Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/292

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. SEPT. is, 1920.

pray in the Litany of Dunkeld : " From caterans and robbers, from wolves and all wild beasts, Lord, deliver us," and were not the inhabitants of Ederachillis obliged to carry their dead out to the lonely island of Handa to protect them from the ravages of this beast ?

One can hardly wish the Wolf back ; but the Wild Cat seems a loss ; and though the count -against the Golden Eagle is fairly heavy who can help rejoicing that the law has interfered to save it ? The Kite, once a common bird, has dis- appeared now from Scotland ; and the Osprey seems to be reduced to a single pair, known to have bred in 1916 in a spot which Dr. Ritchie wisely will not reveal. Sparrow-hawks, Kestrels and Merlins, however, thanks to the Great War,
 * are in flourishing estate.

It is something that man is becoming con- scious of the blight he casts upon animal creation, and that he is setting himself to amend his ways. A livelier feeling for wild nature and its claims distinct from the cruder love of sport though not necessarily incompatible with it will do much : and yet more may be expected from a truer scientific appreciation of the balance inherent in nature, which redresses itself when disturbed without reference to human tastes and needs, and has often, as Dr. Ritcine shows, thrown out what appeared very clever human calculations. Another encouraging fact, abundantly illustrated here, and perhaps too seldom recognized, is the rapidity with which changes can be brought about. The story of the Gulls and the strip of moor, which they colonized and transformed furnishes a striking example of this. That wild life, as such, must be more and more restricted it seems difficult to doubt : but the spread of 'knowledge and humaneness will assuredly extend the good work of preservation already effectively begun, and man the destroyer may become man the protector bringing about a happier balance which shall remove the pressure now steadily forcing the noblest races of animals towards extinction. Books of this kind have no small part to play in this endeavour, seeing that sound and wide popular knowledge is a principal factor towards getting anything of the kind accom- plished.

-Shakespeare's Fight ivith the Pirates and the Pro- blems of the Transmission of his Text. By Alfred W. Pollard. (Cambridge University- Press, Is. Qd. net.)

THIS is a second edition of a series of four lectures delivered at Cambridge in 1915 and published in book-form two years later. They have attracted considerable attention and there is no need either to discuss their main themes or to recommend them to our readers. The present issue constitutes them the first of a series of mono- graphs on Shakespeare Problems a series upon which every student of Shakespeare will certainly do well to keep an eye.

The new Introduction deserves careful reading. Mr. Pollard discusses the work by which, eight or nine years ago, the spuriousness of the early dates in certain Shakespeare quartos was con- clusively demonstrated, witn the result that the mutual relations between printers, authors and the Stationers' Company have become intelligible as those between ordinarily well-meaning persons.

Yet more interesting are the pages dealing with the punctuation of the plays a matter which Mr. Percy Simpson's ' .Shakespearian Punctuation ' has placed in altogether a new light. Mr. Pollard has extended the use of Mr. Simpson's principles from the First Folio to the Quartos especially the * First Quarto of ' Richard IT.' from which he draws an exquisite example of the dramatic system of punctuation in Richard's lines " What must the King do now? must he submit ? " et seqq.

It is a pleasure to find Mr. Pollard subscribing to the conclusions arrived at by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson in his book on " Shakespeare's Handwriting,' and to learn that one of the volumes of the Shakespeare Problems series is to deal further with this question. Three pages of Shakespeare's autograph, accepted by competent judges, and the argument for the authenticity of the signatures also thereby secured, will help materially to straighten out several knotty problems. For one thing, the reference of strange spellings or obviously substituted words to a known script must at once check conjecture, correct sundry errors of emendation, and afford light on the comparative merits of variants. By noting and classifying clues which literary editors have passed by, their very existence being con- sidered as blemishes, Mr. Pollard, and Mr. Dover Wilson who is associated with him in this work, hope to build up what will be virtually a new theory of the history of the Shakespearian text. The clues are promising : the method upon which they propose to work the publication of a series of short monographs is promising also, and we look forward with confidence to the results of their acumen and their persistent enthusiasm.

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