Gaunt is fulfilment of the father's training of his
her pilgrimage took her to Accra, the more reticent than we could wish.
her pilgrimage took her to Accra, the more reticent than we could wish.
Athenaeum - London - 1912a
Oldfield, ingeniously that the new Act has probably
the new Act will be but a fresh starting-
on the other hand, is more hopeful. “As reversed it. Copyright, they point out,
point for legal labour and ingenuity. regards the new matter,” he says, is in future confined to work that is
Mr. Oldfield's book is more ambitious in the inclusion of architecture is perhaps the Åct of 1842. What precise restrictive
original," a word that was absent from
range, for not only does he supply a fully the most important. . . . Works of artistic force the Courts will give to this added
annotated edition of the present English craftsmanship, pieces for recitation, choreo force the Courts will give to this added
law, but also he adds a reprint of the graphic works (of which Mr. Oldfield is
word the future alone can disclose, but
law of the United States upon the subject, good enough to supply a definition which there seems to be good ground for arguing
and some valuable appendixes dealing the Act fails to give), cinematograph pro- that the copyright of a speech, even
with the laws in force in other countries, ductions, records, perforated rolls, and other though delivered extempore, will rest in
and the international treaties and con-
contrivances for mechanical performance future with the speaker, the mere utter-
ventions. In fact, he supplies as complete also come for the first time within the work” of it, although a newspaper report
ance of the words making "a literary
a handbook of the law as it now stands scope of copyright law. Boosey v. Wright does not, by special enactment, infringe
as could reasonably be expected so soon
after the passing of the new Act, and the decisions ; but, as Mr. Oldfield remarks,
thus passes into the limbo of dead the copyright. If the copyright does not
production of so full a work in so short a
belong to the speaker, what need for such
space of time is a very creditable achieve the
many
special enactment ? And if it does belong
exceptions affecting the special enactment?
ment.
different kinds of copyright
property in to the speaker, can a report of it be called
tended to safeguard public interests, as an“ original ” work and endowed with a
The Copyright Act, 1911. With Introduc- well as the doubtful system of compulsory copyright of its own ?
tion and Index by J. Andrew Strahan licences secured by the efforts of the manu.
and Norman H. ° Oldham. (Solicitors' facturers of mechanical instruments, in changes in the law, apart from its inter-
For the rest, probably the most material
Law Stationery Society. )
The Law of Copyright, induding the Copy. mittee that such a system should not be national aspects, are the altered period of
right 4d, 1911, the Unrepealed Sections adopted, have somewhat marted the sym- copyright and the abolition of registra-
tion. The former of these changes, by
of the Fine Arts Copyright Ad, 1862, the metry of the Act.
Musical (Summary Proceedings) Copy-
which copyright continues henceforth for
right Act, 1902, doc. By L. C. F. Oldfield. A perusal of the long and complicated fifty years after the date of death, remedies
(Butterworth & Co. )
19th section justifies his observation. a glaring injustice, and secures the added
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advantage that all an author's works, Other novelties are see-er,”
also adoptions of Latin unchanged, gene-
except those published posthumously, go from 1882 rarely used “to avoid the rally for technical terms like "sella"
out of copyright at the same moment. customary suggestions of seer'”; (anatomy,
(anatomy, “A saddle-shaped portion of
As for the abolition of registration, the seem, sb. (1440–1596) = semblance;
semblance ; the sphenoid ”) and
the sphenoid ") and “senarius" (=an
change has not escaped criticism. Mr. seicentist” (1905, Athenæum); “seld,” iambic verse of six feet). The German
Oldfield contents himself with referring sb. , obsolete variation of Old English semester ; French “ séjour ” ; Spanish
to the condemnation of registration pro-
“setl "=" settle," sb. , meaning seat, seguidilla, selva”; Hebrew“Selah
nounced by the Berlin Convention and throne,” and later "shop"; and Caxton's Turkish “ selictar”; and Japanese “ sen,
the late Copyright Committee, and ex. adopted French “semence"=seed, used show further what varied sources have
presses no opinion of his own. He adds, for “ sowing,” 1859. The trade term gone to the making of English.
rather unguardedly, The result is that sempiternum," “A quality of woollen
Trade fabrications supply" seltzogene,”
an author no longer has to obtain copy cloth made in the 17th c. ,” is endued with
- selvyt," and " semola. ' There are also
right. ” An author had not to obtain literary interest by Braithwait's amusing several terms taken from proper names :
copyright before, except by publishing simile, "She would have her Husband's in the forties of last century the Sefton
his work. Registration only added legal Life of any Stuff rather than Perpetuano family provided a name for a
veal
protection to a subsisting copyright. or Sempiternum. ”
custard,” in the eighties for a kind of one-
Messrs. Strahan and Oldham, on the other The article on the
verb horse landau ; a sort of bridle bit is
hand, hail the change as “ entirely to the
entirely to the “ seem,” which represents an Old Norse called a “ segundo ” bridle or bit, after a
good. ” But, as the columns of The verb derived from sæmr (=fitting, seemly), Spanish writer on bridle hits in the time
Athenæum have already shown, there is but has generally been confused with the of George IV. ; a French chemist, Seignette,
another side to the question, and the Old English séman, thirteenth-century gave an alternative designation to Rochelle
passing of Stationers' Hall, with its
seme (=settle, reconcile, ratify), is an salt; while Seidlitz and Seltzer (altered
authentic list of protected publications, excellent example of the great advance from German“ Selterser") are named
has left a gap which urgently requires achieved by this Dictionary in the treat- | after places. The origin of “ seersucker,”
filling.
ment of words, As to etymology we the East Indian name of U. S. imitations
in cotton of a cool Indian fabric worn by
American clerks and railway servants,
From the same grade of the root are
sóm reconciliation
A New English Dictionary. -See-Senatory. OE. som
(whence séman
“is for the first time correctly given ” as
(Vol. VIII. ) By Henry Bradley. (OxSEEM v. '); the ablaut-variant *sam- appears from the Persian “shir o shakkar, lit.
milk and sugar. '
in SAME a. , SAMEN adv. , together. ”
ford, Clarendon Press. )
The article on the
The early obsolete meanings,“ befit. 1330 put into the mouth of Roland, and
vulgar “s'elp,” in a work dated about
ABOUT a sixth of this single section of beseem,” are properly placed first in also quoted from Barham and Mr. Rudyard
72 pages is devoted to the three important spite of the quotations extending to the Kipling, is redeemed by the interesting
verbs see,” “ seek,” “ seem,” and their first quarter of the seventeenth century, Middle High German parallel selftir=80
combinations and derivatives ; while while current senses are found early in the helfe dir, as well as by antiquity and
* self” and its following—without count- thirteenth. The analysis of variety, in association with a hero of romance.
ing “selvage," "selvagee,” “ apparently meaning and construction is very close
from self+edge'”-and combinations and clear, distinguishing more than thirty
Misprints and mistakes of any kind are
with “semi-," take up more than a third, different developments. The
The obsolete so rare in this masterpiece of lexicography
though only selections of the innumerable transitive senses" To think, deem, ima- that pointing one out simply relieves the
combinations of “ self” and of formations gine. . . . To think fit,” range from Chaucer's monotony of unbroken approbation. Under
with “semi-” have been included.
