By

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

Fitzedward Call.

Aut scire oportet aut tacere.-Old Saying.

Non quidem doctus, sed curiosus, qui plus docet quam scit.

Petronius.

Reprinted, with Additions and Emendations, from "The Statesman."

LONDON:

TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.

1880.

THESE pages are published in deference to the suggestion, that a misleading example, if secure of popular favour, deserves to be combated.

In the course of discussing words and phrases, Lord Macaulay is here appealed to frequently, but with no desire of holding up his authority as law. That his English, taken all in all, admittedly represents the most approved recent usage, is enough for the present purpose of the critic.

F. H.

January, 1880.

DOCTOR INDOCTUS.*

MANY of our readers are, doubtless, aware that a Series of Primers, introductory to science, history, and literature, is now in course of publication by Messrs. Macmillan and Co. Several of these little books we have perused with great satisfaction so good are they, indeed, that it would be difficult to suggest how they could be materially improved.

Among the contributors to the Series in question are Professors Huxley and Jevons, Sir J. D. Hooker, Messrs. George Grove, J. Norman Lockyer, W. E. Gladstone, E. A. Freeman, and the Rev. Stopford Brooke, not to mention other writers of reigning repute. But there is, certainly, one interloper in this highly respectable group of authors; and he is such as to offer, we are com

*English Composition. By John Nichol, M.A. Balliol, Oxon., LL.D., Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Glasgow. Second edition. London: Macmillan and Co. 1879.