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pathies which regulate even his most elemental flights. An intellectual aeronaut, he carries fact and experience as ballast. Speaking in one of his former poems of Socrates, he says"The great wind of the human spirit blew Through this Greek soul,"

We may take these words and apply them to himself with propriety. The great wind of the human spirit" blows through him; it is resonant in his verse; and who will deny that genuine poetry comes only when the poet is as a pendulous wind-harp to that wind?

WILLIAM WATSON.

of the past. But, so far as Mr. Harrop's enjoying the family estates and of acquiring information is concerned, the only acknow- other landed property, it was not long before ledgment of the assistance which he has his ungratified ambition impelled him to the received from the writer in the Albemarle strongest opposition to the Whig Minister. Street review is a scanty reference in a foot- There was, says Bolingbroke's latest biogranote. Such a neglect must damage the pher, no ingratitude in such conduct. The general opinion of an historian's labours. It "two-thirds" reversal of the attainder was creates a doubt whether the omission is not only wrung unwillingly from Walpole, and due to his desire to acquire a reputation for the third portion could not be obtained from originality to which he is not legitimately him either by personal adulation or by offers entitled; and such a conclusion is particularly of political support. Some of the brightest undesirable in this instance, as a careful pages of Mr. Harrop's study will be found to examination of Mr. Harrop's volume will lie in his characters of the less prominent furnish conclusive proofs that he has studied men of light and leading at this era. He the politics of Queen Anne's age with laud- takes especial pleasure in setting forth the able zeal. It may not be possible to accept talents of Shrewsbury, and in guessing at the Bolingbroke a Political Study and Criticism. all his conclusions as articles of faith. We motives by which his conduct was animated By Robert Harrop. (Kegan Paul, Trench, may, for instance, question the correctness of when he depressed the Whigs, or displaced & Co.) his view that "the management of the navy Bolingbroke from power at the death of the THERE is much to attract and there is much was the weak place in Godolphin's Ministry." Queen. He brings out the important part to repel in Mr. Harrop's work. Its main The aim of that Minister and his colleagues which Hanmer played in defeating the aims principles will probably draw forth the un- was to strike home at the French King with of his old friends, which seemed to indicate qualified approbation of the majority of his all their force through his frontiers towards any aversion to the Hanoverian succession. countrymen, but even those who are prepared Flanders; and they cared but little if, whilst But the least-known of all Mr. Harrop's pets to yield their assent cannot but confess their this took place, the baggage of a Secretary of in politics is Arthur Moore, the financier. To regret at the presence of some serious draw- State was carried into Dunkirk. But the Moore he recurs again and again, until at backs. Many of its pages are written with exploits of the navy under Godolphin's Ad- last he bursts out in a special foot-note-these clearness of style and with terseness of ex-ministration presented a happy contrast to notes seem to contain the most recent conpression, and in their perusal no feeling of those of the Ministry which sent out the clusions of Mr. Harrop's study with the dissatisfaction arises to mar the reader's enjoy- ill-fated expedition to Quebec. We may remark that "a Life of Moore, written with ment. Not unfrequently, however, he finds doubt the propriety, in discussing Walpole's adequate knowledge, would be a most interhimself confronted, to his dismay, with sen- financial measures, of implying that to him is esting contribution to the secret history of tences of portentous length and ambiguous due the consolidation of the State's obliga- the eighteenth century." If this is the conmeaning; and this defect becomes doubly tions into a general three per cent. stock-viction of Mr. Harrop, a feeling of duty to annoying when it follows on the recollection of a measure which he defeated when it was the world should urge him to undertake the many passages-as, for instance, those on the brought forward by Sir John Barnard, and task at once; and we would hope that on its position of the essayist and pamphleteer in the which he left for his successors to carry out. completion we may be able to praise the time of Queen Anne-which are expressed But, when every deduction is made, the fact result without reservation. with clearness and liveliness. If, as will remains established beyond doubt that this probably be the case, Mr. Harrop should volume is not the result of a few hours' perfollow up this study of the brilliant Boling- functory skimming of modern writers. broke with similar essays on other statesmen of the same period, he will increase the number of his readers, and add to their happiness, by reducing his style to greater simplicity. A latitudinarian divine once pointed out to Queen Caroline, the wife of George II., a fault which he wished her to correct. The Queen expressed her thanks for the advice, but intimated her desire to know which was the second fault that she ought to remove; whereupon the courly minister "smiling put the question by" with the remark that he should be happy to tell her when he found that the first was corrected. With this example before him, Mr. Harrop may plead that one defect is sufficient for a single reviewer to point out, or for a biographer to correct, in writing his second book. But, in spite of this plea, we venture to point out the second defect in his method of work, and that is the insufficient mention which he makes of the labourers who have ploughed in the field of the Augustan era before him. The theory which he examines and amplifies in the opening pages is the theory which Lord Stanhope put forward many years ago; but the name of that courteous historian finds no place in Mr. Harrop's criticism. It needed not the evidence of a letter in a literary journal to tell the world that any student of Bolingbroke's varied career would naturally consult the articles which appeared in the Quarterly Review a few years ago, and that the conclusions of the essayist on the statesman's conduct would influence his estimate

W. P. COURtney.

SCHOOL EDITIONS OF GERMAN CLASSICS.

