Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/119

 ii B. xii. AUG. 7, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Oxford Literary and Historical Studies. Vol. V. Henry Tubbe. By G. C. Moore Smith. (Ox- ford, "Clarendon Press, 6s. Qd. net.)

Ix ' N. & Q.' for 2 Nov., 1861, Mr. Thorns, the editor, suggested the pxiblication of the literary remains of Henry Tubbe from the MSS. in the British Museum. He was warranted in his assumption that these possess genuine interest, both for their native quality and on account of their undoubted value as illustrative products. Tubbe was obviously a personality, a man with mental resources of considerable range and with a sturdy, independent character ; and, had his health and opportunities been favourable to his full development, he might have figured in his day more conspicuously than it was his lot to do. He saw the end of the Civil War may even have witnessed the execution of Charles I. and he was a consistent and ardent Royalist, who frankly reprobated Cromwell and deplored the existence of the Commonwealth. Son of Capt. John Tubbe, who fell in active service in the Nether- lands, Henry Tubbe was born at Southampton in 1618, and owing to ancestral relations was closely associated with the noble families of Essex and Southampton. His widowed mother, having settled at Croydon, died while he and his only brother were boys. Beared under the supervision of the local vicar, the lads, after leaving Croydon school, went their separate ways, Henry the elder graduating at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1642, and Robert the younger going to sea. After his academic days, Henry Tubbe probably was tutor for a brief period in the Spencer family, and he certainly held some post for a time with the Marquis of Hertford, at Essex House, Strand. Then he became tutor in the family of John Tuf ton, second Earl of Thanet, this service closing his career. All along, he had written voluminously, both in prose and verse. Evidence is lacking as to his last days and the place of his death, but he passed away in 1655.

It is appropriate that the suggestion made by our first editor regarding Tubbe's literary ex- periments should have had its sequel in the work now accomplished by one of our own contributors. Prof. Moore Smith is heartily to be congratulated on the result of his obviously patient and system- atic labours. He has utilized the best sources of information on his subject ; he has turned Tubbe's letters to admirable account ; and in his selection from his writings he no doubt proffers what is representative of the author at his best. The letters reveal an energetic, essentially kindly man, who had a quick eye for natural beauty, keenly appreciated true friendship, and was fiercely impatient over what he considered dis- loyalty and injustice. Besides showing his author's prose quality from his letters, Prof. Moore Smith illustrates it yet further from a character study of 'A Rebell. ' a strong, vehement, and uncompromising delineation and by some extracts from his ' Meditations Divine and Moral.' The chief feature of the miscellany, however, is its group of notable poems personal tributes, discursive studies, satirical diatribes, and so forth. These exercises, though rather

crude, show some measure of poetic conception and fervour, and a sense of form. The author evidently favoured the heroic couplet, and manages it vigorously, if somewhat roughly. Stimulated by Cleveland, Randolph, and others, Tubbe exercised a satirical gift that might have been disciplined into a forcible and trenchant weapon. His un- chastened powers are characteristically revealed in his meditation ' On the Silk-worme,' and his extremely realistic pictures of ' The Gray-Friars/ Sir Anthony Weldon, and ' The Dominical Nose of Oliver Cromwell.' In his gentler moods, Tubbe is a placid, respectable lyrist, but in his satires he is a rhetorical hater of exceptional strength and resource, and a valuable witness for the existence of unswerving loyalty in his time. Thus it is well to have him represented as he is in this judiciously edited volume.

Prof. Moore Smith has not always found Tubbe's text quite easy to handle. In his notes, however, he shows that he has left nothing undone towards- elucidation of difficulties, and when baffled he frankly states his position. He thinks Tubbe

robably contemplated marriage with Penelope ymcots, but in this view he perhaps somewhat strains the emotional fervour of the poet's memorial eulogy. As he hesitates about "Sir John himself " in the Grayfriars poem, it may be tentatively suggested that "Sir John Presbyter "" is the personage in question. In ' A Debate con- cerning the Engagement ' " the woemens charitie " is a doubtful phrase, but perhaps the reference is to the spirit described in Jonsoii's ' Alchemist,' II. ii., which makes widows give legacies and zealous wives " rob their husbands for the common cause." The " Oath of Adjuration," with which the same poem closes, may be defended as suitable to the tone of the satire. " ' The Alchemist,' II. i." and not "II. ii." should have been the reference in the note on 1. 192 of the elaborate and vivacious onslaught on Cromwell.

The Fortnightly Review, except for two articles only, is devoted to the war and the divers questions arising out of it, and even the two exceptions are connected closely and by no fanciful links with the one absorbing subject. The first is the con- cluding part of Dr. Brandes's ' Study of Napoleon/ Dealing with some of the less familiar traits of le petit caporal, and illustrated by little known anec- dotes, it will be found a mo re valuable contribution than the former part. Mr. S. P. B. Mais gives us the second an appreciation of the work and, in some- degree, of the personality of Rupert Brooke. There hangs about this article an aroma of before the war ; its method and the incidence of its praise, even to the comparison with Donne, have the slightly unhappy look of a last year's, fashion ; and we confess that we think the point of view characteristic of the time to which it belongs will, upon the return of peace, be super- seded by something better. But, in spite of this, the essay is clever and interesting, and welcome is any one who has anything fresh to say about Rupert Brooke. One other paper we may mention, seeing that it has some literary and academic as well as political interest, Mr. Sydncy Brooks's ' The War of Contrasts,' a suggestive description of English and German character and tendencies, designed to explain the intensity of German hatred of England, and the comparative nonchalance of the English attitude towards Germany.