Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/207

 9* s.x. SEPT. 6, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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counterpart of Baal information, indeed, if ob- tainable, concerning all the gods for whom

The race of Israel oft forsook Their living Strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing lowly down To bestial Gods ; for which their heads, as low Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spears Of despicable foes.

It is, perhaps, not easy as yet to deal with such subjects with the requisite detachment. Under heads such as ' Austria,' ' Australia,' ' Assyria,' ' Babylon,' and even such as 'Avignon,' 'Augsburg,' ' Belgrade,' much deeply interesting information is given. ' Auto da Fe ' and ' Ark ' are both of extreme importance, and are accompanied with illustrations which add enormously to their value. The work is, indeed, maintained at the high standard it at once reached, and constitutes one of the most solid and indispensable of modern works of reference.

4 THE ROMANCE OF INDIA,' in the Quarterly Review for July, is a thoughtful paper which every one will be the better for having read. It is, of course, wild exaggeration when people say that every Hindoo is a oorn metaphysician. In India, as elsewhere, there are crassly stupid people who live in the animal delights of the present alone, but it would not be easy to find there, as you do so often in England, men and women who really do not know that there are any subjects worth thinking of other than the physical activities. Eastern modes of thought have been so distorted and parodied in this country that good service has been done by giving a sane account of the romance side of life among peoples so very different from and, as it must be owned, in some aspects so superior to ourselves. The paper on Lowell is satisfactory, though we think that the writer at times speaks too highly of Lowell as a man of letters. Of his personal character it would be hardly possible to speak too well, for he was of gentle nature, sane intellect, and with a remarkable power of influence. Circumstances made this widely felt beyond his own land", and he used for wholly beneficent objects the power which nature had given him. There has perhaps been no American who has done more to dissipate the fog of prejudice which has separated England from America, and we are certain that Lowell could not have achieved what he did had he not been a man of letters as well as of State affairs. His prose works have been less read in this country than his verse. We are sorry for this, for they give the views of a highly cultured American on not a few important matters which it is well to compare with our own insular opinions. We need not say that Mr. Swinburne's article on Dickens is an excellent panegyric ; whether it be in all respects convincing is another matter. The writer would not be himself if he did not use strong language when mentioning those with whom he is not in sympathy. There are limits which should never be overpassed when this form of rhetoric is employed. When a writer, however eminent, goes beyond these it is apt to cause reaction in favour of the persons who come under the lash. We are not what we were in days gone by. The ducking-stool and the stocks were no doubt at one time effective influences on the side of virtue ; but picturesque as were their~us.es, they were discarded mainly, as we believe, because they awakened sympathy for those who suffered by them. The reviewer of Mr. Newman's work on 4 The Politics of Aristotle ' knows his subject well,

and states his conclusions with admirable clear* ness, and, what is more, is not overweighted by the massive genius of his subject. How it came to pass that a man whose area of observation was so limited could have the width of view and healthy judgment possessed by Aristotle is a mystery incapable of explanation. As well might we struggle to interpret the remote causes which made the ' Iliad,' the ' Divine Comedy,' or ' Hamlet ' possible. On such matters none but fatuous persons regard themselves as capable of speculating with advantage to themselves or others, but it is a different matter when we are called upon to investigate Aristotle's influence on mediaeval and modern thought. The days of ignorant deprecia- tion are now past, and at times we think we dis- cover a tendency for the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction. ' The Golden Age of English Prose' is -thoughtful, and will do some- thing, one would hope, to induce those who read it to endeavour to make after a seemly fashion. the sentences they write. We thoroughly agree with John Stuart Mill in his denunciation of the study of models as an aid to style, but surely the storing of our minds with the music of those who knew how to use their mother tongue so as to produce harmony would at least preserve us from imitating the coagulated verbiage of some of our contemporaries. TJhe author is quite right when he says that " Bacon, so far as his scientific experi- ments went, did not add a single fact to effective science," but is assuredly mistaken in holding that 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' "was intended for a sober pathological study.'' The paper on George Darley, who is uescribed as a forgotten poet, is well timed. Though not one of the greater lights of the nineteenth century, he was a genuine poet, and his ' Sylvia,' though unknown to the multitude who crave only for new things, has always had a small circle of admirers, which, as false ideals crumble, will, we doubt not, gradually expand.

THE articles in the Fortnightly that can be con- sidered literary deal wholly with the drama. Prof. P. S. Boas writes on 'A Pre-Shaksperean Richard 11.' This play, which forms part of Egerton MS. 1,994, is without title-page and wants some pages at the end. Haiti well-Phillipps printed eleven copies, which are now of extreme rarity, and Mr. Bullen, in an appendix to his ' Old Plays ' (see vol. ii. pp. 427-8) has a short and sneering reference to it, in which he says, " I will not inflict more of this stuff' on the reader." It has now been rendered acces- sible in the German Shakspere Society's Jahrbuch, vol. xxxv., and is the subject of Prof Boas's con- tribution. We can but regret that English scholar- ship has left it to Germany to bring a work of the class within reach of the student, and cannot, through want of space, summarize, or in any way reproduce, the professor's comments. We are sorry tp find him misquoting Milton. Mr. W. S. Lilly dwells upon ' Hermann Sudermann's New Play ' (' Es Lebe das Leben '), which is a problem play with a vengeance. According to the teaching of this, in the case of adultery it is the frail wife who is to commit suicide when the husband and the lover are people with something to do in the world. Rather cynical teaching is this ; but every conceivable ddno&ment to this state of affairs finds acceptance, and we expect before long to see Mrs. This or Madame That in the part. Prof. Lewis Campbell propounds a new theory of ' Shakespeare's