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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th 8. 1. Al-KiL 2, '98.

means for its study as the Germans have. The only grammar of Persian in English which combines common sense with the power of fascinating the pupil is Bleeck's, which has therefore never been appreciated, and has long been out of print. The Germans have several works, admirable in every respect, ranging from another two-shilling booklet by the same ubiquitous Seidel to the expensive but princely grammar by Wahrmund, which is not only the finest Persian Grammar in any language, but perhaps as fine a grammar of any language as has ever been written. It is absolutely the only book in English, French, or German which completely masters the difficult subject of Persian prosody and presents it intelligibly to the reader. One would think that to anybody, even of the meanest intelligence, writing on this theme, it would have occurred that the one indis- pensable thing in all scansion is the know- ledge where to place the tonic accent. A false quantity will pass muster in reciting poetry, but a false accent never : yet, incredible as it may seem, all English and French writers on Persian prosody have united in saying nothing of this aspect of it, so that their pupils could never, were it to save their lives, read a line aloud. This German alone equips his readers with this absolutely necessary information. Apart from poetry, a knowledge where the tonic accent falls is needful for the speaking of any and every language. This is woefully left out of sight in all English grammars of languages, but never in the German ones. We have plenty of pretentious and expensive English books in which from start to finish no word is accented, so that the learner must perforce have a teacher or drop his studies in despair, from sheer inability to pronounce. Compare, for instance, Chamberlain's otherwise admir- able Japanese Grammar with the German one by Lange, which is at any rate partially accented. It is the greatest of pities that we do not translate some of these practical cheap little German books instead of writing dear and nasty original grammars. The only publisher who has made a move in this direction is, I think, David Nutt, who has brought out an adaptation of Wied's 'Grammar of Modern Greek. Its superiority over any English work on the subject must be appareni to the most dense. Its only fault is that the translator has made an utterly English muddle of the directions for pronunciation (always our weakest point), in spite of the clearness of the German which was before her. This Greek book is of the same size as those by Seidel mentioned above; in fact, fo

a couple of shillings one can get in German a good grammar of any important language, Javanese, Annamite, Siamese (an excellent book, truly German in combined simplicity ind grasp), Turkish (fully accented, a feature vhich simply does not exist in our expensive English books), and so on an object lesson 'n linguistic enterprise of which it is to be 'eared we shall never learn the wisdom.

JAMES PLATT, Jun.

SIR WALTER SCOTT ON GRIMMS' 'POPULAR STORIES.'

DK. O. HARTWIG, director of the Library at Halle, and editor of the Centralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen (Leipzig, O. Harrassowitz), contributes to Heft 1 arid 2, January-February, 1898, of that periodical, an article* on the first English translation of that famous collection of 'Kinder- und Hausmarchen,' for which children of all ages and countries owe a debt of gratitude to the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. To this article are appended .nedited letters of Edgar Taylor, the English translator of the stories, J. and W. Grimm, GJeorg Benecke, and last, but not least, Sir Walter Scott.

The special character of the Centralblatt seems to preclude the likelihood of its being seen by many subscribers to 'N. & Q.'j and as anly a few lines of Sir Walter Scott's cha- racteristic letter were printed in Taylor's preface to his now scarce work, 'Gammer Grethel,' published in 1839, it is here pre- sented in full as given by Dr. Hartwig, who states, however, that "the original had Iready in parts become illegible, so that even its owner could no longer decipher all the words." Before coming to this letter, how- ever, it may be well to state how Dr. Hartwig obtained it and the others mentioned above. He says :

"One day last winter, in Florence, while on my way to visit my revered friend Frau Karl Hille- brand to take afternoon tea, the postman placed in my hand the appeal of the Grimm Committee in Cassel, of which I myself was one of the co-signa- tories. Being already aware that Frau Hillebrand had in her possession letters from J. and W. Grimm and that she was still in correspondence with Her- mann Grimm, whose wife rests 'far from home and yet in God's own soil' f in the Evangelical churchyard near Certosa, the conversation natur- ally came upon the foundation of the Grimm Museum at Cassel. All at once the dear lady said :

Kinder- und Hausmarchen der Briider Grimm. Mit ungedruckten Briefen von Edgar Taylor, J. und W. Grimm, Walter Scott, und G. Benecke. Mitgeteilt von Dr. 0. Hartwig."
 * "Zur ersten englischen Uebersetzung der

t " Fern von der Heimath, doch in Gottes Ercle.