Comment on New Books
Fiction. David Balfour, by Robert Louis Stevenson. (Scribners.) “ It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them,” says Mr. Stevenson in the Dedication of this extraordinary sequel which does not disappoint. It would have been all too easy for it to fall upon the common fate, in spite of the fact that as David grows out of the boyhood period of Kidnapped into the days of falling in love, he has every right to grow more completely attractive. Mr. Stevenson gives him all his rights. Indeed, once safely out of the complications of the murder trial, in the first part of the book, the young hero takes triumphant possession of the reader’s interest, yet shares the triumph equally with the charming Highland heroine, Catriona Drummond. A serviceable knowledge of women was needed for tbe writing of Virginibus Puerisque, but there can be nothing so convincing in the abstractions of an essay as in the portrayal of a living person like Catriona. One feels the very genius of womanhood in her. Uncommonly real, too, is the air of eighteenth-century Scotland which fills the narrative. To the whole work Mr. Stevenson has brought the old romantic spirit and the modern faithfulness of workmanship : these, with his native gifts of imagination and understanding, have made a story of rare charm. — Horace Chase, by Constance Fenimore Woolson. (Harpers.) A strong impression is left by this last of Miss Woolson’s stories that there was still power in the writer for a long continuance of good work ; that it was done by a person who had mastered much of the technique of her art, and in future years might have put it to yet greater use. The story is concerned with the marriage of a hard-headed “ hustler ” with a beautiful young woman controlled wholly by impulse, and conquered in the end by an unhappy love for another man. The characters of these and of the amusing minor persons of the tale were very clear in the writer’s eyes, and consequently the reader sees them unblurred. So, too, is it with the scenes of the story, laid in Southern winter resorts of twenty years ago. The work in hand was admirably grasped, and the appearance of the novel as a book so nearly at the time of Miss Woolson’s death emphasizes strongly the reality of her loss from the list of American novelists. — Ships That Pass in the Night, by Beatrice Harraden. (Putnams.) This easily readable tale is marked by no small measure of cleverness, insight, and originality. The sketches of life at an Alpine health resort are drawn with a quick, sure touch, and are at once full of vitality and notably free from exaggeration ; while the love story of Bernardine Holme, which in an older day might almost have been called Her conversion, — a term that very modern and advanced young woman would hardly have recognized, — is told with delicate perception and sincere feeling. The author is least successful in the final catastrophe, which is out of tone with the rest of the book, and so will impress some readers as an uncalled-for interference on the narrator’s part with the course of events. If this is the first work of, as it would seem, a young writer, it is full of promise. — Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by A. Conan
Doyle. (Harpers.) There are hours when detective stories have a power to charm, and in our day there are no tales of the kind, written in English, equaling in ingenuity and interest the chronicles of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes ; so that the narrative of his last exploit, which closes this volume, wherein he sacrifices his own life rather than let a great criminal escape him, will be received regretfully by his numerous friends. We trust that no idle words from some unappreciative reader, such as led to the sudden taking-off of Mrs. Proudie, has brought about this catastrophe. Though no one of the new tales is quite so thrilling as The Speckled Band, yet, generally speaking, they compare favorably with their predecessors. An exception is The Yellow Face, but perhaps the extreme improbability of the incidents on which this story rests will be less apparent to English than to American readers. — The Bailiff of Tewkesbury, by C. E. D. Phelps and Leigh North. (McClurg.) The hero of this tale is a friend of Shakespeare, Will Helpes of Tewkesbury, assumed to be the “ onlie begetter ” of the Sonnets, while the heroine is one of the Lucys of Charlecote ; so the opening chapters are naturally devoted to the traditional deer-stealing, and the youthful Shakespeare appears on the scene with considerable impressiveness ; for though he says little, one look from his eyes takes from Sir Thomas strength and speech, that doughty magnate recovering himself, “ with a gasp like a spent diver’s,” only when the glance is withdrawn. The authors have taken great pains to give the color and tone of the time and place to their narrative, but they have hardly succeeded in imparting much vitality to the characters who play their parts therein. — Evening Tales, Done into English from the French of Frdddric Ortoli, by Joel Chandler Harris. (Scribners.) Mr. Harris’s preface tells how the French version of the Tar Baby came into his hands, and how, from hearing “ the lady of the house ” relate it and its companion tales to the children, he was led to put the stories into English, and then to print them. They are readable, even amusing bits of folk-lore, of a strange kinship with Uncle Remus and Grandfather Æsop, — if anything may still be thought strange in discovering the close and distant relationships of traditional tales.
