BOOK REVIEWS

Songs of the Love Unending. Kendall Banning '02, Chicago, Brothers of the Book, 1912.

Mr. Banning makes an interesting contribution to the literature of the sonnet, in the form of a sonnet-sequence, including the four sonnets, "Invictus", "Communion", "Accolade", and "Coronation". In spirit these sonnets are not, as their titles suggest, chivalric, but rather mystical. They speak with the tongue of Galahad, not of Launcelot, and lack the robust passion that vitalizes the Elizabethan sonnet of love.

Mr. Banning's lines are smooth and beautiful, and some are stimulating, as, for example,—

I shall rise arrayed In joy, as to the thrill of phantom drums".

The little stanzas that introduce and conclude the sequence are finely wrought and full, of meaning.

As a specimen of book-making, the thin volume is a creation of exquisite taste. A. H. L.

The Squire's Recipes. Being a Reprint of an Odd Little Volume as Done by Kendall Banning. Chicago, Brothers of the Book, 1912.

This little volume is attractive in itself and made more so from its air of mystery. Purporting at first to be a genuine find in a moth-eaten hair-trunk in a Connecticut attic, and bound and distributed to a few friends, Mr. Banning had to admit finally that the whole thing was a hoax and that only the language of the recipes was ancient. Several of Mr. Banning's friends protested vigorously at this, maintaining that the hoax rests merely in Mr. Banning's assertion and not in the book itself, which they asserted was a genuine product of the year 1784. One friend even insisted that he was present when the "find" was made. Whatever may be the facts in the case, the contents are genuine and show their author, whether Calvin Banning in 1784, or Kendall Banning in 1912, to have been an artist and a master of his craft.

The Yale University Press announces to appear shortly, the Life andLetters of Nathan Smith, by Emily A. Smith. This biography is written at the suggestion of Sir William Osier and is made up largely from Dr. Smith's own letters written to Dr. Shattuck of Boston. Few men have had a greater influence an medical education in this country than Nathan Smith. An eminent doctor, when anesthetics were still unknown, he performed countless operations, even to removing cataracts, from the eyes of a two-year-old child. Though called in consultation to all parts of New England, he still found time to found three medical schools, at Dartmouth, Yale, and Bowdoin, and to assist at the founding of one at Burlington, Vermont. He also conducted research work, making discoveries in regard to typhus fever that have had a lasting value. A review of this book will appear in an early number of THE ALUMNI MAGAZINE.