Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/248

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. VIL MABOH 23, 1901.

and its characters including " a monstrous Negro of colossal villainy." Some few lines of ^erse written by Stevenson at the age of thirteen are given, together with extracts from his letters ot later date The bulk of the volume is made up of criticism, usually sound enough, of Stevenson s writings. There is the parallel already, it is sad to think, inevitable between Stevenson and Scott ; there is an explanation of Stevenson s attitude towards Burns, with which his critic does no } t sympathize. There is much praise of Stevenson s 'Child's Garden of Verses.' Is it quite exact that the cow in Scotland, as described by Stevenson in lines quoted by his critic,

Walks among the meadow grass And eats the meadow flowers ? We are not always in accord with the opinions expressed by Mr. Baildon, but he says much that is judicious" and some things that are valuable. He can scarcely be familiar with Scott when he speaks of a "Bailie Nicol Jarvie or a Dugald Cratur." What seems here to be a proper name should, of course, be "the Dougal creature' or " the Dougal cratur." "The creature Dougal ' Rob Roy himself calls him. The book is agreeably written, and may be read with pleasure and advantage.

THE Idler magazine has now passed into the hands of that enterprising tirm Messrs. Dawbarn & Ward, under whom it is likely to obtain augmented popularity. Its illustrations are excellent. The contents consist principally of fiction, but there are some articles of permanent interest.

THE Leeds Mercury has celebrated, by the reissue of the number for 7 March, 1801, the fact that the newspaper has been for a hundred years in the hands of the Baines family. The number reprinted contains the announcement that the paper has been purchased by Edward Baines. This long proprietor- ship of a journal by the same family is rare, and almost unique. We have had personal acquaintance with many members of the family, from the founder onward, and can bear testimony to the zeal and energy that have secured the newspaper its exem- plary position in country journalism. It would be possible, did space permit, to extract much inter- esting matter from the number now reprinted.

AMONG other papers, Folk-Lore for March con- tains an instructive resume of the old Irish tabus or geasa. The actions which are still esteemed to be essentially unlucky in the British Islands and Western Europe have yet to be brought together, but there is no reason to doubt that at some future day anthropologists will show that tabu beliefs were anciently of great power among our pre decessors. Another paper on the folk-lore of South West Wiltshire mentions " trap " as a Palm Sunday amusement: "The young men, with the elders to watch them, would ' beat the ball ' up Cow-down and then play trap." Was this ball game, like so many others in Europe, India, and elsewhere, t degraded form of religious observance connectec with nature worship ?

THE February number of the Library Journa deals with several questions worthy of considera tion, among which " Should libraries buy only th< best books, or the best books that people wil read?" is of serious importance. The spread o

education in both America and the British Empire hows only too clearly how few brains have a real bptitude for recognizing the artistic value of true iterature or for absorbing scholarly instruction, and the head of a free library is bound to remem- >er that the general reader cares only for amuse- ment and relaxation. His mental energies are already overtaxed by the demands of social exist- ence, and, though far from being a dullard on matters which give his inborn tendencies proper )lay, he is incapable of fixing attention on any >OOK which requires serious effort of mind.

THE Intermediate deals, as heretofore, with the most diverse subjects, such as the statue represent- ng Desaix as a " mother-naked man," the papers of \tadame de Pompadour, Rudyard Kipling's ' Jungle Books,' and the derivation of the word "bluff." N. & Q.' itself does not afford its readers a wider range of information.

THE February number of the Antiquary contains, imong other articles of merit, a description of the iturgical fan and a fifteenth-century life of St. Dorothea. In the issue of the same magazine for March appears part of a paper on the treatment of our prisoners of war a century ago, which is worth attention ; while in the ' Notes of the Month ' there .s a description of the fragment of a curious mortar
 * qund near the remains of a Roman villa lately

discovered at Rothley, Leicestershire. " The mortar was of pottery-ware, the inside being lined with small flints pressed into the clay before baking."

ta

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M. L. R. B. ("Credat Judseus Apella "). This has already been discussed in 9 th S. iii. 326 and later references. Modern scholars do not believe in the resolution of Apelles into a-pelle.

W. L. R. ("Peace with honour "). This has already been considered ; see 5 th S. x. 386 ; 6 th S. v. 346,496; vi. 136; vii. 58, 255.

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