Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/509

 9 th S. I. JUNE 25, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

501

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1898.

QUERIES :" The horizon of practical politics"" gut" Benjamin Thorpe ' The Adventurer' Pasaz

CONTENTS. -No. 26.

NOTES : Young and Tennyson, 501 Westminster Changes, 502 An Italian Translator of Tennyson, 503 First Horse- Baces in Prussia The Victory of Camperdown Printers' Marks The Lily of Wales Warming- Pan Shakspeare and the Sea, 504 Pearl Fisheries in Wales British Art 'Entertaining Gazette' Senior Wranglers Burmese Wedding Customs, 5C5 Johnson's Residence in Bolt Court " Derring-do " " Vagabonds "St. Julian's Horn, 506.

Dran- aage in

Dickens Reference Wanted Heresy and Beer Grazzini's 1 Seconda Cena,' 507 The Head of the Duke of Suffolk Beards More Family Portrait Frobisher Sibyl Gray's Well Col. Wall' Courses de Festes,' 508 Records of the Inquisition Miles Standish's Wife Bogie Authors Wanted, 509.

BEPLIE8: Cheltenham, 509-Smollett, 510-The Parnell Pedigree, 511 Source of Anecdote Rhyming Warning to Book-borrowers, 512 Newington Causeway Scraps of Nursery Lore Monks and Friars, 513 St. Viars Watch- boxes Spider-wort Spectacles Halifax Shilling, 514 John Weaver Kisfaludy Oxford Undergraduate Gowns

Hyde Todmorden, 515 Verbs ending in "-ish" "Abraham's bosom" Sheepskins, 516 Faitborne's Map of London Prayer for "All sorts and conditions of men "

Pekin. 517 "Posca" St. Kevin and the Goose Authors Wanted, 518.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Piper's ' Church Towers of Somer- setshire ' Baring-Gould's ' Lives of the Saints,' Vols. XIII. and XIV. Inwards's ' Weather -Lore ' Lang's Scott's 4 The Heart of Midlothian ' Burchell's ' In the Days of King James ' Aitken's ' Spectator.'

Notices to Correspondents.

YOUNG AND TENNYSON. YOUNG'S 'Night Thoughts' is a poem at present in risk of being unduly depreciated. Owing to its supposed mere " religiosity," it is too often superficially classed with those books representative of British domestic devotion of which Zimmermann's 'On Soli- tude,' Hervey's ' Meditations,' and Bogatzky's 'Golden Treasury' are types, and which, together with a Bible and a hymn-book, used to form the whole library of small households. In the last century, to whose obsolete style it belongs, it commanded a very wide respect. Dr. Johnson said it contained "very fine things," " a wide display of original poetry," " a wilderness of thought," " flowers of every hue and every odour," "a magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity." Bpswell's praise is even more extravagant. Until our own day it supplied the literary world with a number of quotations greater almost than are taken from any English author except Shakespeare. Even in so recent a book as Bartlett's ' Familiar Quotations ' it obtains three pages of small type. It is surprising, therefore, to find that 'a writer in 'N. & Q.'(5 fch S. i. 365) describes it as "dreary sentimentality," con- taining " occasionally some fair lines few

and far between," and declares that six short passages "exhaust the elegant extracts worthy to be culled" from it. At the beginning of ch. xiv. of * Guy Mannering ' Sir Walter Scott long ago pointed out the quaint- ness of the well-known passage on * Time.'

Among Young's peculiarities are his use of verbal substantives and of abstract adjectives as nouns, e. g. y diffusive, inconceivable, lofty, opaque, profound, vain ; his alliteration, ofte*n subtle and unobtrusive, not apparent merely in initials, but in the continuous use of one sound, as of /, or I, or p, or of two of these combined ; his jingling epithets, of which there are a vast number, e. </., boundless bliss, downy doctors, frozen formalists, frail frame, opprobrious praise, ties terrestrial, value vast; his unusual accentuation academy, allies, contemplate, contemplating, contents, demon- strate, embassy, eternize, increase, miscon- strued, obdurate, orchestra, outrag'd, promul- gate, perspective, record, son6rous, sublunary, survey.

It is strange that two poems so unlike in treatment and in form as Young's 'Night Thoughts' and Tennyson's 'In Memoriam ' should nevertheless have both been born of the same moving force. In each case the poet is led by the death of a dear friend to deal with questions of the resurrection and life hereafter. The late Laureate declared that his " brief lays " were not to be

taken to be such as closed Grave doubts and answers here proposed,

and to my mind the older-fashioned singer is much more convincing and victorious.

The poems are almost wholly unlike, yet there is the faintest suggestion that the later poet was conscious of the work of his pre- decessor. For instance :

One writes, that " Other friends remain," That " Loss is common to the race" And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain

('I.M.,' vi.) may have been suggested by

Yet why complain? or why complain for one Hangs out the sun his lustre but for me, The single man ? are angels all beside ? I mourn for millions ; 'tis the common lot.

(Night i.) Again :

The great world's altar stairs

That slope through darkness up to God

CI.M.,'lv.) reminds us of

Teach me, by this stupendous scaffolding, Creation's golden steps, to climb to Thee.

(Night ix.)

A writer in ' N. & Q.,' 5 th S. ii. 15, has pointed out another resemblance :