— The Princess Margarethe, by John D. Barry. Illustrated by Thomas McIlvaine. (Geo. M. Allen Co., New York.) A pretty fancy of a princess who was not wanted because she could not be queen, and, left to herself, hungered for childish companionship, with the awakening finally of the king and queen to the situation, and the death of the child after all. The story has a certain grace about it, but falls between a youthful and a mature audience, anil lacks the saving salt of humor. — Garrick’s Pupil, by Augustin Filon. Translated by J. V. Prichard. (McClurg.) Among the walking ladies and gentlemen in this rather brief tale are a considerable number of the principal personages of the London of 1780, while many more are casually alluded to, a neat descriptive label being affixed to each and all. Manners and customs are also noted, and Such space as remains is devoted to the history of the brilliant young actress who gives the book its title, certain religious zealots, her relatives, and her two admirers, the wicked nobleman and the virtuous poor man, who, we at once recognize, were changed at nurse ; all culminating in the smoke and flame of the Gordon Riots. Naturally, the result is artificial and conventional.— Parisian Points of View, by Ludovic Halévy. Translated by Edith V. B. Matthews. (Harpers.) Nine short stories and sketches selected from the twoseore M. Haldvy has written, and so well translated that the effervescence and sparkle of the originals are not lost in the process, nor their charming readable quality. In his excellent introduction, Mr. Brander Matthews indicates very cleverly the characteristics of M. Haldvy’s work, justly laying stress upon the fact that even as a story-teller the author’s methods are always those of the accomplished dramatist.
Literature and Literary History. Fanny Burney’s Cecilia has been published in three tidy volumes by J. M. Dent & Co., of London, a house that is fast engaging the affections of the lovers of English literature, especially’of that of the eighteenth century, by the well-planned editions which it is bringing out. The mingling of etchings or photogravures with process cuts is to be deprecated, but the designs are good, and the general consent of type, paper, and binding heartily to be commended. The editor, Mr. R. Brinley Johnson, has been frugal, and there is little to detain the reader from entering upon the sleepy delights of a novel which transports one into a world which is so far off in manners as to seem almost to have its own code of morals.— The tenth volume of the Works of Henry Fielding, edited by George Saintsbury (J. M. Dent & Co., London), is given up to Jonathan Wild. It needs almost a course of eighteenth-century history and literature to set one right in reading this book, but after one gets the key in which it is pitched he sees more clearly the masterly consistency. Still, it takes a pretty strong stomach to withstand some of the scenes. — The same publishers have conferred a favor on the public by bringing out, in two very pretty volumes, Charles Lamb’s Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. Lamb’s own brief comments are touched with his fine critical and humorous sense, and the selections are the cream of the drama, so far as that was independent of construction. The introduction and notes by Israel Gollanez add decidedly to the value of the edition. — Two little volumes in the Elizabethan Library, edited by A. B. Grosart, are published here by A. C. McClurg & Co. : Nicholas Breton’s A Bower of Delights, where the old title is made to cover a new arrangement of material, and Thoughts that Breathe and Words that Burn, a selection from the writings of Bacon. The volumes are quaintly antique in paper and print, and coquettish in their dress.— The Ariel Shakespeare (Putnams) is a series of diminutive volumes, each play by itself, printed in surprisingly large and clear type when one considers the small page, without notes, but with outline illustrations reduced from those by Frank Howard, much after the manner of Flaxman’s outlines to Homer. There is a general assurance that the text has been made to conform to that of the latest scholarly editions ; and perhaps more is not needed, for the books will find their place naturally in Shakespeare Clubs,where the play’s the thing, and not the apparatus criticus. — Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness, a Short Historical and Critical Review of Literature, Art, and Education in Canada, by J. G. Bourinot. (Foster Brown & Co., Montreal ; Bernard Quaritch, London.) The full title of this book defines it so completely that it seems hardly necessary to add that it is No. 1 of the Royal Society of Canada Series, and is a reprint, with notes, of an address by the president of the society, which was founded twelve years ago, at the instance of the Marquis of Lorne. The address is dignified and comprehensive. — Messrs. McClurg & Co. have republished Miss Sheppard’s Counterparts and Rumour in uniform style with their edition of Charles Auchester. The first has an introduction by George P. Upton, the latter one by Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford. It is interesting to note that time has not chilled Mrs. Spofford’s enthusiasm for the writer whom she so warmly eulogized in this magazine more than thirty years ago. — In a garb uniform with that of the Harper’s American Essayists, two new little books are, The Work of John Raskin, its Influence upon Modern Thought and Life, by Charles Waldstein, and As We Go, a second batch of Mr. Charles Dudley Warner’s observations, mainly regarding his fellow-countrymen, in Harper’s Monthly.— Two more volumes have been added to the uniform edition of William Black’s works (Harpers) : The New Prince Fortunatus, the interesting history of the rise, fall, and restoration of the popular young singer, Lionel Moore ; and The Penance of John Logan, and Two Other Tales, rather good specimens of the author’s shorter stories.
