The February Monthly.

In the February number of the Monthly the principal article, at least in point of length, is the "Notes on Drawings by J. M. W. Turner in Cambridge and Boston." The notes, considerably after the manner of Ruskin, are as instructive as they are meant to be. An aggressively sapient piece of work, the article may interest those who are interested in Turner, if they are willing to forgive a patronizing tone for the sake of being informed. The dogmatic manner in art criticism, justified in Ruskin's case by his authoritative position, may in this article repel those who prefer to be stimulated by suggestion rather than to be instructed by formal teaching.

Of the three pieces of fiction in the number, the story entitled "'Yaller' Igo," is the most skilful; the narrator knows his subject and presents his situation picturesquely. "Carter, Correspondent," if not permanently significant, is clever and within its limits, entertaining. The interest in "The Hunger of Phocides" does not pass the interest that inheres in incident for its own sake. The verse of the number is pleasing.

The article on "College Criticism and Literary Slang," re-enforced by the editorial comment, offers some pertinent suggestions. Apart from considerations of the value to literature of the critical essay, the question as a practical matter for undergraduates reduces itself to this: nine out of every ten men--the proportion is probably much larger--when they have occasion after leaving college to commit themselves to print, do so in some form of the essay. As furnishing discipline in this form of writing, no single subject is more interesting to students themselves and to their possible public than literary criticism. With regard to the vexed question of style it may be said that training in composition has, beyond the mastery of the principles of correct and clear expression, the further purpose of developing individuality. A writer's work has value as his work in so far as the style is special to his thought. If his ideas are conventional and derived, his style will draw upon outworn terms and "literary slang." His problem is to know his own meaning exactly and to express it in his own personal way. To think independently and to phrase freshly, because specifically, is his success. Such seem to be the conclusions suggested significantly by these articles.