no pastel
writer, who can say his say in a paragraph and runs dry in two. Hence
these snippy editorials do him no justice: he is obliged to stop every
time just as he is getting ready to say something worth while. They are
his, and therefore readable and judicious; but they give no idea of his
best powers.

He has also written a life of Charlotte Bronte. But he holds his place
in the front rank of recent essayists by the three 'Obiter Dicta' and
'Res Judicatae' volumes of manly, luminous, penetrating essays, full of
racy humor and sudden wit; of a generous appreciativeness that seeks
always for the vital principle which gave the writer his hold on men;
still more, of a warm humanity and a sure instinct for all the higher
and finer things of the spirit which never fail to strike chords in the
heart as well as the brain. No writer's work leaves a better taste in
the mouth; he makes us think better of the world, of righteousness, of
ourselves. Yet no writer is less of a Puritan or a Philistine; none
writes with less of pragmatic purpose or a less obtrusive load of
positive fact. He scorns such overladen pedantry, and never loses a
chance to lash it. He tells us that he has "never been inside the
reading-room of the British Museum," and "expounds no theory save the
unworthy one that literature ought to please." He says the one question
about a book which is to be part of _literature_ is, "Does it read?"
that "no one is under any obligation to read any one else's book," and
therefore it is a writer's business to make himself welcome to readers;
that he does not care whether an author was happy or not, he wants the
author to make him happy. He puts his theory in practice: he makes
himself welcome as a companion at once stimulating and restful, of
humane spirit and elevated ideals, of digested knowledge and original
thought, of an insight which is rarely other than kindly and a deep
humor which never lapses into cynicism.

Mr. Birrell helps to justify Walter Bagehot's dictum that the only man
who can write books well is one who knows practical life well; but still
there are congruities in all things, and one feels a certain shock of
incongruity in finding that this man of books and purveyor of light
genial book-talk, who can hardly write a line without giving it a
quality of real literary savor, is a prominent lawyer and member of
Parliament, and has written a law book which ranks among recognized
legal authorities. This is