Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/48

 38 NOTES AND QUERIES. w* s. VL Jnw u, woo. apples"? I have lived in Devonshire the greater part of my life, but never met with the words "crowdy-mutton "in speech,news- paper, or book. It is unknown to the local glossaries. In Devon and Somerset" crowder " means a fiddler, and " crowrly kit " a small fiddle—e.g., " There go'th tha crowder ! I warndee' e's off tii Worlington Revel," &c. The pie MR. MAYHEW refers to is probably that known in Devonshire as squatt,, squab, or squob pie, and when properly made and served with clotted cream is a delicacy not to be lightly spoken of. This word does not appear m Jenuings's ' Somerset Dialect.' A. J. DAVY. Torquay. LANDOR QUERY (9th S. v. 456).—In his pre- face to 'Simonidea,' Landor undoubtedly referred to Reginald Heber, afterwards Biahop of Calcutta, and to Lord Strangford, Byron's "Hibernian Strangford," author of 'Poems from the Portuguese of Cainoens' (1803). As to the third name, possibly it was Mr. Charles Grant, afterwards Lord Qlenelg (oli. 18fi6), who in 1805, when a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, carried off one of the four prizes offered by Dr. Claudius Buchanan for a poem on the Restoration of Learning in the East.' His brother, Sir Robert Grant, Governor of Bombay, wrote some well- known hymns. Charles Grant's poem con- tained the lines :— Dejected India, lift thy downcast eyes And mark the hour whose faithful steps for thee Through Time's pressed ranks bring on the Jubilee_ The preface to Landor's ' Simonidea' is dated Bath, 14 Feb., 1806. Writing to Southey, towards the end of 1810, Landor said : "There are many things of which I am ashamed in the 'Simonidea.' There is a sneer, of which I am heartily ashamed, at Mr. Grant, Mr. Heber, and Lord Strangford " (see Forster's ' Life of Landor,' first edition, i. 256 n.). In the dedication of the volume of poetry he pub- lished in 1831, Landor spoke of Bishop Heber as " the prudent and liberal man, the wise and witty, the convivial and inoffensive, and than whom none ever died more extensively lamented, none more deeply by the friend and the scholar, by the in- digent and the afflicted, none with better hopes by all the religious and the good." According to the Rev. R. Landor, the few literary men who read 'Gebir' on its first appearance included Shelley, Reginald Heber, and Coleridge. In his imaginary conversation with Archdeacon Hare, Landor himself says that Mr. Charles Wyndham recommended ' Gebir' to the Hebers. Bishop Heber, in his 1 Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India,' says that some of the ruins he saw reminded him of Landor's de- scription of the Egyptian " Masar." Those were the lines Shelley loved to recite, begin- ning Once a fair city, courted then by kings, Mistress of nations, tbrong'd by palaces, &c. STEPHEN WHEELER. "Mr. Grant" would be either Charles Grant, afterwards Lord Glenelg, whose prize poem was published by the University of Cam- bridge in 1805, or his brother Robert Grant, the author of many well-known hymns. Con- sult the ' D.N.B.' for both. W. C. B. I think the "Mr. Grant" referred to by Lan- dor was Robert Grant, afterwards knighted. son of Charles Grant. Sir Robert Grant and his brother Lord Glenelg wrote verses, but I have not read them. See the ' D.N.B.' Tnos. WHITE. Liverpool. _ _ NOTES ON BOOKS. &c. The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient and Modern Art. By W. L. Courtney. (Constable & Co.) THREE thoughtful and valuable lectures on the idea of tragedy, delivered by Mr. Courtney in February at the Royal Institution, now, with a bright and appreciative prefatory notice by Mr. Pinero, appeal to the reading public. Of these the first deals with tragedy from its unpretending genesis in the festival in a Greek village in honour of Dionysus to " what the lofty, grave tragedians taught ; the second with Marlowe, Shakespeare, and, to a certain extent, with the Tudor dramatists generally ; the third with modern developments. chiefly pessimistic, illustrated in the writings of Schopenhauer, Ibsen, and Maeterlinck. That Mr. Courtney's canvas is not large enough for his design is obvious from the outset. A passage from ^Eschylus to Shakespeare, and a secona f rom Shake- speare to Ibsen, leaves, necessarily, huge tracts of country unexplored. The treatment is, however, less inadequate than it appears. In dealing with Greek tragedy one includes that of Rome ; the imitations of Seneca current in Mediaeval and Renaissance times ; the theatre of Corneille and his predecessors ; that of Racine ; and, in fact, the whole French classical drama, together with the imitations of it— few and insignificant enough — in England. Shakespeare meanwhile may well stand for the Romantic drama generally, binding by links of no great strength or substance the drama of Spain with that of Germany and France, as respec- tively represented by Schiller and Hugo. Ibsen, meantime, represents Ibsen, together with the problem play generally, the influence of which seems to be decidedly on the wane. Of the three essays or lectures we find the first the most con- vincing. We have been ourselves in the habit of regarding the basis of the Greek drama as man the slave of circumstance or destiny— call it what you will — and that of the Romantic drama as man at war with circumstance. We have even wondered