It would have act as
passports
to fame of a sort.
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## p. 673 (#503) ############################################
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
THE ATHENÆUM
673
PAGE
COLONIAL HISTORY - NEW STYLE (The Relations of
673
1766)
DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
THR GREEK ROMANCES IN ELIZABETHAN PROSE FIC-
TION
675
676
Guido Cavalcanti;
676-677
JANE AUSTEN FOR SCHOOLS
THE
HUTH LIBRARY
678
- Poetry,
Geo-
-
678-680
681
British - Bird Book ; Hand - List
of British Birds); NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS;
682-685
MUSIC
687
INDEX TO ADVERTISERS
688
66
cratic points of view," and to substitute and business till the Revolution : when
SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1912. for them “the modern and normal imperial the business, so to say, was consolidated.
point of view. ” The change consists in all this the Colonists were merely
CONTENTS.
essentially in taking the Colonies just as acting out what was implied in their inti-
they stood in the seventeenth and eigh- mate consciousness of themselves; their
Pennsylvania with the British Government, 1696–
teenth centuries, and anticipating nothing assumption that they were normal, un-
of their history; in regarding them cal- degraded Englishmen who had surrendered
674 lously not as a cluster of free communities no historic rights of their race in leaving
with an heroic future ahead of them, and home, but had rather added to them the
STUDIES IN ARCADY
its legend even then in the making, but rewards of the adventurous and the
SOME RECENT VERSE (The King : a Tragedy in a Con.
simply as legally permitted and politically liberties resulting from a life outside the
tinuous Series of Scenes ; Sonnets and Ballate of restricted parts of a certain Great Empire, realm.
Poems and Songs, The Widow
in the Bye Street ; Song in September)
to whose Government they were sub- This psychological factor has been
OBITUARY (Dr. Alexander Carmichael)
677 ordinate, by whose power they were pro- emphasized at some length because, with-
tected, and for whose territorial expansion out the clue which it gives, there is no
SALES—AUTOGRAPH LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS;
and commercial advantage they were con- escaping from the maze of disobedience,
sidered to exist. In fact, the investiga- transgression, and default which seems to
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS (Theology - Law -
878 ; Philosophy - History and Biography
tions of the new school of American constitute the whole story of Pennsyl-
graphy and Travel Sports and Pastimes--Philo-
logy, 679; Fiction-General, 680)
historians, as they affect this period, are vania in these pages. The case is not
largely conducted in our own archives, peculiar. The story of every colony in
LITERARY GOSSIP
SCIENCE-BIRDS AND THEIR HABITS (Studies in Bird or by the aid of extensive transcripts turn creates the same impression when
Migration;
made from them, and naturally combine resolved into a recital of that colony's
SOCIETIES ; MEETINGS NEXT WEEK; GOSSIP
to present the Colonies from the point of relations with the controlling offices in
FINE ARTS-FRA ANGELICO; BRITISH MUSEUM Ex- view of the Privy Council, the Board of England or their delegates on the spot.
HIBITION OF DRAWINGS; SCOTTISH ART AND
HISTORY; GOUPIL GALLERY SUMMER EXHIBI-
Trade, and the royal or proprietary But, as Pennsylvania was not only in
TION; CARFAX GALLERY ; SALE ; Gossip 685686 Governors to whom they were such geographical position, but also in most
GOSSIP; PERFORMANCES NEXT WEEK
troublesome charges. So the author other ways the central colony, it offers
DRAMA — A NEW TRAGEDY ; GOSSIP
688 remarks concerning his book :-
all the elements for a full study of
The province of Pennsylvania has been what such relations meant. Mr. Root's
singled out for particular investigation in study is analytic and documentary in
order to elucidate the nature of British method, and lacks nothing of industry
LITERATURE
imperialism in its political and adminis- and exactness. Every aspect of the
trative features during the eighteenth cen- subject has its separate chapter, and al-
tury. It is the purpose to describe both the
organization and activity of the central with Record Office and British Museum
most every sentence its foot-note bristling
COLONIAL HISTORY-NEW STYLE. institutions of colonial control and the work
of the royal officials in the colonial service (MSS. Room) press-marks, to say nothing
THE first sentence of Mr. Root's Preface in administrating imperial policies. Since the
of published sources. What it does lack
his book on Pennsylvania and the British colony is considered from the point of view to some extent is a steady, personal view,
Government is significant, while merely of the Empire, the study falls largely in the or, at any rate, the courage to apply
affirming a familiar piece of knowledge. field of English history. Indirectly it is a such
a view steadily and throughout.
“Until recent years," he says, “it was
part of American history. "
A reference to only a few topics can
the fashion for historians of our colonial This new movement in historical in- be attempted here, and we choose those
era to treat the English possessions in terpretation brings into view knowledge of most general interest.
The first
America in the domain of American his- too long neglected or obscured. But at chapter, on the Central Institutions of
tory. " There certainly was such a the same time it tends to lose touch with Colonial Control,' displays the elabo-
fashion ; and it was so like nature that an one essential truth which the patriotic rate system of councils, boards, com-
unprepared reader may be excused if he historians, with all their faults, had in mittees, and offices of various sorts in
asks with some asperity what was wrong their very bones—the truth, namely, England, which all had a finger in the
with it. The best answer to the question that historical communities, like indi- pie of colonial management, and shows
is an explanation of the terms. This vidual men, are to be comprehended and how political changes in England affected
treatment of “English possessions” means, judged from within, and that no limiting administration in the direction of strict-
in effect, writing their history from the extrinsic circumstances in the case, nor ness or laxity. Chapters on the adminis-
post-revolutionary point of view and as
any contrary suppositions or intentions tration of the Acts of Trade and the
a stage in the history of the United States. in the minds of others regarding them, Courts of Vice-Admiralty bring us at once
This way of approach, it is now contended, afford the proper description of their real into the region of cross-purposes and
determines the bias of sympathy and type and status.
