Mr. Mordell does a certain service in publishing from time to time the results of his reading and re-consideration of literature from what is in many ways the psycho-analytic point of view, though in exactness and precision of expression his work leaves a great deal to be desired. Like his earlier volume, 'The Erotic Motive in Literature', the present work covers a large and varied field, surveying literary mankind 'from China to Peru', from Homer to Chekhov, from Beowulf to William Butler Yeats. There are chapters on the psychology of ecstasy, the historical relations of prose to poetry, love-ecstasy in Arabian literature,