Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/525

 12 s. ii. DEC. 23, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

519'

Jlofcs 0n Itooks.

Pepys on the Restoration Stage. Edited by Helen Mi- \tee. (Yale University Press, $3 ; London, Milford, 12s. 6d. net.)

THIS is a somewhat too mechanically constructed book which, we regret to say, though it is beau- tifully got up, seems to us of doubtful utility. It contains an Introduction in three sections, dealing respectively with the Critics and Pepys's Material on the Stage ; Pepys as a Dramatic Historian; and Pepys and the Restoration Theatre. Though slight, this part is clear and pleasingly written. If it had been filled out with more numerous quotations, had contained some thing more in the way of discussion, and had, perhaps, been extended by a section on the plays Pep\s saw performed, it would have made quite as satisfactory a piece of work as we now have before us, running to about five times the length of the Introduction, and containing with the many repetitions which the plan makes unavoid- able the verbatim text of the scattered references to the stage in the Diary, grouped under a dozen headings and annotated. It may here and there in*a decade save somebody the trouble of looking up a set of pages from an index, but even that person, if he is working with any purpose, will probably have to turn to his Pepys to get the atmosphere and setting of the detail he wants. There is a good Bibliography.

Bibliographical Society of America : Papers.

Vol. X. No. 1, 1916! (Chicago, and Cambridge

University Press, 4s. net.)

THE principal paper of this number is that by Mr. R. J. Kerner, entitled ' The Foundations of Slavic Bibliography.' We are not quite prepared to agree with this writer that " the burden of impartial scholarship for the next generation has fallen upon American scholars," but \ve are glad to call attention to a careful and solid piece of work, embracing the several fields of Slavic Litera- ture, which should be of very definite use to librarians and bibliophiles. It is followed by a pleasing sketch of the work of the Norwegian bibliographer, M. Pettersen, from the pen of Mr. J. C. M. Hanson.

The Burlington Magazine begins with a very attractive frontispiece the reproduction by Messrs. Duveen of Piero di Cosimo's tondo ' The Virgin and Child,' which till lately was in the collection of .Mr. A. K. Street. Alike in its detail, in its massing, and in what it says, it is worthy of close study, and this reproduction conveys as much of the quality of the picture as any of its kind could. Mr. W. B. Lethaby in his third study of ' English Primitives ' deals with the Master of the Westminster altarpiece, and after a learned and deeply interesting discussion, making clear that the Westminster retable is the work of the greatest master of the day, invites us, and we think with reason, to identify him with the .Master of la Sa into Chapelle, and suggests that this splendid work was a gift of St. I,<niis to Henry III. This is a. most attractive article. Mr. F. .M. Kelly, of whose work on costume readers of ' N. & Q.' know something from our own columns, con- tributes a second instalment of ' Shakespearian Dress Notes,' this being on the farthingale. !!

provides some amusing illustrations ; and we note- particularly the cuts from Hoefnagel and an early seventeenth-century Dutch print, which show the farthingale without its overskirt. A series of small bronzes by Pietro da Barga forms the- topic of Signer Giacomo de Nicola's notes for this month on the Museo Nazionale of Florence. These are reduced replicas of great works of" art with hardly more than one exception classical. The function of the artist was popu- larization ; and his methods of rendering and reduction, his understanding of the spirit of" the work he was dealing with, as well as his own temperament and skill, combine to make a very interesting study. A new copy has been discovered of the ' Lovers ' ascribed to Titian,., and this is reproduced side by side with the Buckingham Palace version, which, since it was discussed in The Burlington in 1906, has been repaired and restored. Mr. Lionel Cust writes a. short note upon it. The remaining articles are Mr. Herbert Cescinsky's ' On Chippendale and Hepplewhite,' and Mr. J. D. Milner's ' Two English Portrait Painters ' (Dugy and Leigh). Mr. A. Van de Put in an interesting and decisive letter shows that Mr. Widener's picture ' Portrait Bust of an Elderly Warrior,' attributed to Francesco Bonsignori, is in fact a portrait of Francesco- Sforza.

JOTTINGS FBOM THE DECEMBER CATALOGUES.

MESSRS. MAGOS send us two Catalogues this; month, the one (No. 351) describing over five hundred engravings and etchings, the other (No. 352) continuing from Catalogue No. 349 their list of autograph letters and MSS. The- former includes some interesting caricatures, and' some no [less noteworthy pictures on subjects which the cataloguer has aptly grouped together- under the heading ' Locomotion.' It contains also a good list of aquatints, and we found some of the topographical items among these pirticu- larly attractive. Thus there is a fine impression in colours of J. Carwitham's south-east view of Boston (c. 1750), 351. ; and a pleasing view of Quebec, by J. W. Edy after Fisher (1795), 181. 18s. Part II., which consists of ' Decorative Engravings,' is also well worth looking through, and contains, among other things equally pleasant, Adam Buck's ' Mother's Hope and ' Father's Darling,' engraved by Freeman and Stadler unusually good impressions in which the- colour-printing is remarkably pure and brilliant (1807), 631. the pair ; Peters*s ' Sophia,' engraved by J. Hogg (1785), 121. 10s. ; and llembrandt's ' Standard - Bearer,' a mezzotint by W. Pother (c. 1760), 45i. Of the portraits we may mention the following examples of the work of J. B. Smith : Gabriel Stuart's ' Earl of St. Vincent ' (1797), 31Z. 10s. ; Romney's ' Mrs. Carwardine and Child ' (1781), 571. 10s. ; and Lawrence's ' Mrs. Siddons ' (1783), 35Z.

If any of the recipients of Messrs. Maggs's Catalogues are in the habit of presently throwing them awaj, we would advise them to make an exception in favour of the new list of autographs and MSS. now before us, which goes beyond the average in the high intrinsic interest and value of a large proportion of the items. ' We confess ourselves surprised to find how cheap are historical