strife. In regard to the former, Mr. Root
decides on irrelevant grounds many of the Tested by this criterion, the attempt to would have done well and valiantly had
matters that come up for judgment. The reconstruct, if not to rehabilitate, the he decided outright that transgression of
ordinary patriotic or liberal historian vir- central official point of view is to a large the laws of trade was so essential to the
tually credits the Colonies with the rights extent irrelevant and misleading. The wellbeing of the colonies, and almost to
which they ultimately vindicated for determining moral fact in the situation their tolerable existence, that to call it
themselves in becoming
States, and is apt is that the Colonists never saw themselves smuggling is to beg a very large ques-
to see instances of selfish and arbitrary through Privy Council or Board of Trade tion. The fault lay with the depleting
interference, if not of tyranny, in most spectacles, and can hardly be said to have mercantile system then in vogue, against
attempts of British policy to regulate them. been conscious of the status which the which an economic and growing com-
Against this sympathetic or passionate strict or esoteric theory of the Empire munity had to live as best it might. To
tradition a reaction has been in progress gave them. Whenever that theory was the same cause also should be referred
during the past two decades, and the practically invoked, they were prompt the troubles—the reiterated metropolitan
present book is one of its symptoms and with reclamations, resistance, and evasion. commands and prohibitions, the unfailing
results. “Various forces,” says Mr. Root, The War of Independence, indeed, was colonial disregard and defiance dealt
“have been and still are at work, tending slowly declared and slackly waged. But with in the chapter on Finance.
to clear away the old patriotic and demo- the rebellion in detail—the endemic resist- When
to "The Judicial
ance to outside dictation or control System and the Royal Disallowance,'
The Relations of Pennsylvania with the began with the first boatload of English we the Home Government per-
British Government, 1696-1765. By Win. emigrants who arrived, and continued as sistently and vexatiously trying to en-
fred Trexler Root. (Appleton. )
part of the daily course of individual life force à certain administrative change,
.
we
come
see
## p. 674 (#504) ############################################
674
THE ATHENÆUM
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
ور
à reapportionment of work among the not a genuine or controlling force in the Though the subjects of the articles in
provincial courts, on grounds which would Assembly during the agitated early fifties. this Supplement
Supplement' died so recently,
have commended themselves to any From a recognition of this must follow a several of them have already attained the
intelligent man in England, but which, recognition that the Assembly during these dignity of“ standard " biography. Lord
nevertheless, were more foolishness when years was quite sincere in its offer of money Northbrook, the Duke of Devonshire, and
confronted with the facts of local custom, bills for defence. Mr. Root does not give Lord Glenesk come under this head; and
circumstances, and needs. Take again the due emphasis to the fact (though not ignor- Sir Sidney Lee has wisely secured their
characteristic and passionate opposition to ing it) that the withdrawal of the Quakers respective biographers to give in a con-
the first Vice-Admiralty courts. It drew from political life in 1756 nowise dimin- densed form the substance of well-known
its main strength, not from any penchant ished the difficulties of supply. Indeed, a works. But in other cases the articles
for smuggling, but from the inherited vivid, descriptive history written “close are inevitably in the nature of experi-
prejudices and ideals of a people who had up" (as artists say) to the issues and mental studies which will be superseded
the Common Law of England, so to say, passions of the moment, would show that by and by. Of such a character is the
in their blood. The Common Law was the most intense stage in the whole long editor's elaborate sketch of King Edward,
to Englishmen of that age a part and quarrel was reached in February, 1757, occupying over sixty pages. In the
attribute of their nationality, as well as between a non-disputatious Governor and meantime the daily papers have been
being esteemed the safeguard of their an Assembly in which there may have been quick to discover that Sir Sidney's article
liberties. In the Colonists this sentiment one or two Quakers (of a sort) left, but not contains abundant matter for readable
was rather intensified than diminished a vestige of Quakerism.
quotation. It also embodies a very
by their situation at so long a remove
carefully considered view of the King's
from home and the main body of their
character, based on information supplied
countrymen. They felt that in a court
by those about him. How far that view
which administered the Civil Law—the
can be accepted as final will, perhaps, for
Law of Rome they were submitted to Dictionary of National Biography. Edited some time bo matter for controversy
an alien, an unfriendly and a dangerous
by Sir Šidney Lee. Second Supplement,
Mr. Algernon Cecil's article on Lord
jurisdiction.
Vol. I. Abbey-Eyre. (Smith & Elder. )' Salisbury is greatly ad rem ; and, except
The question of Defence is, of course,
that it is rather lacking in dates, there is
the outstanding topic in any survey of SUPPLEMENTS to the ‘Dictionary of hardly a fault to be found with it. He
Pennsylvania’s record, and especially of National Biography' must present edi- seems to have consulted the family papers
her relations with the British Government. torial difficulties which were mostly absent on certain obscurities in Lord Salisbury's
The subject is full of difficulties, and, from the preparation of the original issue ideas ; and, though for their full examina-
therefore, has been easily exploited by of that great undertaking. Here we have tion we must wait for Lady Gwendolen
prejudice and passion. From these stir-
a volume of 500 articles, dealing with note- Cecil's promised biography, Mr. Cecil has
ring motives Mr. Root is almost distres- worthy persons who died between January thoroughly assimilated the speeches and
singly free, yet the difficulties have been 22nd, 1901, and December 31st, 1911. the articles in The Quarterly. The Liberal
too much for him. The impression which The problem before Sir Sidney Lee was leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
he conveys does, we think, less than clearly how to get these worthies into their receives eulogistic yet judicious treatment
justice to the provincial case. This is true perspective; to make the record fit at the hands of Lord Pentland, who makes
the result partly of the lack of what we the man, and to suppress the well-meant no attempt to disguise the differences
have called mental thoroughness and eulogies of friends and relations as well as which prevailed in the party at the time
the consequent failure to bring into the desire to fight old controversies over of the South African War. All the more
account a good many circumstances again.
