Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/485

 12 s. x. MAY 20, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 399 tionary,' state a tuileur to be " a tiler door-keeper at a lodge of Free- This apparently is the term used tyler ; ^ masons. in France for the person who holds the office of Lodge tyler. ARCHIBALD SPARKE. MARTIN (12 S. x. 350). Should not this be Gregory Martin, and not George Martin as ({noted by your correspondent, who was the learned Roman Catholic writer, and the author, or one of the authors, of the Reims translation of the New Testament ? ARCHIBALD SPARKE. " TIGHT " AND OTHER EQUINE TERMS (12 S. x. 367). Dr. Skeat, in his dictionary, has a useful article on the origin and mean- ing of the word " tight," which has no special reference to horses or cattle, but is of general use in the sense of compactness, approaching perfection, the being ade- quately and completely fixed nautical word " taut " is akin to up. it. The Com- pare the reference in the old English song to " our right little, tight little island." FRANK PENNY. on A Guide to English Gothic Architecture. By S. Gardner. (Cambridge University Press. "ids. net.) THIS is a book very much to be recommended to beginners in architecture. Its principal feature is a series of enlarged photographs, chosen with great skill and good luck, in which the main lines of the development of English Gothic may be studied to some real purpose. Designed originally for use at Harrow, the series proved so successful that sets of the photographs and the handbook explaining them were in constant demand for other schools. This is not to be wondered at : we do not remember any introduction to Gothic which so exactly corresponds with the needs of an intelligent person seeking systematic informa- tion. The sequence of examples could hardly be bettered ; and running to 180 plates (to say nothing of figures illustrating the Glossary) it is generous in amount. The quality of the photo- graphs is excellent, and in many cases permits of study at any rate the preliminary study of a novice in the subject -better than would the original. A few most aptly devised notes are printed at the bottom of each photograph, and four appendixes treat delightfully and in some detail the questions of vaulting, tracery, the plan of churches. Gothic church, and the builders of There is a glossary which includes nearly all the terms that any but an expert can want, but might, we think, have been made easier in its definitions. Thus a battlement is described as an " embrasured parapet," but no definition of " embrasure " is supplied ; the convenient term " merlon " does not appear ; the description of a broach seems difficult unless one knows before- hand what a " broach-spire " is. But these are small matters. It is seldom we have had a book in our hands for which we so greatly wish a wide circulation. A real love of architecture -they may smile who have it not -is among the most solidly useful as well as delightful of inward posses- To kindle it, especially in the young, sions. is not very easy : the books offered for the purpose are sometimes too mesquins to the eye, or too difficult and ponderous, or too easy, or too meagre. More than that, they often lack the power to convey exhilaration and a sense of grandeur, and so do not themselves carry away the imagination. This book has just those qualities -the amplitude and the enthusiasm -which take captive the imagination from the outset and make of its pages true openings into a region of delight. The Victorian Age. By W. R. Inge. (Cambridge ONE University Press, 2s. Qd. net.) may find an interesting example of the rapidity of the changes of modern thought in the already noticeable return, after some bitter but not protracted criticism, to a more sympathetic view of the Victorian age. This gives the " Old Victorians " opportunity for timely counter- criticisms. The angle from which the Dean of St. Paul's looks out upon men and affairs is specially advantageous, we think, for a survey of the nearer past, and in this lecture he has set out his vast subject with all the authority derived from definite, long-pondered and un- borrowed judgment. Not that he fails to quote earlier thinkers and sometimes, perhaps, sur- prisingly. Thus he mentions Sybel's statement that universal suffrage has always heralded the end of parliamentary government. We should doubt whether history, as yet, furnishes examples either numerous or important enough to justify so sweeping a statement or rather, to justify drawing any kind of inference from it. It reminds one of the " come sempre " with which Ferrero introdxices his grandiose but sometimes empty generalizations. The summary account of the Victorian age under its social and political aspects makes a good sketch in our opinion the best portion of the lecture. The literary portion is dominated by the figure of Tennyson, whom Dean Inge vindicates with a slightly peevish enthusiasm vindicating, however, his genius as a poet. rather his opinions than He makes an interesting point in his remarks on the longevity of the great Victorians, wherein only ancient Greece can be compared to them. To Greece, again, he looks back for a parallel to the " magnificent types " they offer of the human countenance, disparaging twentieth-century heads beside them. At first sight this appears merely amusing : yet a re- collection of the National Portrait Gallery rather reinforces his contention. The last secret of the characteristic Victorian genius has not, we think, ever yet been con- vincingly stated. This essay itself does not divulge it. It rather not without some touch of ruefulness and reproach emphasizes the fact that a secret exists.