Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/447

 9 th S. II. Nov. 26, '98.]

NOTES AND QUEEIES.

439

moiselle speaks, however, of " cette malheureuse Angleterre," and can never have had the slightest disposition to the match. Pitt's reason for with- drawing his advances to Miss Eden and retiring definitely from her father's house, Eden Farm, where he spent his happiest days, was the em- barrassed state of his finances, a poverty as uncom- fortable as it was honourable. Pitt's schemes with regard to the regulation of Irish trade won, more than a century later, the commendation of Mr. Glad- stone, who, in ' Special Aspects of the Irish Question,' said, in a passage quoted by Lord Ashbourne, p. 130, note, " The views of Mr. Pitt for Ireland, as they were expressed in the year 1784 by his correspond- ence with the Duke of Rutland, were everything that equity and justice could suggest." We are disposed, indeed, to regard as the most important portion of an excellent volume the exposition of Irish grievances which it contains. JLord Ash- bourne insists on the imprudence manifested by Lord Fitzwilliam, and holds that it "was a mistake ever to have selected him, and a greater mistake still to have allowed him to go to Ireland after he had, by his rash and precipitate language, shown his thorough unfitness for the Viceroyalty." The sub- ject has, however, been dealt with fully by Mr. Lecky and Lord Rosebery, and has given rise to abundant controversy.

Lord Ashbourne has drawn most of his materials from the Bolton and Pretyman MSB., the Stanhope Papers, the Rutland Correspondence, and other similar sources he is careful in naming. Such domestic correspondence of Pitt as he supplies is chiefly interesting as showing the great pride and affection with which Pitt was regarded by his parents. Pitt's own letters strike us as hide-bound. They are those, naturally, of a man on whom heavy responsibility was thrown at an early age, and though they justify the high opinion formed con- cerning Pitt's character, which the latest bio- Sapher, like his predecessors, maintains, they have of regret over the destruction of much of his private correspondence. Pitt was, indeed, as Lord Ashbourne says, a politician and "never anything else." One of Pitt's early letters is acknowledged to be " an extraordinarily formal and verbose production from a youth of sixteen. When, with the assistance of Lord Pitt and Lady Hester, his brother and sister, he wrote and acted a juvenile tragedy, ' Laurentius,' it was wholly political. Two stanzas of a poem now in possession of a granddaughter of the first Lord Harrowby, to whom Pitt preserved the original, are printed. In the first of these stanzas there is an obvious mis- take of "gloom" for grove. Whether it is in the original or the transcript we do not know, but a mistake it is, losing the chief rime of the quatrain. Lord Ashbouruo has written a valuable book, which all politicians will be bound to study, and has cast new light upon a character which is great rather than sympathetic. It is handsomely got up, with Pitt's book-plate as an ornamental device on the cover. The portraits, which are admirably reproduced, constitute a specially attractive feature. They consist, in addition to that of Miss Eden already named, of Hoppner's portrait of Pitt now m the possession of Mr. Burdett Coutts, M.P. ; the fourth Duchess of Portland, from a miniature by Cosway ; Thomas Orde, subsequently Lord Bolton, by Romney ; John Beresford, M.P., Lord Chatham, Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Clare, Henry Grattan, Lord
 * tle literary charm, and leave us no special feeling

Castlereagh, and a second portrait of Pitt bv Gains^ borough Dupont from Apsley House.

Gypsy Folk-Tales. By Francis Hindes Groome.

(Hurst & Blackett.)

MR. GROOME'S new book on gipsy lore, which is- dedicated to Messrs. Cosquin, Clodd, Jacobs and Lang, and their fellow folk-lorists, opens with a dis- claimer (modest, but with a little subacid sugges- tiveness) to the effect that he is " no folk-lorist ^ but one who has dabbled in folk-lore as a branch of the great Egyptian question. If he is not a folk-lorist, he has had assistance from one who is, and the knowledge displayed of variants of the stories he has collected and of parallels to them entitles some one, whom we will venture to think himself, to take a conspicuous place among the commentators on folk-tales. It is, however, with the Egyptian ques- tion that he is most closely concerned. Since his publication, eighteen years ago, of his profoundlv interesting 'In Gypsy Tents' (for which see 6 th S. ii. 338, and a long essay by CUTHBERT BEDE, 6 th S. ii! 362), his studies of the subject have been maintained' and he is now prepared to suggest for gipsy tales an, influence on literature which only an enthusiast would claim on their behalf. After giving among Bukowina gipsy stories 'The Jealous Husband/ the basis of which is a wager similar to that in Cymbelme between Posthumus and lachimo, won. in a similarly fraudulent fashion, he says in a note, "Were I a painter. I would paint a picture, the Forest of Arden, a Gypsy encampment, with tents, dogs, donkeys, and children, a Gypsy story-teller, and Shakespeare." After adding, with a touch of sarcasm, that we know, "of course, that Shake- speare derived the material of his " Cymbeline ' from

the novel of Boccaccio and not through the

second story in 'Westward for Smelts,'" he pro- pounds a question the significance of which is scarcely dubious, " Whence did Boccaccio get his material?" We will not attempt to answer the inquiry. As, however, the most continuous research fails to show the source of folk - lore stories, a gipsy transmission or dispersal is as likely as any other. Among the Turkish gipsy stories which stand earliest, No. 4 is ' The Story of the Bridge,' which Mr. Groome characterizes as so hopelessly corrupt as to seem absolute nonsense. Shapeless as it is,. however, it furnishes very curious evidence on the widespread and ancient belief in " kirk grims." The Roumanian story of ' The Red King and the Witch' Mr. Groome, with a passing sneer at Maeterlinck, declares to be, in his opinion, the finest folk-tale that we possess. It is, indeed, an admir- able specimen, as is that, similar in origin, by which it is succeeded, ' The Prince and the Wizard.' Some of the stories have had to be bowdlerized, being it is stated, far too Rabelaisian to be published entire. The expediency of such processes cannot be questioned when a work is, as in the present case, intended for general circulation. A public exists- which is entitled to have such stories in their original shape. By all concerned in the study of folk-lore, anthropology, ethnology, and kindred subjects, the truth of this contention will be im- mediately granted. How they are to be conveyed to the select few and kept from general circulation we cannot state. The one country in which an experiment of the kind has been carried to a suc- cessful issue is Germany. We are frequently re- minded in ' Gypsy Folk-Tales ' of the Russian tales collected by Ralston and of those in the ' Contes