Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/329

 VIL APRIL 27, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

321

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1901.

CONTENTS. -No. 174.

NOTES : English Hexameters and Elegiacs, 3^1 -Plough Monday Mummeries, 322 Spenser, 'Locrine,' and 'Seli- mus,' 324 Whitaker on Andorra Book by Richard Baxter Sweep's Sign, 326 Henry III. pawns an Image of the Virgin Anthony Fortescue, 327.

QUERIES : Visitation Nuns at Chelsea Excavations near Cirencester County Abbeys, 327 "I sit on a rock "

' To Margaret W 'Duration of Life in Seeds' The

Pursuit of Pleasure 'Mrs. Charles Arbuthnot Byron's Poem on Greece Box Family of Yorkshire Peter Leicester, 328 Register of Births on Tower Hill Sargent Family A Regiment that declined to go to India "Canouse" William Morehead Duke ot Normandy Flower Game University Degrees Ambrose Dudley Mann Flight of King James from Ireland, 329 Authors Wanted, 330.

REPLIES : Shakespeare the "Knavish," 330 " Bull and Last" Anthony de Solemne Location of Theatre Hand-ruling in Old Title-pages, 331 Source of Quotation D'Auvergne Family Funeral Cards ' ' Five o'clock tea" Animals in People's Insides, 332 The Battle of Fontenoy, 333 Wall Calendars with Quotations from Shakespeare, 334 London Churches "As right as a trivet " Healing Stone, 335 " Qui vive?" "Manu- rance" Arundel : Walden Talbot Surname and Family, 336 Broken on the Wheel "Tapping" and "Tipping" A Friday Superstition, 337 Allusion in Wordsworth- Orientation in Interments Fergaunt Runic Inscription found in St. Paul's Churchyard Irish Harps, 338 Pens : "Nibs" and "Nebs" Comic Dialogue Sermon, 339.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Inderwick's ' Calendar of the Inner- Temple Records 'Browne's ' Triglot Dictionary of Scrip- tural Representative Words.'

Notices to Correspondents.

$01*2.

ENGLISH HEXAMETERS AND ELEGIACS.

IN the preface to his charming idyllic poem ' Dorothy,' the author whose hand has lately been missed from these columns, in which it was wont to be familiar thus speaks of the measures in which he delineates and glorifies his heroine :

" We are not ignorant, brethren, of what has been said and done concerning English Hexameters from the days of Hobbinol, and Abraham Fraunce and Philip Sidney, down to those of Whewell, and Clough, and Longfellow, and Kingsley, and Matthew Arnold, and that lumen purpureum, Mr. A. C. Swinburne. As for Elegiacs, there was one who said that In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery

column ;

In the Pentameter aye falling in melody back : but few have taken kindly to these measures ; their friends are feeble, like myself ; and their enemies are mighty and rage horribly; and if they rage against the Hexameter, how much more against the rarer and more difficult Pentameter ? "

This was written in 1880, forming part o1 an explanatory and somewhat apologetic prelude to a poem that tells its own tale admirably, and that is written, besides, in crisp, nimble, and fluent elegiacs constituting their own strong and permanent recom

mendation. Yet, apparently, the critic of o-day knows nothing either of 'Dorothy' r of its instructive and dexterous preface. V[r. Browning, in a somewhat impatient ittle introduction to one of his volumes written at a time when he and the "British public " did not see exactly eye to eye in egard to lofty intellectual poetry hoped hat when men sat in judgment on his work ,hey would, at any rate, take the prelimi- nary caution of making some preparation "or their responsible task. One would magine that a critic of any pretension would consider a laborious and generous training ndispensable. How else can he expect his word to have weight and his opinion to be authoritative 1 The general reader, for whom and through whom he labours and earns his living, is supposed to give credence to his statements and to abide by his decisions. It is a fact that critiques and appreciations furnish many " well-read " members of the community with their entire stock of literary knowledge. They supply for the clubs and the gatherings at afternoon tea the indis- pensable minimum of allusions to " the last new thing " of a favourite or the advent of a fresh aspirant to fame. Thus the indifference, ignorance, or error of a critic who speaks through the medium of a well-accredited organ may be fraught with serious con- sequences both for the books he discusses and the readers whose faith he commands.

Of this necessity for care and thorough- ness there is a somewhat startling illus- tration in the Academy of 19 January, where a reviewer handles in smart modern fashion the new volume of poems by Sir Lewis Morris, entitled ' Harvest - Tide ' (Kegan Paul). The longer poems in this volume the Diamond Jubilee ode, the 'Georgian Romance/ the soldiers' song 'For Britain,' &c. are strong and charac- teristic settings of their themes, while many of the shorter lyrics 'Remember,' e.ff. t ' Ah ! was it 1 ? ' ' Tsedium Vitse,' ' Terra Domus,' 'Pilgrims,' and the vivid 'In Memo- riam ' on Mr. Gladstone are finely conceived and daintily and gracefully elaborated. But new criticism sees nothing of this ; sets itself, on the contrary, to show how ridiculous it can make the artist ; and falls wofully, as will now be seen, on the other side. The reviewer in the Academy poses, as he should be entitled to do, on a broad basis of com- prehensive knowledge. He asserts his fami- liarity with poetry earlier than that given in 'Harvest-Tide,' and he presumes to prove that Sir Lewis Morris is an imitator under several heads. It will suffice meanwhile to