Minor Criticism. Essays about Men, Women, and Books, by Augustine Birrell. (Scribners.) These little papers, on topics so various as to include Marie Bashkirtseff and Book-Binding, bear rather clearly the stamp of the periodical press. Many of them, indeed, are directly suggested by new books or new editions, Mr. Birrell’s role is always that of a saver of good things, and here he keeps on saying them. If the result is rather less spontaneous and satisfactory than, for instance, in the first of the Obiter Dicta papers, may not that periodical press, at the door of which so much is laid, be somewhat to blame ? — At Long and Short Range, by William Armstrong Collins. (Lippincott.) In the ordinary course of living, most men and women have to become possessed of a portion, great or small, of the general stock of human knowledge. The author of this book gives expression to his share of our common wisdom in a series of disconnected observations on a variety of every-day topics, in a few cases the truths are not of the more obvious sort, and therefore are welcome ; more often they are familiar. Sometimes they are rather well expressed, but more than once there are such unfortunate remarks as that “ Old Dr. Sam. J. and T. Carlyle, Esq., did not preempt the whole fair earth.”
History and Biography. Outlines of Roman History, by H. F. Pelham, M. A., F. S. A. (Putnams.) This book is a reprint, “ with many additions and alterations,” of the author’s article, Roman History, in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica ; and it need hardly be said that it differs as widely as may be from the ordinary historical compendium to which the title Outlines is given. It is a masterly summary of the course of Roman history from its beginnings to the extinction of the Western Empire, and especially is it a well-digested and lucid commentary, in the light of the latest researches, on that history in its constitutional and administrative aspects. The volume is carefully annotated and fully supplied with references ; and the work, while it will revive the intelligent reader’s half-forgotten knowledge, revising and extending it as well, will prove an admirable incentive and guide to further study. — In the Footprints of Charles Lamb, by Benjamin Ellis Martin. Illustrated by Herbert Railton and John Fulleylove. (Scribners.) One need not quarrel with any lover of Charles Lamb for finding a pretext for writing a new life of him. Mr. Martin knows his London well, and chooses, as his plan of procedure in what is practically a short biography, to follow Lamb and his sister through the circumstances and surroundings of their successive places of abode. Mr. Railton’s pencil is, of course, extremely useful in making these places real to the reader ; and adding a distinct, scholarly value to the book comes at the end Mr. Ernest D. Worth’s very complete bibliography, covering not only the many editions of Lamb’s own books, but all that great body of writing known by the rather foolish-looking name of Lambiana. — The Days of Lamb and Coleridge, a Historical Romance, by Alice E. Lord. (Holt.) Why romance, and why not biographical, we do not quite understand. The book is an attempt to follow, in a form remotely like that of fiction, the lives of Coleridge and Lamb, with something about nearly every conspicuous man of letters at the beginning of the century. Into the mouths of all these persons a great deal of poor talk is put, so that neither as fiction nor as fact is the narrative very convincing. Poor Lamb, after all these years, has a fresh burden put upon him, — the nickname “ Cholley.”— The plan of the Men of Achievement Series (Scribners) permits a more satisfactory treatment of the subjects of its four volumes than is possible under the conditions of the usual biographical dictionary. A single writer treats each of the groups into which the achieving ones are divided, and the result is not only a clearer view — by reason of the space at the writer’s command— of individual careers and characters, but also a cumulative force in the examples of qualities all making for success of one sort. The Men of Business are treated by W, O. Stoddard, who claims personal acquaintance with most of the men considered ; the Explorers and Travelers by General A. W. Greely, who naturally shows a preference for Polar careers ; the Inventors by P. G. Hubert, Jr.; and the Statesmen by Noah Brooks. As books of reference and as stimulants of young imagination, the four volumes seem to us well designed to succeed. — An Old Town by the Sea, by T. B. Aldrich. (Houghton.) An agreeable series of sketches of the town of Portsmouth, N. H., in which Mr. Aldrich’s wit plays in and out among the tombstones ; the best of all is to be found in those pages which deal with his own reminiscences.