prominent statesmen have been entrusted
which do not appear in a mere citation of We may say at once that he has to competent writers. The wide know-
the “facts” of command and refusal. been highly successful in his delicate task. ledge and mastery over detail acquired
For instance, in the refusal during 1751-4 Some people whose work is of no great by Sir Charles Dilke are duly recognized
to build a fort on the Ohio there were half import have been concisely dismissed. It by Mr. Thursfield, though the reference
a dozen other motives besides pacificist is just as well that records of their industry to The Athenæum and Notes and Queries
prejudice. If it is wrong to write more trustworthy than the hasty obituaries may create a false impression to those
Colonial history from a post-revolutionary of the daily press shall be generally acces- who do not know the facts. Regarding Sir
point of view, it is more manifestly wrong sible, but posterity has no need for a Charles's intercourse with King Edward,
to write of that refusal from the stand- complete list of Dr A. 's sermons or Miss a cross-reference might have been made
point of Braddock's defeat or Pontiac's B. 's novels. Most of the military and
Most of the military and to the account of that monarch, which
conspiracy.
naval articles, too, notably those of Col. gives their relations in fuller detail
Injustice also results from a failure to Lloyd, are models of information definitely (p. 574). In the article concerning Lady
keep distinct stages separate, to observe conveyed. Elsewhere there is a certain Dilke, her connexion and that of her first
both the historical and the moral chrono- lack of completeness, especially in the husband with Middlemarch' as proto-
logy of the story. The things that have references to authorities. Thus Mr. de types are clearly stated. Though there
been done by recent British writers of Montmorency might have elucidated the was a certain irony in entrusting an old-
high acceptance in the way of jumbling part played by Sir Charles Adderley in fashioned Trade Unionist like Henry Broad-
chronology, and launching promoting the compromise over the Fran- hurst to Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, the
their eloquent denunciations from the chise Bill of 1884 by an allusion to the result is admirably impartial.
scrapheap of dates, are almost past narrative of the negotiations in Mr. The philosophy of Alexander Bain can
believing of honest men. Mr. Root is Andrew Lang's 'Life of Sir Stafford hardly be said to have endured, but
not entirely free from this fault, though Northcote,' and there are other instances nothing could be clearer than Miss
innocent of the eloquence; but the of the insufficient ransacking of political Haldane's exposition of his somewhat
observance of the moral chronology, of biographies. Mr. Charles
Boyd's article materialistic and emphatically utilitarian
the modifications of opinion and temper on Alfred Beit does not indicate where teaching. An unsigned article on Edward
within a given period, is a counsel of the Report of the British South Africa Caird, Master of Balliol College and philo-
perfection which has hardly come before Committee is to be found, and other sopher, provokes speculation as to its
him. Yet we believe there can be no contributors follow him with vague refer- authorship; it is uncommonly well done.
reasonable account rendered of this sub- ences to blue books on Egypt, or It is pleasant to see present-day digni.
ject which does not recognize that the Turkey, or somewhere else. Those whose taries of Oxford and Cambridge paying
year 1747–8—the year of the Association doom it is to labour in the Newspaper affectionate tributes to their friends who
or Volunteer Movement represents a sort Room of the British Museum know to are gone. Thus Prof. Henry Jackson
of moral landslip in Pennsylvania, and their cost that the hunting down of a aptly estimates the scholarship of Archer-
that orthodox or pacificist Quakerism was · particular report or dispatch takes time. Hind, and Dr. W. H. Hutton the social
## p. 675 (#505) ############################################
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
THE ATHENAUM
675
are
6C
qualities of Dr. Bellamy, President of Marchant has refrained from doing so. long life embody the contents of tho‘Ency-
St. John's, Oxford. Miss Mary Bateson's Sir Walter Besant may not have con- clopædia Britannioa ' in one romance.
erudition is well weighed by a sciously reckoned himself as a philan- Dr. Wolff has observed some parallels
fellow-mediævalist in Prof. Tout. Mr. thropist, but he was one. Mr. W. B. between Richardson and Sidney so in-
A. H. Johnson rather understates Montagu Owen, one of the editor's assistants, tells significant that we cannot take seriously
Burrows's activity in political affairs at the story of the People's Palace skilfully, his remark that “ Richardson's indebted-
Oxford. During the turmoil of 1880 and does justice to Besant's crusade on ness to Sidney does not seem to have
Burrows's zeal in the Conservative cause behalf of his brother-authors. Another been thoroughly investigated. ” But those
considerably outran his discretion. valorous crusader was Frances Power between Sidney and the Greeks
We must not linger too long, however, Cobbe, and Mr. Alexander Gordon sets convincing. The Arcadia' as a whole
in academic groves. By way of contrast forth her many activities with sympathy has the same kind of frame — the com-
the typically Bohemian figure of Robert and moderation. It is of interest to be plications are the same in kind, some-
Buchanan presents itself, and Mr. Thomas reminded that in 1862, when she read times actually copied. Hence, in the
Bayne is to be congratulated, both on his before the Social Science Congress a paper words of Dr. Wolff,“ one who reads for
handling of the old “Fleshly School of advocating the admission of women to pleasure simply cannot understand the
Poetry. ” controversy, and on his winnow- university degrees, the proposal was Arcadia. '» Of the resemblance in detail
ing of the few novels that count from the received with universal ridicule. " Doro- we have quoted one example. One other
pot-boiling trash. Mr. Seccombe almost thea Beale, of Cheltenham, who laboured will suffice: it shows that Sidney had
persuades us to regard Samuel Butler, the for the education of her sex is to be found before him the contemporary version of
author of 'Erowhon,' as a deliberate not far from Ada Ellen Bayly (Edna Heliodorus by Underdowne, where may
philosopher, but it would be nearer the Lyell), who wrote novels with purposes, be found this account of a feast :-
mark to look on him as a whimsical and devoted much of their proceeds to
satirist. Surely there should have been charitable causes.