Goethe.-Götz von Berlichingen. Edited by

H. A. Bull.

Mr. Harrop discusses the measures and principles of Bolingbroke with a keen sympathy for the policy of the Whig statesmen of the period; but with no deep-rooted Heine.-Selections from the Prose Writings. prejudices against their Tory opponents. The Heine.-Selections from the Prose Writings. oft-debated Treaty of Utrecht is, as might be Edited by C. Colbeck. (Macmillan.) expected, analysed with thoroughness and To those who desire to see the study of unsparingly condemned in its main pro- modern languages take its place as a sister visions; the tortuous methods by which the discipline by the side of that which has clandestine negotiations with the French King hitherto claimed exclusively the title of were carried on, and the inadequacy of the "classical" study, the appearance of these terms obtained, in consequence of these under- volumes is in itself an encouraging sign. hand intrigues, by the allies of England have They are the work of two Englishmen-men never been laid bare with greater force than of high university training and standing, and in this volume. But even after this ex-masters in great public schools. They appear haustive exposure of a peace of which no one could feel proud, though most Englishmen were wearied unto death of the contest which it ended, Mr. Harrop is sufficiently just to point out that the treaties were not "more directly favourable to the exiled House than the provisions agreed to at Ryswick by William himself. He doubts even if either of the Tory leaders during the Queen's reign was really desirous of securing the restoration of the Pretender; he only suspects that Bolingbroke regarded such a design as one which might be forced upon him at some future period, and for which he must impress the Jacobites with the conviction that his heart was in their cause. This is no isolated instance of candour on Mr. Harrop's part. When Bolingbroke, with the sullen acquiescence of Walpole, found himself not only at liberty to return from exile, but with the power of

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in a series with the expressed aim of issuing select works of the best modern authors, with Introductions and notes "based on the latest researches of French and German scholars." This aim is further illustrated by the remark that "it is now being felt that French and German, if taught on the same scientific principles as Greek and Latin, are of hardly less value as an educational instrument than the classical languages.' Mr. Colbeck refers in his Preface to the prospect of a modern languages tripos at Cambridge as a spur for "the teachers who have long recognised German as affording . . . the linguistic training of which Latin and Greek have been supposed to hold a monopoly.”

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With the views and aims thus set forth we cordially sympathisc. We believe, too, that their realisation must be chiefly the work of Englishmen-men possessed of influence in

the schools and universities, and qualified by their English training, and their objective analytic study of the modern languages, to understand and meet the requirements of the English student of the same. Hence we received these volumes, so to speak, with open arms, and entered upon the examination of them with something of sanguine expectation. There is no escaping a frank confession that we have been a good deal disappointed. That they do not lack good points of their own is only what we should have expected from the names of their editors. The experience of the teacher has often added to the practical usefulness of the notes. To Mr. Colbeck, in particular, must be conceded the merit of having grasped his subject as a whole, with the life in it, and of having brought to his task the literary versatility which is certainly one of the necessary qualifications of an editor of Heine. We purpose, however, to confine our attention chiefly to the linguistic notes; and here we too often miss the accuracy of scholarship, and the practical acquaintance with the results of philological research, which we felt justified in expecting from books announced under such auspices. Nay, more, we shall have to show that they contain not a few serious and almost unaccountable errors, such as might well give to the most untrained of Germans teaching their native language in England occasion to triumph over their English rivals, and to throw discredit upon the German scholarship of Englishmen. Let us proceed to look at a representative selection from the lengthy list of notes we have marked for criticism.

99.66

relation, and the possessive pronoun is as
little redundant as in the English "I
ruffled his frizzy hair for him." In both
cases it has a peculiarly appropriate pos-
sessive force, "that of his." Mr. Bull
shows, indeed, a curious leaning to mechanical
explanations and grammatical fictions, such
as we had thought long ago dismissed to
limbo. For instance, in the note to p. 61,
1. 35, the construction of "gehe es wie es
gehe" is explained in a bracket [wenn es
geht, wie es gehen mag]. Surely such a style
of elucidation is only confusion worse con-
founded. Similarly, on the relative clause,
|❝einem . der sich in sie verliebt " (p. 39,
1. 19), we have the remark, "Wenn is
omitted." Could anything be less "scien-
tific"? On expressions like "ein zwanzig
Ritter," "vor ein sieben, acht Jahren," &c.,
Mr. Bull's comment (p. 29, 1. 31) is, "ein
here etwa, and is undeclinable." What
should we say to a German editor who
laconically commented on Ben Jonson's "a
two shillings or so," or Carlyle's "in a twenty
years more,
29 66 a= about"! P. 55, 1. 7,
"Das macht, sein Gewissen war schlechter
als dein Stand;" "Das macht das kommt
daher, dass..
as in.. &c."
What can
result from such a note but the mystification
of the learner (who is thus practically tanght"
to read one thing and think another) unless
the simple explanation of this familiar con-
struction is added, that das is accusative, the
following sentence-often a dependent clause
with dass or weil-being the subject?

