Guilt and its History

be got from this beyond entertainment? And (since good letters are themselves so readable) wouldn't I get more even of that by going to the sources? It does seem that Miss Drew has nothing new to offer in the way of scholarship or insight. Too often, in fact, she appears to rely wholly on the standard scholarly works. (Her account of Lady Mary reads like a digest of Robert Halsband's Life.) She has done her homework well enough in most cases, although it is disturbing to have her refer to Sybil Le Brocquy, the writer on Swift, as Sybil de Brocuy in her text and as Sybil Le Brocuy in her bibliography. The essays in The Literature of Gossip evoke for the serious reader today another era. Their genre reached its height in Virginia Woolf and its depth, perhaps, in Elbert Hubbard. Miss Drew belongs of course in the Woolf class. The kinship is in fact worth mentioning; for just as the pieces in the Common Readers were most stimulat-