Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/99

 io">s. in. JAX. 28, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

IA" (10 th S. ii. 527 ; iii. 36). The preface in question is an abridged text of 'A Character of the late Elia,' which appeared in The London Magazine for Janu- ary, 1823. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt includes this in his collection of ' Essays and Criticisms by Thomas Griffiths Wainewright,' remarking that it "has a strong smack of Lamb's peculiar style, but, on the other hand, it agrees much in manner with the concluding portion of Wainewright's undoubted paper, 'Janus Weatherbound.'" Mr. Bertram Dobell discusses the matter in his ' Side-Lights on Charles Lamb,' and decides in favour of the view that the preface is by Lamb himself. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford. Arranged and edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee. Vols. IX.-XII. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

A THIRD instalment of four volumes has been added to Mrs. Paget Toynbee's definitive edition of Wai- pole's letters, leaving but one further instalment, also of four volumes, to appear. Little more than six months has elapsed since vols. v.-viii. were given to the world (see 10 th S. i. 498), so by the middle of a year still new we may hope to be in possession of the completed work. The period covered is 1774-83. Sir Horace Mann remains the chief correspondent, though the Hon. Seymour Conway and the Rev. William Mason run him close, and the Countess of Upper Ossory springs into prominence. Among promiscuous letters is one to George Colman, complimenting: him, with more zeal, we should suppose, than sincerity, upon his translation of Horace's ' Art of Poetry.' Some of the letters to Madame du Deffand appear for the first time. Walpole, of course, knows French well enough. His style, however, in his French correspondence is not specially vivacious. The new portraits which are supplied are of much interest. A frontispiece to vol. ix. shows Horace Walpole, from a plaque in Battersea enamel from the South Kensington Museum : that to vol. x. exhibits Wal- pole and Mrs. Darner, from a painting by Angelica Kauffmann, in the possession of Earl Waldegrave. Another volume has for frontispiece the cha- racteristic picture of Walpole from the National Portrait Gallery, reproducing a drawing by Dance. Other portraits are George IV. when Prince of Wales, by Reynolds : Gainsborough's Frances Seymour Conway, Countess of Lincoln ; Reynolds's First Baron Heathfield, Mr. William Windham, Admiral Keppel, and the Rev. William Mason ; Dance's First Baron Clive and Lord North ; Gainsborough's Mrs. Robinson ; and Romney's Elizabeth Berkeley, Baroness Craven. There are in addition other designs, facsimiles, &c. Up to the close of May, 1783, 2,413 letters are printed as against 2,247 in Cunningham. We have already spoken in commendation of the arrange- ment and the notes, and can only pronounce this

edition worthy of its author and the great repre- sentative press by which it is issued.

Brownings Men and Women. Edited by Basil Worsfold. Vols. 1. and II. (De La More Press.) THOCOH uniform in shape and appearance with " The King's Classics," to which we have frequently drawn attention, these two volumes of Browning's poems belong to a different series, entitled "The King's Poets." Neither less dainty nor less valu- able are they than the works with which they are associated, and they are likely to prove no less- popular, being excellent in all typographical re- spects, well edited, and carefully annotated. Each, volume has a capital portrait, that to the first con- sisting of a striking and beautiful, if rather senti- mentalized, design by Field Talfourd, and that to the second of Watts's better-known and more virile likeness. In the first volume is also a clever and highly appreciative introduction, mainly critical, but to a certain extent biographical : to the lattec are affixed many excellent notes. Among Brown- ing's poems, 'Men and Women' are notable in many respects, and in none more, perhaps, than in that they constitute a species of response to the ' Sonnets frjm the Portuguese,' perhaps Mrs. Browning's most remarkable utterance. These two pretty volumes are equally suited for the library and boudoir, and introduce very agreeably what promises to be a delightful collection.

The Poetical Works of ElLabeth Barrett Browning.

(Frowde.)

OF the one-volume editions of the poets which we owe to the taste and enterprise of Mr. Frowde this will be probably the most acceptable. During many years Mrs. Browning's poems were in their entirety all but inaccessible to the general reader ; and when we were first the happy possessors of an edition, the seventh, published in 1866, we found a difficulty in. selecting for companionship precisely the poem we wanted. That perplexity is now over, since we can carry with us, with no sense of weight and discom- fort, the entire works. That Mrs. Browning is, since Sappho, the most inspired of poetesses may perhaps be maintained. Had her artistic sense - been equal to her sympathies and perceptions there is no saying what position she might not have occupied. The present complete edition has a por- trait from a photograph after a drawing by Talfourd. In our perusal we have come across a rather obvious, but embarrassing misprint on p. 213, stanza xciii. 1. 4, where the substitution of "he" for the renders the verse unintelligible. The volume deserves, and will obtain, a warm welcome.

Famous Sayings and their Authors. By Edward

Latham. (Sonnenschein Co.) Dictionary of Battles. By T. Benfield Harbottle-.

(Same publishers.)

Two additions have been made to the useful and now rapidly enlarging series of reference dic- tionaries. The first, which is by that indefatig- able gleaner in the field Mr. Latham, whose name is familiar in our pages, is announced as a ' Col- lection of Historical Sayings in English, French, German, Greek, Italian, and Latin.' Its compila- tion has obviously been a matter of difficulty and labour, and the result is satisfactory. Very many of the sayings advanced are the reputed last words of their authors. Nothing, as the compiler knows, is much more fallacious-