Poetry. A Symphony of the Spirit, compiled by George S. Merriam. (Houghton.) The sources from which the poems of death and separation making up this volume are drawn show forth a broad field of choice, ranging from Vaughan and Herbert to Emerson and even more purely contemporary singers. The feeling of the collection is not all a feeling of sadness ; indeed, the book is remarkable for its poems of courage, its strong words bidding men and women add beauty and bravery to their lives through the very sorrows that Seem to leave behind them nothing but blackness. — Wayside Music, Lyrics, Songs, and Sonnets, by Charles H. Crandall. (Putnams.) Many of the verses in this book have served a good purpose in the magazines. Pleasantly and sincerely enough they express their pleasant thoughts.
Joined with them there is, unhappily, rather a goodly number of rhymes which from their very nature are ephemeral, and therefore cannot strengthen that hope of permanence to which a book is expected to aspire. — Lyrics, Idyls, and Fragments, by Joseph H. Armstrong. (Publishers’ Printing Co., New York.) The editor of this book reminds the friends of the writer, who died at twentythree, that it is intended primarily for them, yet cannot repress the hope that it “may add a few fragrant blossoms to the Southern nosegay.” Some of the verses are quite good enough to be imagined as helping to fill the first pages — the Juvenilia — of a volume of positive value in its maturer portions. — Fleeting Thoughts, by Caroline Edwards Prentiss. (Putnams.) The title justifies us in regarding the verses in this book as fugitive ; and the fact that nearly every one of them may be read on a page of its own — not one attaining to two full pages — points a beautiful moral of condensation for minor bards.
Travel and Nature. The Land of Poco Tiempo, by Charles F. Lunimis. (Scribners.) Poco Tiempo is “ pretty soon,” and the land Mr. Lunimis calls by its name is New Mexico. The well-illustrated articles which make up his book give an extremely clear picture of some phases of life in the Territory which has so foreign a quality that one can hardly think of it as waiting for the day, perhaps not long distant, when it shall be as fairly a State of the Union as New York or New Hampshire. Mr. Lummis’s style — as such terms as “sun-lasso” for “camera” will testify—is rather Southwestern. but he has the gift of vividness, and the description of the Penitent Brothers, the New Mexican order of Flagellants, whose Good Friday rites he saw and photographed three years ago, is not easy to forget. The subject, to be sure, is memorable enough in itself. — Mineral Resources of the United States for the Calendar Years 1891 and 1892, by David T. Day. (Government Printing Office, Washington.) The series of which these are the latest volumes is planned in such a way that the reader may have definite information of the increase of production year by year, or diminution, as the case may be. The summary is very compact, and each mineral is then treated at length and in a free manner by different specialists. — In the series of University Extension Manuals (Scribners), The Earth’s History, an Introduction to Modern Geology, by R. D. Roberts, has recently found a place. The geology of Great Britain is taken as a specific illustration of the history of the building of the earth. The great diversity of age in the formation of the island, as well as the facility afforded students by the limited area, serves to make the illustration a convenient one. — Where To Go Abroad, edited by A. R. Hope Moncrieff (Blacks, London), deals, of course, with the continent, and is defined as “ a Guide to the Watering-Places and Health Resorts of Europe, the Mediterranean,” etc. — More specific in its intention is Carlsbad, a Medico-Practical Guide, by Dr. Emil Kleen, a practicing physician at Carlsbad. (Putnams.) —Therapeutics of Cholera, by P. C. Majumdár, a homoeopathic physician of India, is a small book published by Boericke & Tafel, Philadelphia,