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"Absatz

hafter Kerl." Nor does he appear to be aware that hospitieren is not slang, but a technical academic term. Kneipen are not "drinkingbouts" (p. xxi.), but beer-houses. Nor can we agree that Privatdocenten " correspond fairly with our 'coaches'; they are professors in spe, lecturing publicly by the licence of the university, but without salary. P. 62, 1. 24, "Herr Johannes Hagel Mr. John Smith." Hagel is not a common surname; nor can Mr. Colbeck's laconic note be accepted as an adequate explanation of the term "Hans" or" Jan Hagel" (here ironically used by Heine in the form "Herr Johannes Hagel") for the rabble or common herd. Some reference might have been looked for to its most prob able connexion with the popular and originally mythological conception of hail as a curse and pest, and thus a fit symbol to convey malediction and abuse. P. 27, 1. 25, "Haben Sie es schriftlich?" has no reference to "scriptural authority;" schriftlich, "in writing," "in black and white," is familiarly used to express complete certainty-e.g., "Das geb' ich dir schriftlich!" as a strong assevera tion. The meaning is simply an ironical "Are you quite sure of that?" P. 30, 1. 29, "Bücher worin . . . die Vernunft von ihrer eigenen Vortrefflichkeit renommiert," supply wird." A finite form of sein or haben as auxiliary may be omitted in a dependent sentence, but not one of werden. Renommiert is indicative present, "reason brags of her own excellence." haben" (p. 113, 1. 31), of wares, does not Let us now turn to Mr. Colbeck's larger mean to "run out," but abgehen, to "go and somewhat more fully annotated volume. off," "sell;" nor does Absatz here mean We would again expressly remark that in "pause,' ," "intermission," but "sale," being dwelling upon points where we have a the corresponding substantive to the verb controversy with him we pass over many absetzen, to "dispose of," "sell." "Herzog excellent notes, often, indeed, rather meagre, Ernst " (p. 12, 1. 19) is not "the friend of but containing useful information tersely put. John Frederick, Elector of Saxony . . .," but With all Mr. Colbeck's sense of humour, he the hero of the well-known "Volksbuch" of has occasionally missed Heine's jokes in a the same name. We do not think that Mr. way that must amuse himself. He takes, Colbeck would have sought any fartherfor instance, entirely en sérieux Heine's fetched explanation of Heine's Kaiseraktionen humorous coinage Relegationsräthe. And (p. 131, 1. 18) if the old Haupt- und Staatscan there be any doubt that by fusstrittdeut- actionen, of which Heine was probably thinklicher (p. 118, 1. 18) Heine meant to indicate ing, had occurred to him. And has Mr. the itching desire of his feet to give the Colbeck any authority for "the verb actionprofessor a kick? On the other hand, we niren, 'to speculate with shares"? We think Mr. Colbeck will find that his "later can nowhere find a trace of it, and are acmeaning" of wohlbestallt (p. 7, 1. 9), "sleek," quainted only with actioniren, "to bring an "well tended," is a ghost of his own imagina- action against." To sum up briefly a few tion, apparently conjured up by a mistaken other points upon which we are at issue with etymology. On p. 34, 1. 9, "dann curiere Mr. Colbeck. Notizen are not "annotations," er sich mit nüchternem Speichel" is ren- but memoranda, notes jotted down; and dered "... with a diet of abstinence." We Heine's Notizenstolz is pride in undigested have here, without doubt, a reference to the fragments of knowledge. Unhaltbarkeit is not vulgar superstition which attributes curative 'inconsistency," but "untenableness; " Gevirtue to the saliva secreted before a man has staltenreichthum is not "wealth of literary broken his fast. P. 44, 1. 29, "Und sie (die form," but profusion of figures-i.e., persons, Kälber) wandeln stolz gespreizt;" "gespreizt, characters. We do not think any German es ist; South-' striding.' Spreizen never implies forward ever yet said " Mir ist am besten zu Muthe;" movement, but simply the spreading out, or while no one would hesitate to say "Mir ist holding wide apart-e.g., of the legs or fingers; heute viel wohler." Nor can nach Geburt gespreizt is here used with adverbial rather Christi be admitted as correct German than verbal force, mit gespreizten Beinen, for nach Christi Geburt. In adverbs like indicating the awkward straddle of a cow's hordenweis, in which the first element is a gait. P. 62, 1. 6, "Kamel, according to the substantive, this alone is in the genitive; great authority, the 'Burschikoses Wörter-weise is an original accusative. We must buch,' is student slang for a savage.' Mr. confess ourselves to be quite puzzled as to Colbeck seems to have no suspicion of the any connexion, etymological or otherwise, fact that ein Wilder is itself a slang term for between "train-oil" and "in train," the a student who is not a member of any Ver- French en train, from Latin trahere. Mr. bindung, and then generally for a "philister- Colbeck will find his second and better thoughts

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Mr. Bull must surely be a despiser of dictionaries. In the note to p. 45, 1. 18, he renders "gewachsen wie eine Puppe," "with a complexion like." We should say "with a figure (Wuchs, growth, stature) like." Backfisch (note to p. 60, 1. 4) does not mean "hoyden,' 'country girl," but is simply a playful term for a still growing girl at the age when she is supposed to become interesting, sweet seventeen or earlier. On p. 73 Lerse says, "Von Jugend auf dien 'Von Jugend auf dien ich als Reitersknecht und hab's mit manchem Ritter aufgenommen." Mr. Bull's note is "aufgenommen, 'taken service with."" Is Mr. Bull really unacquainted with the familiar phrase "es mit Einem aufnehmen" (es die Fehde, den Kampf, or the like; cf. den Handschuh aufnehmen"), to break a lance or measure one's strength with someone, to prove oneself his match, &c.? P. 88, 1. 3, Alle Vortheile gelten" is translated "all advantages tell," instead of "are allowed" or "lawful "—just as in a game one player cries to another, "Das gilt nicht!" P. 2, 1. 24, ausgerieben is explained as "durchprügelt;" what Mr. Bull means is durchgeprügelt. P. 12, 1. 16, "'s ist: German dialect." Just as little as it isn't" is South-English dialect. P. 4, 1. 5, "wann man sie nit bezahlt, thun sie dir keinen Streich;" "ihm and not dir should strictly correspond to man." Mr. Bull does not see that dir is the ethical dative: see his own correct remark on p. 128, 1. 21. P. 21, 1. 3, "dem Polacken. dem ich sein gekräuselt Haar.. verwischte; "sein is redundant, and we should have expected das." Mr. Bull is here fairly on the grammatical tread-mill; dem is a dative of interest or

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66

on Eins in Unsereins confirmed, and the whole matter made clear, by consulting Grimm's Dictionary, iii. 255-57.

Further contributions to a second and revised edition of these volumes might be made, but we have reached the utmost limits of our space. We have already indicated our persuasion that the elevation of the modern languages, and of German in particular, to the character and dignity of a real "study" and instrument of intellectual training, must in the main be brought about by Englishmen, first as students, then as teachers and authors of text-books. But those who undertake the task had need be on their guard against under-estimating it. Few, perhaps, are yet entirely free from the conventional idea about the modern languages, that they lack both the difficulties that try the mettle of the student of Latin and Greek, and the deeper-lying substance that calls forth and rewards his patient and strenuous effort. Before what we are hoping to see can come to pass, it must be clearly recognised that real scholarship and sound work in a language like German demand the same prolonged and minutely analytical study, the same philological training and research, without which no one thinks of attaining distinction, or the right to speak with authority, in "classical" scholarship.

HENRY JAMES WOLSTENHOLME.

Illustrated Guide of the Orient Line of Steamers
between England and Australia. Issued by
the managers, F. Green & Co., and Ander-
son, Anderson, & Co. (Maclure & Mac-
donald.)

ALTHOUGH this sumptuous volume is modestly
entitled an
"Illustrated Guide," it is in
reality a series of excellent articles on the
route between England and Australia, the
whole forming a work of considerable lite-
rary merit. It is edited by the Rev. W. J.
Loftie, who also contributes chapters on the
mother country and on Egypt; and he has
been assisted in the work of compilation by
Mr. George Baden Powell, Commander T. A.
Hull, Mr. H. E. Watts, formerly editor of
the Melbourne Argus, Dr. Charles Creighton,
and other writers, all of whom are ac-
knowledged authorities on the subjects with
which they specially deal. The illustrations
are both interesting and artistic; and the
maps, diagrams, and astronomical plates give
the results of the latest scientific researches.

and important industries by enabling many and heroine finally together when he
things to be brought to England which is a widower of forty-four, with a married
in the old days must have perished by daughter, and she is an old maid of thirty-
the way.
A striking example of this is nine. Her younger readers will naturally
afforded by the remarkable statistics of scout the idea as ridiculous, but it is much
the refrigerated meat trade. The splendid less absurd in the eyes of those to whom the
steamers of the Orient Line, some of which mature ages in question seem comparatively
may at any time be seen in the Royal youthful. There is not a great deal of story,
Albert Dock, enable passengers to reach Aus- and we have to take most of the characters,
tralia, a distance of twelve thousand miles, including the two who play the nominally
in less than a third of the time which was leading parts, chiefly from the author's
consumed on the voyage so lately as thirty account of them, rather than from what they
years ago. In 1808 the convict-laden ship are made to say and do. But two who occupy
did well if she reached Botany Bay within minor positions in the story are very well
one hundred and fifty days from Spithead, sketched; and, much to Miss Craik's credit,
and in 1850 the eager gold-digger considered they are both men-Mr. Beresford, the genial,
himself lucky if he was landed in his Vic-wholesome, sweet-natured old gentleman
torian Eldorado within ninety days. Then rector, with no very great enthusiasm for his
followed the age of clippers, which shortened calling, and conscious that he might have
the voyage still further, though seventy-five been more useful in some other rank of life;
days was still considered a rapid passage. and Jack Dallas, the easy-going, bantering
Now, however, a new era has dawned on the man about town, sound at the core, but a
history of ocean traffic; and, instead of ninety little bewildering to folk with little sense of
days' "imprisonment, with a chance of being humour. And yet the real pith of the story
drowned," which used to be the lot of the is elsewhere, in the account of the wife
Australian traveller, he spends one month in forced on Godfrey Helstone by irresistible
a floating hotel which carries him through circumstances when his whole affection is
some of the most beautiful and interesting set on Joanne Beresford. Margaret Egerton,
scenery in the world, and so transforms the the girl in question, is depicted as good and
aspect of the voyage that he will not only be right-minded in the highest degree, as fairly
sorry when it is over, but will very likely well-looking, reasonably accomplished, and
look back to the days spent at sea as among deeply affectionate, besides having consider-
the pleasantest he has ever enjoyed. It is able wealth. But she is totally void of grace
worth mentioning that, since the Orient Line and charm, though without any failure in
was opened in June 1877, upwards of ladyhood, slow-witted, impervious to humour,
one hundred thousand passengers have been and a contrast at almost every point to the
carried to and fro at this marvellous speed quick, lively, and equally good and right-
There is real skill in the
with an immunity from accident to life or minded Joanne.
limb all but total. How these startling way Miss Craik shows how even genuine
results have been attained, with much more goodness is not enough to satisfy the demands
besides, is explained by Mr. Loftie and his of human nature in companionship, and yet
colleagues in a very clear and entertaining that it is enough to prevent the union from
fashion. A reference to the Table of Contents being actually unhappy, though it has some-
will, however, best show how varied is the thing of the sameness and insipidity of a
character of the information afforded; and, diet consisting solely of gruel, however un-
altogether, it is abundantly evident that impeachably wholesome.
neither trouble nor expense has been spared
Kirby-in-the-Dale is a very crude book,
to make the book worthy of its subject. with some marks of literary faculty here and
Thus, while its value to intending travellers there, but a deplorable lack of care and skill
can hardly be overrated, it will be almost in composition. To begin with, it is pro-
equally indispensable to their friends at home, phetic, for we start with the fixed date that
and may be said to mark a new and striking the hero, some thirty years old at the
departure from the old style of "guide-opening, was three years of age when the
books" of which it is difficult to speak too
highly.

It was a theory of ancient geographers that continents balanced each other, and George Canning alluded to this in the well-known speech in which he summoned "a new world

to redress the balance of the old." But he little thought that within half a century from his day the remote island of New Holland, as it was then called, would afford a home to three millions of colonists, almost all of them of British birth or descent. The great Australasian colonies are, indeed, advancing with such gigantic strides that it is daily becoming more and more difficult to keep pace with them; and there is no doubt that the facilities of communication afforded by the enterprise of the managers of the "Orient Line" have encouraged, and will continue to encourage, the growth of a variety of new

GEORGE T. TEMPLE.

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Indian Mutiny broke out, so that we are
in 1884 at starting, and the narrative is
carried on for more than two years farther.
Next, there is the mistake made of so describ-
ing the ruins in the parish of Kirby as to
point definitely to Fountains Abbey as the
place intended, and of drawing a most un-
flattering portrait of its noble owner, not
as an incompetent public servant, put in a post
far beyond his abilities, but as a clever, but ill-
conditioned, person. The characters are all
conventional lay-figures, especially the hero
and heroine, both entirely commonplace,
though he is intended to be the model intel-
lectual and active parson, and she a romantic
and highly wrought creature, all loveliness
and intellect. Another young lady, active,
learned, clever, and practical, is set up as
a foil to this ethereal being; but we are told
that she has the faults of being ever so
slightly under-bred and vulgar, which detract
from her admirable qualities.
This is so;
but what the author has failed to observe is

that precisely the same fault attaches to all
the other ladies in his story, the ideal heroine
herself and Lord Kirby's two daughters.
The lack of skill in composition is chiefly
shown by an intolerably long monologue, in
which the heroine discloses her life-secret to
the parson and the second young lady, in
which she devotes as much space to de-
scribing the Paris of the Second Empire and
the effect the scenery of Guernsey had on
her as to telling who and what she is and
what happened to her. So, again, we are
told that the Hon. Misses Lawson, though
high-bred and graceful, are not pretty; but
at the close of the last volume the elder is
living in Brighton, the handsomest woman
there; and whereas a good deal is made of
a second marriage of Lord Kirby, and of the
little boy whom the new Lady Kirby thinks
to be heir, yet an elder brother is named at
the very end as the only son. Still, the book
is not by any means unreadable; and its
interest lies neither in the characters nor in
the plot, but in Mr. Rye's revelations of his
own opinions and theories, and the sometimes
vigorous language in which he expresses
them. Two examples will suffice:

"One of the curses of England is the cheap
newspaper press. No more fruitful propagator
of crime and wickedness of every kind has ever
existed. It is not too much to say that modern
newspapers do more harm than is counter-
balanced by any benefits that the discovery of
printing has given to the world."
Whether one agrees with this judgment or
not, at any rate it is vigorously put, though
it lacks the epigrammatic neatness of Long-
fellow's apophthegm in "Kavanagh," speaking
of the United States-"This country is not
priest-ridden, but press-ridden." The other
remark is in a different key, and truer to

facts:

