Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/514

 424 NOTES AND QUERIES, no- s. iv. NOV. 25.1905. book, it will be remembered, teems with th sayings of Sydney Smith. Among thos quoted is his telling Rogers of " a very od •dream " he had had on the previous night " that there were thirty-nine Muses and nin Articles, and my head is still quite confuse< about them." In noticing Herbert Spencer's ' Principle of Psychology1 on the 1st of March th reviewer " cannot help one reflection. Whatever pain ma be felt at finding so remarkable an intellect on th side of opinions which most readers must regard a opposed to their most cherished convictions, ther will be a counterbalancing pleasure and a higl moral influence in the contact with a mind s< thoroughly earnest and sincere in the search afte truth as every page of this work shows Mr. Spence be." On the 15th Walt Whitman's 'Leave of Grass' receives summary treatment: "I the * Leaves of Grass' should come into anybody's possession, our advice is to throw them instantly behind the fire." On the 22nd Grote is congratulated on his completion of his history of Greece "from the days of Homer to the death o Alexander":— " Portions of his vast subject will hereafter receive additional inquiry, and be placed in a new and fuller light, and his thoughts will fructify anc expand in the minds of other men ; but it will be long before the work, as a whole, can be superseded, and his history will remain to many generations at a monument of learning, of wisdom, and of pene- tration." On the same date a review of Singer's 4 Shakespeare' states :— " It is not creditable to English men of letters that a satisfactory edition of England's greatest ipoet should still be a desideratum ; yet every student must admit the mortifying fact There are many causes of the many failures—the principal cause, •however, and that which brings all the others in its train, is the mediocrity of the men who have under- taken the task. Even in the case of Johnson, Pope, and Campbell, this sweeping charge of mediocrity >is applicable, for these men, remarkable as they were, were but mediocre in their knowledge of Elizabethan literature and of the dramatic art. No dramatist has ever set himself to the task—no man •of special knowledge and great intellectual power has thought it worthy of his labours, or thought himself competent to undertake it. The difficulties we admit to be very great. It is indispensable •that whoever engages in the work should be familiar with much more than the Elizabethan literature. He must- know the Spanish drama, and the early drama of France and Italy, and he must be a -•dramatic critic." The subject of Mrs. Fitzherbert and •George IV. has been recently revived through the publication of the work by Mr. Wilkins. The Saturday Review of the 29th of March notices the memoirs of the Hon. Charles Langdale, who had set his heart upon the production of the_papers deposited at Coutts's, to which Mr. Wilkins, by permission of King Edward, has had access. Mrs. Fitzherbert's executors, Sir George Seymour and Mr. Forster, objected: "They urged that those papers only proved the marriage of Mrs. Fitzherbert with the Prince—a thing which for many years past has never been disputed." In the book appear the letters from the Duke of Wel- lington to Lord Stourton, refusing his con- sent to the publication of the papers con- tained in the packet:— " I do protest most solemnly against the measure proposed by your Lordship—that of breaking the seals affixed to the packet of papers belonging to the late Mrs. Fitzherbert, deposited at Messrs Coutts the bankers, under the several seals of the i/arl of Albemarle, your Lordship, and myself." Victor Hugo's 'Les Contemplations' re- ceives high eulogy in the number for the 26th of June :— '.' We owe a debt of unmixed gratitude to the exile at Guernsey for the rich banquet of poetry of which it has been our privilege to partake. That we are not singular in our opinion as to its worth may be gathered from the fact that the first edition of the Contemplations' was exhausted on the day of publication." In the review of 'The Angel in the House' on the llth of October, Coventry Patmore is recognized as "a true poet." The work 'deserves to be read and remembered not jecause it is exempt from faults, but because t is unmistakably the production of a poet.' • A ^ook, which forras " Part of the nation's .itle-deeds to greatness," Capt. M'Clure's Discovery of the North-West Passage,' is noticed on the 8th of November :— uiThe ^h?le 8tory is to the last degree grand and noble, and it suffers nothing in the hand of iu larrator If, during the late war. our navy had ew opportunities for performing brilliant achieve- lents, we may console ourselves by the reflecti™ hat one exploit, at any rate, was performed by intish seamen, which neither Nelson nor Collini- •ood has excelled." ' Aurora Leigh ' is the subject of a long rticle on the 27th of December, and severely riticized, but, notwithstanding the defects of the poem Mrs. rowning has more fully than ever proved that «be a poetess. The fable, the manners, and the iction, are, as it has been said, more than qneation- ble; but after eliminating the story, the eccen ricities of the actors, and a great part of Uw lalogue, there will remain an abundant store of oetical thought, of musical language, and of dea> nd true reflection." On the same date the reviewer of • Barry
 * ' then I shall not take off my boots." Th