Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/534

 440 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.vm. MAT as, 1021. ledge of him in the general public. A good example is the quotation of ' Lasciate ogni speranza. . .' in 1793, in the article on the imprisonment and death of Louis XVI. With the mid-nineteenth century we come to great abundance of allusion and to a riper and truer criticism. Most of the great writers of the time are represented, but there are curious exceptions. Is it the case that Newman never mentions Dante ? And that no tractarian writer except B. W. Church and Keble has anything about him ? Dr. Toynbee has done a particularly useful work by recording articles on Dante in periodicals and it may well gratify those of our correspon- dents who have contributed ' Danteiana ' to our own columns to know that these have a place in this record. Combined with the notices of Dante in litera- ture and the books and articles about him, Dr. Paget Toynbee gives us the drawings and pictures of English artists illustrating his works the earliest being six drawings done by Fuseli in 1777 of subjects from the ' Divina Commedia.' Several interesting facts are brought out in the author's pithy Introduction as that " during the last 118 years the 'Commedia' as a whole has been translated into English on an average once in about every four years." "If," he goes on to say, " the independent translations of the several divisions of the poem be included in the reckoning, it will be found that an English transla- tion of one or other of the three cantiche has been produced on an average once in about every twelve months a record which, it is believed, cannot be paralleled in the literature of any other country." Memoriae Antiguas Historiales del Peru. By Fernando Montesinos. Translated and edited by Philip Ainsworth Means. (Hakluyt Society.) THE work of Fernando Montesinos possesses two features which give it importance for the student of America before the Conquest : the list of the Kings, and the folk-lore embedded in the history. The list of Kings would seem to be a modified version of a list drawn up by a man of much greater claims than our author's to respect as a historian, Bias Valera, natural son of Don Luis de Valera and an Indian woman, who was converted to Christianity but had been con- nected with the old court of Peru. Born about 1540 Bias Valera joined the Society of Jesus about 1568 and came to Spain in the early nineties of the century, dying at Cadiz in 1596. He wrote a history of Peru in Latin, which is lost. The one work of his preserved is the ' De los Indies del Peru, sus costumbres y pacifica- cion ' ; another, the ' Vocabulario historic del Peru,' has in some sort survived in the book before us mutilated, however, and reduced in value. Montesinos, a Spaniard and also a Jesuit, went to Peru in 1628, journeyed widely, with good opportunities of collecting facts about the natives, for he was in the exercise of some kind of inspectorship, and returned to Spain about 1644. His ' Memoriae ' show that he was acquainted with the writings of his predecessors in the study of the Indians, and also that he himself brought a genuine interest to bear on the subject, but they have justly aroused the impatience of later workers by their being forced into the frame of an absurd belief that Peru was the Ophir of the Old Testament. Peruvian history and chronology, then, had to be twisted and tortured to fit into the history and then received chronology of the Scriptures. Hence the list of Kings systematically extended and rearranged has become a travesty in which only certain lines of truth can now be detected. However, it is something to have such a list preserved in any form ; and if little and cautious credence can be given to most of the history, it contains good passages from Valera, and, as we said above, there remains the folk-lore which, as a record of pre-Inca custom and belief, is so far unique. An Introduction by the late Sir Clements Markham is prefixed to the Introduction by the Editor, and from Sir Clements Markham come also a list of words in the names of Kings and Incas, and a list of Quichua words in Montesinos. Mr. Means provides a careful note on the Chrono- logical Tables. His Introduction gives an ex- cellent resume" of the present position of the study of pre-conquest history and the bearing of recently established facts upon Montesinos. WE have received a delightful volume of repro- ductions of twenty-four hitherto unpublished drawings from the collection of the late Frederick George Stephens. It has been put together by the artist's son in memory of his father and mother, and will certainly give great pleasure to the many admirers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother- hood. Two portraits of Septimus Stephens and his wife painted by F. G. Stephens are full of sympathetic feeling, while the portrait studies of Stephens by Ford Madox Brown, Holman Hunt and other members of the Brotherhood are most interesting, that by Millais of him as a young man being specially attractive. A recent visit to the Tate Gallery makes the original sketch of ' The Carpenter's Shop ' of specially vivid appeal, showing as it does the little glimpse through the window of tenderly drawn detail of birds and foliage unnoticed in the finished picture. One picture by D. G. Rossetti is arrest- ing in its beauty, and seems wholly " Beata Beatrix " not " a portrait of Miss Siddal." In Plate xin. we have a reminiscence of the fierce war of words which raged in the world of art when Ruskin was at his prime. Lieut. -Colonel Step hens is greatly to be congratu- lated on this charming production, which is not merely a most graceful memorial, but also a little collection of treasures for the lover of art. to EDITORIAL communications should be addressed to " The Editor of ' Notes and Queries ' " Adver- tisements and Business Letters to "The Pub- lishers" at the Office, Printing House Square, London, E.G. 4; corrected proofs to The Editor, ' N. & Q.,' Printing House Square, London, B.C. 4.