‘Plato’s Britannia,’ by Douglas Woodruff, is one of the flowers of the Belloc movement, varying as a flower should, from its common factors. Belloc’s humour is vast, Rabelaisian, abrupt, and his irony is sometimes fierce to the point of self-destruction, but this book is a well-sustained display of pawky fun, almost Caledonian at times, and no intrusion of the bludgeon mars or neutralises the anatomising rapier. The noise is, to our slow ear, sufficiently like the noise of Jowett’s Plato to polish the genial jest. The English find it hard to be patient with the Irish, who return the compliment with interest, but here is an Englishman who sees all sides of what is wrong with the English, sees them steadily, too, and never departs from the serenity of the good physician who seeks above all to cure the patient.

It is an easy book to read rapidly, and yet he who reads too rapidly will miss a great deal, from the ‘Foreword by Peter, Bishop of Philepompus,’ to the promise, more or less veiled, at the end, that the Scots are to have a turn from Plato.’ I have known Mr. Woodruff since his schooldays. I taught him then and have prayed for him ever since ‘(he is not past praying for, then)’ and am frankly amazed at the amount of truth the book contains. (He always was a little liar.) ‘for whatever tincture of the cardinal and other virtues (I am writing in the country, far from books, and have not the complete list by me),’ etc. etc.