It was a ffairye, as al the peple semed, * selictar The London Gazette No. 4236
There must be more than a thousand to “ 1627 HAKEWILL. . . . Possunt, quia is dated 1606, while just above No. 1985
words beginning with “self- ” in the posse videntur. They can, because they is dated 1684. Most of the alien names
selection, a large percentage being regis- seeme they can. ” At least as admirable mentioned above appear for the first time
tered in a dictionary for the first time. are the longer articles on the verbs in one of the dictionaries of the English
Most of the additions are valuable, and and seek," and the noun “ seed,” all language, which are prone to exclude the
many of special interest, as may be Old English ; and that on“ seize," from foreign element too rigidly except in
inferred from a few taken at random. Old French, apparently first used about the case of technical terms. Several of
Spenser, for instance, is quoted for “self-1290 as a law-term in the form“ seise
Dr. Bradley's fresh importations are
assurance,
as well as Scott and Mr. to put in legal possession of property, omitted in The Stanford Dictionary,'
Hardy; Dickens for “self-assertingly”; office, or dignity; compare seisin which was mainly concerned with foreign
Wood (1692) for “selfcide”=suicide, (from 1297).
words and phrases.
another equivalent, self-killing," being The history of “self-respect," made
Under “ semblant," adj. , Caxton's
quoted from “Sheffield (Dk. Buckhm. ), clear by several quotations, reveals a rare Charles the Great,' 1485, is left the
dated about 1721. The quotations show exception to the usual tendency of words earliest quotation by the futility of obey-
that Bishop Ken (about 1711) was much to change their meaning from better to ing the direction, " 1377 [see SEMBLABLE
“ (
addicted to the use of self- combina- worse-illustrated by the descent of a. , 1),” as neither the date nor sem-
tions.
seely
from blessed to "simple, blant” is to be found where indicated ;
The multitude of “ semi-” compounds silly. From 1613 to 1675“ self-respect” but we find under“ semblance,' 2b,
has been chosen with similar judgment, expressed “ a private, personal, or selfish “ 1377 LANGL. P. Pl. B. xviii. 285 And
the methodical arrangement of the hun- end,” self-love, self-conceit,” but after in semblaunce [v. r. semblaunt] of a
|
dreds treated in one article being especially a penitent obscurity of more than a serpent sat on the apple-tree. This
noticeable for its fullness; yet an index century it emerges reformed.
coincidence suggests that a quotation
to the group would have been serviceable, The rest of the section-less than half- dated 1377 was removed inadvertently
and
the same may be said as to self-. " not occupied by the word-groups already | Huous after the reference
in question
had
“from semblable” article as super-
Among newly recorded semi-” com- mentioned, copiously illustrates the motley fluous after the reference in question had
pounds are
semi-bousy (1400). =half-assemblage, gathered from all quarters been inserted. Under Fuller's “semnable”
drunk; Bacon, 1628, is cited for“ semi-at divers times, which constitutes English (for “ semblable ") there might well have
concave”; nineteenth-century authors for vocabulary. There are Old English items, been a reference to “semenaunt” (for
semi-feral "=half-wild ; and Mortimer such as the noun seed and the verb
semblant”), where we find
the con
Collins for the ugly and superfluous “sell”; adaptations from Old French, verse variant remlant” for “ remnant. ”
“semihiant,” our objection being to its e. g. , “sell” (=saddle)“ seize”; from The innovation "seism," justly called
introduction into the language, not its Latin, e. g. select," "select-"; and from in one of the quotations " the awkward
inclusion in the N. E. D. '
Greek, as
seism, ," " seism-. " There are word,” might be dropped on the hint.
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No. 4397, FEB. 3, 1912
THE ATHENÆUM
119
It is to be hoped that this incomparable dipped down from Kumasi, its capital, to towards the theory of a benevolent
Dictionary will not encourage the use of the Atlantic seaboard at Sekondi, where despotism. ” That depends for its validity
many unnecessary terms. Rather, while her route ended.
on the temperament of the despot, with
vastly increasing our grip on ideas and
Like another district, which we deal with whom unlimited authority is hardly
words, it should relieve the ever-increasing elsewhere, much
of this country
had not favourable to the growth of sympathy and
strain imposed on the national memory been traversed before by a white woman.
understanding, and is apt to become
by the rapid and inevitable growth of our Mrs. Gaunt's facile and rather gusty style inoculated with the virus of Cæsarism.
vocabulary.
never drifts into mere enumeration of Such are the scope and achievement of
A further portion of T by Sir James peoples, places, and incidents. Her versa- Mrs. Gaunt's book-one fertile in sugges-
Murray is announced for April 1st. tility is such that, wherever she goes, she tion, felicitous in style, though not with-
kindles her narrative with patches and out its mannerisms, but imbued with the
splashes of colour. Particularly illu- saving grace of personality.
minating are her hard, penetrating com-
Alone in West Africa. By Mary Gaunt. ments on the prevailing fetishism con-
(Werner Laurie. )
cerning the West African climate. The
theory current as to its unredeemed vile-
NEW NOVEL.
The avidity with which travel books are
ness has, she observes, crystallized into
sought after by the public is apt to thrust superstition. Officials go there in con-
Roddles. By B. Paul Neuman. (John
into the market a type of descriptive work fident expectation of having their energies
Murray. )
which wilfully trades upon the reader's enervated and paralyzed by its humidity, MR. NEUMAN has written another notable
curiosity. The principle of “omne igno- and in a spirit of calculated disgust. They novel, which has no other continuity with
tum pro magnifico focuses attention flout Nature by burning the candle at his previous work than that provided by
on the unknown country rather than the both ends, by falling into sedentary habits an entirely wholesome sympathy with his
qualities that go to the visualizing of and a dumb mental resentment opposed
fellows.
it, and tends to submerge critical acumen. to physical well-being. So the consequent
To avoid careful study becomes an acute ill-health is as much the result of internal
The characters stand alone, by
temptation. For this reason, and on
as extraneous causes. It may be readily
their own inherent vitality, without any
account of the multiple and disconnected imagined how much the administration of the verbal explanatory props, so
impressions left by a book of this nature, of the country suffers when activities but necessary to the average fiction-maker.
personality is invaluable in supplying unity half-hearted and almost morose are applied For once the well-intentioned critic can
and distinction and fixing a rallying.
point for the reader. Mrs. Gaunt's new
gance and take the part of appreciator,
book fulfils this demand. It is not so
Mrs. Gaunt's picture of the Germans trying to show more clearly the reflection
much that her personality is virile and
as colonizers of Togo is in striking of light from the many facets presented
commanding, as that it is sufficient to cut
contrast to the verdict just given. Of to view. Artistry is here from the very
a way for the reader through the jungle their alertness, regularity, and cheerful. title, which centres our attention once
of her journeys. Her salient capacity is a
ness she speaks in terms of ungrudging and for all on the chief character—though
surprising and quickening common-sense ;
admiration. Their keen and trenchant intermittently Roddles may appear to
she refuses to take things on
methods of organization she opposes to have no more to do with the tale than
trust,
alert enough to test all she hears and the British lack of plan and casual attitude.
others. It is Roddles, the little drunken
sees by her own experience.
Our sole Without attempting to draw invidious tailor whom we think of when away from
objection to her lucid and conscientious comparisons, she speaks of the presence of the book-Roddles, the individualist who,
narrative is that she tends to lapse into broad, long roads, the facilities for transit, acknowledging his own responsibility to
impressionistic journalism. The purely the instinct for governing, the scientific society for his offspring, sees
descriptive portions of her adventurous warfare against sleeping sickness, the sponsibilities involved by his own exist-
jaunt through little-known districts in insistence on cleanliness and order, and
-Roddles, who shows the first joint
West Africa do not call for detailed treat-
the anxiety to preserve natural beauties, in his armour of self-sufficiency by failing
ment. Mrs. Gaunt started up the Gambia where “ England seems indifferent if the to thunder forth his lack of faith in the
from Bathurst through the ground-nut beautiful spot be not within the narrow spiritual when his stricken boy fearfully
colony,” a land of promise so far as
asks for confirmation of his father's
productivity is concerned. She skirted German women, too, live with their disbelief.
Sierra Leone“ the white man's grave husbands in Togo, their helpmeets there as We can permit ourselves the pleasure
staying a short time at its dirty, ill. at home. Englishmen, on the other hand, of only one quotation, that in which
kempt capital, Freetown, and spent some regard such itinerant companionship as Roddles sums up for his friend's benefit
interesting days in Liberia, autonomous akin to sacrilege. The tropics are no his life's philosophy :-
since 1822, through the courageous experi- white woman's country. Immorality
ment of America.
“ There, there, he left the first sentence
and discontent are the outcome.
unfinished, 'when a man 'as blasted luck
For the semi-cultured native she has So far as Ashanti is concerned, however, all 'is life, it's no good whining about it.
scant praise, insisting on his boorish- Mrs. Gaunt is less dispiriting. There a There 's luck, there's no luck, and there 's
ness, his arrogance, his raw and blatant succession of zealous administrators have blastod luck. They 've got luck, you've
egoism.
