Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/242

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. SEPT. 3, 190*.

bv President Cleveland. It was published by W. B. Conkey & Co., of Chicago. Its editor was an Englishman, Charles H. Capern, the only son of Edward Capern, the Bideford rural postman poet, who died 4 June, 1894, aged seventy-five, and is buried in Heaton Punchardon (North Devon) Churchyard. Let into the upper part of the Dartmoor granite headstone that marks the spot is the actual postman's bell this singularly endowed genius used to carry upon his daily rounds. HARRY HEMS.

BROOM SQUIRES (10 th S. ii. 145). As a lad I often watched besom-makers at work in Derbyshire lanes. They made the besoms in broom and birch, and one man finished off those made of broom by evenly cutting the ends, and the rest called him the broom- squarer. This was work which required a deft hand and a sharp knife. The besoms made of birch were left with un trimmed ends, and were used for side-sweeping, or drawing together loose corn on barn floors, while the others were used as the ordinary sweeping-brush is used. It would be well if every county could be treated as Gertrude Jekyll deals with " Old West Surrey."

THOS. HATCLIFFE.

SCOTCH WORDS AND ENGLISH COMMENTA- TORS (10 th S. i. 261, 321, 375, 456 ; ii. 75). Does not this surpass the "flight of MR. BAYNE'S reviewer far enough to deserve record in ' N. & Q.' ? It is the opening sentence in an advance notice of a book about New York City, written by a Westerner, who can tell more about Manhattan Island than is known by most of its lifelong residents : " The 4 Gif tie ' is about to ' gie ' us the power for which Eobert Burns sighed in vain."

M. C. L.

New York.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Christopher Marlowe and hi* Associates. By John

H. Ingram. (Grant Richards.) THE difficulties which beset the writer of a life of Christopher Marlowe are almost as great as those to which innumerable would-be biographers of Shakespeare have succumbed. But few facts or traditions are in existence, and such as survive are distasteful to those who think that moral short- coming. or even the unrestrained impetuosity of youth, is irreconcilable with the possession of the most eminent poetical and imaginative gifts. In the case of Shakespeare, the resented legends which show him chasing the king's deer, contending with rivals for easily won and cheaply awarded female favours, or leaving behind him in Oxford, on his way to London from Stratford, a child by the handsome wife of a vintner and publican rest

on the allegations or insinuations of such men of later date as Wood, Oldys, and Aubrey. With- Marlowe the case is different. The charges brought against him are those of contemporaries and intimates, and evidence is forthcoming that the Privy Council concerned itself about his doings,, and, to put things mildly, was nowise contented with his proceedings. No more satisfactory to- Mr. Ingram is the direct evidence of Marlowe's associates than were let us say to Halliwell- Phillipps-the allegations and insinuations of the collectors of gossip, and a main purpose of the new life of Marlowe is to brand with malignancy or mendacity those on whose shoulders rest the worst charges against the poet. Holding widely different views from Mr. Ingram as to the necessity of moral and intellectual worth running side by side, as it were in a curricle, we find his arguments speciali pleading, and rise from the perusal of his work a., trifle resentful and wholly unconvinced. That his- book is interesting, agreeable, and erudite we con- cede ; we yield in no respect to him in admiration, of Marlowe's genius, and we have read with interest and admiration the analyses of works by which we were spell-bound much more than half a cen- tury ago. That the character of Marlowe is white- washed by these labours we do not hold. It is not to- vindicate a man to call him, by &petitio principii, "the gentle, kind, youthful Cantab." Such an* epithet might have suited Shelley had his univer- sity been Cambridge instead of Oxford ; but, though both men were alike in the attitude of revolt, we find nothing in the earlier to justify the use of such terms. The only way of exalting Marlowe is by depreciating his assailants. Greene's ' Groat's- worth of Wit' is called by Mr. Ingram apparently, since it is in quotation marks, at second hand " that crazy death-bed wail of a weak and malignant spirit." Greene was not, indeed, very highly prized) by his fellows, and Richard Simpson, in his ' School) of Shakespeare,' rates his character almost as low- as Mr. Ingram. The accusations brought against. Marlowe in the Harleian MSS. are treated as- doubtful. Baines's 'Letter' is called Baines's libel.. Beard's 'Theatre of God's Judgments' is spoken of as "one of the filthiest of the evil-minded school to which it owes its origin." Again, it is called "Beard's bestial book." All who write against Marlowe are, indeed, disparaged or discredited. By proceedings such as this it is, of course, possible to establish Villon as moral and Marot as chaste. We hold no brief against Marlowe, and have no objection to being convinced of the falsehood of the-, accusations against him. We think, however,, the labour that is undertaken is unremunerative- and futile. From the point of view of criticism Mr. Ingram's work is excellent; it is handsomely got up and well illustrated. No portrait of Marlowe is known to exist. The frontispiece consists of a Dulwich portrait of Edward Alleyn. Other por- traits are of Tom Hobson, the Cambridge Carrier ; Matthew Parker; Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork; Charles Howard, the High Admiral ; Shakespeare ;. Drayton ; Raleigh; Chapman; and the Earls of" Northumberland and Pembroke. Other illustra- tions are of Canterbury, Cambridge, and Deptford.

Studies in Dante. Third Series. By Edward Moore,

D.D. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) IN the third series of his ' Studies in Dante ' Canorv Moore departs from both the previous series, but leans, however, rather to the second than the first..