Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/577

 io< s. V.JUNE 16, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

477

other Celebrities ' two stanzas (not verses) of John Howard Payne's famous song which "have never before been printed." The two stanzas are reprinted in * N. & Q.' If MR. JENNINGS will turn to 'Stories of Famous Songs,' by S. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald, which was published in London in 1898 by John C. Nimmo, he will find there, at p. 10, the two stanzas which Mr. Mackinlay states "have never before been printed." Fitz-Gerald's book gives a different rendering of the first line of the two stanzas. He prints the line thus :

How sweet, too, to sit 'neath a fond father's smile. Fitz-Gerald's punctuation and that in C N. &Q. are different in nearly every line of the two stanzas under discussion.

FEEDERIC ROWLAND MARVIN. 537, Western Avenue, Albany, N.Y.

G. ROSSETTI'S *TRE RAGIONAMENTI ' (10 th S. v. 428). In the catalogue of the Dante Library of Cornell University (vol. ii. p. 408) the brochure 'La Beatrice di Dante' is entered as having pp. viii + 100, and having the following title : * La Beatrice della Vita Nuqva e una figura allegorica, per confessione e dimostrazione di Dante medesimo.' No later publications by Rossetti are entered.

J. F. R.

MR. McGovERN inquires concerning the 'Tre Ragionamenti' of G. Rossetti (my father). The answer to the inquiry is as follows. The second Ragionamento, and the third, have not yet been printed. Two or three years ago a gentleman well known in Italian literary circles Prof. Ciampoli, the Director of the Victor Emanuel Library in Rome formed a project of publishing in Italy a complete edition of my father's compositions in verse, to be followed, perhaps, by a similar edition of his com- positions in prose. The two Ragiona- menti in question have been placed at the disposal of Prof. Ciampoli, with a view to this contingency of publication.

W. M. ROSSETTI.

LADIES' HEADDRESSES IN THE THEATRE (10 th S. v. 389. 433). My reference should have been to No. 235 of The Spectator, as given by MAJOR BUTTERWORTH.

CHARLES MASEFIELD.

GRAY'S 'ELEGY : ITS TRANSLATIONS (10 th S. v. 428). In the opening lines of the Third Dialogue, published in 1796, of 'The Pur- suits of Literature,' the author tilts in good- humoured fashion at the "cobweb labours" of those scholars who had become tainted \YJth w h$t lie terms "the rage for trans-

lating Gray's 'Elegy into Greek verse," and who took part in the competition re- ferred to by your correspondent. In one of the frank and copious notes Mathias supplies particulars of the scenery and decorations adopted to give an air of realism to the pro- ceedings at the competition, which was held in " the celebrated Music Room, in Hanover Square." He has other allusions in other notes, and quotes from a " review of these famous translations " which appeared in The British Critic for March, 1795, p. 245. He mentions only a few of the competitors, and Dr. Sparke's name is not among them.

JOHN OXBERRY. Gateshead.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama. By Walter

W. Greg, M.A. (Bullen.)

To Mr. Greg we are indebted for a work of remark- able erudition and singular charm. To the con- ditions attendant upon its production, including the manner in which what was originally a small sketch developed into a solid and substantive book, claiming to rank as an authoritative pronounce- ment, is attributable a sense of want of systematic arrangement of which we have to complain. Some ten years ago Mr. Greg's conclusions concerning the pastoral drama in Elizabethan literature formed the subject of a magazine article. In the com- position of this the author became impressed with the fact that the due execution of his self-imposed task involved a knowledge of European pastoralism in general, and learned at the same time that a work from\ which such knowledge was to be obtained did not exist. This deficiency he now attempts to remedy by prefixing to a revision of his first essay an account of pastoral literature gene- rally. So thoroughly has this task been executed that the prefatory matter seems disproportionately large, an impression of lop-sidedness being con- veyed. After an account of the pastoral poetry of Theocritus, Bion, and Mpschus, the eclogues of Virgil, and those of mediaeval times, the opening chapter deals at some length with Italian pastoral poetry and pastoral romance. A second chapter takes us to England, and carries us from Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calender' to Milton's ' Lycidas ' and Browne's ' Britannia's Pastoral.' We then in chap. iii. return to Italy, to the ' Aminta ' of Tasso and the ' Pastor Fido ' of Guarini, and are then in the remaining chapters brought back to Eng- land and the consideration, in the final chapter (vii.), of Milton's masques 'Arcades' and 'Comus.' Excellent is the matter all through, and the book, which may be studied with advantage and read with delight, occupies a high position in modern literary accomplishment. It has none the less a fragmentary appearance, and should, in its author's interest reluctant as we are to counsel such a course be recast and rewritten before going into a second edition.

As regards the pastoral in classic times, among the humanists in Italy, Spain, and England, the work is exemplary in" fulness. In France 'Lea