Passing through the Guinea rescued the country from internecine strife. got no luck, and I've got the rest. "
Coast, almost fabulous in its natural Strong measures have had the stimu- If the middle of the book is the less
beauties, she reached Half Assinie lating effect required. Concerning the entrancing, it is merely a case of partially
and the French border. From Elmina, vexed and seemingly inscrutable problem suspended animation while we watch the
the old Portuguese mining settlement, of the native population Mrs.
Gaunt is fulfilment of the father's training of his
her pilgrimage took her to Accra, the more reticent than we could wish. Her Offspring, softened as it is by contact with
capital of the Gold Coast Colony; up the conclusions are enigmatic, varying in womanhood. The lessening of tension
Volta to the Krobo Hills, infamous for
accordance with the different status of the also serves to add poignancy to the
the mystic blood - orgies there practised aborigines in different parts. The half- dénouement-the conversion of Roddles
by the nearly savage inhabitants ; over emancipated native, with his veneer of and his Jonathan, a broken-down law.
the Eketo range, and so to the border culture, still, she declares, retains the writer, through the instrumentality of a
into the German colony of Togo. Thence rudiments of barbarism, combined with Salvation Army girl. The reader need
she travelled along the coast to the best the less agreeable characteristics of civi- not fear sermonizing--there is none;
point of vantage and turned inland into lization. His isolation from both white and but there is a true exposition of the self?
Ashanti which has cost England so much black, and his incapacity are complete. evident failure of lives whose only aim
money and so many lives; and finally For the primitive majority she veers I is an exclusively materialistic success.
no
re-
ence
seas. "
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; that on the ‘Sussex Downs' is included in the survey; and as, in spite of
TRAVEL AND TOPOGRAPHY.
oddly prosy; while the occasional notes on the width of his knowledge, omniscience is
landscape elsewhere lack the vivifying touch. not one of the author's foibles, he has properly
To some degree the latter defect might have called in such experts as Mr. Salzmann, Mr.
been overcome by a closer attention to the Reginald Smith, and Mr. Clement Reid to
ENGLAND.
style, which is so loose and rambling that check his conclusions in their several pro-
MR. IAN HANNAH's book on The Sussex | it frequently defeats the writer's best vinces. It is not a little surprising that any
Coast--in “The County Coast Series attempts at vivacity. In so far as this is one man can write with such intimacy on so
(Fisher Unwin-may be heartily recom-
the case it might be remedied without much many subjects as the author of this sumptu-
mended to all lovers of Sussex, as well as,
trouble by revision in a later edition.
ously furnished volume. The discovery
in general, all lovers of antiquities. It
(p. 119) in Chichester Cathedral in 1891 of
makes a guide-book of much more than In of the Beaten Track in Sussex : a long-lost Anglo-Saxon charter of Oslac
ordinary value ; it contains enough informa- Sketches, Literary and Artistic (Hove, Com- | (A. D. 780) is significant evidence of the need
tion to serve as an adequate book of reference bridge), Mr. Arthur Stanley Cooke has for antiquaries thoroughly to examine their
for ordinary purposes; and it is calcu- made a book which will delight all true
own immediate surroundings.
lated to form an excellent starting point men of the county. These pages represent
for any one taking up local archæology as
artistic and literary impressions of nearly The “ Flower of Gloster. ” By E. Temple
a hobby. Every church in the tiny, almost two score rambles. The descriptive text is Thurston. (Williams & Norgate. ) – It is
forsaken villages beside the inconsequent lively and adequate, but the 160 illustrations not a very common way of taking a holiday
little streams which run down to the sea by Sussex artists, all reproduced from original to hire a canal bargo, its horse and man,
from the Downs is most carefully described ; black-and-white drawings, are the real and go up and down the most secluded
nor will the wanderer who follows this book feature of the book. The author himself
waterways. This is what Mr. Thurston
miss any house, or fragment of a house, of contributes some 40 of them, Mr. Arthur has done and written about.
antiquarian importance within some fifteen
Packham nearly as many more
, and the guide-book? horis horrified at such things ;
miles of the shore between Chichester and Rye. rest are the work of members of the Brighton
so he gives no hints about the practice of
As is promised in the preface, the historical Arts Club. These illustrations are very his art, and is not too accurate concerning
and literary interest predominates over the pleasing, and make the largest collection of the places he has seen. Thus he is rightly
topographical, and one feels oneself, as one Sussex views published in any book we are proud of taking us through Warwick with-
reads, journeying about ancient Sussex aware of. From Brighton as a centre Mr.
out a word on its history, and there is only
rather than about the banal region which Cooke has rambled both East and West. one recollection he will always keep" of
we and our fathers have made of so much So much has been written on Sussex
Stratford-on-Avon :
of the coast to-day. Indeed, Mr. Hannah within recent years that many of the
might well have been more severe than he tags are becoming stale, among them pure-white gondola, propelled on the waters of
" It is of a lady dressed in white, seated in a
is upon the depressing hideousness of the Mr. Kipling's dim blue goodness of the the Avon by a gondolier all clothed in the same
works of modern man, as seen, say, from Weald. ' The style is good except for a few colour of original simplicity. Whenever I hear
the west end of Worthing to the east of lapses from grammatical English. The of Stratford, I think of that.
Brighton.
author can turn a pretty set of verses, But he gives us (through his artist) an un-
From St. Wilfrid to Blake-nay, in less witness his stanzas harebells. It is recognizable Wormleighton, and slips over
detail, to Burne-Jones and Mr. Rudyard implied that the promontory fortress of the date of Abbot's Salford, placing nuns
Kipling - the men of note who have Burpham is due to the Romans ; surely it there, too, centuries before they ever
played any of their parts on the coast of is prehistoric.
entered the house. Disquisition, not de-
Sussex are brought up before us in a suffi.
scription, is what pleases Mr. Thurston :
ciently pleasing pageant. The warriors and Selsey Bill : Historic and Prehistoric. By he follows George Borrow, somewhat too
the administrators fare, on the whole, better Edward Heron-Allen. (Duckworth. ) — By readily, for he has hardly the true wanderer's
than the literary characters--the pages on his wide attainments Mr. E. Heron-Allentouch. The journey from Cropredy, to
Blake, for example, are far from happy- is exceptionally well qualified to deal with Warwick by canal is a stirring one, placid
and better also than the ecclesiastics ; while the prehistoric and historic aspects of the and long drawn-out only in seeming; Three
those who come off best are the scarce-known district in which he lives. "Historically times you circle the height of Wormleighton,
or unnamed townsmen, villagers, and fisher and geologically Selsey Bill is very interest- and so you may think of Rupert dining there
folk, of whom the author tells us more than ing, and has captivated the reviewer like the night before Edgehill, in that now dis-
one good story. Nor has he forgotten the others of the comparatively few visitors who mantled Star-Chamber; see Edgecote, where
three or four local trades : the needle for several summers in succession have the royal standard floated; think of Charles
making at Chichester; the trug at Hurst- trusted themselves to the tender mercies of calling Shuckburgh from his hounds, and
monceaux ; and the sheep-crooks of Pye- the tramway which dallies between Chi- read tombstones to one and another faith-
combe.
chester and Selsey village. The sea has ful soldier of King Charles ye First. " But
His accounts of the older towns, Chichester, from time to time played wanton tricks with not all these things will Mr. Thurston know
Lewes, Newhaven, Battle, and especially the island of Selsey; and at the present of, or if he knows tell. On again you may go
Winchelsea and Rye, are full and satisfactory, time, owing to an irruption, in December, that quiet way by Baddesley Clinton: Mr.
