Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/467

. ix. JUNE 7, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

459

The points raised are mainly technical, and to pro- nounce upon them requires a kind of erudition rarely to be found outside a very limited circle. The critic called upon to deal with Mr. Neilson's argument may say of Mr. Neilson as Wyntoun says of Huchown, that he

Has tretyd this mar cwnnandly Than sufrycyand to pronowns am I.

Alliterative pieces previously claimed, directly and indirectly, for Huchown, include the following, printed by the Early English Text Society and, in some cases, elsewhere also: 'Morte Arthure,' ' Destruction of Troy,' * Cleanness ' and ' Patience ' (the last two in ' Early English Alliterative Poems '), together with ' Golagrqs and Gawayne,' ' Awntyrs of Arthure,' and 'Pistill of Susan, edited for the Scottish Text Society. To these Mr. Neilson adds 'The Wars of Alexander' (E.E.T.S.); 'Titus and Vespasian ; or, the Sege of Jerusalem,' edited by Gustav Steffler (Marburg, 1891) ; ' The Parlement of the Three Ages' and * Wynnere and Wastoure' (Roxburghe Club, 1897) ; * Erkenwald,' included in Prof. Carl Horstman's ' Altenglische Legenden ' (Neue Folge, Heilbronn, 1881) ; and three or four short pieces, with which, however, Mr. Neilson does not specially concern himself. Sufficiently startling are the conclusions at which Mr. Neilson arrives so startling that we must perforce leave experts to pronounce upon them. One, perhaps the most important, is that there is being gradually revealed to us "the countenance of an immortal who ranks among the great formative forces in the literature of the English tongue, who, while Chaucer was still (to public intents) silent, had ransacked the storehouses of Latin, French, and English in the quest of material for romantic narrative, and who, no less than Chaucer, set his seal for ever on the literary art of his own genera- tion and of the generations to follow in romance
 * Gawayne and the Green Knight,' and ' The Pearl,'

a unique and lofty spirit, comparable, in respect

of his greatness, only with Walter Scott." Not less remarkable are the interpretations put upon some of the Arthurian legends, recalling those which a couple of centuries earlier were forced upon Pantagruel' and 'Gargantua.' In the 'Golagros' poem, as we are told, the fact in substance is that Edward III., Gawayne is the Black Prince, and the duel is the battle of Poitiers, while the white horse is that ridden by the French king on that ill- fortuned day." Ill-fortuned for France, we pre- sume is meant. In another poem, * The Erlis gone of Kent,' Arthur is Edward III. and Gawayne is the Black Prince, while Galleroun " is a historical and allegorical representative of Scotland." That these and other views herein put forward will meet with opposition may safely be assumed. We are in no position to challenge them. All we can do is to commend them to the consideration of the students of alliterative verse. The rich stores of Glasgow University, already laid under contribu- tion by the Hunterian Club, have been used by Mr. Neilson, whose volume includes the substance of two lectures delivered before the Glasgow Archaeo- logical Society, in whose Proceedings they were first printed. Some additions have been made, an index has been supplied, and the work thus con- stituted has been issued in an edition practically limited to 250 copies. Facsimiles from Hunterian MBS. of Geoffrey of Moumouth, diagrams, crests,
 * ' Golagros represents John of France, Arthur is

and other illustrations add to the interest and value of the volume.

SIR EDMUND T. BEWLEY, LL.D., has reprinted from the Cumberland and Westmorland Archrco- oerical Society's Transaction^ vol. ii., New Series (Kendal, Wilson), Some Notes on the Lowther* who held Judicial Office m Ireland in the Seventeenth Century. These are of historical as well as genea- logical interest, and are accompanied by a design of the Lowther monument in Lowther Church, Westmorland.

MR. PERCY LINDLEY'S Holiday* in Eastern Counties has been greatly enlarged, and is very likely to set one dreaming of a visit to places so pleasantly described by pen and pencil.

HONOUR to the season is furnished in the Fort- nightly by a ' Coronation Ode,' the author of which is Mr. James Rhoades. Like many similar com- positions it is creditable as rhetoric, if not specially "m^^y.^.P 06 ^/ Mr - G - Marconi writes on is, of course, bound to make out a case for his own invention, but some of the instances he advances of wireless communication are sufficiently remarkable. Mr. Arthur Symons contributes an article on ' Rodin,' of whom he speaks as " a visionary, to whom art has no meaning apart from truth." He is a little startling in his paradox, as when he says in reference to rhythm, the importance of which it is difficult to exaggerate, " The same swing and balance of forces make the hump on a dwarfs back and the mountain in the lap of a plain. One is not more beautiful than the other, if you will take each thing simply, in its own place." This we cannot but regard as a hard saying. An animated account is given of various works of Rodin. With Mr. Symons's conclusions we cannot deal. He quotes, however, a message from the civic authorities in Paris which is a surprising " document in the relations of art and the State." Without the abso- lute assurance of the writer we should hesitate to believe such a communication possible. They do not do everything better in France. Mr. Joseph Morris has an able article on ' John Webster.' in which he holds the scales successfully between the measureless enthusiasm of Mr. Swinburne and the carping dis- content of Mr. William Watson. Concerning Web- ster Mr. Morris has no doubt. He is "infinitely the greatest of that fascinating brotherhood of play- wrights who cluster, like clever and emulative children, round the gigantic manhood of Shake- speare." Mr. Courtney s treatment of the legend of ' Undine ' is, too, a delightful blend of poetry and fantasy. 'George Eliot is the subject in the Nineteenth Century of an essay by Mr. Herbert Paul. George Eliot's letters are pronounced "pon- derous, conventional, and dull." Her style has not the magic of Rousseau and George Sand. It has, even at its best, " a hard metallic tone," and the metal is not silver. What seems to Mr. Paul most remark- able in her is that her powers of expression seldom find " a simple and natural outlet," except in the mouths of her characters. She is credited with a true and sincere sympathy with goodness of all kinds, with sorrow, with suffering, and with child- hood. * Middlemarch ' is regarded as the culminat- ing effort of George Eliot's genius. She is said to have been "always didactic," preaching "to the conventional masses of her fellow-countrymen the gospel of self - sacrifice, self surrender, and self- restraint." She wrote, it is owned, good English,
 * The Possibilities of Wireless Telegraphy.' He