Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/446

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [*" s. HI. JUNK 3, '(

Phcebe, and Wildrake are as pleasant as hereto- fore, and though Col. Everard grows increasingly tedious, that is the case with almost all Scott's heroes. Not readily would we allow any meddling with the text of Scott. We should, however, be thankful in our hearts to any one who would, without avowing his iniquity, quietly suppress passages of such inexpressible priggishness as ap- pear on p. 301 and elsewhere. Alice herself is tarred with the same brush, and now and then makes one angry with her pedantic pretence. None the less, 'Woodstock' is a fine novel, though it betrays a few signs of haste and unwariness.

Mr. Pickiuick's Kent. By Hammond Hall.

(Rochester, W. & S. Mackay.)

THIS little work, the letterpress of which is by Mr. Hammond Hall, gives a photographic record of the tour of the corresponding society of the Pick- wick Club in Rochester, Chatham, Muggleton, Dingley Dell, Cobham, and Gravesend. It has been obviously a labour of love both on the part of the author and that of Mr. Lionel Gowing, to whom most of the photographic illustrations are due. We have found very pleasant the task of perusal, and should enjoy still more that of exploring, with this pleasant and trustworthy companion in our hand, the sunniest spots in Kent. The work has, the writer points out, special and individual claims, among which may happily be counted accuracy, rare in works of its class. Mr. Hall has decided that Muggleton is Maidstone ; Dingley Dell, Sand- ling ; and Cob Tree, Manor Farm. His reasons for this faith are too long for quotation, but we com- mend them to the attention of our readers. To lovers of the country and of Dickens this delightful volume will be equally welcome.

PROF. ARBER and Mr. Frowde have deserved well of all lovers of poetry by issuing The Shake- qpeare, The Jonson, and The Milton Anthologies, three instalments, well printed and inexpensive, of a choice garland of English poetry destined in ten volumes to cover 400 years. The volumes are named from a representative poet of the period covered. Thus the Shakspeare anthology reaches from 1592 to 1616, the Milton from 1638 to 1674. Here are gathered in a number of poems not hitherto easily accessible, some of them none the less excellent for being anonymous, while things formerly credited to Shakspeare, such as Barn- field's "As it fell upon a day," are now restored to their right authors. Some modern critics are so foolish as to say a thing like Drayton's "Since there 's no help, come let iis kiss and part," must be Shakspeare's because it is so fine. Prof. Arber plays none of these tricks. He knows that many men have done one supreme thing and never equalled it again. The punctuation adopted seems rather odd ; there are certainly some intrusive commas about which spoil the sense e.g., in ' Lycidas.' Remarkably rich, apart from the great name of Milton, is the anthology which bears his name. Cowley, Herrick, and Lovelace show a grace'and ease which does not seem to come to oiir modern lovers and poets, who elaborate till all is "ripe and rotten." Is it not a little prudish to omit the last verse of Suckling's ' Wedding Ballad ' ? our age is curiously inconsistent in such matters. It is pleasant to note under the wing of Ben an early appreciation of tobacco by Barten Holiday, poems on so excellent a theme being rare. Marlowe's

"Come live with me, and be my love!" is duly faced on the opposite page by the answer, here ascribed to "Ignoto," but why not say " Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days," as ' The Compleat Angler' tells us? We have found almost everything that we looked for in -these handy volumes, which may be aptly described in Izaak Walton's words as " old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good, I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age."

A SUPPLEMENT to the Court Journal supplies a portrait of the Queen by Mr. Frederic Goodall, R. A., with verses in keeping by Sir Edwin Arnold.

G. L. S. is much obliged to W. C. B., MR. FRED. C. FROST, and to MR. F. A. RUSSELL. She has succeeded in getting copies of Kipling's ' Reces- sional' and ' Dulce Domum.'


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M. DOUGLASS. The epigram is as follows : In Craven Street, Strand, ten attorneys find place, And ten dark coal barges are moored at its base. Fly, Honesty, fly, to some safer retreat ; There 's craft in the river, and craft in the street. The lines are by James Smith, part author of the ' Rejected Addresses.' They were written, sup- posedly extempore, at a dinner in Lincoln's Inn. Sir George Rose then improvised the answer :

Why should Honesty seek any safer retreat

From the lawyers or barges, odd rot 'em?

For the lawyers are just at the top of the street,

And the barges are just at the bottom.

F. J. PARKER, Boston, Mass. ("Methods of arranging MSS.").-~ See 8 th S. iv. 528 ; v. 53, 296.

M. 0. H. See Tasso's 'Jerusalem Delivered,' cantos xiv., xy., &c. Armida was an enchantress who held Christian knights captive in her garden j and enslaved to her charms.

A. D. ("The Loreley"). Clemens Brentano, at j the beginning of the century, first dealt with the I legend in German.

F. T. ELWORTHY (" Face the music"). See 8 th S. ix. 168, 272, 477 ; x. 226, 306, 403 ; 9 th S. ii. 135.

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