Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/429

 )> S. I. MAY 28, '98. ]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

421

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1898.

CONTENTS. -No. 22.

>TBS : Historic Perspective. 421-Shakspeariana, 422- Jarrel of Gunpowder as a Candlestick Russian Cage-birds et Free, 423 Ringers' Articles Siamese Names Dr. T. Rutherfortb English Doorway, 424 "To^Chi-ike" New- ingt,on Causeway Author of 'Sylvan Sketches,' 425 Riding the Marches "The echoes of Ben Nevis" ' Jonkanoo" Rosalie Curchod, 426.

QUERIES: Honest: Honestly Arms of the See of Wor- cester Aldridge, co. Stafford Pownalls, 427 Goethe's Mason-Lodge' Jasper Cleiton Church Tradition Cromwell Epitaph ' Reading Mercury 'Nathan Todd, 428 Col. Robert Scott General Benedict Arnold Hyde Arms of Slaiie Authors Wanted, 429.

REPLIES : " Harry-carry," 429 Short a v. Italian a, 430 City Names in Stow's Survey ' Punch Windward and Leeward Islands "The Hempsheres," 431 Mendoza Nursery Lore Hugh Massey Du Plessy Battle-axes, 432 King James I." On his own" Swansea English Grammar 'The Colleen Bawn,' 433 "Dargle" " Mari- fer" Slaughter, 434" The defects of his qualities "San Lanfranco Bath Apple Archer Bacon" Dawkum" Motto of the College of Surgeons, 435 Arms of De Kelly- grew Gladstone Bibliography Sentence in Westcott "Hoast": "Whoost" John Loudoun Oriel=Hall Royal Samuel Ireland. 436 " Hamish " Rev. John Logan- Inventories of Church Goods " Merry " Boulter Port Arthur, 437 Major Longbow Robespierre and Curran " A crow to pluck with," 438.

NOTES ON BOOKS: Beazley's 'John and Sebastian Cabot' Arnold's 'Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey,' Vol. III. Moss's 'Folk-lore* Russell's 'Sonnets on the Sonnet 'Allen's ' Ambassadors of Commerce.'

Notices to Correspondents.

HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE.

' We are too close to see in accurate vision either of these men [Carlyle and Ruskin]. We lack the perspective of time."

These words, which suit me admirably as a text for what follows, are dislodged (not abruptly, I trust) from their context, which is a readable ' Bibliographical Biography ' of the second -named writer penned in 1879 by Mr. W. E. A. Axon. I select them in prefer- ence to others because of their concise ex- pression of a thought which I have long regarded as inaccurate. Historic perspective, or "the perspective of time," as applied to persons and periods, is to me a sheer literary fallacy. The process is as radically false as an inverted telescope with equal results. It narrows the view to vanishing point, the sole merit of which is concentration, but at the price both of clearness and accuracy. "Accurate vision" is possible only in the foreground whether of scenery or history. " Time has a strange contracting influence on many a widespread fame," wrote Carlyle C Essays,' vol. i. p. 18), whereas expansion is the attribute of the present. If their con- temporaries have no " accurate vision " of the doers of deeds and the makers of thought,

will it be found in the discoloured medium and dim remoteness of that which is proverbi- ally untrustworthy? Will generations yet unborn be better able to gauge the character and genius of Kuskin and Gladstone than they who have lived and moved and had their being with them? Ditto of current events. Will any historian of the future judge more soundly or narrate more accurately the causes and incidents and issues of the Crimean War than Kinglake 1 And if current events be (as they sometimes are) alarmingly distorted and living celebrities misjudged, is the treacherous "perspective of time" or history likely to give the world a presentment of both nearer the truth ? The tardy recog- nition of merit is altogether different from a correct or incorrect estimate of it. Byron and Keats both suffered from the former, but none save the wilfully perverse denied the genius of either. And so of Browning and Meredith. Who questions their power or fails to appreciate their talent, though their sentences be of tenest like the Delphic Oracles in mystery 1 And will the twenty-first cen- tury read their lines with less difficulty or belaud what it cannot understand more loudly than the nineteenth 1 More likely it will relegate them (though unfairly), by the contraction of perspective, to the limbo of things unreadable. Tasso, to go further afield, may have been, to use Lamartine's phrase, " bafoue jusque dans son genie," and Dante expelled from Florence "nell' mezzo cammin di sua vita," and Victor Hugo ex- patriated for years ; but they were neverthe- less prophets, if not in their own country, certainly in tneir own times. And Tennyson and Goethe, will posterity bid them climb to a higher gradient up the slopes of Parnassus than that which they have already reached ? I doubt it. No ; the verdict of the future is passed by a jury utterly incapable of viewing a case except through partj^- tinted lenses and furnished only with fragments of evidence upon which to base it. Distance lends eri- cnantment or disenchantment to a view which never possessed either; judgment is given upon mutilated documents or personal bias. Of such is the making of history. Gibbon, Macaulay, Freeman, and Lecky are samples in point; McCarthy's 'History of our Times ' witnesses for the plaintiff. One such volume is worth, in point of accuracy, a whole library of the former. I am not over hopeful, however desirous, of winning many proselytes to my theory, and so shall cease to dilate my phylacteries further ; the rather am I in plight to call into being a swarm of literary wasps about my path. Whichever it