Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/287

 xii. OCT. 3, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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for some shortcomings in the inscription, is probably intended to mean " Marco Polo, a Venetian who traversed the whole world, and was the first to explore India."

RONALD DIXON.

46, Marlborough Avenue, Hull.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The, Discourses of Epictetus. Translated by George

Long. 2 vols. (Bell & Sons.)

IT is pleasant to have in so convenient we had almost said dainty a shape Arrian's discourses of Epictetus, the one of the " Philosophers of the Porch" who, although he had obviously no knowledge of Christian teaching, approached most nearly to its principles. Long's translation, confessedly founded upon that issued in 1807 by Mrs. Carter, was published by Messrs. Bell & Sons in 1877. It is wholly satisfactory for the purposes of the English reader, conveys admirably the cheerful and pious philosophy of this "Budge doctor of the Stoic fur," and is enriched with notes from Schweighaeuser, the best editor, Wolf, Upton, and the translator. It is, of course, for its ethical and philosophical utter- ances that the work is most noteworthy. In essays such as that in the third book on ' Finery in Dress ' it casts a light upon the Rome of Nero. It is a happy idea of Messrs. Bell to popularize the trans- lations of the classics, the appeal of which in their original shape was not wholly aesthetic. We hope they will go further, and produce other works belonging to their classic series which, if less edify- ing, are not less valuable, and, thanks to the menaced prosecution of a bogus society, have long been inaccessible.

The Chatelaine of Vergi. Done into English by

Alice Kemp- Welch. (Nutt.)

Miss ALICE KEMP- WELCH has translated into easy and readable English the thirteenth-century French poem of ' La Chastelaine de Vergy,' one of the most touching and beautiful productions of the dark ages. To the general reader the story is best known as 'The Burgundian Tragedy,' told by Madame Oisille as the seventeenth novel of the 'Hepta- meron.' It is also found in the 'Recueil de Bar- loazan' and many other places. A valuable and interesting introduction, historical and biblio- graphical, is given by L. Brandin, Ph.D., and the French poem is also supplied. Reproductions of designs illustrative of the story are taken from an ivory casket in the British Museum. It is a delight- fully sad and noble story, and we are not surprised to learn that Froissart places the Chatelaine de Vergi with Helen, Hero, Medea, and other heroines in the garden of King Love, and associates her story with those of Tristan and Isoud and the Lady of Fayel and the Chatelain of Couci.

The Descent of the Sun: a Cycle of Birth. Trans-

lated by F. W. Bain. (Parker & Co.) A Digit of the Moon : a Hindoo Lore Story. (Same

translator and publishers.)

THOUGH different in size' The Descent of the Sun ' being in what answers to 4to form and ' A Digit of the Moon' in what may almost be considered 12mo these books are alike in the beauty of their get-up as in the nature of their contents.

Both are more or less in the nature of solar myths, and both illustrate that omnipresent theory in Hindoo literature of the everlasting incarnation and reincarnation of the immortal soul in body after body. In the case of ' A Digit of the Moon,' which is a second edition, the manner in which the MS. came into the hands of the translator is at once romantic and pathetic, and the story, which we have previously read, presumably in the first edition, is matchless in beauty and charm. It narrates the conquest of a peerless princess, who, in a style with which students of Oriental and some forms of mediaeval literature are familiar, insists, as the price of her possession, upon being asked a riddle or a problem which she cannot solve. The two works have in common the passionate adoration of beau- tiful adolescence to which little in European lite- rature quite corresponds. ' The Descent of the Sun ' is richer in imagination. We know nothing more vague in terror and more hopeless in cruelty than the torments to which are subjected Umra- Singh and his beloved Shri in the valley of the Rakshasas, and the magic of the blue eyes of the latter is beyond description. Sully Prudhomme might have felt something of this indefinable charm when he said :

II existe un bleu dont je meurs

Parce qu'il est dans les prunelles. We can but hope that Mr. Bain can and will draw from the Sanskrit many more stories or myths equally poetical and delightful. Gray is said to have depicted happiness as consisting in lying on a sofa and reading endless stories by Crebillon Ms. Substituting Sanskrit for French, we might almost say that a gift equally desirable is in the bestowal of Mr. Bain.

Sir David Wilkie. By Lord Ronald Sutherland

Go wer, F. S. A. (Bell & Sons. ) IN preparing for Bell's series of "Great Masters in Painting and Sculpture " a monograph on Sir David Wilkie, Lord Konald Sutherland Gower has been exceptionally privileged, since he has had access to works of the great Scottish painter in collections not generally within reach. Thanks to such facili- ties, and to a natural vivacity of style, he has pro- duced a work which we are disposed to class as one of the best, as it is certainly one of the most read- able, of the series to which it belongs. Its numerous and excellent illustrations include several portraits and a cast of Wilkie himself, and a view of the manse (no longer existing) of Cults, in the county of Fife, in which he saw the light, together with other pictures of more or less personal and domestic interest. A photogravure of Princess Victoria, with the Duchess of Kent, the Duchess of Northum- berland, and others, forms a striking frontispiece, and there are some forty additional illustrations from the Royal Academy, the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Apsley House, the National Portrait Galleries of England and Scot- land, and from various private collections. In its class, the book is everything that can be desired.

Biblia Cabalistica ; or, the Cabalistic Bible. By the

Rev. Walter Begley. (Nutt.)

THIS work is from the same writer to whom we owe the discovery of the ' Nova Solyma.' We are glad to introduce it to the knowledge of those who are pleased with or able to grasp the mysteries of which it treats. An order of mind and a clasa of erudition which are uncommon are necessary