The tables were furnished with delicate
There is, in fact, much
some mention of Seven Sonnets and a fino, confused interest in this volume, those that were slaine, being in steede
dishes, some wheroof laie in tho handes of
Psalm of Montreal' and 'God the Known and if some may question the propriety of weapons. . . . Besides, the cuppes were
and the Unknown,' first published in The of including a patent medicine vendor in overthrowen, and fell out of the bandes,
Examiner of 1879. Mr. Seccombe some- its scope, whereas not a single plumber or either of them that dranke, or those, who
what oddly refers to Butler's “outwardly pastrycook is to be discovered in it, still had instead of stones used them. For that
conventional aspect. ” Did he expect him the hoardings are always with us, and soudaine mischiefe wrought nowe devises,
and taught them in stoade of weapons to
to wear a cap and bells ?
It would have act as passports to fame of a sort.
been pertinent to say that his way of life
use their pottes. . . . bruing bloude with wine,
joyning battaile with banketting. ”
was unconventional, and that the books
which are now well known brought him
Sidney followed with this :-
little profit in his lifetime.
On the whole, the men and women
The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose “Thus was their banquette turned to a
of letters in this volume are not of
Fiction. By Samuel Lee Wolff. (New battaile, their winie mirthes to bloudia
exceptional interest. Miss Elizabeth Lee
York, Columbia University Press ; Lon- rages. . . . They never weyed how to arme
has the mot juste for poor Ouida (Marie
themselves, but tooke up everything for a
don, Henry Frowde. )
weapon, that furie offered to their handes.
Louise Do la Ramée), whose novels on DR. WOLFF's book consists of summaries
. . . . Some caught hold of spikes (though
Italy are by no means to be despised ; but of three Greek romances by Heliodorus, death. And there was some such one, who
serviceable for life) to be the instruments of
she does not seem sufficiently conscious of Longus, and Achilles Tatius, and a very held the same pot wherein he drank to your
the value of Aubrey De Vere as a pioneer careful study of their matter and literary health, to use it to your mischief. "
of the “Celtio Renascence. ” Mr. Bickley method, followed by summaries and studies
makes no attempt to pigeon-hole John of the prose romances of Sidney, Greene, Sidney, however, seems to be thinking of
Davidson, and therein he acts wisely. and Lodge, showing the correspondence the Virgilian “furor arma ministrat. ”
Much of Davidson's verse is nimble and the actual connexion between the In our opinion the multiplication of
rhetoric, and even the Fleet Street English and the Greek. Dr. Wolff's such examples is not to be encouraged.
Ecologues' await their final critic. Mo- thoroughness does not conceal itself. Far fewer would have been enough to
berly Bell touched literature at some His 500 pages present not only what prove Dr. Wolff's power of observation,
points, but he can scarcely be said to have we suppose are all his conclusions, but and for the rest, references should suffice.
belonged to it, and, as Mr. Monypenny also virtually all his grounds for them, As it stands at present the book is a
candidly admits, many of his enterprises quoted at length. A characteristic para- model for students, but by no means
strictly beyond the bounds of graph is where he notices that,
for writers. The method of work is ex-
journalism. "
cellent, but the amount of paper covered
No great artists figure in this volume ;
“in Sidney's episode of the Princess's lamentable. Nor is it for lack of
but an architect whose fame cannot fail captivity, the brutal Anaxius, forcing his ability to do anything else that Dr.
to endure, John Francis Bentley, receives chin (* Arc. , III. xxvi. 352) Putting Wolff adopts this monumental method ;
his
due from Mr. Paul Waterhouse. him away with her faire hand, Proud beast for, wherever he personally intervenes
Among the actors, Lionel Brough is, (said she), yet thou plaiest worse thy comedy, with argument or comment, he is lively
perhaps, the most noteworthy; an un- then thy Tragedy. '". Thersander, forcing his and sensible, though we do not think his
signed article on him gives little idea of caresses upon Leucippe, also takes her by style one that bears the sudden use of
his powers as a raconteur.
the chin, and also receives a sharp reproof.
"Twaddle! ” Once, probably to relieve
We will conclude our survey by It is, in fact, his principal aim to show the tedium--though if unconsciously, then
mentioning some of the philanthropists not only that was Sidney indebted to the naturally—he gives way to the style
who figure in this closely packed volume. Greek romances, but also that he alone under discussion by speaking of "the
Foremost comes the Baroness Burdett- among Elizabethans has developed the heroic spectacle, and the spectacular
Coutts, whose wise use of her wealth is form further on his own account, and " has heroics, of shipwrecked Pyrocles. "
clearly described by Mr. J. P. Anderson. actually brought nearer perfection the His study of this style is the most
The list of portraits adds value to this, complex architectonics of Greek Romance. " interesting part of the book, and he has
as to many other, articles in the ‘Supple- Dr. Wolff will find fow to challenge the ventured to coin a new word,
“ homeo-
ment. Mr. James Marchant says just last part of his statement, since the phony,” as a generic term for one of its
enough about Dr. Barnardo. There was Arcadia' is a book which there are devices, the rhetorical use of similarities
no necessity to go into all the litigation many to praise and very few to love and in sound-repetition, assonance, allitera-
in which Barnardo became involved read. A committee of Senior Wranglers tion, rhyme. These, on a small scale,
through the reception of children of Roman night still further elaborate and perfect are the result of the same hard external
Catholio parentage into his homes, and Mr. ! the architectonics, and in the course of a sense of form which the romances as a
were
## p. 676 (#506) ############################################
676
THE ATHENÆUM
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
ور
no
never
66
was
nor
" the sense
sense.
whole, and all of their parts, exhibit to an touchwood, but from the old roots of the
extraordinary degree. For modern ex- faith still spring as beautiful examples
SOME RECENT VERSE.
amples of homeophony equal to the old, of love and human charity as those which
The King: a Tragedy en a Continuous
readers must turn to the prose and the mediæval world enshrined in its Series of Scenes. By Stephen Phillips.
verse of Swinburne. Some of his prose legends. It is a thousand pities that these (Stephen Swift. )-Mr. Phillips has a prolific
seems to be written for the joy of con- folk-stories and mediæval traditions which pon, and writes with some passion, fluency,
structing formally perfect sentences which Mr. Gales touches upon in papers such as and spaciousness of conception. But his verso
must have hovered before his mind's The Lore of the Three Kings,' The often lies open to the imputation of spurious-
eye before he had anything to pour into Queen of Festivals,' 'The Land of Par-
ness of effect, owing to a tendency to forcing
them. At other times he was the subject dons,' should either have faded from the into artificial and extravagant postures.
a genuine capacity for emotional expression
of fitful inspiration, as when, having memory of the English Church or were
His latest poetic drama is much inferior to
spoken of “a curious monotony in the never transplanted here by Continental his best work, and accentuates its blemishes.
variety," he thought well to ask “if piety. Mr. Gales says aptly :-
Its motif is that of unconscious incest,
there be not a curious variety in the
culminating, on discovery, in the suicide
monotony," but went
further. “It is one of the normal functions of of the lovers. Though less crude and
Rhyme bad entered into his soul. There religion to provide an immense background transpontine than Ford's famous treatment
“ breath”
divided from
to life, to create an atmosphere, to bring of a similar theme, it can bear no comparison
death, "light" from
something large and imaginative into the to it in tragic massiveness and poignancy.
night," most contracted lives. Normally this is It carries frequent evidence of slovenly
and he gave the most perfect example of done for the mass of the people by their workmanship, and Mr. Phillips ignores
prolonged homeophony to be found when religion. "
many opportunities of heightening his lan-
he wrote,
guage into lofty relationship with tragic
In Catholic countries, perhaps, but in Eng- possibilities. The scenes drift lazily and
Slowlier than life into breath,
Surelier than time into death. . . . . . land our author, we fear, is right in his mistily past us, carelessly picked out and
contention that a
in 'To Walt Whitman in America. ' bound to lose its hold upon the mass of
“colourless religion ” is without any sharp, concrete realization of
outlines. The characters, too, are lack-
His poetry was the first entirely happy simple souls by neglecting to emphasize oratorical mouthpieces. Indeed, the play
ing in
individuality; they are merely
place for this treatment of words. Prose, in its “ Feasts and Festivals
as a whole is metallic and otiose, untouched
which approximates to the language of of joy and wonder in human life. In this by the authentic wand of inspiration. The
speech, can never perhaps be trained connexion an interesting essay might be quality of the poetry itself is fitful ; some-
to such completeness of artificiality as written on the atrophy of the aesthetic
written on the atrophy of the æsthetic times curiously naked and divorced from
verse, without announcing itself as non-
This completeness, unlike the indirect appeal for the cultivation of the rhetoric. The speech of Carlos, the king's
sense in the English people. Mr. Gales's Mr. Phillips's peculiar genre ; sometimes
sweeping, processional
nonsense, is not to be met in Sidney old brotherliness and gracious charity son, is typical -
or his predecessors. Dr. Wolff might among men unseals religious springs
establish a connexion between Swinburne which have been silting up slowly, but
Why you encircle me as doth the air,
And nothing breathes or moves apart from you.
and Achilles Tatius, but purely as an surely in the last two centuries. Theo-
The Universe hath got from you à soul;
ingenious exercise, not as
Since first I saw you on a fated night,
a contri-
retically the Church inculcates brotherli- From the dark palace casement secretly
bution to knowledge worthy of pub- ness among all men, but how different
Leaning with loosened hair to midnight lilies
lication” with Prof. Thorndike's impri- was the spirit of its work in the mediæval Thou art more sweet than souls of evening flowers
matur.
In
village from our modern practice !
In a dim world, and ere a star hath come.
this light our author's catholicity, his This is self-consciously purple”; clever,
ardent sympathy with the poor and simple but too affected to be born of lively
Studies in Arcady. Second Series. By joyous and beautiful in human feeling
minded, his appreciation of all that is spontaneity.
R. L. Gales. (Herbert & Daniel. )
appear both as a survival and a revival Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti.