though we should have been glad of a better 1910, of the sea into Pagham Harbour (which Thurston never mentions it, though he was
picture of Chichester Cathedral than the for some 40 years had been reclaimed for at Lapworth and Knowle and Solihull, a
view of a drive and some trees with a spire pasture), the very existence of the Selsey very short distance away. But he does
behind them, which is all that is vouchsafed promontory seems to have become pre- tell one of “ the six locks at Knowle, up
us. In general the choice of the photographs carious. It is difficult to realize that a few which we climbed wearily, a height, it must
strikes us as capricious. Some are good, hundred years ago Selsey Bill ran out sharply have been, of over a hundred feet before we
but others-e. g. , those of the interior of into the sea and resisted the breakers with reached the top”; and of all the horrors
Winchelsea Church--are decidedly poor. . bluff cliffs ; yet, on the other hand, the of the canal beyond Knowle, by Solihull, and
We imagine that this is partly due to the student of fossils or of coast erosion could its contents. "Perhaps the most charming
desire to avoid giving hackneyed views. nowhere see these subjects better demon- part of the book is the passage describing how
On the other hand, most of Miss Edith strated than along by Thorney Farm and the party left the barge behind for a while
Hannah's little drawings at the head of the West Wittering, west of the Bill. This time and trudged over the road from Stratford
chapters are successful, and we have no the sea has forced an entrance to Pagham to Tewkesbury, pausing only at places which
doubt that her water-colour drawing of (formerly Selsey) Harbour at the west, specially please the wayfarer, at Bidford
Beachy Head in a fog is in itself beautiful, instead of (as before) at the east end of the (though Mr. Thurston says hard words
though it has suffered a good deal in repro- great shingle bank, and the breach that after there) and Salford, Eckington and Fladbury:
duction.
the first attack was a few yards wide has Fladbury, which deserves all the enthusiasm
There are at least two other elements of now been multiplied in width many fold. it wins, whether from the house on the hill
interest in the county apart from memories On manorial statistics and genealogy from which looks across to other hills; from the
and survivals of old Sussex folks, their the time of William the Conqueror, the late rectory, once the richest in the shire, with
customs, habitations, and churches. One is rector of the parish, the Rev. John Cavis- its terrace above the river; or from the mill
Brighton; the other is the land itself, apart Brown, had intended to write ; but death below with its beautiful pool. These are
from the human inhabitants thereof. Mr. interrupted his plans, and the store of docu- things Mr. Thurston sees and knows how to telle
Hannah deals with both ; but in neither ments handed to the author by his widow of, and they go far to make one happy with
case do we think he has expressed even so is too great to be fairly handled in the his book. But it would have been even more
much of their inner secret as a work like present volume. The story begins with the delightful if he had told us more of what
this might have held. The chapter on cutting of the English Channel, and is carried he saw and less of what he said, including
Brighton while there are but few omis- on to the present day, almost every relevant the language with which he and his bargee (a
sions to remark-is almost pure "guide. I department of science and history being very nice fellow)garnished their conversation.
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121
THE ATHENÆUM
ones
9
are
Mr. Dakin's pictures parallel the quality eat less of raw meat and blubber, and more of of Greenland entirely from memory, and
garments of cloth instead of scal-skin ;. . . . they about a thousand miles of the coast
of Mr. Thurston's prose. The coloured bread, tea, and cooked meats of the settlers
aro charming, the black-and-white and Nature rebels. The Southern Eskimos are
as accurately as that drawn by the Admiralty
are sometimes exceedingly good (as on less hardy, they cannot bear the cold so well, Survey. The introduction of an English
but need more fire, more clothing, and more warm
p. 127) and sometimes as surprisingly bad. food, and their children are puny. . . . If they of place among a people whose memories are
system of education seems strangely out
À writer and an artist who can sometimes give up their native foods they will dwindle and so well developed. Memory and eyesight
do so well ought always to do well, one die out. "
will be weakened by too great a dependence
feels.
We entirely agree with him, and are on books.
therefore the more surprised to find that he The author ends his interesting narrative
Memorials of Old Gloucestershire (George approves of the introduction among them by telling us that the policy of the mission-
Allen), edited by the Rev. P. H. Ditchfield, of European foods, such as tea, bread, bacon; aries has been “to make the Eskimo a better
is & volume which is of interest, but is of wooden, linoleum-covered floors ; of | Eskimo. " To us it would rather appear
incomplete. “Memorials " is a word vague bedsteads, sofas, and even gramophones ; from his account that we ourselves have
enough to include anything, but we fail to and, yet stranger to relatę, glass windows something to learn from this prehistoric
understand the principle on which the various on hinges.
people in the way of common sense', as well
contributors have worked. Dr. Cox is re-
It is sad to read that their winter houses
as in methods of education and government.
sponsible for a chapter on the Forest of Dean,
“ dark and noisome," and that the art
Dr. Wallace felt the same about the forest-
and he tells us that it is foreign to the purpose of carving is disappearing. Dr. Rink was
dwellers of the Malay Archipelago, and he
of his essay to enter into the question of
the administration of the Forest.
But an
one of the first travellers to give Western pointed out many ways in which the English
Europeans some idea of the Eskimos at would be made better English if they would
account of that district which omits to
home. His book is illustrated by the clever learn from Nature's children.
mention the Speech House, where the
drawings of a native who shows the winter The photographs which serve as illustra-
gives no information about the laws of the by no means to be despised.
Freeminers hold their ancient Court, and house to have been well constructed, and tions are excellent, but we regret that the
subject-matter is not better arranged, and
Freeminers, cannot be considered satisfactory.
There are 25 pages on Chatterton, and a good
also that the map is not referred to in the
The following is also illuminating :-
text.
deal about Bristol Cathedral; but Gloucester “ The summer of 1904 saw the hospital. . . . in
Cathedral has apparently been forgotten, | full going order, for among the many things that
Hunters and Hunting in the Arctic. By
though the work has been copiously_illus-
the Harmony brought were the bedsteads and
trated. We note that Sir Francis Drake
Translated by H.
bedding for the wards. Our servant a bright the Duke of Orleans.
and active Eskimo girl of eighteen. . . . touched Grahame Richards. (Nutt. . -In four recent
is named, but that Sir Walter Raleigh is
my arm. . . . and said, • What are they ? '. . . summers the Duke of Orleans has made
omitted. Houses in which, local tradition - Why, these are the bedsteads. ' Bedsteads ? '
says, they lived are still standing and -this with a puzzled air,
voyages in Arctic waters the last three in
• Ahaila, beds for the
.
)
his steam-yacht Belgica of Antarctic fame.
are close together. There is an interesting sick people; old Emilia is the only
person in bed, He might, indeed, almost be styled a seasoned
chapter by Canon Carbonel on the famous
and she is not sick, only old. '
Arctic explorer, if he had not managed,
glass at Fairford ; but, though Mr. Ditchfield
“ I tried (says Dr. Hutton] to explain to her through skill or good fortune, or a com-
goes out of his way to say that the glass that these bedsteads were to be. . . . in readiness bination of them, to avoid passing a winter
came from the Netherlands, his contributor for any possible sick persons during the future.
in those regions. In 1905 he succeeded in
is allowed to give an account which is incon- “Ai, ai," she said, there are going to be sick reaching the highest latitude till then
sistent with the editor's words. The article people ? Who will it be? '”
attained on the shores of East Greenland,
on the 'Norman Doorways of Gloucester- We are still wondering what bedsteads and and in adding to the map a stretch of coast-
shire' is valuable, and the many photo- hospital wards have to do with Eskimo line (surveyed only from the ship), besides
graphs of these add to the usefulness of the hunters, and also whether Dr. Hutton has
a group of islets, named by him“ Isles de
book. We are sorry that there is no map forgotten the subtle influence of suggestion.
France,” which figure variously (and rather
of the county in the volume ; but there is a
The women are extraordinarily skilful, absurdly) in this book as the French
good Index, in which we have noted only as the following instance may show :-
Islands and * French Land. ” Of this
one mistake.
*** Be wise in time, and wear Eskimo clothes,' expedition, and of the succeeding one in
was the advice of & missionary, who said he 1907, he has published narratives in diary
would arrange matters for me ; accordingly the form, which have not been translated into
village 'tailor,' square - faced, brisk little English ; and in the present volume he
NORTHERN REGIONS.
Eskimo woman, came in one day like a miniature has brought together the hunting experi-
hurricane. There was
no aloofness
about her . . . . she stood me up, and looked at me,
ences of his four voyages under the headings
To those caught in the tangled net of an and measured me with her arms, and walked out of Trappers,' 'Bears and their Cubs,'
artificial civilization there can be no greater satisfied. "A bit taller than my husband, and ‘Reindeer, The Walrus and Seals. ' The
refreshment than the Real.
the new Act will be but a fresh starting-
on the other hand, is more hopeful. “As reversed it. Copyright, they point out,
point for legal labour and ingenuity. regards the new matter,” he says, is in future confined to work that is
Mr. Oldfield's book is more ambitious in the inclusion of architecture is perhaps the Åct of 1842. What precise restrictive
original," a word that was absent from
range, for not only does he supply a fully the most important. . . . Works of artistic force the Courts will give to this added
annotated edition of the present English craftsmanship, pieces for recitation, choreo force the Courts will give to this added
law, but also he adds a reprint of the graphic works (of which Mr. Oldfield is
word the future alone can disclose, but
law of the United States upon the subject, good enough to supply a definition which there seems to be good ground for arguing
and some valuable appendixes dealing the Act fails to give), cinematograph pro- that the copyright of a speech, even
with the laws in force in other countries, ductions, records, perforated rolls, and other though delivered extempore, will rest in
and the international treaties and con-
contrivances for mechanical performance future with the speaker, the mere utter-
ventions. In fact, he supplies as complete also come for the first time within the work” of it, although a newspaper report
ance of the words making "a literary
a handbook of the law as it now stands scope of copyright law. Boosey v. Wright does not, by special enactment, infringe
as could reasonably be expected so soon
after the passing of the new Act, and the decisions ; but, as Mr. Oldfield remarks,
thus passes into the limbo of dead the copyright. If the copyright does not
production of so full a work in so short a
belong to the speaker, what need for such
space of time is a very creditable achieve the
many
special enactment ? And if it does belong
exceptions affecting the special enactment?
ment.
different kinds of copyright
property in to the speaker, can a report of it be called
tended to safeguard public interests, as an“ original ” work and endowed with a
The Copyright Act, 1911. With Introduc- well as the doubtful system of compulsory copyright of its own ?
tion and Index by J. Andrew Strahan licences secured by the efforts of the manu.
and Norman H. ° Oldham. (Solicitors' facturers of mechanical instruments, in changes in the law, apart from its inter-
For the rest, probably the most material
Law Stationery Society. )
The Law of Copyright, induding the Copy. mittee that such a system should not be national aspects, are the altered period of
right 4d, 1911, the Unrepealed Sections adopted, have somewhat marted the sym- copyright and the abolition of registra-
tion. The former of these changes, by
of the Fine Arts Copyright Ad, 1862, the metry of the Act.
Musical (Summary Proceedings) Copy-
which copyright continues henceforth for
right Act, 1902, doc. By L. C. F. Oldfield. A perusal of the long and complicated fifty years after the date of death, remedies
(Butterworth & Co. )
19th section justifies his observation. a glaring injustice, and secures the added
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advantage that all an author's works, Other novelties are see-er,”
also adoptions of Latin unchanged, gene-
except those published posthumously, go from 1882 rarely used “to avoid the rally for technical terms like "sella"
out of copyright at the same moment. customary suggestions of seer'”; (anatomy,
(anatomy, “A saddle-shaped portion of
As for the abolition of registration, the seem, sb. (1440–1596) = semblance;
semblance ; the sphenoid ”) and
the sphenoid ") and “senarius" (=an
change has not escaped criticism. Mr. seicentist” (1905, Athenæum); “seld,” iambic verse of six feet). The German
Oldfield contents himself with referring sb. , obsolete variation of Old English semester ; French “ séjour ” ; Spanish
to the condemnation of registration pro-
“setl "=" settle," sb. , meaning seat, seguidilla, selva”; Hebrew“Selah
nounced by the Berlin Convention and throne,” and later "shop"; and Caxton's Turkish “ selictar”; and Japanese “ sen,
the late Copyright Committee, and ex. adopted French “semence"=seed, used show further what varied sources have
presses no opinion of his own. He adds, for “ sowing,” 1859. The trade term gone to the making of English.
rather unguardedly, The result is that sempiternum," “A quality of woollen
Trade fabrications supply" seltzogene,”
an author no longer has to obtain copy cloth made in the 17th c. ,” is endued with
- selvyt," and " semola. ' There are also
right. ” An author had not to obtain literary interest by Braithwait's amusing several terms taken from proper names :
copyright before, except by publishing simile, "She would have her Husband's in the forties of last century the Sefton
his work. Registration only added legal Life of any Stuff rather than Perpetuano family provided a name for a
veal
protection to a subsisting copyright. or Sempiternum. ”
custard,” in the eighties for a kind of one-
Messrs. Strahan and Oldham, on the other The article on the
verb horse landau ; a sort of bridle bit is
hand, hail the change as “ entirely to the
entirely to the “ seem,” which represents an Old Norse called a “ segundo ” bridle or bit, after a
good. ” But, as the columns of The verb derived from sæmr (=fitting, seemly), Spanish writer on bridle hits in the time
Athenæum have already shown, there is but has generally been confused with the of George IV. ; a French chemist, Seignette,
another side to the question, and the Old English séman, thirteenth-century gave an alternative designation to Rochelle
passing of Stationers' Hall, with its
seme (=settle, reconcile, ratify), is an salt; while Seidlitz and Seltzer (altered
authentic list of protected publications, excellent example of the great advance from German“ Selterser") are named
has left a gap which urgently requires achieved by this Dictionary in the treat- | after places. The origin of “ seersucker,”
filling.
ment of words, As to etymology we the East Indian name of U. S. imitations
in cotton of a cool Indian fabric worn by
American clerks and railway servants,
From the same grade of the root are
sóm reconciliation
A New English Dictionary. -See-Senatory. OE. som
(whence séman
“is for the first time correctly given ” as
(Vol. VIII. ) By Henry Bradley. (OxSEEM v. '); the ablaut-variant *sam- appears from the Persian “shir o shakkar, lit.
milk and sugar. '
in SAME a. , SAMEN adv. , together. ”
ford, Clarendon Press. )
The article on the
The early obsolete meanings,“ befit. 1330 put into the mouth of Roland, and
vulgar “s'elp,” in a work dated about
ABOUT a sixth of this single section of beseem,” are properly placed first in also quoted from Barham and Mr. Rudyard
72 pages is devoted to the three important spite of the quotations extending to the Kipling, is redeemed by the interesting
verbs see,” “ seek,” “ seem,” and their first quarter of the seventeenth century, Middle High German parallel selftir=80
combinations and derivatives ; while while current senses are found early in the helfe dir, as well as by antiquity and
* self” and its following—without count- thirteenth. The analysis of variety, in association with a hero of romance.
ing “selvage," "selvagee,” “ apparently meaning and construction is very close
from self+edge'”-and combinations and clear, distinguishing more than thirty
Misprints and mistakes of any kind are
with “semi-," take up more than a third, different developments. The
The obsolete so rare in this masterpiece of lexicography
though only selections of the innumerable transitive senses" To think, deem, ima- that pointing one out simply relieves the
combinations of “ self” and of formations gine. . . . To think fit,” range from Chaucer's monotony of unbroken approbation. Under
with “semi-” have been included.
It was a ffairye, as al the peple semed, * selictar The London Gazette No. 4236
There must be more than a thousand to “ 1627 HAKEWILL. . . . Possunt, quia is dated 1606, while just above No. 1985
words beginning with “self- ” in the posse videntur. They can, because they is dated 1684. Most of the alien names
selection, a large percentage being regis- seeme they can. ” At least as admirable mentioned above appear for the first time
tered in a dictionary for the first time. are the longer articles on the verbs in one of the dictionaries of the English
Most of the additions are valuable, and and seek," and the noun “ seed,” all language, which are prone to exclude the
many of special interest, as may be Old English ; and that on“ seize," from foreign element too rigidly except in
inferred from a few taken at random. Old French, apparently first used about the case of technical terms. Several of
Spenser, for instance, is quoted for “self-1290 as a law-term in the form“ seise
Dr. Bradley's fresh importations are
assurance,
as well as Scott and Mr. to put in legal possession of property, omitted in The Stanford Dictionary,'
Hardy; Dickens for “self-assertingly”; office, or dignity; compare seisin which was mainly concerned with foreign
Wood (1692) for “selfcide”=suicide, (from 1297).
words and phrases.
another equivalent, self-killing," being The history of “self-respect," made
Under “ semblant," adj. , Caxton's
quoted from “Sheffield (Dk. Buckhm. ), clear by several quotations, reveals a rare Charles the Great,' 1485, is left the
dated about 1721. The quotations show exception to the usual tendency of words earliest quotation by the futility of obey-
that Bishop Ken (about 1711) was much to change their meaning from better to ing the direction, " 1377 [see SEMBLABLE
“ (
addicted to the use of self- combina- worse-illustrated by the descent of a. , 1),” as neither the date nor sem-
tions.
seely
from blessed to "simple, blant” is to be found where indicated ;
The multitude of “ semi-” compounds silly. From 1613 to 1675“ self-respect” but we find under“ semblance,' 2b,
has been chosen with similar judgment, expressed “ a private, personal, or selfish “ 1377 LANGL. P. Pl. B. xviii. 285 And
the methodical arrangement of the hun- end,” self-love, self-conceit,” but after in semblaunce [v. r. semblaunt] of a
|
dreds treated in one article being especially a penitent obscurity of more than a serpent sat on the apple-tree. This
noticeable for its fullness; yet an index century it emerges reformed.
coincidence suggests that a quotation
to the group would have been serviceable, The rest of the section-less than half- dated 1377 was removed inadvertently
and
the same may be said as to self-. " not occupied by the word-groups already | Huous after the reference
in question
had
“from semblable” article as super-
Among newly recorded semi-” com- mentioned, copiously illustrates the motley fluous after the reference in question had
pounds are
semi-bousy (1400). =half-assemblage, gathered from all quarters been inserted. Under Fuller's “semnable”
drunk; Bacon, 1628, is cited for“ semi-at divers times, which constitutes English (for “ semblable ") there might well have
concave”; nineteenth-century authors for vocabulary. There are Old English items, been a reference to “semenaunt” (for
semi-feral "=half-wild ; and Mortimer such as the noun seed and the verb
semblant”), where we find
the con
Collins for the ugly and superfluous “sell”; adaptations from Old French, verse variant remlant” for “ remnant. ”
“semihiant,” our objection being to its e. g. , “sell” (=saddle)“ seize”; from The innovation "seism," justly called
introduction into the language, not its Latin, e. g. select," "select-"; and from in one of the quotations " the awkward
inclusion in the N. E. D. '
Greek, as
seism, ," " seism-. " There are word,” might be dropped on the hint.
6
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No. 4397, FEB. 3, 1912
THE ATHENÆUM
119
It is to be hoped that this incomparable dipped down from Kumasi, its capital, to towards the theory of a benevolent
Dictionary will not encourage the use of the Atlantic seaboard at Sekondi, where despotism. ” That depends for its validity
many unnecessary terms. Rather, while her route ended.
on the temperament of the despot, with
vastly increasing our grip on ideas and
Like another district, which we deal with whom unlimited authority is hardly
words, it should relieve the ever-increasing elsewhere, much
of this country
had not favourable to the growth of sympathy and
strain imposed on the national memory been traversed before by a white woman.
understanding, and is apt to become
by the rapid and inevitable growth of our Mrs. Gaunt's facile and rather gusty style inoculated with the virus of Cæsarism.
vocabulary.
never drifts into mere enumeration of Such are the scope and achievement of
A further portion of T by Sir James peoples, places, and incidents. Her versa- Mrs. Gaunt's book-one fertile in sugges-
Murray is announced for April 1st. tility is such that, wherever she goes, she tion, felicitous in style, though not with-
kindles her narrative with patches and out its mannerisms, but imbued with the
splashes of colour. Particularly illu- saving grace of personality.
minating are her hard, penetrating com-
Alone in West Africa. By Mary Gaunt. ments on the prevailing fetishism con-
(Werner Laurie. )
cerning the West African climate. The
theory current as to its unredeemed vile-
NEW NOVEL.
The avidity with which travel books are
ness has, she observes, crystallized into
sought after by the public is apt to thrust superstition. Officials go there in con-
Roddles. By B. Paul Neuman. (John
into the market a type of descriptive work fident expectation of having their energies
Murray. )
which wilfully trades upon the reader's enervated and paralyzed by its humidity, MR. NEUMAN has written another notable
curiosity. The principle of “omne igno- and in a spirit of calculated disgust. They novel, which has no other continuity with
tum pro magnifico focuses attention flout Nature by burning the candle at his previous work than that provided by
on the unknown country rather than the both ends, by falling into sedentary habits an entirely wholesome sympathy with his
qualities that go to the visualizing of and a dumb mental resentment opposed
fellows.
it, and tends to submerge critical acumen. to physical well-being. So the consequent
To avoid careful study becomes an acute ill-health is as much the result of internal
The characters stand alone, by
temptation. For this reason, and on
as extraneous causes. It may be readily
their own inherent vitality, without any
account of the multiple and disconnected imagined how much the administration of the verbal explanatory props, so
impressions left by a book of this nature, of the country suffers when activities but necessary to the average fiction-maker.
personality is invaluable in supplying unity half-hearted and almost morose are applied For once the well-intentioned critic can
and distinction and fixing a rallying.
point for the reader. Mrs. Gaunt's new
gance and take the part of appreciator,
book fulfils this demand. It is not so
Mrs. Gaunt's picture of the Germans trying to show more clearly the reflection
much that her personality is virile and
as colonizers of Togo is in striking of light from the many facets presented
commanding, as that it is sufficient to cut
contrast to the verdict just given. Of to view. Artistry is here from the very
a way for the reader through the jungle their alertness, regularity, and cheerful. title, which centres our attention once
of her journeys. Her salient capacity is a
ness she speaks in terms of ungrudging and for all on the chief character—though
surprising and quickening common-sense ;
admiration. Their keen and trenchant intermittently Roddles may appear to
she refuses to take things on
methods of organization she opposes to have no more to do with the tale than
trust,
alert enough to test all she hears and the British lack of plan and casual attitude.
others. It is Roddles, the little drunken
sees by her own experience.
Our sole Without attempting to draw invidious tailor whom we think of when away from
objection to her lucid and conscientious comparisons, she speaks of the presence of the book-Roddles, the individualist who,
narrative is that she tends to lapse into broad, long roads, the facilities for transit, acknowledging his own responsibility to
impressionistic journalism. The purely the instinct for governing, the scientific society for his offspring, sees
descriptive portions of her adventurous warfare against sleeping sickness, the sponsibilities involved by his own exist-
jaunt through little-known districts in insistence on cleanliness and order, and
-Roddles, who shows the first joint
West Africa do not call for detailed treat-
the anxiety to preserve natural beauties, in his armour of self-sufficiency by failing
ment. Mrs. Gaunt started up the Gambia where “ England seems indifferent if the to thunder forth his lack of faith in the
from Bathurst through the ground-nut beautiful spot be not within the narrow spiritual when his stricken boy fearfully
colony,” a land of promise so far as
asks for confirmation of his father's
productivity is concerned. She skirted German women, too, live with their disbelief.
Sierra Leone“ the white man's grave husbands in Togo, their helpmeets there as We can permit ourselves the pleasure
staying a short time at its dirty, ill. at home. Englishmen, on the other hand, of only one quotation, that in which
kempt capital, Freetown, and spent some regard such itinerant companionship as Roddles sums up for his friend's benefit
interesting days in Liberia, autonomous akin to sacrilege. The tropics are no his life's philosophy :-
since 1822, through the courageous experi- white woman's country. Immorality
ment of America.
“ There, there, he left the first sentence
and discontent are the outcome.
unfinished, 'when a man 'as blasted luck
For the semi-cultured native she has So far as Ashanti is concerned, however, all 'is life, it's no good whining about it.
scant praise, insisting on his boorish- Mrs. Gaunt is less dispiriting. There a There 's luck, there's no luck, and there 's
ness, his arrogance, his raw and blatant succession of zealous administrators have blastod luck. They 've got luck, you've
egoism.
