Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/578

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NOTES AND QUERIES. 110 s. vm. DEC. u, 1907.

Press, we need add no more to encourage the judi- cious booklover. The form and editing of the series are alike excellent, a piece of that fine printing for which the Oxford Press is famous all the world over. Mr. Brett has an easy task with Prof. Elton's ' Critical Study ' on Drayton to rely on for his Introduction. As for the text itself, many of the sonnets reach a level high enough to show that the best known of them, beginning

Since there 's no helpe, come let us kiss and part, is by no means an inexplicable phenomenon to be credited to Shakespeare because it is too good for Drayton. There are undoubted "longueurs" in Drayton's muse, but he has at best that compact yet pregnant method of expression which was the gift of the great Elizabethans.

MESSKS. LONGMAN have added to their attractive " Pocket Library " The Wrong Box, an amusing fantasia which is the delight of Stevensonians, arid ought also to have a wide appeal to the general public.

The National Review this month is violently and not very convincingly anti - German. Mr. J. L. Garvin's paper on 'The Falsehood of Extremes' deals with the prospect of Tariff Reform, and does not seem to us a good specimen of an attractive writer's work. The Poet Laureate's effusion ' How can One serve One's King ? ' is respectable verse, but certainly not inspired. 'Some First Impres- sions of a London Season ' are considered by " A Debutante," who has freshness, and, we should say, a zeal for culture rmich beyond the average society lady. Many civilians will sympathize with her note on the airs which young army men give themselves. Canon Ellacombe has the most interesting article of the number in 'Church Restoration,' a thing which, he points out, was unheard-of in earlier times, when men had no reverence for the earlier designs on which they imposed their new fabric or ideas. ' Oxford University Life in the Seventeenth Century,' by Lady Newton, ought to be interest- ing, but the title is absurdly big for a few extracts of unimportant letters concerning Brasenose in 1608-11. These few pages are mo_stly concerned with accounts, and tell us very little. In ' The State and the Family ' the editor of The Spectator contends that the old Poor Law in Early Victorian times produced a state of demoralization among the recipients of relief which is a warning, and he strongly advises people to peruse the report of the Poor Law Commission of 1834.

The Burlington Magazine opens with a repro- duction of Renoir's picture of ' Madame Charpen- tier and her Children,' a charming picture which was last spring secured for the United States at 92,000 francs, and which is criticized by that ac- complished critic M. L. Be"nedite. Two delightful little pieces by Wilkie in the Tate Gallery are the subject of a note by Mr. D. S. MacColl; and American painting is represented by Mr. R. H. Brandegree's 'Portrait of Miss Sarah Porter.' ' Some Italian Medals,' by Mr. M. Rosenheim and Mr. G. F. Hill, includes a medal presenting, apparently, Sir John Cheke, the well-known English scholar, as "Joannes Chekius." It was struck at Padua, where he is known to have stayed. The editorial comments continue the subject of the decorations of the Palace of West- minster.

ALEXANDER SMITH. The Glasgow Herald has the following concerning one of our contributors : "We record with regret the death of Mr. Alex- ander Smith, 45, Millbrae Road, Glasgow, which took place suddenly on the afternoon of Sunday [17 November]. Mr. Smith, who was in his seven- tieth year, belonged to Argyle shire. Early in life he came to Glasgow, where he was trained to busi- ness, and for the past forty years he was accountant to Young's Paraffin and Mineral Light Company. Mr. Smith was a man of a retiring disposition, and it was only by a select circle of friends that he was known as an earnest and devoted student. As an authority on Old English literature he was widely recognized. He wrote a number of articles for The Glasgow Herald on literary and antiquarian sub- jects, and for over thirty years he was a regular contributor to Notes and Queries. He was a member of the Glasgow Hunterian Club, and was chiefly responsible for the editing of a number of reprints which they have issued. He also edited and printed for private circulation a number of little-known old plays, tracts, and pamphlets. Among his friends and correspondents were the late Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, the late J. Payne Collier, and the late Dr. David Laing; and Mr. Edmund Gosse was usually his guest on the occasion of his visits to the city. Of his literary friends in America the chief were the late Prof. Albert Smith, Philadelphia, and Mr. Horace Howard Furness, who in his preface to his ' Variorum Shakespeare ' acknowledged his in- debtedness to Mr. Smith."

THE REV. DR. SMYTHE PALMER will shortly pub- lish with Messrs. Routledge & Sons ' The Ideal Gentleman,' forming a new volume of "The London Library." It consists of a long series of literary extracts dealing with the character of a gentleman as depicted in literature from the earliest period.

Jlottaa to Comapontonts.

We must call special attention to the following notices :

ON all communications must be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for pub- lication, but as a guarantee of good faith.

To secure insertion of communications corre- spondents must observe the following rules. Let each note, query, or reply be written on a separate slip of paper, with the signature of the writer and such address as he wishes to appear. When answer- ing queries, or making notes with regard to previous entries in the paper, contributors are requested to put in parentheses, immediately after the exact heading, the series, volume, and page or pages to which they refer. Correspondents who repeat qiieries are requested to head the second com- munication " Duplicate."

C. DRURY ("Chemists' Coloured Glass Bottles"). See 10 S. v. 168, 231, 356.

CORRIGENDA. Ante, p. 425, col. 1, 1. 14 from foot, for "Luisisana" read Quisisana. P. 457, col. 1, 1. 27, for "wrist" read waist.

NOTICE.

We beg leave to state that we decline to return communications which, for any reason, we do not print, and to this rule we can make no exception.