Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/46

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[12 S. I. JAN. 8, 1916.

yet they contribute their quota to one's under- standing both of Chesterfield and of the current notions of the period. A. C. Stanhope was a tolerably unamiable person, with the most extra- ordinary ideas about diet and the bringing up of a child. Mrs. Randolph writes about Fanny Nisbet Nelson's wife. Mr. Moreton Frewen brings- to an end his ' Memories of Melton Mowbray,' which again include some good stories, and Mr. W. H. Mallock begins an analysis of ' Current Theories of Democracy,' suggestive, at any rate, and comprehensive. The rest of the number if we except Dr. R. H. Murray's discussion of Hoche's Expedition to Ireland in 1796 deals with actualities. We may mention that Mr. S. P. B. Mais, in an article which strikes us as the most raluable we have yet had from his pen, describes ' A Public School after Eighteen Months of War ' (it is only seventeen as yet, by the way, and could hardly have been that when the pages were written), and that Lady Wolseley's paper on ' W T omen's Work on the Land,' and Mr. Percy Hurd's ' Impressions of Champagne and Lor- raine.' while addressed to present emergencies, have both considerable permanent interest.

THE January Cornhill starts wdth the first two chapters of a work by Charles Kingsley, being the MS. of a novel entitled ' A Tutor's Story,' left by him unfinished, and recently discovered among his papers, and now revised and completed by his daughter, Lucas Malet. It promises well. There is a certain vigour in sheer well-doing about Kingsley's characters which has an actual literary value, and is" refreshingly different from the two or three literary attitudes which have grown conventional in Edwardian and Georgian times. The lame youth from Cambridge in the year 1829, with a "Radi- cal " acquaintance on the one hand and a wicked young sprig of nobility to reform on the other every one able to talk, and drawn with the centre of gravity in the right place, whatever else may be wrong, after the straightforward Kingsley fashion ought to provide readers of The Cornhill with Some good hours.

Mr. Boyd Cable is good in his war sketch, ' A Benevolent Neutral.' Sir Herbert Maxwell's ' An Angler's Dilemma,' after a few pleasant pages upon angling in general, relates a solitary pisca- torial adventure in the River Minnick on an April morning some fourteen years ago. ' A Curious Chapter in Wellington's Life,' by Dr. Fitchett, is concerned with the correspondence between the Duke and " Miss J." It is, perhaps, the most interesting paper in the number, and does better justice to both the correspondents than has always been done. Sir Henry Lucy in 'Across the Walnuts and ths Wine ' tells two or three first-rate after-dinner stories, winding up with a good description of the immemorial challenging of the King's keys at the gate of the Bloody Tower. Miss Sellers's ' Montenegro,' and Judge Parry's ' Daniel O'Connell Counsellor,' must also be mentioned. The latter has an abundance of amusing detail.

ON the south wall of the loggia before the church of San Martino at Florence is a neglected fresco by a Florentine master of the late fifteenth century, representing the Annunciation. This was ascribed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to Filip- pino Lippi, but Mr. Herbert P. Home was the first to attribute it to the master to whom, from

the characteristic animation of the figures, it rightly belongs, namely, Sandro Botticelli. In the January number of The Burlington Magazine Mr. Giovanni Poggi confirms this attribution by documentary evidence, fixes the date of the picture as 1481, and expresses the opinion that its condition is not so bad as has been thought, and that the retouches might be successfully removed. Two reproductions accompany the article. Mr. J. D. Beazley gives some photographs of a red figured Attic hydria of 480 B.C., which is now in the Hermitage at Petrograd, and the paintings on which represent the story of Achilles and Polyxena. The designs are admirable. Mr. Campbell Dodgson describes some rare woodcuts of the early Flemish and German schools, belong- ing to the ' Genealogy ' of the Emperor Maximilian, and now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Sir Martin Conway notices the first part of the publication of Raphael's drawings edited by Dr. Oscar Fischel of Berlin a series unfortunately cut short by the war. This instalment contains early, and therefore very interesting drawings, and some beautiful specimens are reproduced. Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy contributes an article on ' Buddhist Primitives (Sculpture).' Strictly speaking, there are no such things as Buddhist primitives, early Buddhism being a puritanical creed, and by its logic averse from every manifestation of the body, and therefore from beauty and art. Among the works repro- duced is the beautiful ' Yakshini ' or dryad on the gateway of the Sanchi Stupa (early second century B.C.). Dr. Squire Sprigge sends the first instalment of an article on ' Art and Medicine,' in which he points out the almost inevitable vagueness of most of the historical accounts of disease that have come down to us. The de- scription by Thucydides, for example, of the plague at Athens, leaves it quite uncertain what that plague really was. Such pictures, on the other hand, as Rubens's representation of St. Ignatius's miracle in casting out a devil from a

S)ung girl, or the picture in the cloisters of San arco at Florence of St. Anthony extending the consolations of religion to a plague- stricken youth these are most definite and valuable records of pathological observation. It is sur- prising what a number of representations of disease we have in our picture galleries.

ia.? t0 Ct0rasp0nirnrts,

STRATFORD-ON- AVON. Forwarded to G. F. R. B.

L. L. K. (" The ' Gad Whip ' in Lincolnshire "). A description of the gad-whip ceremony at Caistor will be found at 9 S. viii. 285, and at the end of it references to earlier communications.

L. N. " La belle Corisande " was the name by which Diane d'Andouins, Comtesse de Gramont (1554-1620), was known. She was for about 8 years the mistress of Henry of Navarre, and their corre- spondence is extant. Me"lisande suggests Maeter- linck's play ' Pelle"as et Me"lisande. It was not an uncommon name in the Middle Ages, and was borne, for example, by the daughter and heiress of Baldwin II., King of Jerusalem, who married Fulk of Anjou.

CORRIGENDUM. Ante, p. 4, heading (6), for " Asces " read Axes ( =ague>.