Passing through the Guinea rescued the country from internecine strife. got no luck, and I've got the rest. "
Coast, almost fabulous in its natural Strong measures have had the stimu- If the middle of the book is the less
beauties, she reached Half Assinie lating effect required. Concerning the entrancing, it is merely a case of partially
and the French border. From Elmina, vexed and seemingly inscrutable problem suspended animation while we watch the
the old Portuguese mining settlement, of the native population Mrs.
Gaunt is fulfilment of the father's training of his
her pilgrimage took her to Accra, the more reticent than we could wish. Her Offspring, softened as it is by contact with
capital of the Gold Coast Colony; up the conclusions are enigmatic, varying in womanhood. The lessening of tension
Volta to the Krobo Hills, infamous for
accordance with the different status of the also serves to add poignancy to the
the mystic blood - orgies there practised aborigines in different parts. The half- dénouement-the conversion of Roddles
by the nearly savage inhabitants ; over emancipated native, with his veneer of and his Jonathan, a broken-down law.
the Eketo range, and so to the border culture, still, she declares, retains the writer, through the instrumentality of a
into the German colony of Togo. Thence rudiments of barbarism, combined with Salvation Army girl. The reader need
she travelled along the coast to the best the less agreeable characteristics of civi- not fear sermonizing--there is none;
point of vantage and turned inland into lization. His isolation from both white and but there is a true exposition of the self?
Ashanti which has cost England so much black, and his incapacity are complete. evident failure of lives whose only aim
money and so many lives; and finally For the primitive majority she veers I is an exclusively materialistic success.
no
re-
ence
seas. "
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on
; that on the ‘Sussex Downs' is included in the survey; and as, in spite of
TRAVEL AND TOPOGRAPHY.
oddly prosy; while the occasional notes on the width of his knowledge, omniscience is
landscape elsewhere lack the vivifying touch. not one of the author's foibles, he has properly
To some degree the latter defect might have called in such experts as Mr. Salzmann, Mr.
been overcome by a closer attention to the Reginald Smith, and Mr. Clement Reid to
ENGLAND.
style, which is so loose and rambling that check his conclusions in their several pro-
MR. IAN HANNAH's book on The Sussex | it frequently defeats the writer's best vinces. It is not a little surprising that any
Coast--in “The County Coast Series attempts at vivacity. In so far as this is one man can write with such intimacy on so
(Fisher Unwin-may be heartily recom-
the case it might be remedied without much many subjects as the author of this sumptu-
mended to all lovers of Sussex, as well as,
trouble by revision in a later edition.
ously furnished volume. The discovery
in general, all lovers of antiquities. It
(p. 119) in Chichester Cathedral in 1891 of
makes a guide-book of much more than In of the Beaten Track in Sussex : a long-lost Anglo-Saxon charter of Oslac
ordinary value ; it contains enough informa- Sketches, Literary and Artistic (Hove, Com- | (A. D. 780) is significant evidence of the need
tion to serve as an adequate book of reference bridge), Mr. Arthur Stanley Cooke has for antiquaries thoroughly to examine their
for ordinary purposes; and it is calcu- made a book which will delight all true
own immediate surroundings.
lated to form an excellent starting point men of the county. These pages represent
for any one taking up local archæology as
artistic and literary impressions of nearly The “ Flower of Gloster. ” By E. Temple
a hobby. Every church in the tiny, almost two score rambles. The descriptive text is Thurston. (Williams & Norgate. ) – It is
forsaken villages beside the inconsequent lively and adequate, but the 160 illustrations not a very common way of taking a holiday
little streams which run down to the sea by Sussex artists, all reproduced from original to hire a canal bargo, its horse and man,
from the Downs is most carefully described ; black-and-white drawings, are the real and go up and down the most secluded
nor will the wanderer who follows this book feature of the book. The author himself
waterways. This is what Mr. Thurston
miss any house, or fragment of a house, of contributes some 40 of them, Mr. Arthur has done and written about.
antiquarian importance within some fifteen
Packham nearly as many more
, and the guide-book? horis horrified at such things ;
miles of the shore between Chichester and Rye. rest are the work of members of the Brighton
so he gives no hints about the practice of
As is promised in the preface, the historical Arts Club. These illustrations are very his art, and is not too accurate concerning
and literary interest predominates over the pleasing, and make the largest collection of the places he has seen. Thus he is rightly
topographical, and one feels oneself, as one Sussex views published in any book we are proud of taking us through Warwick with-
reads, journeying about ancient Sussex aware of. From Brighton as a centre Mr.
out a word on its history, and there is only
rather than about the banal region which Cooke has rambled both East and West. one recollection he will always keep" of
we and our fathers have made of so much So much has been written on Sussex
Stratford-on-Avon :
of the coast to-day. Indeed, Mr. Hannah within recent years that many of the
might well have been more severe than he tags are becoming stale, among them pure-white gondola, propelled on the waters of
" It is of a lady dressed in white, seated in a
is upon the depressing hideousness of the Mr. Kipling's dim blue goodness of the the Avon by a gondolier all clothed in the same
works of modern man, as seen, say, from Weald. ' The style is good except for a few colour of original simplicity. Whenever I hear
the west end of Worthing to the east of lapses from grammatical English. The of Stratford, I think of that.
Brighton.
author can turn a pretty set of verses, But he gives us (through his artist) an un-
From St. Wilfrid to Blake-nay, in less witness his stanzas harebells. It is recognizable Wormleighton, and slips over
detail, to Burne-Jones and Mr. Rudyard implied that the promontory fortress of the date of Abbot's Salford, placing nuns
Kipling - the men of note who have Burpham is due to the Romans ; surely it there, too, centuries before they ever
played any of their parts on the coast of is prehistoric.
entered the house. Disquisition, not de-
Sussex are brought up before us in a suffi.
scription, is what pleases Mr. Thurston :
ciently pleasing pageant. The warriors and Selsey Bill : Historic and Prehistoric. By he follows George Borrow, somewhat too
the administrators fare, on the whole, better Edward Heron-Allen. (Duckworth. ) — By readily, for he has hardly the true wanderer's
than the literary characters--the pages on his wide attainments Mr. E. Heron-Allentouch. The journey from Cropredy, to
Blake, for example, are far from happy- is exceptionally well qualified to deal with Warwick by canal is a stirring one, placid
and better also than the ecclesiastics ; while the prehistoric and historic aspects of the and long drawn-out only in seeming; Three
those who come off best are the scarce-known district in which he lives. "Historically times you circle the height of Wormleighton,
or unnamed townsmen, villagers, and fisher and geologically Selsey Bill is very interest- and so you may think of Rupert dining there
folk, of whom the author tells us more than ing, and has captivated the reviewer like the night before Edgehill, in that now dis-
one good story. Nor has he forgotten the others of the comparatively few visitors who mantled Star-Chamber; see Edgecote, where
three or four local trades : the needle for several summers in succession have the royal standard floated; think of Charles
making at Chichester; the trug at Hurst- trusted themselves to the tender mercies of calling Shuckburgh from his hounds, and
monceaux ; and the sheep-crooks of Pye- the tramway which dallies between Chi- read tombstones to one and another faith-
combe.
chester and Selsey village. The sea has ful soldier of King Charles ye First. " But
His accounts of the older towns, Chichester, from time to time played wanton tricks with not all these things will Mr. Thurston know
Lewes, Newhaven, Battle, and especially the island of Selsey; and at the present of, or if he knows tell. On again you may go
Winchelsea and Rye, are full and satisfactory, time, owing to an irruption, in December, that quiet way by Baddesley Clinton: Mr.
