tention. But did
he? Was it not Mr. Gosse who early in the war glorified the blood that was
being shed as a cleansing stream of Condy's Fluid? The truth is, apart
from his thoughts about literature, Mr. Gosse thinks much as the
leader-writers tell him. He is sensitive to beauty of style and to
idiosyncrasy of character, but he lacks philosophy and that tragic sense
that gives the deepest sympathy. That, we fancy, is why we would rather
read him on Catherine Trotter, the precursor of the bluestockings, than on
any subject connected with the war.

Two of the most interesting chapters in Mr. Gosse's _Diversions of a Man
of Letters_ are the essay on Catherine Trotter and that on "the message of
the Wartons." Here he is on ground on which there is no leader-writer to
take him by the hand and guide him into saying "the right thing." He
writes as a disinterested scholar and an entertainer. He forgets the war
and is amused. How many readers are there in England who know that
Catherine Trotter "published in 1693 a copy of verses addressed to Mr.
Bevil Higgons on the occasion of his recovery from the smallpox," and that
"she was then fourteen years of age"? How many know even that she wrote a
blank-verse tragedy in five acts, called _Agnes de Cestro_, and had it
produced at Drury Lane at the age of sixteen? At the age of nineteen she
was the friend of Congreve, and was addressed by Farquhar as "one of the
fairest of her sex and the best judge." By the age of twenty-five,
however, she had apparently written herself out, so far as the stage was
concerned, and after her tragedy, _The Revolution in Sweden_, the theatre
knows her no more. Though described as "the Sappho of Scotland" by the
Queen of Prussia, and by the Duke of Marlborough as "the wisest virgin I
ever knew," her fame did not last even as long as her life. She married a
clergyman, wrote on philosophy and religion, and lived till seventy. Her
later writings, according to Mr. Gosse, "are so dull that merely to think
of them brings tears into one's eyes." Her husband, who was a bit of a
Jacobite, lost his money on account of his opinions, even though--"a
perfect gentleman at heart--'he always prayed for the King and Royal
Family by name.'" "Meanwhile," writes Mr. Gosse, "to uplift his spirits in
this dreadful condition, he is discovered engaged upon a treatise on the
Mosaic deluge, which he could persuade no publisher to print. He reminds
us of Dr. Primrose in _The Vicar of