hand-made, more sharply stamped by a virtue that has always, since the beginning of time, been called antique. His autobiography will be read as long as readers want to know what it was like to be born a Puritan leader. It is a book to read and keep and reread, amusing, sad, tonic, courageous, vivid, pugnacious. It is a record of New England at its best, of energetic toil without high spirits, of a self-distrust that has unflinching eyes.

AN AMERICAN REALIST

In the recent widespread discussion of American realism, or the lack of it, it is noticeable that one book is generally conceded to realize the English ideal of verity while at the same time it preserves a distinctly American flavor. This is Willa Sibert Cather's "THE SONG OF THE LARK." Among many tributes paid to the book, we quote the following from a recent article by H. W. Boynton in The Nation:

I think "The Song of the Lark" the most genuine and powerful story, American or English, of recent years. I need not say again what I said of it some months ago in these pages. The impression of its noble sincerity there recorded has persisted, has been strengthened by the rereading which itself constrained. . . . Among all the flimsy puppets labelled "genius' whom our novelists have been displaying in their shop-windows, the spineless, egotistical, hysterical, vulgar lot, Thea Kronborg, in her simple and unforced reality, stands fairly alone. We believe in her genius because we believe in herself - that sound human self of which her genius is but the supreme expression. Here, at least, is a true story, a wellnigh faultless interpretation of character in action, a work of sincere, creative realism.

<< CARRY ON "

A recent letter from Ian Hay to friends in this country closes by saying: "Personally, I am very tired. I have just finished three months continuous slaving over my new machine gun company. We are out of the Salient now and further south." Then in a postscript, he says: "I reopen this to say that I have just received word that I am transferred to a job at home to be on the staff with the Machine Gun Corps as an instructor." This latest information will be good news to Mr. Hay's many friends and admirers in this country, for though it will mean that the scene of "Carry On," the sequel to "The First Hundred Thousand," now appearing in Blackwood's and soon to be published in this country, will shift from France to England, their author will be out of the danger zone. And wherever Ian Hay is, one may depend on his finding something to write about and time in which to write it.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY