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176 ask, 'Wherefore this insistence ? Has Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, with his customary liberality in epithet, been calling Chaucer a 'cad'? Has any one been aspersing Chaucer's breeding? If not, the observation is a little inapt. The evolution of the ' gentleman ' during five hundred years has resulted in many changes in the connotation of the term. Even Mr. Paton admits the ' conversa- tional laxity ' of Chaucer's pilgrims, and that some of their rude jests might have brought the blush of shame to the cheeks of ' a party of moderately sober militiamen.' Indeed, however, the insistence is futile. Chaucer's is too large a figure to be thrust into a conventional category. We may be fairly pardoned for hinting at the possibility of Mr. Noel Paton having failed to grasp the full significance of Chaucer's place and power, when we find him characterise Chaucer as an 'enfant terrible, whose worst sin is deficiency of reticence.' But in spite of more than one infelicitous simile, and in spite also of a certain immaturity of critical faculty, the essay of Mr. Paton is interesting and readable. Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. Edited and selected by W. B. Yeats. London : Walter Scott, 1888. The folk-lore of Ireland is peculiarly rich in legends of the supernatural. Uncanny stories of ' merrows ' or sea-folk ; of the 'gentry,' who correspond to the 'brownies ' of the Scotch tales ; of ghosts, giants, witches, devils, and other species of the order of quaint and queer, make up, with the ' Brehon Laws,' which nobody reads, what stands for most people as native Irish literature. And if much of it is coarse and crude, especially as it appears in transla- tion, there are ingenuity of device and imaginative boldness enough to recommend the Irish stories, even to the epicure. The collec- tion of Mr. W. B. Yeats is very fairly representative, although an e.ample or two from Joyce's Early Celtic Romances might with advantage have been given, unless there were difficulties in the way. It is curious to compare the Irish setting of some of the legends with the tales as they appear in other literatures. Indeed there is room for an e.tended edition of Mr. Baring Gould's Myths of the Middle Ages. But for the purposes of comparative mythology, it is to be feared that the narrators may have uncon- sciously improved the analogies, or even made some of them. It is hard to believe, for example, that Prosper Merimee's Guiseppe had not something to do with Billy Dawson in Will Carleton's ' Three Wishes ' (p. 235) ; not that there is any suggestion of plagiarism, but that the mingling of the stories is probable. The book is extremely readable, and ought to be one of the most widely read of the Camelot Series. The second volume of Unwin's Novel Series is Mrs. Keith's Crime, by Mrs. W. Kingdon Clifford. The intense painful- ness of the story will probably prevent adequate recognition of its thoroughly artistic method ; yet its essential truthfulness in the working out of a dominant motive has made it rank high among psychological novels. It is needless to remind our readers that Mrs. Clifford is the widow of a man of genius whose Cosmic Emotion added the reputation of a stylist to that of a mathema- tician, and is also the authoress of a volume of charming stories. Mr. Grant Allen notwithstanding, there may be some question about the general sanity and value of an Eisteddfod, but on the less blatant work of reprinting in facsimile there cannot well be two opinions. The Oxford Series of Welsh Texts is an undertaking which with all the niceties of antiquarianism combines a very sub- stantial measure of practical use. The first volume of this series was the famous Red Book of Hergest, better known as the Mabin- ogion, through the charming translation of Lady Charlotte Guest. The second, and so far the last issued, is the Black Book of Car- marthen, the very oldest of Welsh manuscripts, which contains many of the poems attributed to Taliesin and the other pre-Christian bards. The Ms. itself is believed to date from about the reigns of Henry 11. and Richard, a time when the great Welsh Renais- sance of poetry was already in its germ. Mr. T. Fisher Unwin is about to publish 'English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages (fourteenth century), by J. J. Jusserand, Conseiller d'ambassade. Dr. ^s Lettres.' Translated by Lucy A. Toulmin Smith. The specimen sheets show that the book is written attractively, while the best indication of its solid value is the name of the translator. The previous work of Miss Smith — the introduction to her brother's great book on English Guilds — takes rank with the Monograph of Brentano and the Treatise of Ochenowsky in a list of the books on the department of mediaeval life with which they are concerned. M. Jusserand's work, which is illustrated by reproductions from mediaeval tapestries, drawings, and paintings, would appear to aim at giving in popular form a series of pictures of the industry and social life of the middle ages, compounded from such details as are given in the Rolls of Parlia- ment, Rymer's Fo;dera, and such as have been collected with historic or economic intent in the writings of Stubbs, Freeman, Green, Rogers, and others. Quite the best thing in the Universal Review for October is the daintily pensive little poem by Sir Edwin Arnold ' To a Pair of Slippers. ' The author of ' The Light of Asia ' is undoubtedly not in first or even in the second rank ol living poets, whether for the thought-quality of his verses, or for the merits of their form. A serious, rather than a high thinker, he does not live habitually on those upper heights where the atmosphere is rarefied to that fine- ■ ness which constitutes the essentially poetic. Neither is his versi- fication, with all its ' go ' and occasional music, exempt from faults that are apt to mark the amateur. A lame ending, a harsh cadence, an hiatus where the reader is suddenly bumped into a stand — these are very ordinary things in Sir Edwin's poetry, and examples enough may be found of them in the verses we have named. Nevertheless, the poem is very prettily trivial and pathetic. It is most daintily illustrated by Mr. J. Bernard Partridge. The Wandering Jew has turned up at Dresden. At anyrate, one may infer this from the announcement of the opening there of a museum of old boots of famous personages. It would appear that since Nathaniel Hawthorne compiled the catalogue of the ' Virtuoso's Collection,' the venerable wanderer has been accumu- lating with vigour, for he has added almost a whole department to his formerly sufficiently varied and curious collection. The little glass slipper of Cinderella, one of Diana's sandals, the green velvet shoes of Thomas the Rhymer, and the brazen shoe of Empedocles, which was thrown out of Mount Etna, formed by no means a con- temptible set of treasures for such a museum. They are remote enough to be rare. But these were all in the old collection. The complete catalogue of the new one is not before us, but the Pall Mall Gazette gives the names of a few of the items. Among these there are the pair of boots in which Napoleon 1. fought the battle of Dresden, the white satin embroidered shoes which he wore at his coronation, a pair of high-heeled boots which once encased the feet of Maria Theresa, and a pair, presumably low-heeled and square-toed, which formed a basis for the understanding of Immanuel Kant. But, after all, the collection stands in need of additions. There are many famous boots and shoes that have not yet found their way there. There are or were the seven-leagued boots, and the world-renoivned habitable shoe of the anti-Malthusian old woman. What would not one give to see the boots of Henry Darnley and of Bothwell side by side with the dainty slipper of Mary's that is now in the Bishop's Palace at Glasgow? Why should we not have a row of Queen's slippers, say from those of Marie Antoinette to those of Isabella of Spain ; or a row of courtiers' and statesmen's boots worn out on palace stairs. A row of old hats to match the boots would enable us, eveo without the more flimsy material that usually intervenes, to conjure up an amazing assembly of historic ghosts ; and if besides there was a number of Mr. Edison's phonographs, each charged with speech done by them in the flesh, it would be possible to make a seance which would draw like a blister. Ediitburglt : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty.