Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/207

 US. 1. MAR. 5, 1910.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

199


 * Big Klaus, 7 in the same volume, may be

mentioned as another adaptation of a folk- tale which is widely known in the Old

! World. M. P.

ALIPORE will find the fairy tale about the ' Four Winds in Andersen's ' Garden of I Paradise, 2 printed in ' Tales for the Young.' ! My edition is dated 1847. J. D.

[W. A. H.. D. O., and Miss ETHEL M. TURNER
 * also thanked for replies.]

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Newly translated by

E. E. C. Gomme. (Bell & Sons.) WITH a proper appreciation of what the progress of knowledge demands, Messrs. BeH have resolved to supersede the edition of ' The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ' which has long held the post of honour in the Antiquarian department of their " Bohn's Library " by a new translation from the com- petent hands of Mr. Gomme. Having before him the critical editions of the text and annota- tions provided by Prof. Earle and Mr. Plummer, he has naturally been able to produce a greatly improved version. He agrees with his predecessors in holding that the early part of the famous Chronicle which recounts the invasions of the Danes was probably written by King Alfred himself. The statement that in the year 883 this enterprising monarch sent alms all the way to the Christians in India is remarkable.

An admirably full Index has been adapted from .Mr. Plummer's edition, but it is occasionally at fault. The entry, e.g., just referred to is indexed as " India, 183, E," instead of " India, 883, A." Mr. Gomme gives up as an insoluble crux what is to be understood by the " bone " of a ship of King Griffin's which was brought as a trophy to Harold (sub anno 1063). We venture to suggest that it was a sail, and that the word is the original of the diminutival form bonet (in Langland), a species of sail known later as a " bonnet." In the Introduction " future " (p. vi,) is surely a mistake for " present." Moreover, the promise (p. 207) that the terms sac and soc and infangenthef, &c., will be explained in the Index is not made good.

Tin: Nemesis of literary masterpieces has over- lakcn Ksntond. which the- Clarendon Press now I publish in a students' edition, with prolegomena (critical and historical), notes, and appendixes by .Messrs. T. C. and W. Snow, and an introduc- tion, reprinted from "The Oxford Thackeray," "jy Prof. Saintsbury. The notes, adapted to the I tin- pupil-candidate for examination, \plain everything explicable, yet, full to over- flowing as they (very properly) are, make good reading. Like other great masters of romance, notably Shakespeare and Scott, Thackeray paid little heed to consistency in detail, or fidelity to the minutiee of history. Minor discrepancies and small errors of fact occur in Esmond's narrative, nd where they appear the teacher is bound to notice them, for " facts are facts, and when they

are mentioned they must be put right. But " in the words of the editors' gracefully apologetic Preface " the essential Thackeray is no more concerned with them than the essential Shake- speare with the date of Aristotle and the geo- graphy of Bohemia."

We must not wonder, therefore, to find Thacke- ray, in the Preface, placing Rachel Esmond's death in 1736, while at the close of the story she is still living in 1742 ; or relating young Frank's courtship of Mrs. Mountford hi 1704 just a year after that elderly charmer's decease ; or locating Walcote now near Wells and again near Winchester ; or describing Lady Dorchester (nee Sedley) as " Tom Killigrew's daughter." Even when we read that Irish Teague of the Royal Cravats, on hearing Esmond whistle ' Lillibullero ' (the popular an ti- Jacobite tune), bade " God bless " his Honour, we need not marvel overmuch. Such " twink- lings of oblivion " and they are fairly numerous are, after all, but the momentary respites demanded by the mind's eye, fatigued with the effort of its steady gaze on the panorama of the story ; and Thackeray, were he challenged in respect of such lapses, might well reply, " When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see." The very brilliance of the inward light tends, as in the case of sun-pictures, to obliterate the sharp out- lines of the detail.

In the autograph MS. of ' Esmond,' which lies in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, the chapters have no titles. This accounts for a confusion which the present writer remembers puzzling over on his first perusal of the book : the title of chap. i. describes the contents of chap, ii., and vice versa, that of chap. ii. the events of chap. i. The titles must (observe the editors, who are indebted to Prof. Henry Jackson for information respecting the MS.) " have been added without looking at the text, because the title of chap. iii. suits only the present order.'* In the famous episode of the interview between Henry Boyle and Addison on the subject of ' The Campaign,' Addison is represented as quoting Ovid's line, " Hac ibat Simois, hie est Sigeia tellus," and, almost in the same breath, the words " aliquo praelia mixta niero." These have not been traced to their source, and the editors suggest that they are an imperfect reminiscence of a verse three lines below the line from the ' Hero ides ' cited by Addison just before -" Pingit et exiguo Pergama tota mero " adding that " aliquo mero " is very doubtful Latin for " a little wine." But in view of the fact that he had already introduced this very phrase some pages above ( ' ' So Esmond .... drew the river on the table, aliquo mero" &c.), is it not more likely that Thackeray here recalls the .very words of some school exercise or University Prize poem, his own or another's words framed, of course, on the pattern of Ovid's pentameter ? On this occasion it is that Addison, after Boyle's departure, repeats: to Esmond the line, " I puff the prostitute [Fortune] away," from Dryden's spirited version of Horace, Od. III. xxix. an ode which, as many A place in the novels testifies, was never very long 'absent from Thackeray's mind, and from which he had already borrowed a phrase, " sevo laeta negotio," to characterize Beatrix at the age of thirteen.

The editors devote six pages to the discussion of the means employed in ' Esmond ' to produce an illusion of the period of Queen Anne. These