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Tommy Upmore is the least successful work Mr. Blackmore has yet given to the world. He has, on the one hand, tried to make it a political satire (a class of literature for which his genius is in no way adapted), and, on the other, the conceit upon which the story, such as it is, turns, is a very frigid one-the physical peculiarity of the hero, defined as "meiocatabarysm," or bodily lightness, which enables him to scud before a favourable wind, and even, some three or four times in the book, to mount into the air and fly. That Mr. Blackmore manages to say amusing things in his own quaint, if now mannered, way is doubtless true; and that he does but express the sentiments of many of his contemporaries in his strictures on the measures and policy of the present Government is true also. But his hand is not light enough for satire, and Tommy Upmore actually reads as though it were a clever caricature of its author's least admirable peculiarities, written by someone with more humour than good nature. The crisis of the story, to which all the prefatory details about the hero's buoyancy are meant to lead up, is extravagant without being amusing. He saves the country, when the

Radical majority is debating a Bill for sur-
rendering Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, and for
dividing the fleet between France, Russia, and
the Irish Republic (late the Land League),
by flying up to a beam just under the ceiling
of the House, waving a small Union Jack, and
singing some verses of "The flag that braved,"
&c. Whereupon the Radicals repent, and
walk into the Opposition lobby. There has
been nothing like this-we do not say in
history, even when Feargus O'Connor's crow
spoiled a peroration of Sir Robert Peel's, but
in fiction, since, in Anti-Coningsby, Coningsbys
at the close of a parliamentary debate, jump,
down Ben Sidonia's throat, and disappears
for ever.

Charles de Remusat.

swarms

Priest and Man is by an American writer,
and even printed with American types, only
the title-page being English. The author has
got hold of a good subject, and has evidently
been at the pains to read up some of the more
obvious and modern sources of information
touching Abelard, such as Victor Cousin and
in the country or the period, and the book
But he is not at home
with anachronisms, individually
trifling, it may be, but destructive of the local
colour expected from the writers of historical
novels. Thus he makes the twin towers of
Notre Dame visible a century before they
were built; he puts a quotation from Isaiah
into the mouth of a Gypsy fortune-teller;
he makes a presumably Norman-French
student applaud an Arabo-Egyptian singer
that a priest at the beginning of the twelfth
"Viva la cantatrice!" he supposes
century might be known as Père Du Blois,
and a middle-class woman as Madame Hil-
dare, and that the Morgue and the juge de
paix (the latter an invention of Napoleon I.)
were familiar institutions at the time. He
child," being an orphan, and perhaps imagines
thinks that Héloise got her name as "God's
a Hebrew root for it; the fact, of course,
being that it is the feminine form of the
familiar Chlodowig, which takes so
allied shapes, and in all means "holy fame."
But some of the episodes in the stormy
and there is movement in the subsidiary
career of Abelard are described with vigour,
story of his imaginary pupil, Felix Radbert,
so that, faulty as the book is, it is not with-
out flashes of interest.

with

very

many

London newspaper office, true to the life
And there are single passages where the
writing rises above its usual high level into
something better still. Altogether, a notice-
able book.
RICHARD F. LITTLEDALE.

SOME VOLUMES OF VERSE.

ALL of the poems of the Poet Laureate that he
last dramas-are published in a single volume
cares to reprint-with the exception of his two
at about six shillings. The complete works of
Mr. Browning, according to a rough calcula
tion, can only be bought in twenty-two volumes
at the price of about six pounds. For this con-
trast there are no doubt good reasons, upon
which we do not care to dwell. Our present
object is to point out that Mr. Browning-or
rather Mr. Browning's publisher-has at last
been induced to issue at a more reasonable rate
not the complete works, but the two series of
selections which the poet himself formed some
ten years ago. The Browning student, of
course, will not be content with selections; bat
the general public, which contains a vast number
any excuse for saying that Browning is beyond
of Browning students in posse, has no longer
their means. If anyone must have but one
volume only, he will not do wrong in getting
the first of the two. Messrs. Smith, Elder, &
volume has been reduced from 7s. 6d. to 3s. 6d.
Co. are the publishers, and the price of each

W. Allingham. Day and Night Songs. New
Blackberries picked off Many Bushes. By
Edition. (Philip.)
volume might have been called Everybody's
Mr. Allingham's new
Birthday Book, for there must be very nearly
three hundred and sixty-five little poems, verses,

or verselets here put together, suited to many minds and moods. The title, which sounds at first somewhat fanciful, is not altogether inappropriate, although a fruit of more piquant these wayside reflections of a poet as he journeys through life. A less rustic title, too, berries" Mr. Allingham deals more with the might have been happier, since in "Blackworld of thought and action than with out-ofdoor life and country scenes. This little book

flavour would best indicate the nature of

is

very interesting as a perfectly sincere, outspoken-some may perhaps say, too outspoken is no echo, of one who sees into the heart of things -record of the daily cogitations of a mind which and under a careless guise are to be found for himself. It is, in many senses, a man's book; words of counsel, insight, and admonition, utterances of a moralist who would fain see the world wiser and better. Those who cavil at the form of these verses (too short, too long, too plain, too pointed, they are sure to be called by one and another) should dwell on their meaning. A meaning is always there, and often put very happily. Take the following:

"You cannot see in the world the work of the
Poet's pen,
Yet the Poet is master of words and words are
masters of men."

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My Ducats and My Daughter is a book of much higher quality than the ordinary novel of the season. It is written in clear, flowing, idiomatic English; the plot, without being trite and commonplace, is consistent and probable; there are three or four well drawn characters in it, especially Mr. Ingleby, the narrow, rigid, conscientious Puritan, supremely convinced that he knows better Here is a delicious epigram of quite other than anyone else, but as hard on himself as on others. The speculator Arden, and the able Liberal editor Mallory, with his private creed of Positivism, and his business-like recognition that it would not pay to bring it into the columns of a London daily, are also good portraits, as is, in addition, Camilla Arden, a complex nature, ably drawn. There is some very clever political writing in the book (contrasting forcibly with Tommy Upmore), and the humours of a Scottish election are skilfully hit off. There is also a vivid description of the interior arrangements of a

"Wine, good wine, is an excellent thing, The vintner too often deserves to swing." is another :

Here

"No banquet's ever to my wish,
Unless the talk be the finest dish."

A wise and witty little book, an earnest and a
merry little book, a truly original book, is
this basketful of Blackberries. May it delec-
tate many! Accompanying it we find a
and Night Songs.
new and pretty edition of the popular Day
now since these first appeared? And although
How many years ago is it
in the interval new poets have come to the

fore and made reputations, have they given us anything sweeter or subtler than "The Unknown Beloved One," "The Mowers," and What is it that is gone we fancied ours "? "Some power it was that lives not with us now, A thought we had, but could not, could not, hold. Oh sweetly, swiftly passed!-air sighs and mutters,

Red leaves are dropping on the rainy mould, Then comes the snow, unfeatured, vast and white,

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"He who ventures close to them, Tho' he touch but to the hem Of their garments as they swayTake your wings and fly away. "All things fair will pall on him, All but their lithe stems grow dim, All but their buds pale and grayTake your wings and fly away. "And his soul-fire-crown'd and shodWill go sorrowing like a God Fallen from the stars astrayTake your wings and fly away." Ishtar and Izdubar, the Epic of Babylon. Vol. I. By Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton. H. Allen.) Mr. Hamilton has hitherto been known by his works on Mexico; he now comes forward as an archaeological poet. has endeavoured to reconstruct the ancient epic of Babylon, adapted, of course, to modern tastes, from the translations given by Assyrian scholars of the fragmentary tablets belonging to it. With these he proves himself to be well acquainted, and to have studied them with laudable zeal. How far he has been successful in throwing them into a poetical dress it is difficult to say. His rhymes are not always perfect; he has an over-great partiality for the word " grand;" and the way in which he introduces Assyrian and Accadian words into his verses is, to say the least, extremely odd. At the same time, the poem possesses both spirit and imagination; and, if it directs the attention of the literary world to the oldest epic of which we know, it will not have been composed in vain.

Oh what is gone from us we fancied ours?" Things New and Old. By E. H. Plumptre. (Griffith & Farran.) The sound scholarship, wide humanity, and fluent verse of Dean Plumptre are well known; and in this little book of poems-"the autumn gleanings of a vintage late "-they are all put in evidence. The Dean's muse shows better in longer than in shorter poems; his verse is fluid and equable and well-sustained; but it is little elaborated, and thus it is excellently suited for story-(W. telling. Of the tales in this volume" Adrastos is the best; it is full of the pity and fear that come from watching the shadow of Ate darkening fair lives. "The Emperor and the Pope tells in smooth, rhyming octosyllables the story of Trajan and the importunate widow and of Gregory's intercession for his soul. Here is a fragment from it about the "angli angeli ":“He saw and pitied; gems and gold, From out the Church's treasures old, In fullest tale of weight he told, And gave their price, and set them free, Heirs of Christ's blessed liberty. And now they followed, slow and calm, Each bearing branch of drooping palm, Each lifting high a taper's light, And clad in vestments pure and white; And they with voices soft and slow, As streams 'mid whispering reeds that flow, Still sang in mournful melody That sad, unchanging litany, 'O miserere, Domine.'"

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"Vasádavatta: a Buddhist Idyll," "Chalfont S. Giles," and " Bedford" are tales in blank verse, written with taste, but with a want of variety in the pause, and a tendency to recur to well-worn phrases, such as "not for him at the end of the line (we should not like to reckon up how many times "chance and change" comes in the volume). The sonnets are all interesting. They have one great merit of sonnets, that they are wholes, and run easily; but why do several of them end in an Alexandrine? The best is that called "Drift

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ing," a political sonnet, dated 1867. The pro and con of the Ritual question is argued in two sonnets. The Church Association side rather strays from truth when it speaks of "Prayers in a speech that none can understand" and Teaching that neither heart nor brain employs." The "In Memoriam poems are numerous, but contain nothing noteworthy. The Hymns run remarkably well. We have also received from the same publishers new editions of two other volumes of Dean Plumptre's poems-Lazarus and Master and Scholar. Under a Fool's Cap. Songs by Daniel Henry, jun. (Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.) It takes much wisdom, says the proverb, to make a fool. At least it takes some pathos and some humour and some fancy and a ready gift of rhyming; and these are gifts with which Mr. Daniel Henry is certainly endowed. His method is to take a nursery rhyme by way of text-some be quotes, we regret to see, from a revised version-and spin a poem out of it. We have read these poems with a great deal of pleasure. In some cases, we have said the pathos is a little too ready, or the rhythm a little too lame; but in many cases we have been altogether pleased. The poems are not quotable in single verses; indeed, they are hardly quotable at all. The reader must start

Three Hundred English Sonnets. Edited by David M. Main. book, which is tastefully got up as to printing (Blackwood.) This little and binding, may be called a condensed edition of the same editor's Treasury of English Sonnets. Fresh sonnets are included, and the bulky notes are omitted. The former can hardly be considered a very material addition, except as regards the sonnets of Rossetti. The absence of the latter does not involve a very sensible loss. The Treasury was an excellent library book, being copious and accurate; but it was overweighted with ana.

