Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/407

 9* s. XIL NOT. i*, MOB.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

399

E'fts is to leave matters precisely where they were. i the case of his opening study Mr. Lang has the candour to own that the mystery remains much darker than he found it. If a moral is to be drawn from the results of his researches, it is virtually that the conditions under which evidence reaches us are prohibitive of serious acceptance. In the few cases in which we have it at first hand instead of at third or fourth, it is not the more trustworthy or acceptable. Witness the case of the wicked Lord Lyttelton, who, when dealing with the prediction fulfilled, as it seems, to the letter that he should die in three days, speaks of the communication as a dream, and a couple of days later describes it as a ghost. This special form of difficulty attends one at the outset of every investigation, and is the despair of the careful observer. We could " an we would" dilate from personal experience upon the untrust- worthiness of what should be conclusive testimony, having listened to the description by a companion of an event which both, with equal opportunities for observation, had witnessed, and found therein what seemed to us nothing but misrepresentation and inaccuracy.

Under the title which gives its name to the col- lection, ' The Valet's Tragedy,' few will be prepared to find an account of the man with the so-called "Iron Mask." Accepting as proven all that Mr. Lang seems to establish concerning the hero of this experience, we find that the story gains in incredi- bility what it loses in romance, and it is in a mood of obstinacy and resistance to conviction that we prefer the inventions of Alexandre Dumas or another, to the logic of Mr. Lang. Two consecutive chapters deal with the "valet" himself, Eustache Dauger, and his master, Roux de Marsilly, while a subsequent chapter is more or less connected with it. Chap. iii. deals with another mystery, owned to be insoluble, that of the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, whether the death of that magistrate were due to suicide or to the Jesuits. All that we draw from Mr. Lang is that in case the murder by Catholics took place in London, and the body was subse- quently conveyed to the ditch north of Maryle- bone, the Savoy was a more probable scene of the assassination than Somerset House. In the second of two articles on Joan of Arc Mr. Lang approaches subjects treated by the Psychical Research Society, and holds that the intelligence received by "the Maid " through her voices was, in fact, presented in the shape of hallucinations of eye and ear. It was " sane, wise, noble, veracious, and concerned not with trifles, but with great affairs." Saints and angels did not make themselves audible and visible, but by appearances to the senses that which was divine in Joan made itself intelligible to her ordinary consciousness. Other subjects with which Mr. Lang concerns himself are ' Amy Robsart,' in which the relations of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Lei- cester are compared with those of Mary Stuart and the Earl of Both well ; and ' The Queen's Marys,' in which it is held, apropos of Mary Hamilton, that the fine ballad is not, as Mr. Child opined, concerned with an event in Russia in 1719, but with one in Scotland in 1563. James de la Cloche, whose mystery is dealt with, was the avowed son of Charles II. 'Fisher's Ghost' and 'Lord Bateman' are two further mysteries. No mystery is the Shakespeare- Bacon imbroglio, which comes last, but a refutation of the utterances to which some men who should know better have lent their names. Mr. Lang's new volume has all the attractions of its prede-

cessors, and is in many respects an important con- tribution to historical knowledge. Its illustrations consist of a plan of Somerset House in 1630, the prison in the Isle of Sainte Marguerite of the Man in the Iron Mask, and a portrait of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, which conveys the idea of a man quite capable of suicide.

Turner on Birds. Edited, with Introduction, Translation, Notes, and Appendix, by A. H. Evans, M.A. (Cambridge, University Press.) IN 1544, before he became wholly immersed in religious controversy, the Dean of Wells, the friend of Latimer and Ridley and the intimate associate of Conrad Gesner, wrote during his stay at Basle, and published in Cologne, his ' Avium Prsecipuarum quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est, Brevis et Succincta Historia.' The fame of this was eclipsed by that of his 'Herbal,' issued a quarter of a century later, but it was recognized as the first attempt to treat its subject by scientific methods, and was privately reprinted in Cambridge in 1823 for G. Thackeray, the Provost of King's. Under the admirably competent care of Mr. A. H. Evans, of Clare College, it has now been translated, and published with the Latin text and the English rendering on opposite pages. In a pious and very hortatory address to Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward VI., Turner states that he has com- piled from Aristotle and Pliny and all the best writers this libellum, and has for the prince's pleasure (gratiam) placed the Greek, German, and British names side by side with the Latin. His own observations upon birds follow those of his predecessors. For many readers the work thus constituted has considerable attractions, and it will be scarcely the less interesting on account of the few errors it preserves. When we are told that the Ardea pellet, screams while it couples and (they say) emits blood from its eyes, the "ut aiunt" is Aris- totle's. What Turner reports concerning the Brant and Bernicle goose gives an English or rather Hiber- nian authority. Turner himself was indisposed to believe the assertion of Giraldus (Cambrensis) concerning the spontaneous generation of the bird. An Irish theologian, however, Octayian by name, took his oath upon the Gospel which he taught that he had himself witnessed virtually the process of generation, seen and handled the birds when but rudely formed, and pledged his word that if Turner would remain in London a month or two he would send him some chicks. On the strength of this rash undertaking Turner repeats an old fable. On the aurivettes, or goldfinches, he notes that it is one of the small birds that feed on seeds of thistles and do not touch worms even when offered them. Besides two species of halcyons, he has seen a third species on the banks of streams near the seaside, and nowhere else, which is so like the kingfisher in voice "that if you did not see it you would swear it was a kingfisher." This bird is found near his native Morpeth, and is there called a water craw. Mr. Evans identifies it with the water ouzel or dipper (Cinchis aquaticus). The work is admir- able in all respects, and will be welcomed by the naturalist.

Izaak Walton and his Friends. By Stapleton

Martin, M.A. (Chapman & Hall.) IN writing a new life of Izaak Walton Mr. Martin has been avowedly influenced by the desire to bring out the spiritual side of Walton's character, an