Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/484

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. x. DEC. 12,

Tic Look of Sussex Verse. Edited by C. F. Cook. Foreword by Arthur Bell. (Hove, Combridges, 2s. net.)

NEARLY every anthology of verse upon some aspect of nature, or pertaining to some country or some chosen corner of the world, if it includes examples from the eighteenth or earlier centuries, shows at its sharpest the divergence between our own vision of nature and that of our forbears. We do not remember to have seen this contrast anywhere brought out more vividly than in this little collection of poems about Sussex. The beauty of Sussex, one may say, is of that simple and yet subtle order which it takes a man of this generation fully to see and to express. That sense of intimate, even passionate affection, not for one's country as a whole, but for this or that mood of her as revealed in this or that of her tracts, which breathes now in the work of many poets (and, for example, in Mr. Bell's Foreword to this volume), arose first in the North, and made us attentive to beauty of a savage and impressive kind. We were first taught to feel, and then to tell effectively, a love for " Caledonia, stern and wild," for the scenery of the lakes, and for landscapes, such as those of the West, which resemble these. But the new sensitiveness to the wild earth has made us listen more and more eagerly for ever fresh tones of her voice, and expressions of her countenance, and nowhere has she proved herself, to the peculiar temperament of men in our time, more compelling than in Sussex. It may, indeed, be thought by those who are real children of that soil that the poets of other blood who have cele- brated her have even yet only half discovered (or, at any rate, half revealed) her ; but it is astonishing to compare their intimacy, the dis- tinctiveness of their vision of her, and their vital response to this, with the affectionate descriptions and moralizings of earlier generations, in which mere words and a conventional literary attitude make up most of the piece.

Nearly all the best things here are already familiar to every one. There are, however, some verses about Rowfant by Andrew Lang, a sonnet by Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Rosamund Marriott \Val- son's ' On the Downs,' and Mr. Laurence Binyon's ' Thunder on the Downs,' as well as three or four poignant, dreamy things by Mr. Arthur Bell, which may not be known to so many readers as the work of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, or Francis Thompson, or Mr. Hilaire Belloc. Of another sort (and welcome) is Horace Smith's ' Brighton." The more tragic aspect of Brighton was essayed (with rather uncertain touch) by F. W. H. Myers in a poem \vhich is in- cluded here. Graveyards and registers have yielded their quota, and we get a sprinkling of legends, as well as an example or two of Sussex songs. The Cade scene from ' 2 Henry VI.' is given because, though the play would have it in Kent, Iden's capture of Cade really took place in Sussex, near Heathfield. Our readers may re- member a letter on this subject by Mark Anthony Lower, communicated to ns last April by our correspondent MR. W. L. KING (11 S. ix. 2SI). A timely touch occurs unexpectedly in the song

from the Pepys Collection at Cambridge " A most sweet Song of an English Merchant born in Chichester " is the title of it as thus :

A rich merchantman there was,

That was both grave and wise,

Did kill a man in Embden town

Through quarrels that did arise. The merchantman is saved by the rather out- rageous affection of a German girl, whom he brings to England as his bride. But the much- belaboured censor was already at work, it seems, over Anglo-German affairs, for the song winds up with

But of their names and dwelling-place

I must not here recite.

A handful of biographical notes dealing with the less well-known among the writers represented will add a good deal to the enjoyment of lovers of Sussex in other parts of the kingdom.

The Structure of ' Le Livre d'Artus ' and its Func- tion in the Evolution of the Arthurian Prose- Romances : a Critical Study in Mediceval Litera- ture. By H. Oskar Sommer. (Hachette & Co., 3-9.)

DR. SOMMER, long recognized as one of the most industrious and learned critics of the Arthurian cycle, publishes here some conclusions of great importance concerning its early sources. The whole question of these romances is, as most readers know, highly complicated, and the pamphlet before us is only for the specialist. It deals with MS. No. 337 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, which consists of two distinctly dif- ferent fragments. The second of these has been printed by Dr. Sommer ; the first is not yet available in a printed edition. From both, after devoting " a stupendous amount of time and labour to the study of the MS.," Dr. Sommer has- deduced the existence of a huge, single, and coherent compilation which he calls ' Le Livre d'Artus.' He points out with great ingenuity the relations between the two parts of the MS., and what the references in them fairly imply of stories which the whole text formerly contained. Here he uses the evidence of other MSS. So far as we can judge from a highly condensed account, we think that Dr. Sommer's ' Livre d'Artus ' is a likely supposition, though a novel one, and a noteworthy addition to the early sources. Its influence on ' Le Livre de Lancelot ' in the losses and gains of both is an interesting inquiry which Dr. Sommer will doubtless develope at greater length in due course. While fully recognizing the erudition of Dr. Sommer, we feel that his argument would lose nothing if he were less assertive concerning its value.

The Heart of East Anglia. By Ian C. Hannah.

(Heath, Cranton & Co., 7s. 6d. net.) Tins history of Norwich is one of the best of Mr. Hannah's works. It goes deeply into nothing there was no need to do so but it assembles together a well-chosen multitude of pleasant and instructive details, arranged neatly, but without formality, and set off with a style the exuberance of which does not (as we have noticed to be the case in some of his other books) become tiresome. His subject is one that suits him, for its interest is abundant and varied, and original material of a directly quotable sort is also plentiful. From Herbert of Losinga to Borrow, from