Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/71

 9* s. VL JULY 2i, woo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 5T the sea is so overwhelming as to'make mj contention ludicrous. I may have been wrong ; but I think that I made out a very good case in favour of my contention. 1 quoted passages from other poets which snowed that they must have seen the sea. ] could find no such passage in Shakspeare. There is, however, one line in 'Richard II.' which I did not quote, and which is happy: After late tossing on the breaking seas. That one of Shakspeare's hyperboles corre- sponds with one by Lucan does not seem to me to be very significant. In my former contributions I either quoted or referred to all the chief passages in which Shakspeare mentions the sea, and I com- pared what he had written with what other poets had written on it. Yet MR. PERCY SIMPSON said that I was blind to the evi- dence of Shakspeare's knowledge of the sea, and was not a ware that Shakspeare borrowed hislines from the conventional storm-painting of the Latin poets. It seems that some Latin poets do not follow nature when they are Stinting storms ; but I am quite sure that orace describes naturally sea storms, the sea, and what pertains to it. And surely Virgil's tempest in the '^Eneid,' book i. lines 80-90, is like the real thing. If we knew nothing of the life of Byron we could perceive from his poetry that he had had maritime experience. I am as sure that Homer and Cowper saw the sea as that I have seen it myself; but I do not think the same of Shakspeare. A few lines that he has written cause me to suppose that he may have seen the sea ; but most of his descrip- tions of it and references to it make a dis- tinctly contrary impression. A great poet, who is describing what he has never seen, may resort to hyperbole in order to disguise his ignorance. Though Shakspeare wrote very beautiful poetry on the sea, it is not certain that he saw it. The lovely dirge in ' The Tempest' may have had no other sug- gestion than a bit of coral on the mantle- piece ; but anybody else might have voyaged all round the world, and yet would never have had his ideas. Shakspeare need not have had actual knowledge of a sea storm when he wrote the grand lines in ' Pericles ': The sea-man's whistle Is as a whisper in the ears of death Unheard. E. YARDLEY. OMAR KHAYYAM (9th S. v. 517).— For Persian poetry generally, Qarcin de Tassy's 'Prosodie des Langues de 1'Orient Musul- ni.'in,' second edition, 1873, is a most lucid and fascinating book, in quite the best style of French scientific writing. Concerning the various editions of Omar, I had an article in the Academy, 4 December, 1897. in which I referred to Wh'infield's, in Trubners "Oriental Series," as the best edition of the Persian text, and it has an English verse translation. Since then there has been published the fac- simile of the Bodleian manuscript mentioned in the editorial note. JAS. PLATT, Jun. EKLATIVE IMPORTANCE OF SUBJECTS IN PUBLIC LIBRARIES (9th S. v. 456).—The follow- ing extract from the Report of the Rochdale Free Public Library may be of service to BIBLIOPHAGUS. to whom I shall be glad to send a copy of the Report itself if he wishes : No. of Volumes CLASSIFICATION. Volumes. Issued. Theology and Philosophy 1,803 ... 1,182 Biography and Correspondence ... 2,960 ... 1,977 History and Travels 4,519... 3,715 Law, Polities, and Commerce ... 806... 562 Arts, Science, and Natural History 3,940... 6,397 Fiction and Juvenile Literature ... 16,3.r>9 ...106,660 Poetry and the Drama 1,131... 917 Miscellaneous Literature 6,614 ... 10,854 Books for the Use of the Blind ... 277 ... 53 38,409 ...132,317 HENRY FISHWICK. Total The Heights, Rochdale. Hints as to the above and statistics of the relative proportions in which fiction and other classes of books were issued are in the Report of St. Giles's Public Library (1899-1900, p. 16, 5 14), Parishes of St. Giles and of St. George, Bloomsbury, Tho. Greenwood, 1892 and 1894, pp. 401-2,131; Newcastle-upon-Tyne,33; Sun- derland, 144; Birmingham, 160; Longfagan, near Dundee, 445. Second International Li- brary Conference, London, 1897: Children's Libraries, 111; in Jamaica, 175-6. The Library, i. 332, Guildhall; ii. 179, 233, 364; iv. 136; v. 176: vi. 411; and viii. 522-35 in especial. H. B. Wheatley, 1886, 'How to Form a Library,' 85-6, for Liverpool. See also F. B. Perkins, The Best Books.' C. G. S.-M. 23, Upper Bedford Place, W.C. FOSTER POWELL, THE YORKSHIRE PEDES- TRIAN (9th S. v. 436).—MR. SMITH will find an interesting account of this man in ' Won- derful Characters,' by H. Wilson and J. Caulfield, published by J. C. Hotteu (no date, but about 1870), wherein he is stated X) have been born in 1734 and to have died n 1793. I think your correspondent's date of 1732 must be an error. FRED. C. FROST, F.S.I. Teignmouth. This celebrated Yorkshire pedestrian was born at Hoprforth, near Leeds, in 1734, For