Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/486

400 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12S. IX. Nov. 12, 1921. but both 'Northanger Abbey' and 'Mansfield Park' have been neglected; and 'Emma' is represented by one short and not specially remarkable paragraph. 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Persuasion' are the sources chiefly drawn upon. Wonderful to relate, Louisa's jumping off the Cobb is not given. Among writers, perhaps, less generally read than they deserve to be will be found here Paley, Henry Mackenzie (the delightful country dowager from 'The Lounger'), Mrs. Radcliffe, John Foster and Cobbett.

Pictorial Posters issued by Governments during the war ought to take their place among the most interesting phenomena of a time full of new developments. A comparative study of those of the different belligerents would doubtless throw some new light upon their respective characters and mentality; and a philosophical lover of humanity, comfortably removed from the scenes and the passions to which the posters appertained, would certainly derive from them material for many sapient reflections and notable essays. We are, perhaps, as yet too near the war to feel inclined for, to be even capable of, a detached inspection of the appeals which at every turn used to grieve, amuse or irritate us in days when, do what one would, every call to anybody was apt to come home as a reproach. When it is possible to look them coolly over, or when the next generation examines them, what will be found to be the outstanding qualities of the British posters? Most of them are very homely; realistic by the standard of the realism of Punch; humorous often, but hardly ever witty; apt to stress cheery resolution, competence, and endurance, but consistently shy of heroics. Some few of the artists have achieved that subtle exasperatingness which, we understand, is one of the highest secrets of successful pictorial advertisement, and lurks often under a superficial commonplaceness. We used to find that with impatience in the conscience-stricken gentleman who could not answer the searching question, "Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?"; and also in the elderly matron who with a fearfully lifelike fieriness was urging her stodgy son to go. It is curious to remember how moving—even compared with the posters on which the men figured—was the Flag.

These remarks have been occasioned by a red-covered sixpenny booklet in which the Government has published a catalogue of War Literature, and the bulk of which is concerned with the posters. It is in itself very well worth having as a memento.

have here another of the useful Cambridge Guides to Modern Languages. The compilers in their preface emphasize its being but a manual. A "skeleton" grammar precedes near a score of very well-chosen extracts from Dutch authors both prose and verse. We consider the grammar has been unduly retrenched: it may barely suffice for a learner who knows German; for anyone who, beyond English, knows no Teutonic language it will certainly prove provokingly inadequate.

It was a good plan to print the English equivalent line for line under the first Dutch passage given, and again in the interest of those who do not read German or a Scandinavian language we would have had this help extended further. Granted acquaintance with a kindred language it should be possible after a few days' work with this manual to read Dutch with tolerable facility.

A short political history of the Netherlands and a more elaborate history of Dutch literature are provided to whet the learner's appetite for the new language.

The Bookman's Journal for November contains one or two papers which are worth noting. Mr. Richard Curie may well be attended to in what he says of English authors still in need of editors Coleridge (the prose), Landor and Borrow. A complete Defoe and a complete Steele are also among the possible and desirable achievements with which he tempts the enthusiast. Mr. McBey's etchings are sympathetically discussed by Mr. M. C. Salaman. In 'The World and the Artist' Mr. Drinkwater attacks the problems of ugliness and of the relation of machinery to art. Professor Saintsbury contributes one of the best appreciations of Austin Dobson that have appeared, and Mr. Hugh Stokes writes freshly, also informingly, on Charles Meryon and his vision of Paris.

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