Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/247

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S. L MAR, 19, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

239

1 is book in which Mr. Brandes seems on safest cound he is compelled, through no fault of his own, i tost hopelessly to flounder. He relies strongly r non the supposed facts that the Mr. W. H. of the bonnets is the Earl of Pembroke, and that the dark l.,dy of the same poems is Mary Fitton. If he c juld have retarded publication for a few months he would have found that, on irresistible evidence, Mary Fitton was a fair lady, and have seen the Lord Pembroke theory dismissed by Mr. Lee into tie limbo of the vanities. We must not be held to underrate Mr. Brandes's work. Like all scholars, however, he is, in default of real knowledge, driven .nto conjecture, and could, we doubt not, supposing the order of production of Shakspeare's works were proved to be quite different from what it is now held to have been, furnish another set of reasons as valid and as captivating as those he advances. It is due to his acquisition of our language from with- out that passages of poetry, description, or rhetoric seem to impress him more than those in which overmastering passion finds its simplest and most potent utterance. He has, however, enriched our

} literature with a fine work, and a work which the student will do well to have ever at his elbow. The translation, which we know to be vigorous and fluent, and believe to be close, is by Mr. Archer,

I assisted by Miss Mary Morison and Miss Diana

! White, the proofs haying been revised by Dr.

I Brandes. The index is fairly good, but might, perhaps, have been extended, even at the risk of enlarging somewhat the work.

Brief Lives. By John Aubrey. Edited by Andrew Clark, M.A. 2 vols. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) IT was time that we should have a revised, anno tated, and authoritative edition of Aubrey's ' Brief Lives.' The conditions under which these were written and left, and the method generally oi i Aubrey's workmanship, have militated against their complete recognition. Now, even when they have received treatment which may perhaps be regarded as final, we are not to have them in tneir integrity. As in the case of the immortal diary of Pepys, men have been long in learning how great was the interest of the work, and in what points exactly it consisted. Diligent in the collection of materials, especially of gossip and anecdote, Aubrey seems to have been almost incapable of arranging or formu , lating the knowledge he had acquired. The addi tions to lives he had already written in part were thrown in almost at random, and have sometimes even to be sought in the middle of a different life This carelessness and want of system were further complicated by the fact that a considerable portion of his work was accomplished in the crapula follow ing a night's debauch. In a letter to Wood, quotec by Mr. Clark, Aubrey reflects how much more work he could do if he had " but either one to

[Come in morning with a good scourge or did no

jsitt up till one or two with Mr. (Edmund) Wyld.' How much, moreover, drinking meant in those days is abundantly evident from Aubrey's own pages Wood, in whose behalf the labour was zealoush undertaken and, in a sense, loyally accomplished made abundant use thereof. The manuscript resi puum has never been fully used, and most of it stil remains in a sufficiently inchoate state. The prin pple on which this latest edition has been shapee s that of giving in full all that Aubrey has written vhether of interest to the present generation or fot. His four chief MSS. of biographies, known ar

MSS. Aubrey 6, 7, 8, 9, are thus placed beyond the isk of destruction. Scarcely an attempt at expur- ng to modern tastes, are not only vulgar, but at imes foul, are preserved, the lives being treated is historical documents, and left, with very few excisions, " to bear unchecked their testimony as to he manners and morals of Restoration England." This is unquestionably the right spirit in which to proceed in a book intended wholly for scholars, and as a note informs us, words or lines are omitted, the reasons for the suppression are sufficiently obvious, and the expurgation is accepted with equanimity and approval. If in one case that of John Overall, 1560-1619, Dean of St. Paul's, London, and his wife we are a little discontented at the omission of two lines of verse of obvious coarseness, it is from the standpoint of the folk-lorist rather than that of the antiquary or the historian. The lady, we are told, and repeat with due reticence, "was not more beautiful than she was obliging and kind," and had "the loveliest eies that ever were seen." Her husband's indulgence seems to have been quite
 * ation has been made. Conversations which, accord-
 * hough we come now and then upon places where,

Sroportionate to the urbanity of her disposition, ne is perfectly satisfied to lose the unedifying particulars which are spared us in Aubrey's life of Sir Walter Raleigh; and one stands aghast, and more than aghast, at what is stated concerning Francis Bacon. In the appendices are given some ' Notes of Antiquities,' many of them of much interest, and two scenes viz., Act II. sc. iii. and Act III. sc. iii. from ' The Country Revell,' a comedy of the existence of which we were unaware. This work in MS. is incomplete, a few of the scenes being sketched and fewer completed, and written in the blank spaces and between the lines of a long legal document, MS. Aubrey 21. For further par- ticulars concerning this curious work we must refer the reader to the account, which occupies pp. 333-9 of vol. ii. What is written out and the materials collected in order to be worked into the plot fur- nish, it is said, "a terrible picture of the corruption of Aubrey's country and times." The play must, apparently, have been sketched and attempted between 1680 and 1697, when the author died. Is it worse, we wonder, than the comedies of Dryden, Shadwell, Mrs. Behn, Tom D'Urfey, Wycherley, and others which cover a similar period ? and would it have justified a further diatribe of Collier ?

We have in the present volumes immeasurably more of Aubrey than can elsewhere be found, and the edition forms an indispensable portion of every antiquarian library. It is, moreover, happy in method and choicely got up. We have no fault to find with its arrangement or its reticences. On the contrary, we think both commendable. So much pleasure have we reaped from the perusal that we keep harking back to Pepys. feeling, as in the case of that dissolute and delightful worthy, that the best edition is that which gives us the most. In the present case, however, we are in the same position as the Court of Theseus and Hippplyta in the presence of Peter Quince and his associates, and " know all that we are like to know."

The Fern World. By Francis George Heath.

(Imperial Press.)

WITH a new edition, the eighth, of Mr. Heath's admirable 'Fern World,' the Imperial Press begins a new, handsome, and attractive series of books, to be called "The Imperial Library." The