Education and Textbooks. Dynamic Breathing and Harmonic Gymnastics, a Complete System of Psychical, ^Esthetic, and Physical Culture, by Genevieve Stebbins. (Werner.) The writer goes pretty far afield for her illustration of the principles underlying gymnastics, and the reader who has been floundering about in the philosophy of the opening chapters gets his reward when he, or more properly she, comes to the exercises of vibrating leg, waist twist, leg stretch, and trunk vibration. — The Educational Labors of Henry Barnard, by Will S. Monroe. (Bardeen.) A brief sketch, closing with a bibliography, of an able man who was almost a voice crying in the wilderness. — First Course in Science, by John F. Woodhull. (Holt.) The science is physical science, and the course is in two companion volumes : one a book of experiments, intended to be accompanied by an inexpensive set of apparatus, the other a textbook.— Drawing in the Public Schools, a Manual for Teachers, by Anson K. Cross. (The Author, Normal Art School, Boston.) — The Seventh Book of Vergil’s Æneid, edited, for the Use of Schools, by W. C. Collar. (Ginn.) A step in the right direction, since it supposes that the reader wants to read Latin poetry, and not to illustrate a grammar.
Illustrated Publications. The Book of the Fair. (The Bancroft Co., Chicago.) The fifth, sixth, and seventh parts of this serial publication have reached us, covering pages 161-280. Every page has several illustrations, and there are frequent full-page representations of the greater features of the Fair. The editor has done what few in his place would have done : he has skillfully adjusted his text so that the designs illustrating it appear always on the same opening. The text itself is a sort of catalogue raisonne of the exhibits, in which there is particularity without too tedious detail. The subjects in these parts cover some of the educational exhibits, the German, Norwegian, Swiss, and a part of the Woman’s Exhibit. There is a procession of interesting facts. Unlike the Fair, the facts do the walking here across the page. — Some Artists at the Fair. (Scribners.) Now that the Fair is over, and the American people can think about it in their homes, the supreme recollection is of its art ; so that this brochure, with its exquisite illustrations and its text by artists, writing of what was to them a joyous holiday of work, is a most fitting souvenir and Aid to Reflection. The Decoration of the Exposition is by Frank D. Millet, Types and People at the Fair by J. A. Mitchell, The Art of the White City by Will H. Low, Foreground and Vista at the Fair by W. Hamilton Gibson, and The Picturesque Side by F. Hopkinson Smith, an admirable grouping of subjects and writers.— The last four or five numbers of L’Art (Macmillan) seem, for some reason, to have less richness than usual. The etchings, indeed, include an admirable copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Miss Frances Harris, and there are several reproductions of portraits and subjects by John Russell. These represent English schools. There is also a striking paper on old bindings, and there are some sketchy notes on the Chicago Exhibition. A fine portrait of Gounod is given in the musical bulletin, and there are some copies of museum rarities, but the editor draws pretty freely upon current illustrated books for subject and for designs. — The Hanging of the Crane, and Other Poems of the Home, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Houghton.) A little book of very attractive appearance, and excellent in its selections. The illustrations, pretty as they are, raise a question which we do not attempt to answer. Is the artist justified in presenting the young people of whose crane the poet saw the hanging as persons eminently of today, sitting under a “ banquet lamp ” which they might have brought out of the pages of Life with them, and all unsuggestive of the Golden Wedding for which their board will have to be expanded in 1944 ? Or does a familiar poem become so broadly generalized in its relations to time that its characters may be assigned to any part of any century ?
