Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/579

 ii s. v. JUNE 15, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Life-

raiure. (Cambridge University Press.) WE have before us half-a-dozen of these excellent little volumes. Ancient Assyria, by Dr. Johns of St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, may well count among those which best fulfil the ideal of the series. He deals in the first chapter with the data from which we form our notion of the character and history of the Assyrian empire : tradition ; references in the Bible and in classical literature ; the land ; the language ; and, finally, the material and methods of modern research. There follow chapters on Assyria as a city state, on her early relations with Egypt, Mitanni, and Babylonia, and then on the First and Second Empires and on the Sargonids. Arrived at the end of the book one is in possession of a clear, general outline of what to-day is known on this vast subject, having been enabled also to realize, more or less, the position of gaps, and hence been'prepared, if one chooses, to learn intelligently and assign to their right place the fresh facts which will be published when the hoards of inscriptions still awaiting the attention of scholars have been worked through. Within the limits assigned, and as an introduction to this study, we do not see how the thing could have been better done. There are about a dozen well-chosen illustrations, of which we notice that the first a lion colossus is described as a " bull."

Mr. Macalister's History of Civilization in Palestine is not only well planned and instructive, but written also with a certain charm. Par- ticularly interesting are the chapters on the ' Prae - Israelite Semitic Occupations,' on the 4 First Struggle of West and East,' on the ' Growth of the Religious Consciousness in Israel,' and that entitled ' Roman and Byzantine.' In the second of these the writer treats of the origin of the Philistines, the scattered remnants of the ancient civilization of Crete, who, until Greek influence made itself felt, were " the only cultured or artistic race who ever occupied the soil of Pales- tine." We may imagine their shades, accosting with some amusement the shade of Matthew Arnold ! The curious helplessness of the Hebrews in regard to inventive or practical activity, whether in the decoration of a pot or the con- struction of a tunnel, is vividly brought out ; and, again, the writer has not forgotten to illustrate familiar details of the Bible story when they come in his way as where, discussing the overlapping in Palestine of the Bronze and Iron ages, he points out that the famous passage, 1 Kings vi. 7, does not mean that Solomon's temple was reared in silence, but that the new metal, iron, had not been suffered to profane its stones. We heartily recommend this book to the many thousands who, as teachers or students, are occxipied with the historical aspect of the Bible.

The Troubadours, again, by the Rev. H. J. Cliaytor, is a delightful and stimulating little work. Designed as, indeed, all these books are for the ordinary reader, whose knowledge of the subject in question is not detailed or scientific, it sets forth, to start with, lucidly and simply, what were the scene, the tongue, the technique ;

and the inner theory of the poetry of the trou- badours, and then proceeds to give a sufficiently vivid account of individual poets those being chosen who are most famous or whose work is most representative. The glamour of the trou- badours is something like the blue of the horizon, which appears brightest and most beautiful if one fixes one's eyes a degree or two above it, and fades more or less into the commonplace*] f one focusses one's sight upon it directly. So here the romantic figures of Jaufre Rudel and Bertrand de Ventadour and Arnaut Daniel may seem to the general readec to look soberly and shorn of their rays, and Folco to be little worthy of his place in the ' Paradiso.' On the other hand, though, Bertrand de Born, who sowed discord between Henry II. and his son, and walks in the ninth bolgia

E il capo tronco tenea per le chiome Pesol con mano a guisa di lanterna is to some extent rehabilitated. It would, we think, have been a good thing if, systematically, there had been added to the account of eacli of the more important troubadours a note of the number of his works that remain to us.

Perhaps the most interesting pages of Mr. Rait's interesting Life in the Medieval University are those which treat of the student universities. We found ourselves comparing and contrasting the relations between masters and scholars at Bologna with those of which we hear as obtaining in the old-fashioned educational system of Japan. The ways of the East were again fortuitously, of course recalled to us at the end of the book, where it tells how Cardinal Estoute- ville at Paris revived an old regulation by which students in .arts were to hear lectures sitting, not on raised seats, but on the ground, " ut occasio superbiae a juvenibus secludatur." Appa- rently they were allowed straw to sit on, whence it is said the street they heard lectures in was called Vicus Stramineus. Mr. Rait has con- trived to work many such homely, minute details into the course of his clear and careful retracing; of the development of the mediaeval universities, and his picture of the turbulent life that was led in them ; so that the reader will be able to form a full and strongly coloured idea of the scholar's existence. Of the master's, on the other hand, his notion is likely to be an attenuated one- No doubt this latter lacks such crude,'but effective, incidents as the " jocund advent," town and gown rows, and the ' like, with which a good deal of play is here made too much, perhaps, for these are particular instances of the general violence of mediasval manners rather than funda- mental characteristics of a university. When all is said, those who dispense the learning of their day are a more essential factor in educational history than irritated townsfolk or even brawling students, and we would gladly have exchanged some of the stories of riotings and murders for a more thorough treatment of the phases of thought,, the kinds of learning, and the influence of out- standing personalities, which distinguished the different periods and the different universities, here in question.

In The Ballad in Literature Mr. Henderson had a fascinating subject, and his first two chapters considering the limits within which he was working struck us as satisfactory, though w* had hoped for more ample illustration from