With
of
Translations of
It is pleasant to encounter a writer whose Southern lands. It is pleasant to add "I cannot trust the reader," says Mr.
them, and
a priestly ideal not uncommon in
Introduction by Ezra Pound. (Swift. )
humble pages shine with the gracious that Mr. Gales's tone, though scholarly, Pound, " to read the Italian for the music
light of a great
spiritual tradition, and is simple and homely, and perfectly free after he has read my English for the sense. ”
Essays from a Country Parsonage’ may from the tinge of artificiality which mars Therefore he has abandoned his intention
do far more to reconcile the modern the utterance of many of our latter-day of printing the Italian of Guido Caval-
thinker with the authority of the Church School of ritualists. Many of his best canti's poems with what he calls an una
than the works of many imposing and
celebrated divines. One muses on laying essays, indeed, as · Dickens in Real Life' rhymed "gloze. He has, in fact, written a
and Town and Country English,' show doubt as to his aim, he announces that
down Mr. Gales's delightful little volume
a native sympathy with the racy spirit of he has tried “ to bring over the qualities of
dogma is necessary for the nurture of the old English life, while others demonstrate Guido's rhythm, not line for line, but to
living seeds of faith-as the majority of his cosmopolitan outlook. , The Breton embody in the whole of my English some
Churchmen have strenuously held. But peasant, the Russian muzhik, the English trace of that power which implies the man. "
clerics as broad - minded as Mr. Gales villager to him are equally as interesting Such hopes are alone enough to handicap
rare, and evidence is abundant
in their common family features as in him. Ho has desired and hoped to write
their innate temperamental differences like that of Guido
what shall have on English readers an effect
that the letter killeth. " Studies in
Arcady,' indeed, at the first glance has The only, passage we have noted which looking at this distant goal he has become
but an indirect bearing on the Church's fails a little in brotherly charity is one
blind to nearer things. He has become
in which the name of Dr. Clifford is cited. blind to the necessity of writing English and
problems or policy, but, as one turns from It is natural that the great schism of being intelligible ; or, if not blind, then he
one to another of these pleasant ‘Dis dissent should still rankle in the minds of has allowed rhyme and a purely self-conscious
cussions and Digressions' on villagers and
He
their ways, on Christian legends, folk-
even the most broad-minded Anglicans, choice of words to make him appear so.
speech, Medieval traditions, Colourless and it is one of times ironies that the to put it mildly), or furlon (for which
Religion, &c. , one recognizes that their social root of that schism, viz. , “the
he has to give a note), or forlendye" (to
Poor Man's gospel » should be less and rhyme with
comprehend me,'' but of
springs not merely from the author's kindly less propagated by the Free Churches as doubtful meaning): "he will say :-
springs not merely from the author's kindly their congregations become more and
humanity, but also from his cultivation
Deadly 's the poison with thy jogs connected ;
of the flower of medieval religious senti-
more prosperous.
and speak of “where Love is situate
ment. All the dogmas of the schoolmen,
will brighten up Guido by saying that
all the tangled growths of doctrinal con-
troversy have rotted slowly away to
Ramour, courier through the mind, ran crying,
"A vileness in the heart, Oyea I lies dying. . .
an
are
6
on
: he
## p. 677 (#507) ############################################
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
677
THE ATHENÆUM
s like
66
no
His vocabulary seems to have been taken Boy' and 'The Carol of the Poor Children. ' the native kilt, and the kindly, serene face,
from dictionaries or a crude and disorderly, In the last-named Middleton's tender fanci. | they felt that something of the sturdy
if picturesquo, memory, so that time after fulnoss is at its meridian :-
independence of the folk of the Western Isles
time he ghooks us and blinds us to Guido
We are the poor children come out to see the sights
among whom he was born and bred, and
with words which he has not made his own. On this day of all days, on this night of nights,
something, too, of their gentle introspective-
This astonishing example is not solitary : The stars in merry parties are dancing in the sky
A fine star, a new star, is shining on high !
ness, had passed into him. It was in going
The grace of youth in Toulouse ventureth;
up and down these islands in the exercise
She's noble and fair, with quaint sincerities,
We are the poor children, our lips are frosty blue,
of his calling that he gradually accumulated
Discreet she is and is about the eyes
We cannot sing our carol as well as rich folk do,
Most like to our Lady of sweet memories.
Our bellies are so empty we have no singing voice,
those stores of lore concerning old rites and
so that within my heart desirous
But this night of all nights good children must rejoice. customs, and those collections of Gaelic
She hath clad the soul in fashions peregrine. We do rejoice, we do rejoice, as hard as we can try, hymns, charms, and 'Blessings' which he pub-
Such verse suggests that Mr. Pound has
A Ane star, a now star, is shining in the sky!
lished in 1900 in the two sumptuous volumes
And while we sing our carol, we think of the delight
lost his natural feeling for the value of The happy kings and shepherds make in Bethlehem to.
which he named “Carmina Gadelica. ' Here
words. Where Rossetti says
night.
we have over 200 poems and fragments
cross," he says cruciform," as if it were But as a poet Middleton was seldom more
in Gaelic and English, and we may truly
the same, and not a rigid technical word than a charming literary butterfly. Had he say that in no other published material is
somewhat difficult to raise into poetry. Nor lived, the bad habits generated by facility the inner soul of the Highlander revealed as
is he afraid of ineptitude, as in the lines :- would probably have prevented him from
it is in the beauty and delicacy of these
An archer is he as the Scythians are
making of versé a vehicle for the seriousness poems. Many of them retain a half-pagan
Whose only joy is killing some one else. of thought, depth of emotion, and freshness note, and show evident signs of pre-Christian
He will speak of a “ spirit” in one line and of vision that were beginning to mark his origin ; even as we possess them, coloured
as they are by later Christian influence,
"
sprites" in the next, without distinction, prose.
they are among the most precious testimony
and translate mia donna" as “Milady. "
The Widow in the Bye-Street. By John
we possess to the native cults of these
It is unnecessary to give further examples
of the kind of difficulties which Mr. Pound
Masefield.
islands. But, apart from all scientific uses,
(Sidgwick & Jackson. )- The
has added to those created by a poet of Widow in the Bye-Street, which appeared well worthy of the labour bestowed upon
another age and another tongue, difficulties in the pages of The English Review, has by their collection and publication. For many
months before his death Dr. Carmichael had
conceal the translator's insight. He has Everlasting. Mercy, which, if an unequal, been busied in arranging for the press a
never overcome the disadvantage of not
was a genuine product of the imagination. second collection, almost equal in number
knowing that a writer of verse may do any-
We expect rather better things from Mr.
to the first; but ill-health has prevented
thing rather than be both unreadable and Masefield than the former, in which the the fulfilment of this design.
unintelligible. Rossetti, at least, is seldom realism inclines to be mechanical and the
Dr. Carmichael was a well-known figure
either and never both ; Mr. Pound's version versification bare and arid. The elimination
cannot, as poetry, supersede his, and as a
of all ornament is too evident; to attain wherever the native tongue and the old
crib it is not sufficient.
to the baldest diction becomes a kind of customs survived. He was President or
ideal. There is nothing here of the romantic,
Chief of many Gaelic societies, and he was
magical naturalness of Wordsworth's sim- the inspirer of many younger men. Fiona
Poems and Songs. By Richard Middleton.
plicity. After all, metrical exigencies do Macleod's best work, in particular, was done
With an Introduction by Henry Savage. entail some poetic vraisemblance. Prose and when in his company or under the influence
(Fisher Unwin. /Richard Middleton's death,
verse are not interchangeable ; their spirit of his writings and spirit. He helped Dr.
that saw the actors at their fullest de- MAGAZINES, &c.
MISCELLANEOUS
velopment. The dignity of Miss Sara
MURRAY
BELL'S HANDBOOKS TO
Allgood as Kathleen could not have been NOTES AND QUERIES
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
642 CONTINENTAL CHURCHES.
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::
## p. 673 (#503) ############################################
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
THE ATHENÆUM
673
PAGE
COLONIAL HISTORY - NEW STYLE (The Relations of
673
1766)
DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
THR GREEK ROMANCES IN ELIZABETHAN PROSE FIC-
TION
675
676
Guido Cavalcanti;
676-677
JANE AUSTEN FOR SCHOOLS
THE
HUTH LIBRARY
678
- Poetry,
Geo-
-
678-680
681
British - Bird Book ; Hand - List
of British Birds); NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS;
682-685
MUSIC
687
INDEX TO ADVERTISERS
688
66
cratic points of view," and to substitute and business till the Revolution : when
SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1912. for them “the modern and normal imperial the business, so to say, was consolidated.
point of view. ” The change consists in all this the Colonists were merely
CONTENTS.
essentially in taking the Colonies just as acting out what was implied in their inti-
they stood in the seventeenth and eigh- mate consciousness of themselves; their
Pennsylvania with the British Government, 1696–
teenth centuries, and anticipating nothing assumption that they were normal, un-
of their history; in regarding them cal- degraded Englishmen who had surrendered
674 lously not as a cluster of free communities no historic rights of their race in leaving
with an heroic future ahead of them, and home, but had rather added to them the
STUDIES IN ARCADY
its legend even then in the making, but rewards of the adventurous and the
SOME RECENT VERSE (The King : a Tragedy in a Con.
simply as legally permitted and politically liberties resulting from a life outside the
tinuous Series of Scenes ; Sonnets and Ballate of restricted parts of a certain Great Empire, realm.
Poems and Songs, The Widow
in the Bye Street ; Song in September)
to whose Government they were sub- This psychological factor has been
OBITUARY (Dr. Alexander Carmichael)
677 ordinate, by whose power they were pro- emphasized at some length because, with-
tected, and for whose territorial expansion out the clue which it gives, there is no
SALES—AUTOGRAPH LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS;
and commercial advantage they were con- escaping from the maze of disobedience,
sidered to exist. In fact, the investiga- transgression, and default which seems to
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS (Theology - Law -
878 ; Philosophy - History and Biography
tions of the new school of American constitute the whole story of Pennsyl-
graphy and Travel Sports and Pastimes--Philo-
logy, 679; Fiction-General, 680)
historians, as they affect this period, are vania in these pages. The case is not
largely conducted in our own archives, peculiar. The story of every colony in
LITERARY GOSSIP
SCIENCE-BIRDS AND THEIR HABITS (Studies in Bird or by the aid of extensive transcripts turn creates the same impression when
Migration;
made from them, and naturally combine resolved into a recital of that colony's
SOCIETIES ; MEETINGS NEXT WEEK; GOSSIP
to present the Colonies from the point of relations with the controlling offices in
FINE ARTS-FRA ANGELICO; BRITISH MUSEUM Ex- view of the Privy Council, the Board of England or their delegates on the spot.
HIBITION OF DRAWINGS; SCOTTISH ART AND
HISTORY; GOUPIL GALLERY SUMMER EXHIBI-
Trade, and the royal or proprietary But, as Pennsylvania was not only in
TION; CARFAX GALLERY ; SALE ; Gossip 685686 Governors to whom they were such geographical position, but also in most
GOSSIP; PERFORMANCES NEXT WEEK
troublesome charges. So the author other ways the central colony, it offers
DRAMA — A NEW TRAGEDY ; GOSSIP
688 remarks concerning his book :-
all the elements for a full study of
The province of Pennsylvania has been what such relations meant. Mr. Root's
singled out for particular investigation in study is analytic and documentary in
order to elucidate the nature of British method, and lacks nothing of industry
LITERATURE
imperialism in its political and adminis- and exactness. Every aspect of the
trative features during the eighteenth cen- subject has its separate chapter, and al-
tury. It is the purpose to describe both the
organization and activity of the central with Record Office and British Museum
most every sentence its foot-note bristling
COLONIAL HISTORY-NEW STYLE. institutions of colonial control and the work
of the royal officials in the colonial service (MSS. Room) press-marks, to say nothing
THE first sentence of Mr. Root's Preface in administrating imperial policies. Since the
of published sources. What it does lack
his book on Pennsylvania and the British colony is considered from the point of view to some extent is a steady, personal view,
Government is significant, while merely of the Empire, the study falls largely in the or, at any rate, the courage to apply
affirming a familiar piece of knowledge. field of English history. Indirectly it is a such
a view steadily and throughout.
