Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/459

 10 s. XL MAY s, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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to demand that names of streets shall be inscribed in Flemish as well as in French. EDWABD NICHOLSON.

NOTES ON BOOKS, *a

The Inferno of Dante Alighieri. Literally trans- lated into English Verse in the Measure of the Original by Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. (Sydney, Angus & Robertson.) IT is pleasant to find the Old World joining hands with the Antipodes in scholarship, and we think that the distinguished judge has done an excellent work in presenting this version of Dante to Australians. Most modern authors get false opinion of style and comparative merit, because they are ignorant of the great classics of literature, and rely merely on the authors of the last fifty years or so for exemplars. If this is true of England, it is, of course, more evidently so in regard to a country like Australia, which is too busy and too young as yet to achieve literary traditions.

The version before us gives a better idea of the original than many more ambitious efforts ; it will bear comparison both with the original text and with such a rendering as Longfellow's, on which it improves occasionally in the matter of diction. The translator has wisely not sought to embroider the sense of his author, while he has managed successfully to avoid the perils of " das gemeine," the commonplace expression which may be poetry in one language, but not in another. Inversions a common way of evading difficulties with translators are not overdone, and it is clear that Sir Samuel has founded his vocabulary on considerable know- ledge of English poetry. His occasional licences such as " 'gan " are fully justified. Regarding the version as a whole as successfully plain and dignified, we do not like the use of " quite," as in Now, reader, thou shalt hear a sport quite novel,

and

flouting

Of such sort that I quite believe it frets them.

The correctness of the work is a matter for congratulation, for some of the latest translators have made mistakes in rendering the Italian as well as introducing needlessly fanciful para- phrases. We give as a specimen of the book Dante's reply to his master when first discovered : " And art thou then that Virgil, and that fountain

Which poureth forth so wide a flood of lan- guage ? "

I answered him with reverent brow and bashful : " O light and honour, thou of other poets, May the long study and the great affection Profit me now, that made me search thy volume. Thou art my master, and thou art my author :

And thou alone art he from whom I borrowed

The polished style that hath achieved me honour."

We note that every third line of the translation is numbered, and that the book is printed in a pleasant type and laudably free from misprints.

We hope that Sir Samuel Griffith may find

time to add the Purgatorio ' and ' Paradise ' to this volume. Since Bowen's work on Virgil we remember no worthy manifestations of the literary judge, who seems, alas ! to be as rare nowadays as the literary bishop.

IN The Fortnightly Review Mr. Justin McCarthy deals with ' The Carlyle Love-Letters.' Mr, W. T. Stead discusses his somewhat credulous ' Exploration of the other World,' claiming to- have received messages from the dead. Georgette Leblanc Maerterlinck, wife of the famous drama- tist, has some pretty prose ' In Madame Bovary's' Country,' which reads well in the version of Mr. A. T. de Mattos, one of the few translators who can be trusted to give us good work nowadays. ' Our Insularity,' by Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, is an interesting address to the Modern Languages Association on a notable English deficiency, our sloth in the appreciation and assimilation of foreign work. Like all that Mr. Fisher writes, it is effectively worded. Prof. Marcus Hartog and his colleague continue their studies in ' The Irish Dialect of English,' which we find alike scholarly and entertaining. We do not parti- cularly care for Mr. S. R. Crockett's ' Page from the Diary of Mr. William Hewer,' which is a piece of pseudo-Pepysian diary. ' Bell and the Dragon,' an educational article by Mr. F. J. Harvey Darton, and ' John Galsworthy as Dramatist,' by Mr. E. A. Baughan, are both interesting articles in their special ways. We are glad to see that The Fortnightly is not swamped with politics, on which far too much is now being written for our taste.

The Nineteenth Century is chiefly concerned with technical matters and politics. Besides ' Six German Opinions on the Naval Question ' we have another hi ' What every German knows,' a needlessly pompous exposition, by a German valet and secretary, of what a leading politician ought to say to an English audience on Germany and Dreadnoughts. We cannot see much that is new hi this imaginary conversation by Mr. Austin Harrison. Canon Hensley Henson writes in his usual trenchant journalistic style about ' The Lambeth Ideal of Re-union,' and spoils his case by overdoing it. Mr. D. C. Lathbury's High Church views of ' Prayer Book Revision and the Ornaments Rubric ' are more moderate and more effective. Mr. Lewis Melville gives us new ma_tter in some unpublished correspondence concerning ' William Beckford's Adventure hi Diplomacy.' Capt. T. G. Tulloch in ' The Aerial Peril ' deals with the Zeppelin airship, and similar matters hardly as yet within the range of practical politics. In ' The End of a Legend,' Mr W. S. Lilley tackles once again the question of Carlyle and Froude, of which we are getting heartily tired. We think his denunciations of Froude's inaccuracy are too sweeping. We are not authorities on ' Ireland and the Budget,' but it seems to us that Mr. T. M. Kettle, M.P., claims far too much for his country, and ignores much that has been done. ' The Declaration of London,' by Mr. T. G. Bowles, deals with im- portant decisions in international law which, so far as a layman can see, need reconsideration.

IN The Cornhill Miss Millicent Wedmore has a little poem of merit, ' Jarjaille of Aries.' Mr. A. L. Smith hi ' History and Citizenship : a Forecast,' gives us a lecture largely on Maitland's work, especially the later work in which he