THE MANTUAN
Virgil and His Meaning to the World of To-Day. By J. W. Mackail. 12mo. 159 pages. Marshall Jones Company. $1.50.
Virgil: A Biography. By Tenney Frank. 8vo. 200 pages. Henry Holt and Company. $2.
PROFESSOR MACKAIL'S little book on Virgil, in the Our Debt to Greece and Rome series, is an attempt to "sell" that poet to "the World of To-Day." That such an attempt is in order just now was recently demonstrated in the course of a symposium on "the ten dullest authors" in which no less than two eminent literary characters—one of them a professional critic—voted Virgil one of the world's greatest bores. It is to such an audience as this that Professor Mackail's book is primarily addressed, and I am not sure that he does not err a little in overpraising his author—or rather in praising him uncritically. But on the whole the book is admirable for its purpose; it infects the reader with the peculiar glow of luminous enthusiasm which is characteristic of Mackail and which makes him such a charming writer on the classics. I wish, however, that the editors of this interesting series would not insist so upon emphasizing the "Meaning" of their subjects to the "World of To-Day." In this case, the editor writes a preface explaining that Professor Mackail "has presented us with a study of the significance of Virgil to the twentieth century"—and then Mackail goes ahead—quite rightly—and writes a book which commends Virgil to our attention on the strength of his absolute literary and intellectual merits—in other words, of his chief claims to significance to the world of any day.
Professor Frank's book is quite different; it is a new biography of Virgil from rather a fresh point of view. Professor Frank has examined all the evidence for himself and deferred to no one else's judgement about it, with the result that he accepts as genuine most of the doubtful poems ascribed to Virgil and on the strength of them reconstructs a very complete record of his movements and his