Decoration and Archilecture. Indoors, by Samuel How. (Warren, Fuller & Co., New York.) The publishers of this book are dealers in wall papers and interior decorators. This handsome volume is frankly from the side of the manufacturer ; but it is so interesting as a display, through abundant illustrations, of what interiors are and may be that one readily comes to regard it as a very attractive collection of designs, accompanied by a readable text which does not obtrude the shop, though it leaves the door ajar. — Household Art, edited by Candace Wheeler. (Harpers.) As we have already mentioned the purpose of the Distaff Series, to which this volume belongs, it is necessary to say of the book in hand only that the pieces of which it is composed have to do with interior decoration and kindred topics. — Homes in City and Country. (Scribners.) A collection of half a dozen papers on the city house in the Fast, South, and West, the suburban house, the country house, small country places, and building and loan associations, by Messrs. Sturgis, Root, Price, Mitchell, Parsons, and Linn. The illustrations are very attractive and effective, and the reader gets a quick perception of such differences as exist between various sections of the country, — differences which really intimate something of the local phases of life. The writers, where it is possible, point out the historical features of the subject and the development which has taken place. It may be said, in brief, that the more intelligent builders to-day overleap an intervening period, and evolve their houses from types of a century or more ago which really gave rise to a succession of new forms since that time. — Garden Design and Architects’ Gardens, by W. Robinson. (Imported by Scribners.) We have to thank Messrs. Blomfield & Thomas and Mr. Sedding for producing books which have called out this indignant review, crowded as it is with delightful examples of English art in gardening, and with vigorous protests against false art. Mr. Robinson is right in claiming for England preeminence in the art which expresses itself in gardens. He could have reinforced his position by a reference to the poets who have had so much to do with designs for gardens.
Economics. Socialism, its Growth and Outcome, by William Morris and E. Belfort Bax. (Scribners.) An interesting and readable book which will put one quickly in possession of that notion of socialism which is dominated, we may say, by the sense of beauty in living. The authors look upon England as almost hopelessly under the dominion of a dull middle class, and seek for escape in new conditions to be brought about by socialism. It is curious to see how, with all their detestation of commercialism, when they come to treat of marriage and the family in the new state, they fall back upon that conception of the relation which is implied in contract. But the sacramental idea is far profounder, more elemental, and, we suspect, more lasting ; and a socialism which is based on a free contract will come very rapidly to an inglorious death.— The History and Theory of Money, by Sidney Sherwood. (Lippincott.) An interesting piece of conglomerate. The main structure is a dozen lectures given by the author as a part of a University Extension course. But upon the inauguration of the series of lectures various persons, like Provost Pepper, Mr. Trenholm, Mr. Joseph Wharton, and Professor James, made short speeches, and at the close of each lecture a brief discussion followed. Lecture, speech, and discussion are all pointed, and an appendix gives a syllabus of the course. The book is, besides, well indexed, and the solitary student who reads it through will certainly feel that he has been in an audience.
Philosophy and Religion. Primary Convictions, being Discussions, of which the greater part were delivered in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, before the President, Faculties, and Students of Columbia College, by William Alexander, Lord Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. (Harpers.) These lectures on the evidences of Christianity, though marked by a reasonable logic and an affluence of learning, make their appeal to the reader primarily through a fervor of literary expression ; the themes are charged with a fine feeling, and the orator (for orator the bishop certainly is) is listened to for the charm of his voice, the impassioned tone with which he gives utterance to beliefs which have taken to themselves, in his mind, a large measure of richness drawn from the confirmation of poetry and philosophy as seen in great literature. — An Interpretation of Philosophy, by John Bascom. (Putnams.) This book is more suggestive than lucid. It is a discussion of prominent philosophers, with some reference to their historical and geographical relations. One chapter is headed Transitional Persons. Under this head appear the names of Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, the fountains of modern thinking. The word “ transitional ” seems to be used in the sense of the German "epoch-making.” As no references are given to the works of the authors discussed, the doubt arises whether the writer has studied the German or French authors in the original, or is giving interpretations from translations. Singular figures occur in the discussion. Speaking of Hume, the author says, “ Nihilism is suicide, and the philosophy that sinks into nihilism should find no hand to pluck it up again by its drowned locks.” Apropos of Taine and French thought we have the following : “ There is not enough weight in the gymnast’s body to give importance to his somersets.” Sometimes it is difficult to grasp the meaning; as, for instance, when we learn of Spinoza that “ this character was swallowed up in his philosophy, and bore the same simple, direct, constant impress.” The book is dedicated to the graduates of the University of Wisconsin, with whom the authors were discussed. It will be interesting to them, as it is the kind of treatment that might hold the attention of the average senior when enforced by the presence of the master ; but for the ordinary reader, with all its vigor and insight, it is obscure, and for philosophical scholars much too general.