such as that of Edmund Gosse, he is dismissed as a vulgar, if sometimes amusing, fellow, a devil's disciple. Writers like Professor Saintsbury and Dean Inge find him vulgar and foul and unpolished, though Professor Saintsbury, on reconsideration, admits that he is a master of the vernacular. In the great Cambridge History of English Literature he gets a paragraph from Professor Sorley as a reviver of the Hobbesian selfishness theory against the facile optimism of Shaftesbury. The two English writers who have most sought to do him justice are Mr. J. M. Robertson and Mr. Leslie Stephen. The latter, as author of the article in the "Dictionary of National Biography," extensive references in his "English Thought in the Eighteenth Century" and extensive treatment in his essays, is perhaps chiefly responsible for his present English reputation. Leslie Stephen saw clearly that Mandeville was a remarkable man with important intellectual connections, but he was irritated by Mandeville's "detestable grin," and he felt bound to apologize for Mandeville's giving up to the coffee-houses "a penetration meant for loftier purposes."
I have gradually been preparing the way for two announcements. The first is: Mandeville is worth knowing—a man to lay siege to and conquer. The second is: If you wish to know Mandeville you may now, without hesitation, be recommended to disregard everything else, and begin with Mr. Kaye's two magnificent volumes. I speak with emphasis and feeling. In twenty years' observation of the products of higher English study in America I have met with no more exhilarating and satisfying work than this, which originated in the Yale school for eighteenth century letters.
Mr. Kaye gives us an admirable scholarly text of the
