Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/125

 12 S. II. ACJ. 5, 1916. J

NOTES AND QUERIES.

MR. HOGG will find full particulars in ' The Trial of Major Campbell for the Murder of Captain Boyd, in a .'Duel, on the 23d of June, 1807' (ut supra MR. BLEACKLEY).

There is another edition printed in Newry same year.

For a striking account of the trial and subsequent incidents he might also refer to "The Condemned Soldier" in W. H. Maxwell's ' Rambling Recollections of a Soldier of Fortune,' Dublin, 1842. Max- well, as a lad of fifteen, was present at the trial in Armagh, and states that " the cir- cumstances attendant upon the conviction and death of Major Campbell are perfectly authentic."

The case created an immense sensation at the time. The judge was Wm. Fletcher, whose "charge to the Grand Jury of Wex- ford," some four years afterwards, came like a bombshell into the Ascendancy camp, and ran through many editions.

EDITOR ' IRISH; BOOK LOVER.'

DENMARK COURT (12 S. ii. 50). Mr. Matthias Levy, the author of ' The Western Synagogue,' 1897, on p. 7 gives a reproduc- tion from ' Wall is' s and Horwood's Plans of London, 1799,' which shows that Denmark Court was situate between Southampton and Burleigh Streets, and facing Beaufort Build- ings. ISRAEL SOLOMONS.

en

An Exxay on Shakespeare's Relation to Tradition.

By Janet Spens. (Oxford, Blackwell, 2*. 6W.) THIS is a brilliant attempt taken as a whole, a successful attempt at reinterpretation of an old theme. The work of recent investigation into classical antiquity, the new breath which has caused the dry bones of Greek and Latin poetry to live again, and has thereby withdrawn our atten- tion from their philological trappings, is influencing and vivifying allied studies, and it is natural that many principles should be directly applied to English literature, when they have once gained acceptance as explaining classical literature.

Dr. Spens begins well by setting the long-cherished notion of " originality " in its right place, and by a very suggestive hint as to the place of tradition in the constitution of poetry. In this with a different set of terms, and working from a different angle she urges the same sort of argument as we may find in Shaftesbury.

Her essay on Shakespeare's comedy is a discus- sion falling under the three heads of previous comedy, the influence of Munday, and the use of the folk -play by Shakespeare.

The most important of these sections is the second, a scholarly and well-argued exposition of a new view of the background against which Shakespeare lives for us. Exception may, we think, be taken to the minuteness of detail into which Dr. Spens

works out her theory of Shakespeare's debt to- Munday ; but while her infersnces are largely beyond

Erqof, it may be said in her defence that an accumu- ition of instances of correspondence and resem- blance, even though no one of them is without mistake, may leave on the reader's mind an im- pression truer to reality than does a cautious or empty conjecture of the generalized sort.

In the second division of the book on Shake- speare's tragedy Dr. Spens has rather let a good idea run away with her. Let us be emphatic in saying that it is a good idea that the sense of a tragic hero as one under a curse is well developed by connecting him with the kindred idea underlyicg the conception and custom of the scapegoat, and that the belief in his possession of magical power is a real constituent in the complex notion ot him from which the individual heroes we know have sprung. But though this throws light on Shakespeare's sources, it will, we think, prove an iynix fatuwf if followed without careful correction in the inter-

rotation of Shakespeare's own work. Dr. Spens pes not allow nearly enough for the centuries of distinctive Christian theory and Christian fable which intervene between the Greek tragic hero- and him of Elizabeth's day. Shakespeare may or may not have entertained the Christian faith : he belonged to a time and race steeped in it, whose every conception was in some manner or other coloured by it. It would not be difficult quite apart from any view of Shakespeare's religion to work out a scheme of thought as Christian in its implication as her scheme here of which " honour "" is the centre is pagan, and show that as ihe frame and essential substance of Elizabethan drama. On- the katharsis Dr. Spens is brilliantly suggestive, and makes her points ; on the Greek drama in general she writes rather rashly, as if we possessed more than a fragment of it. It is said that Sophocles, for instance, wrote 130 plays : of these we have 7 and some fragments. It is not safe, then, to dogmatize freely about what was the central idea in the tragedy of Sophocles, even if we find we can bring the plays we possess within the four corners of a likely plan. On the whole, we think, the latter division of this book, though the more attractive, and showing a wide and sympathetic knowledge of a great range of poetry, will not wear as well as the former- It belongs to the wave of speculation which first conspicuously showed its head in 'The Golden Bough,' and when, in due time, that topples over will mostly be carried down with it. Meanwhile, however, we gladly acknowledge both that it bears a considerable amount of high probability and useful suggestiveness, and that, in this com- paratively fresh field, to offer matter for correction is in itself to render service.

WE found the new Fortnightly very good. Most of the papers are flrst-rate, and it is some time since we have seen a review of which the interest is so various and wide-ranging. Let us begin with the caterpillars. We mean no disrespect either to the drama or to aviation, either to ' The Hopelessness of Germany's Position ' or to Lady- Warwick's opinions upon ' Hodge in Petticoats,* when we venture to assert that ' The Procession- aries ' furnish the pages by which to us the August number will first, though by no means solely, be memorable. But then they are described by the pen of Fabre, inimitable at such.