Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/75

 10 s. XIL JULY 17, 1909. NOTES AND QUERIES.

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NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

A Life of John Colet, D.D. By J. H. Lupton, D.D.

New Edition. (Bell & Sons.) THE late Dr. Lupton was well known to be a devoted admirer and lifelong student of the famous Dean of St. Paul's. He edited his various works with careful notes and appendixes, and produced a charming Life of him in 1887. A new edition of this volume is now issued, and will be welcome, as this year is the fourth centenary of the foundation of the famous school with which Colet's name will always be associated. Dr. Lupton, strange to say, entertained some doubts whether the mystic number of one hundred and fifty and three, to which the scholars were to be limited, should be con- nected with the draught of fishes recorded in St. Johnxxi. 11 ; but Fuller knew of that tradition, and it would be difficult to assign a more satisfactory reason for an otherwise arbitrary number.

Dean Colet as a man of light and leading is worthy of a place beside More and Fisher. Stand- ing between the Renascence and the Reformation, he had sympathetic affinities with both. His liberal opinions were no doubt to some extent due to his intercourse with Erasmus, his bosom friend. His judicious remarks on the interpretation of the Mosaic records of Creation show him to have been a man before his time, and the morning-star of Biblical criticism.

Many incidental points of literary interest emerge in Dr. Lupton's delightful volume. He notices, for instance, that not a few of Shakespeare's Latin quotations are borrowed from the examples in Lily's Grammar, from which he acquired his "little Latin." A misprint seems to have been overlooked on p. 156, where " Sharmoveres Lane" should cer- tainly be Sheremoniers, as in Stow's ' Survey.'

Ruined and Deserted Churches. By Lucy Eliza- beth Beedham. (Elliot Stock.) WE have here an interesting little book on a subject concerning which not much has been written. The author includes chapters on ' Superseded Churches of the West and South,' Churches in One Churchyard,' and ' Guild, Wayside, and Chantry Chapels.' Her style is sentimental and unnecessarily verbose. Abund- ance of detail recalling the piety of the past is, however, provided, and there is a good supply of illustrations from photographs. Many of the stories of monuments are such as are ignored by all except a few zealous antiquaries.
 * Ruined Churches in Norfolk and Suffolk,' ' Two

We hope that a further volume continuing the subject may appear from the same hand. There are plenty of examples in England which cannot be mentioned in a small book of 106 pages. The beautiful St. Catherine's Chapel with a stone roof, for instance, which crowns the little hill in front of Abbotsbury in Dorset, is well worth notice ; and the same place contains a finely buttressed monastic barn of great size and spacious- ness, which shows the massive work of the fifteenth-century builder. If the author had restrained her gift for quoting verse, often of no great merit, and uttering " improving " remarks, and thought of making an index, we should have been better pleased.

The Heroine, by Eaton Stannard Barrett, has been reprinted in a comely form by Mr. Frowde. That this success of 1813 will be widely read is hardly to be expected, but the book has a good deal of interest for students of letters, and all that* can be said for it is so well said by Prof. Raleigh in his Introduction that readers are likely to be tempted to read on. The adventures of Cherubina are by no means devoid of wit and high spirits, if once we can, as Prof. Raleigh says, " accept the perilously slender illusion " of the story. At his best, the author breaks through, the formal veil of the literary manner and becomes; pointed and natural. He makes pretty play with the verse he includes, and is deservedly- lauded for his Johnsonian parody in Letter X.

IN the new series of 'Cambridge County Geographies,' Kent, Essex, Surrey, and Sussex, all the work of Mr. George F. Bosworth, and Norfolk- and Suffolk, the work of Mr. W. A. Dutt, have- appeared. These brief volumes which contain physical and geological maps, diagrams, and a num- ber of general illustrations are decidedly bright, and attractive, while within the limits assignee! they afford an excellent basis for more detailed! study. Each contains some account of the famous men of the county, climate, and administration, regarding geography, indeed, in a very different light from the jejune handbooks of an earlier genera- tion. We hope that these books will be generally taken up in schools, and serve to foster a more general interest in a country full of attractions, of which the ordinary man as a rule knows little.

The Burlington Magazine for July opens with an important editorial on ' A Purchase Fund for Works of Art,' in which it is suggested that such a. fund ought to be largely a Government affair, and might be entrusted to the -care of the First Com- missioner of Works, since a Committee is an unsatisfactory body to negotiate the purchase of an important work of art. It is further suggested that a body of acknowledged experts should be asked to draw up lists of masterpieces which ought to be bought for the nation. An authentic work of Jaques Daret, painted in 1434, is described, and! illustrated by a full-page plate. Other plates con- cern six ladies in the portrait exhibition in Paris,, criticized by M. Andre" PeratS in continuance of his; article in the June number. Mr. E. A. Jones; notices a large catalogue of drinking horns, silver cups, and spoons in the National Museum at Copenhagen. The cups, as is shown by several illustrations, are particularly fine. Some early- Portuguese paintings are also figured and described by Mr. Herbert Cook, revealing a source of art which is little known at present. ' Pictures lately in the Collection of the King of the Belgians ' are also the subject of an interesting article. The Hobbema, 'Cottages under Oaks,' is a delightful picture, which was once in an English collector's hands. Messrs. Morris & Co. write concerning the appreciation of their Arras tapestry work that the " closing of the looms" is not at present in contem- plation, though the sale of the tapestries "barely compensates for the loss involved in training workers, of whom only a minority arrive at fruition." The work at Merton Abbey certainly deserves wider recognition. The various notes and reviews exhibit that expert touch on which we are able to rely in The Burlington, and which gives it a secure position among real lovers of art.