Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/84

72] throughout his dominions, and this fact explains the passionate jealousy of Pisa, which, desirous of expanding inland, found an insurmountable obstacle to this aspiration of its neighbor." One would wish to have seen a fuller account of Siena and some recognition of Arezzo in a Tuscan history.

"Women of the Valois Court" (Scribner} is the initial volume of a fresh sub-series by the indefatigable M. Imbert de Saint-Amand. The volumes differ from their predecessors in that their interest is still more largely personal, each one containing a series of detached historical portraits. In the number before us, for instance, there are portraits, pictorial as well as verbal, of Marguerite of Angouleme and Catherine de' Medici, and, subordinately, of Diane de Poitiers, Marguerite of Valois, Marie Stuart, and others. The author's style is as showy and vivacious as ever, and he has interwoven in his own narrative the usual proportion of quotations from the authorities, and from diaries and letters, of the period. Balzac's opinion of Catherine is sufficiently striking. Nothing, not even Saint Bartholomew's, gives him pause in his enthusiasm for his heroine. In his eyes, "the figure of Catherine de' Medici appears like that of a great king. The calumnies once dispelled by facts, recovered with difficulty from the falsities and contradictions of pamphlets and anecdotes,—everything can be explained to the honor of this extraordinary woman, who had none of the weaknesses of her sex, who lived chastely in the midst of the amours of the most licentious court of Europe, and who, in spite of her meagre purse, was able to build admirable monuments, as if to repair the losses occasioned by the demolitions of the Calvinists, who inflicted as many wounds on art as on the body politic." The extracts in the volume, brought thus together in compact and accessible form, are of great value to the student. The book is withal full of romantic interest, and is more readable than the general run of books that profess to be nothing else.

In "Orthometry" (Putnam), Mr. R. F. Brewer has attempted a fuller treatment of the art of versification than is to be found in the popular treatises on that subject. While the preface shows a tendency to encourage verse-making, as unnecessary as it is undesirable, the work may be regarded as useful in so far as it tends to cultivate an intelligent taste for good poetry. The rhyming dictionary at the end is a new feature, which will undoubtedly commend itself to those having a use for such aids. A specially interesting chapter is that on "Poetic Trifles," in which are included the various imitations of foreign verse in English. The discussion of the sonnet, too, though failing to bring out fully the spiritual nature of this difficult verse form, is more accurate than might be expected from the following sentence: "The form of the sonnet is of Italian origin, and came into use in the fifteenth [sic] century, towards the end of which its construction was perfected, and its utmost melodious sweetness attained in the verse of Petrarch and Dante." In the chapter on Alliteration there are several misleading statements, such as calling "Piers the Plowman" an "Old English" poem. In the bibliography one is surprised not to find Mr. F. B. Gummere's admirable "Handbook of Poetics," now in its third edition. In spite of these and other shortcomings, which can be readily corrected in a later issue, this work may be recommended as a satisfactory treatment of the mechanics of verse.

The public has already heard more or less of the translation of the Old Testament writings, undertaken sometime since by a group of the most eminent European and American Semitic scholars, and already well under way. The projectors of this great enterprise have also included in their plans the publication of the complete Hebrew text of the Old Testament, in a series of volumes to be the exact counterparts of those making up the English edition. There will be twenty of these parts altogether, and, through the generosity of an unnamed friend of the enterprise, they are offered to subscribers at a very low price. Part the first, containing the text of the book of Job, edited by Professor Siegfried, of Jena, has just been issued, and, in its Leipzig typography, is a very beautiful piece of work. The text is printed in colors by a new process, the invention of Professor Haupt, the general editor of the series. Interpolations and parallel compositions are thus distinguished from the primitive portions of the text, a feature which those who use the book will not be slow to appreciate. The text has been left unpointed except in ambiguous cases. The Johns Hopkins Press is the American agent for this work, and will receive subscriptions for the whole work or for the separate parts as issued.

Volume 17 of "The Adventure Series" (Macmillan) contains a reprint of Nicholson's translation (1790) of Count de Benyowsky's "Memoirs and Travels in Siberia, Kamchatka, Japan, the Liukiu Islands, and Formosa." The book is edited by Captain Pasfield Oliver, who, in his exhaustive Introduction, devotes himself to the rather unusual editorial task of picking holes in his author's narrative and impugning his veracity. Benyowsky was a Polish adventurer of the eighteenth century, one of those "plausible, amusing, and good-looking, but wholly unprincipled, Don Juans," says Captain Oliver, "who would fight under any leader where plunder was to be gained." He was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1769, but escaped shortly after and made his way to Kamchatka, from whence he sailed on his zig-zagging voyage in Behring Sea, the Sea of Ochotsk, and the North Pacific, arriving at Macao, after a series of remarkable "adventures" which form the basis of his narrative, in 1771. Judging from