Mr. Main's notes were often valuable, sometimes highly suggestive, but nearly always unreadable. It was right to cut away the notes; but, unhappily, this involved the sacrifice of all the contemporary work incidentally quoted therein. Mr. Main's general scheme has never seemed to us to be the best available. By rigidly excluding the sonnets of living writers the editor did his best to put his book as speedily as possible on the top shelf. A scheme admitting living writers must have its grave faults, but this form of swift suicide is surely not one of them. Mr. Main's three

hundred sonnets are on the whole well chosen, though we should say that the selection is rather thot of a bibliographer than of a poet. We have made memoranda of the omissions which occur to us from our point of view. We like Mr. Main's selection from Shakspere and Spenser; we think he could hardly fail to satisfy us with his selections from Milton and Wordsworth; but we should have preferred Keats's sonnet on the Elgin Marbles to that on Leander. We are glad to observe that Mr. Main has cut away Shelley's stanzas of the "Ode to the West Wind," and that he has promoted Leigh Hunt's "Nile" to a place in the text. We are also glad that he has followed Mr. Hall Caine in giving George Eliot's "Brother and Sister," and we wish he had followed Mr. Waddington in giving Burns's "Thrush." We

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receive a new sonnet by Hartley Coleridge with a good deal of pleasure, and think it vastly more valuable than the two playful poems that Mr. Caine discovered in the Lake country. We are sorry that Lord Hanmer's fine "Pine Woods " has not found a place, and we are yet more disappointed to miss Longfellow's extremely beautiful Nature." There is reason to think that Longfellow considered this sonnet the best of his shorter poems. We are at a loss to know how an editor generally so discriminating could have printed Sydney Dobell's "No Comfort " and omitted his magnificent "Army Surgeon." We think Lord Beaconsfield's Wellington" is superior to John Forster's "Dickens."

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We are

sorry not to see Poe's "Silence," which, although it has fifteen lines, is as certainly a sonnet as Hood's poem on the same subject. Moreover, Mr. Main knows that the tail is a legitimate addition to the sonnet in Italianand why not in English? We are disappointed that we cannot find Charles Whitehead's" Even as yon lamp," which is, in our judgment, among the finest sonnets ever penned. Mr. Main properly gives to S. L. Blanchard "Hidden Joys," which Lord Houghton was tempted to attribute to Keats. The selection from Rossetti is excellent, yet it includes the sonnets on "Chatterton and on "Oliver Brown," both painfully laboured works, and excludes that on the Last Three at Trafalgar," which is, perhaps, as free, as lucid, and as vigorous and impassioned as Milton. Mr. Main alludes to certain emendations by Mr. Hall Caine in Isaac Williams's sonnet "Heed not a World" as disastrous; but Mr. Caine's version was, at the time it appeared, the only one that rhymed and scanned, and it remains in all respects equal to Mr. Main's later version. Arthur O'Shaughnessy's "Her Beauty" is said to be from the poet's posthumous volume. It was written for corrections (from the rough draft which was Sonnets of Three Centuries, and contains the all the author left behind him) of the editor of that book. Mr. Main gives us another long note on Blanco White's "Night." Touching a good deal that has been said by other writers on one "fatally disenchanting line" in that sonnet, we have recently received from Mr. William Davies, author of Songs of a Wayfarer, the following emendation, which he remembers to have seen in early printed copies of the sonnet :"Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood revealed." Mr. Main should make a note of this.

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MR. WADDINGTON'S English Sonnets by Living Writers (Bell) has, we are glad to see, reached a second edition, and the editor has taken the opportunity of adding ten sonnets. these are by Mr. Theodore Watts, three by Mr. W. S. Blunt, and two by Miss Mathilde Blind,

who

66

Four of

were all unrepresented in the first edition. Mr. Watts's Wood-hunter's Dream,' Mr. Blunt's "To the Bedouin Arabs," and Miss

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Blind's "The Dead are valuable additions. We observe with some surprise that the reader is still informed by the Preface that the volume contains only 178 sonnets-a statement which Mr. Waddington would find it hard to support. at least two of his writers are It is our misfortune, rather than his fault, that no longer "living."

Songs of Irish Wit and Humour. Selected by Alfred Perceval Graves. (Chatto & Windus.) Though perhaps not quite so complete as might be wished, this selection of Irish songs is very welcome at a time when "wit and humour" seem almost to have abandoned the country of Moore and Sheridan, of Lover and Prout. The political section is specially weak, though for this we can but respect Mr. Graves's motive.

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