though we should have been glad of a better 1910, of the sea into Pagham Harbour (which Thurston never mentions it, though he was
picture of Chichester Cathedral than the for some 40 years had been reclaimed for at Lapworth and Knowle and Solihull, a
view of a drive and some trees with a spire pasture), the very existence of the Selsey very short distance away. But he does
behind them, which is all that is vouchsafed promontory seems to have become pre- tell one of “ the six locks at Knowle, up
us. In general the choice of the photographs carious. It is difficult to realize that a few which we climbed wearily, a height, it must
strikes us as capricious. Some are good, hundred years ago Selsey Bill ran out sharply have been, of over a hundred feet before we
but others-e. g. , those of the interior of into the sea and resisted the breakers with reached the top”; and of all the horrors
Winchelsea Church--are decidedly poor. . bluff cliffs ; yet, on the other hand, the of the canal beyond Knowle, by Solihull, and
We imagine that this is partly due to the student of fossils or of coast erosion could its contents. "Perhaps the most charming
desire to avoid giving hackneyed views. nowhere see these subjects better demon- part of the book is the passage describing how
On the other hand, most of Miss Edith strated than along by Thorney Farm and the party left the barge behind for a while
Hannah's little drawings at the head of the West Wittering, west of the Bill. This time and trudged over the road from Stratford
chapters are successful, and we have no the sea has forced an entrance to Pagham to Tewkesbury, pausing only at places which
doubt that her water-colour drawing of (formerly Selsey) Harbour at the west, specially please the wayfarer, at Bidford
Beachy Head in a fog is in itself beautiful, instead of (as before) at the east end of the (though Mr. Thurston says hard words
though it has suffered a good deal in repro- great shingle bank, and the breach that after there) and Salford, Eckington and Fladbury:
duction.
the first attack was a few yards wide has Fladbury, which deserves all the enthusiasm
There are at least two other elements of now been multiplied in width many fold. it wins, whether from the house on the hill
interest in the county apart from memories On manorial statistics and genealogy from which looks across to other hills; from the
and survivals of old Sussex folks, their the time of William the Conqueror, the late rectory, once the richest in the shire, with
customs, habitations, and churches. One is rector of the parish, the Rev. John Cavis- its terrace above the river; or from the mill
Brighton; the other is the land itself, apart Brown, had intended to write ; but death below with its beautiful pool. These are
from the human inhabitants thereof. Mr. interrupted his plans, and the store of docu- things Mr. Thurston sees and knows how to telle
Hannah deals with both ; but in neither ments handed to the author by his widow of, and they go far to make one happy with
case do we think he has expressed even so is too great to be fairly handled in the his book. But it would have been even more
much of their inner secret as a work like present volume. The story begins with the delightful if he had told us more of what
this might have held. The chapter on cutting of the English Channel, and is carried he saw and less of what he said, including
Brighton while there are but few omis- on to the present day, almost every relevant the language with which he and his bargee (a
sions to remark-is almost pure "guide. I department of science and history being very nice fellow)garnished their conversation.
-
46
>
## p. 121 (#103) ############################################
No. 4397, FEB. 3, 1912
121
THE ATHENÆUM
ones
9
are
Mr. Dakin's pictures parallel the quality eat less of raw meat and blubber, and more of of Greenland entirely from memory, and
garments of cloth instead of scal-skin ;. . . . they about a thousand miles of the coast
of Mr. Thurston's prose. The coloured bread, tea, and cooked meats of the settlers
aro charming, the black-and-white and Nature rebels. The Southern Eskimos are
as accurately as that drawn by the Admiralty
are sometimes exceedingly good (as on less hardy, they cannot bear the cold so well, Survey. The introduction of an English
but need more fire, more clothing, and more warm
p. 127) and sometimes as surprisingly bad. food, and their children are puny. . . . If they of place among a people whose memories are
system of education seems strangely out
À writer and an artist who can sometimes give up their native foods they will dwindle and so well developed. Memory and eyesight
do so well ought always to do well, one die out. "
will be weakened by too great a dependence
feels.
We entirely agree with him, and are on books.
therefore the more surprised to find that he The author ends his interesting narrative
Memorials of Old Gloucestershire (George approves of the introduction among them by telling us that the policy of the mission-
Allen), edited by the Rev. P. H. Ditchfield, of European foods, such as tea, bread, bacon; aries has been “to make the Eskimo a better
is & volume which is of interest, but is of wooden, linoleum-covered floors ; of | Eskimo. " To us it would rather appear
incomplete. “Memorials " is a word vague bedsteads, sofas, and even gramophones ; from his account that we ourselves have
enough to include anything, but we fail to and, yet stranger to relatę, glass windows something to learn from this prehistoric
understand the principle on which the various on hinges.
people in the way of common sense', as well
contributors have worked. Dr. Cox is re-
It is sad to read that their winter houses
as in methods of education and government.
sponsible for a chapter on the Forest of Dean,
“ dark and noisome," and that the art
Dr. Wallace felt the same about the forest-
and he tells us that it is foreign to the purpose of carving is disappearing. Dr. Rink was
dwellers of the Malay Archipelago, and he
of his essay to enter into the question of
the administration of the Forest.
But an
one of the first travellers to give Western pointed out many ways in which the English
Europeans some idea of the Eskimos at would be made better English if they would
account of that district which omits to
home. His book is illustrated by the clever learn from Nature's children.
mention the Speech House, where the
drawings of a native who shows the winter The photographs which serve as illustra-
gives no information about the laws of the by no means to be despised.
Freeminers hold their ancient Court, and house to have been well constructed, and tions are excellent, but we regret that the
subject-matter is not better arranged, and
Freeminers, cannot be considered satisfactory.
There are 25 pages on Chatterton, and a good
also that the map is not referred to in the
The following is also illuminating :-
text.
deal about Bristol Cathedral; but Gloucester “ The summer of 1904 saw the hospital. . . . in
Cathedral has apparently been forgotten, | full going order, for among the many things that
Hunters and Hunting in the Arctic. By
though the work has been copiously_illus-
the Harmony brought were the bedsteads and
trated. We note that Sir Francis Drake
Translated by H.
bedding for the wards. Our servant a bright the Duke of Orleans.
and active Eskimo girl of eighteen. . . . touched Grahame Richards. (Nutt. . -In four recent
is named, but that Sir Walter Raleigh is
my arm. . . . and said, • What are they ? '. . . summers the Duke of Orleans has made
omitted. Houses in which, local tradition - Why, these are the bedsteads. ' Bedsteads ? '
says, they lived are still standing and -this with a puzzled air,
voyages in Arctic waters the last three in
• Ahaila, beds for the
.
)
his steam-yacht Belgica of Antarctic fame.
are close together. There is an interesting sick people; old Emilia is the only
person in bed, He might, indeed, almost be styled a seasoned
chapter by Canon Carbonel on the famous
and she is not sick, only old. '
Arctic explorer, if he had not managed,
glass at Fairford ; but, though Mr. Ditchfield
“ I tried (says Dr. Hutton] to explain to her through skill or good fortune, or a com-
goes out of his way to say that the glass that these bedsteads were to be. . . . in readiness bination of them, to avoid passing a winter
came from the Netherlands, his contributor for any possible sick persons during the future.
in those regions. In 1905 he succeeded in
is allowed to give an account which is incon- “Ai, ai," she said, there are going to be sick reaching the highest latitude till then
sistent with the editor's words. The article people ? Who will it be? '”
attained on the shores of East Greenland,
on the 'Norman Doorways of Gloucester- We are still wondering what bedsteads and and in adding to the map a stretch of coast-
shire' is valuable, and the many photo- hospital wards have to do with Eskimo line (surveyed only from the ship), besides
graphs of these add to the usefulness of the hunters, and also whether Dr. Hutton has
a group of islets, named by him“ Isles de
book. We are sorry that there is no map forgotten the subtle influence of suggestion.
France,” which figure variously (and rather
of the county in the volume ; but there is a
The women are extraordinarily skilful, absurdly) in this book as the French
good Index, in which we have noted only as the following instance may show :-
Islands and * French Land. ” Of this
one mistake.
*** Be wise in time, and wear Eskimo clothes,' expedition, and of the succeeding one in
was the advice of & missionary, who said he 1907, he has published narratives in diary
would arrange matters for me ; accordingly the form, which have not been translated into
village 'tailor,' square - faced, brisk little English ; and in the present volume he
NORTHERN REGIONS.
Eskimo woman, came in one day like a miniature has brought together the hunting experi-
hurricane. There was
no aloofness
about her . . . . she stood me up, and looked at me,
ences of his four voyages under the headings
To those caught in the tangled net of an and measured me with her arms, and walked out of Trappers,' 'Bears and their Cubs,'
artificial civilization there can be no greater satisfied. "A bit taller than my husband, and ‘Reindeer, The Walrus and Seals. ' The
refreshment than the Real.
