Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/360

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NO TES AND QUERIES. [ii s. xn. OCT. 30, 1915.

one which, repeated to Scott, at once captured his ear, quick to seize cadences with the true inightly ring in them. We were interested to see Mrs. Hemans making an appearance here. -Of the two poems chosen, the shorter might well have been reduced by the last stanza (since the compiler is by way of making curtailments), and would then have been well worthy a place.

Alongside the well-known classics in this kind of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries we were particularly glad to have the 'lovely ' Epitaph of Dionysia ' of unknown author- .ship ; the strong music of Emerson's ' Dirge,' with his trick of unexpected felicity ; and the examples of Landor, from which, however, rather ^unaccountably, the quatrain " I strove with none " is absent. Finally, we must mention the .inclusion of the one or two curiously constructed epitaphs by the Poet Laureate.

The ' Poems on Animals ' form, we think, a less satisfactory collection. Perhaps the absence of both ' Poor Matthias ' and of ' Kaiser ' may, at a pinch, be forgiven, but what can excuse the omission of ' Geist's Grave ' ? Who cares about Joanna Baillie's kitten, or Robert Southey's ' Poor Phillis ' ? compared with

That liquid, melancholy eye,

From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry,

The sense of tears in mortal things. Still, there are very good things here amid some -dull ones Lamb's ' Irus' faithful wolf-dog,' for example ; two of Calverley's (' The Water Rat ' though, is not one), and Marvell's ' Nymph com- plaining for the Death of her Fawn,' with one or two excerpts from Shakespeare, and the inevitable pieces from Gray and Blake.

The ' Modern Lays and Ballads,' again, is good. Only twenty- three have been brought together, (it having been considered ' impossible to shorten any, and yet desirable to include such lengthy -examples as ' John Gilpin,' ' The Ancient Mariner,' .and ' Eugene Aram.' No doubt hardly any two compilers would have agreed upon just this twenty-three, and in several cases we ourselves
 * should have preferred a substitute ; but the

collection ought to be really useful, and we may mention that it contains, among poems not commonly found in anthologies, Dr. Bridges's 'Screaming Tarn' and Peacock's ' Llyn-y-Dreid- diad-Vrawd.' Browning's ' How they brought the Good News ' appears both here and in the "' Poems on Animals ' rather a waste of space. We look forward to the other volumes announced as "in preparation. "

THE October number of The Edinburgh Review Js one of the best which it has fallen- to us to notice. It contains more than one article worthy not only of careful immediate consideration, but also of a place on the bookshelf for future reference. We .should put among these Mr. Henry Wickham Steed's brilliant interpretation of Austria, an important study which may well serve to correct many misapprehensions. The writer is particularly
 * good in his account of the relations between

Austria and Hungary, and his exposition of the groundlessness of the expectation that it is through the breaking away of Hungary that the Austrian empire will collapse. Another paper -of which the value will survive is Mr. Edmund

Gosse's careful and detailed survey of the ' De- secration of French Monuments,' which not only brings conveniently together what information is now available, but also gives us charming and clear-cut descriptions of the towns destroyed. We fear that all too few Englishmen have realized the preciousness of Senlis or of Meaux (happily preserved), still fewer, perhaps, that of Arras. They may learn of it here. It is refreshing to turn away from the modern world altogether and go back to Greek athletics. Mr. F. A. Wright's article should certainly be made a note of by the classical scholar. It is a clever and very irterest- ing summary of our information on the question, put with originality and point. We would commend it no less to trainers of youth and athletes, Yet, again, in Mr. Lytton Strachey's ' Voltaire and Frederick the Great ' we have a lively and adequate sketch of a highly curious historical episode. A sketch of this kind the subject being compact and of few 1 elements does in many ways better than a book, and we have not often come across a better example than this.

Miss M. D. Petre writes at considerable length and rather cloudily upon ' Christianity and War,' the purport (which would have remained clearer if it could have been more briefly stated) being that war is one of the things* in life which belong to " the elements of its probation, and not of its perfection." An article which we read with much enjoyment is Mr. David Hannay's ' The Humanity of Modern Warfare.' The writer in view of the nature of the weapons now in use is exceedingly dubious as to the chances of war becoming more rather than less human. We" confess we share his doubt, though we think that he somewhat underrates the moral effect of popular criticism, which surely tends towards greater humanity, both with more decision and with more enlightenment than ever before. Mr. J. A. R. Marriott has a very able discussion of the political problems involved in the present crisis, from an academic point of view. Of this we are glad. The influence of the academic point of view in Germany has been the subject of much comment ; but it is rather the corruption of that influence than the fact of it which is to be deplored. It has not perhaps been sufficiently realized that in this country the separation, upon which we seem tacitly to congratulate ourselves, between the academic and the practical views of affairs is in itself a weakness, and that, so far from ac- quiescing in it, we ought to ami at so correcting each that the two may co-operate effectively.

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