Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/221

 12 s.. ix. AUG. 27, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 179 REFERENCES WANTED (12 S. ix. 130). (a) This phrase of Ben Jonson is found in ' Underwoods,' Ixxxviii., ' A Pindaric Ode on the Death of Sir H. Morison ' : "As, though his age imperfect might appear, His life was of humanity the sphere. " 11. 51, 52. EDWARD BENSLY. on The Ninth Volume of the Walpole Society. Edited by A. J. Finberg. TITS principal study in this volume a volume upon which the Walpole Society is much to be congratulated is Mrs. Finberg's Canaletto in England.' In the middle of the eighteenth century Antonio Canal, the Venetian painter of views who went by the name of Canaletto, was well known among English lovers of art, and his work had its influence on the development of landscape painting in England. A strange oblivion has, however, so obscured his name that he will not be found mentioned in most books of reference relating to art in England. He stayed here for some eight years working for patrons to whom he had become known while in Venice through the good offices of Owen McSwiny and of Joseph Smith of the British Consulate in that city. Mrs. Fin- berg is compelled to address herself to dissipating doubts about the reality of this visit. These were started by Mr. Reginald Home in an article in The Magazine of Art in 1899, being grounded upon a note of Vertue's which mentions " something obscure or strange " about the painter then in England, " a reservedness and shyness in being seen at work," and the rise of a " conjecture that he is not the veritable Canelletti of Venice . . . or that privately he has some unknown assistant. . . ." Mrs. Finberg has no difficulty in dis- posing of the said conjecture not only from the evidence of contemporary Italian writers, and by showing that when in England he was in the company of persons who could not have been deceived as to his identity, but also from Vertue's own later notes. It is a useful feature of this study that it contains, in chronological order, all the notices of Canaletto by Vertue. Not much of Canaletto's work is very easily accessible, the best English examples being in private collections. We may be the more grateful for the numerous well-chosen and well-executed plates with which this monograph is illustrated. While much of the quality of the original is in- evitably lost, these pictures at least convey the clearness, spaciousness and grace of Canaletto's art, and the fine proportion of parts, especially the proportion of earth to sky, which makes the larger views exhilarating. Mrs. Finberg gives us careful notes both of the subjects and history of the different works, and of Canaletto's relations with his patrons ; an interesting detail in this regard is Canaletto's work for Hollis. Antonio Canal was in Venice again in 1756, and his later life is unknown. He died at the age of 70 in 1768. The Catalogue raisonne" of his English views which concludes this article should be noted. Marcus Gheeraerts's picture of Queen Elizabeth being borne in procession in a litter on the shoulders of gentlemen has already been much discussed. It is to be found in two versions : the one at Melbury, belonging to the Earl of Ilchester, the other at Sherborne Castle, belonging to Major Wingfield-Digby. That Elizabeth is proceeding to Blackfriars to the wedding of Henry Herbert with Anne Russell seems now satisfactorily estab- lished. Lord Ilchester, in the article before us, goes on further to establish the identity of the several figures in the procession. In most of them we consider him to be more than probably successful. The number contains an interesting note on the affairs of Joseph Goupy in 1738, by Mr. C. Reginald Grundy, and a discussion by Mr. A. J. Finberg of Robert Peake's portrait of Prince Charles (Charles I.) in the University Library, Cambridge. Mr. Finberg invites students of Jacobean portraiture to study afresh, in the light thrown by the Cambridge ' Prince Charles,' about a score of portraits which were, tentatively, assigned by Dr. Lionel Gust, in the third volume of The Walpole Society, to Marcus Gheeraerts the younger. The most important of these, from the present point of view, is that of the Earl of Sussex, of whicn Dr. Cust had remarked that it has "more the look of an English painter of the period." English for the English : A Chapter on National Education. By George Sampson. (Cambridge University Press. 5s. net.) WE find ourselves, on the whole, in sympathy with the plea contained in this book. It is true that Mr. Sampson's witty and vehement criticism of past and present blunders contains little or nothing that is new, and a good deal, in our opinion, that is exaggerated and even mistaken. Thus, we agree that the elementary schools have, in fifty years, failed to bring real education to the mass of the English people : we deplore that what has been so laboriously taught and learned in them is usually forgotten almost as soon as school is left ; and we would admit that several things are taught, or attempted to be taught, to children top early. But, with all this, we are sure it is a mistake not to aim at giving children information : that a care for language which is expression is unsound if there works not with it part passu a care for knowledge ; and that if, for any reason, a choice had to be made between the two, knowledge of facts would have to come before training in power of expression. Neverthe- less, the power of expression has been so much neglected, and English has been so foolishly dis- dained and clumsily handled, that the over- emphasis of its claim by an enthusiast is even desirable. Mr. Sampson speaks his mind at great length, and draws his illustrations from ail the world. We think his advice sometimes fanciful as when he wishes older boys to be given Plato to read. But there is one suggestion which we would heartily support that of giving " bright top-class children " in the elementary schools a taste of logic. His reason for believing that logic would attract boys that there is a touch of rigmarole in it, which has possibilities of fun we are inclined to believe would prove good, while as part of a general preparation for life and the use of one's mind logic has some obvious advantages over, say, grammar and geometry.