Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/483

. i. MAY u, 190*.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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letter-writer finds it as facile and pleasant as con- versation itself. Even of those letters essentially didactic, the selection here offered does not seem to be happy. That numbered lx., so far from being suitable for a popular collection, is nothing else than a dry theological treatise of thirty-five pages on the errors and heresies of Abaelard, and even this requires a long prefatory explanation of twenty-one pages.

The selection is made from the excellent transla- tion of St. Bernard's works by Dr. Eales. and in some instances the editor has conveyed the material without making the necessary corrections and excisions of cross-references to letters and passages not contained in the present volume, which is puzzling to the reader. The candour of the modern Benedictine is to be admired in including Letter xl v. , in which the saint earnestly repudiates the newly introduced Festival of the Immaculate Conception of St. Mary, and condemns it in round terms as " a presumptuous novelty, against the custom of the Church."

Sematography of the Greek Papyri, by F. W. G. Foat, is a paper of great interest reprinted from the Journal of Hellenic Sttidies. The first word of the title being recently invented, we believe, and possibly obscure in meaning to the ordinary reader, we should say that Dr. Foat's learned study, based on the examination of the Greek of about three hundred papyri, supports the thesis that the various symbols and abbreviations which recur are not irrational or arbitrary, but natural curtailments of real words. In fact, the cursive hand of one genera- tion is the symbol of the next. Some such process is unconsciously introduced in many careless handwritings of to-day, which are quite easy to us, but very difficult to a foreigner not used to the common endings of our language. Dr. Foat points out that some symbols can be traced from a simple ligatured cursive to a conventional form ; thus a mutilated gamma standing for yivtrai is put before a total. The whole study suggested is extremely interesting, and most of Dr. Foat's results are ingeniously worked out, with abundant references to the work of distinguished exponents of the papyri, both German and English, in pioneer work like this it is easy to be led away on fanciful paths, data not being obvious for intermediate forms, but we think that Dr. Foat has found out so much which is certain that he deserves high credit for his researches. He notes by the way that it is surprising that hundreds of common words have not been forced into abbreviated forms in modern English. The eighteenth century was in this respect, we may say, more daring than we are to-day, though some "copy" for the press would satisfy even a zealous reformer, and we saw in a book we handled but yesterday " Norm." printed in the current text throughout for Norman.

IN the Burlington appears the second portion of ' The Drawings of Jean Francois Millet in the Col- lection of the late Mr. Staats Forbes.' With this is iven a brief account of that regretted collector. The esigns include, with others, those for 'Le Semeur,' ' Deux Faneuses,' ' Les Moissonneurs,"Le Planteur,' ' Lea Vignerons,' ' Les Bucherons,' and ' L'Homme a la Brouette.' Specially interesting are the reproduc- tions of the miniatures of the Harleian MS. of ' The Chronicle of Jehan Creton concerning Richard II.' Half these superb miniatures are reproduced in the present number. 'Italian Boxwood Carvings

of th Sixteenth Century ' and ' Portraits by John Van Eyck ' also repay close study. A reproduction of Leonardo's 'Portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli,' from the Louvre, makes a fine frontispiece to an attrac~ tive number.

'LESLIE STEPHEN AND HIS WORK,' in the Quarterly Review for April, is a most interest- ing paper by one who must have made a study of Stephen's career. Stephen was a typical utilitarian of the higher class, and conse- quently was attracted by the men of the eigh- teenth century. Those among us who are at the opposite pole of thought cannot but admire Stephen's honesty and the careful manner in which he avoided all overstatement. "In dealing with Froude," we are told " Stephen was almost too kind"; we think his reviewer errs in the same- direction. To excuse Froude's blunders and para- doxesnot to use stronger words by his love of mischief is surely itself mischief-making. We have a right to demand that books of history or bio- graphy, if written at all, should tell the truth. Froude's style is not of such a transcendent quality as certain persons have represented it, but it is quite sufficiently attractive to have per- manently distorted the vision of those who have been captured by it. For ourselves, we have no hesitation in saying that Leslie Stephen's style is- not only more accurate, but far nobler, than that of the man who gave us so much of history in masquerade. To speak of Freeman as not having^ " a spark of humour " is outrageous, as every one who had the pleasure of knowing him will testify ? he was, however, too conscientious to distort history for the sake of amusing the groundlings. The reviewer ends his paper with the welcome and absolutely accurate statement that it is impossible to have read Stephen's books " without reverence for the fidelity of the artist, and affection for the personality of the man." Mr. Reginald Blomfield's- ' Art of the French Renaissance ' has given us great satisfaction. The Revolution wrought destruction- among the great houses of France almost as terrible as what occurred to our monasteries during the period of the Reformation. We have, however, hardly any plans or drawings of the great Gothic buildings which were swept away in this country, while we believe that many of the great French houses that have disappeared have left some memorials behind them very imperfect, in most cases, it is true, but not without much interest for the lovers of art. It is not clear why many of these- noble structures came into being ; our interpretation' is that in not a few instances it was merely from a feeling of vulgar display, for among the French' aristocracy the love of home life which has been a passion with Englishmen was well-nigh unknown. We have evidence of this in the fact that when taste changed the great nobles neglected, and in some instancese ven destroyed, the palaces in which their forefathers had taken pride, for it must be remembered that by no means all the losses we have to mourn were the work of the Revolutionists. Mr. Edward Wright has a very good paper on 'The Novels of Thomas Hardy,' and Mr. Henry James writes skilfully, if not wisely, on Gabriele D'An- nunzio.

' SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN ON THE AMERICANA REVOLUTION,' in the Edinburgh Review for April, is a remarkably picturesque paper, but we are not in full sympathy with some of the critic's con-