Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/379

 ii s. xii. NOV. 6, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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's Journal, and Other Papers. By Austin

Dobson. (Chatto & Windus, 6s.) HERE is another batch of those * Eighteenth- Century Vignettes " which Mr. Dobson has been producing for some years, for the delight at once of the ordinary reader and the expert. Every- where we find the charm of style which belongs to the accomplished man of letters, and makes erudition seem easy. With many of the more obvious themes Mr. Dobson has dealt already, but, like Johnson in the ' Lives of the Poets,' he makes unfamiliar figures no less interesting than people whom everybody knows, or is supposed to know.

His first paper, ' Rosalba's Journal,' was sug- gested by the late Col. Prideaux, whose wide knowledge of the eighteenth century often illu- minated our own columns, and the dedication, accepted while he was alive, remains to testify to the communion of the two friends in their favourite period. Rosalba Carriera was a Venetian pastellist, and Mr. Dobson's account is based on the memoranda she left of her stay in Paris in 1720 and 1721. She had commissions from the highest, and painted Law of the Mississippi scheme while he was still rich and applauded. In 1730 she was in Vienna and much in demand, being a musician as well as a painter. By 1750 she had become totally blind, but she lived to be 82, a fit heroine for a novel except that she seems to have had no romance of the love-making sort. Here, as everywhere in Mr. Dobson's pages, we come across famous or infamous people hit off in some revealing epithet or incident.

The next paper, like that on Prior's ' Peggy,' i ntroduces us to the great lights of the century. We certainly think that Johnson overrated Thrale, as Mr. Dobson suggests, and that he behaved very badly about Mrs. Thrale's second marriage. On this last point, however, little is said here.

A highly interesting piece of history is the essay on ' The Gordon Riots,' known to the world through ' Barnaby Rudge.' A neat summary gives the views of some famous witnesses, and tells us what became of the fanatic Lord George, whose character is somewhat of an enigma.

' A Literary Printer,' which is concerned with two people of the sort, Bowyer and Nichols, is alike instructive and entertaining, including, we note, a graceful compliment by the way to our own columns. Both printers were men of re- markable industry, and, without the collections of Nicho's, students of the eighteenth century would, inueed, be at a loss. Nichols began with the ' Memoirs of Bowyer,' his master and former partner. BoAyyer had the advantage of a residence at a University, " by which he profited," as Mr. Dobson remarks ; but it is as well to add that, according to his own confession, his Cam- bridge education " served only in trade to expose me to more affronts, and to give me a keener sensibility of them."

Last in the volume comes an imitation of Lyttelton, ' A New Dialogue of the Dead,' in which the shade of Henry Fielding turns on a, biographer and abuses him as a murderer. The ready Murphy, a useful person in many ways, did but scant justice to Fielding in a biographical

essay of 1762, and here he is exposed in vigorous style. Mr. Dobson has added notes in justifica- tion of his dialogue. We need no such testimony to his accuracy, and merely ask for more. We applaud a touch of variety in criticism, and ."recall with pleasure Andrew Lang's letter to a lady of the Upper Mississippi Valley on this same subject of Fielding.

Fleetwood Family Records. Collected and edited' by R. W.Buss. Part IV. (Privately printed.) DESPITE difficulties occasioned by the war, Mr. Buss has succeeded in getting another instalment of these interesting records ready. The item likely to prove most widely attractive is a reprint of the letter of George Fleetwood General and Baron in Sweden to his father Miles Fleetwood, describing the battle of Liitzen. This is a vigorous,. workmanlike piece of writing, containing some trenchant criticisms on the conduct of his own side, and a soberly Worded, yet tolerably vivid account of the fall of the King of Sweden, the report of an eyewitness.

A short outline of this man's life is also given- His best years were spent in military and diplo- matic service, chiefly between England and Sweden. He last left England in 1660, and died in Sweden in June, 1667, lying buried at Nykoping Ostra. He has still descendants in that country.. By his mother Anne Luke he is linked to two men more widely known than himself, for her mother Was a St. John, kin to Shelley, and her nephew was that Sir Samuel Luke who had for his clerk the author of ' Hudibras,' and served so it is said as the model for that character.. The Fleetwood ancestry of Lady French is another good item. Daughter of Richard William Selby- Lowndes of Bletchley, she is here shown to be descended, through her great-grandmother, Mary Goostrey, from the Fleetwoods of Missenden.. The fourth and fifth items in this instalment are a Viking descent Fleetwood of Calwich, Pen- wortham, The Vache,. &c. and a short series of notes on the same.

THE October Quarterly Revieic has several: welcome papers which have nothing to do with the war. It starts off with an exceedingly in- teresting article by Mr. T. E. Page on ' Greek Poetry in English Verse,' containing some dicta which are pleasantly disputable (in particular, we do not think he has " hit off " the true character of the Greek Anthology), and a nunbtrof acute distinctions, criticisms, and counsels upon the art of translation, made yet more valuable by abundance of illustration. Mr. R. C. Witt's discussion 'of the Trustees' Report en the National Gallery is a weighty contribution, sure of the attention the subject deserves. To Mrs. B. E. ('.. Dugdale we are grateful for her lively pages on the romantic tale of Ines de Castro and Pedro of Portugal one of the classic love-tragedies of the world, which is none too well known to the general English reader. Mr. Morton Fullerton writes copiously and with judgment on the renascence of French idealism perhaps the most engrossing development of Western Europe in the twentieth century, revealed to us, already strong and effective, whilst many writers were still deploring the disappearance of idealism from France. Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie on ' The War and the Poets ' says very much what most of us think. It is, however, curious to find a page of