“Until recent years," he says, “it was
part of American history. "
A reference to only a few topics can
the fashion for historians of our colonial This new movement in historical in- be attempted here, and we choose those
era to treat the English possessions in terpretation brings into view knowledge of most general interest.
The first
America in the domain of American his- too long neglected or obscured. But at chapter, on the Central Institutions of
tory. " There certainly was such a the same time it tends to lose touch with Colonial Control,' displays the elabo-
fashion ; and it was so like nature that an one essential truth which the patriotic rate system of councils, boards, com-
unprepared reader may be excused if he historians, with all their faults, had in mittees, and offices of various sorts in
asks with some asperity what was wrong their very bones—the truth, namely, England, which all had a finger in the
with it. The best answer to the question that historical communities, like indi- pie of colonial management, and shows
is an explanation of the terms. This vidual men, are to be comprehended and how political changes in England affected
treatment of “English possessions” means, judged from within, and that no limiting administration in the direction of strict-
in effect, writing their history from the extrinsic circumstances in the case, nor ness or laxity. Chapters on the adminis-
post-revolutionary point of view and as
any contrary suppositions or intentions tration of the Acts of Trade and the
a stage in the history of the United States. in the minds of others regarding them, Courts of Vice-Admiralty bring us at once
This way of approach, it is now contended, afford the proper description of their real into the region of cross-purposes and
determines the bias of sympathy and type and status.
strife. In regard to the former, Mr. Root
decides on irrelevant grounds many of the Tested by this criterion, the attempt to would have done well and valiantly had
matters that come up for judgment. The reconstruct, if not to rehabilitate, the he decided outright that transgression of
ordinary patriotic or liberal historian vir- central official point of view is to a large the laws of trade was so essential to the
tually credits the Colonies with the rights extent irrelevant and misleading. The wellbeing of the colonies, and almost to
which they ultimately vindicated for determining moral fact in the situation their tolerable existence, that to call it
themselves in becoming
States, and is apt is that the Colonists never saw themselves smuggling is to beg a very large ques-
to see instances of selfish and arbitrary through Privy Council or Board of Trade tion. The fault lay with the depleting
interference, if not of tyranny, in most spectacles, and can hardly be said to have mercantile system then in vogue, against
attempts of British policy to regulate them. been conscious of the status which the which an economic and growing com-
Against this sympathetic or passionate strict or esoteric theory of the Empire munity had to live as best it might. To
tradition a reaction has been in progress gave them. Whenever that theory was the same cause also should be referred
during the past two decades, and the practically invoked, they were prompt the troubles—the reiterated metropolitan
present book is one of its symptoms and with reclamations, resistance, and evasion. commands and prohibitions, the unfailing
results. “Various forces,” says Mr. Root, The War of Independence, indeed, was colonial disregard and defiance dealt
“have been and still are at work, tending slowly declared and slackly waged. But with in the chapter on Finance.
to clear away the old patriotic and demo- the rebellion in detail—the endemic resist- When
to "The Judicial
ance to outside dictation or control System and the Royal Disallowance,'
The Relations of Pennsylvania with the began with the first boatload of English we the Home Government per-
British Government, 1696-1765. By Win. emigrants who arrived, and continued as sistently and vexatiously trying to en-
fred Trexler Root. (Appleton. )
part of the daily course of individual life force à certain administrative change,
.
we
come
see
## p. 674 (#504) ############################################
674
THE ATHENÆUM
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
ور
à reapportionment of work among the not a genuine or controlling force in the Though the subjects of the articles in
provincial courts, on grounds which would Assembly during the agitated early fifties. this Supplement
Supplement' died so recently,
have commended themselves to any From a recognition of this must follow a several of them have already attained the
intelligent man in England, but which, recognition that the Assembly during these dignity of“ standard " biography. Lord
nevertheless, were more foolishness when years was quite sincere in its offer of money Northbrook, the Duke of Devonshire, and
confronted with the facts of local custom, bills for defence. Mr. Root does not give Lord Glenesk come under this head; and
circumstances, and needs. Take again the due emphasis to the fact (though not ignor- Sir Sidney Lee has wisely secured their
characteristic and passionate opposition to ing it) that the withdrawal of the Quakers respective biographers to give in a con-
the first Vice-Admiralty courts. It drew from political life in 1756 nowise dimin- densed form the substance of well-known
its main strength, not from any penchant ished the difficulties of supply. Indeed, a works. But in other cases the articles
for smuggling, but from the inherited vivid, descriptive history written “close are inevitably in the nature of experi-
prejudices and ideals of a people who had up" (as artists say) to the issues and mental studies which will be superseded
the Common Law of England, so to say, passions of the moment, would show that by and by. Of such a character is the
in their blood. The Common Law was the most intense stage in the whole long editor's elaborate sketch of King Edward,
to Englishmen of that age a part and quarrel was reached in February, 1757, occupying over sixty pages. In the
attribute of their nationality, as well as between a non-disputatious Governor and meantime the daily papers have been
being esteemed the safeguard of their an Assembly in which there may have been quick to discover that Sir Sidney's article
liberties. In the Colonists this sentiment one or two Quakers (of a sort) left, but not contains abundant matter for readable
was rather intensified than diminished a vestige of Quakerism.
quotation. It also embodies a very
by their situation at so long a remove
carefully considered view of the King's
from home and the main body of their
character, based on information supplied
countrymen. They felt that in a court
by those about him. How far that view
which administered the Civil Law—the
can be accepted as final will, perhaps, for
Law of Rome they were submitted to Dictionary of National Biography. Edited some time bo matter for controversy
an alien, an unfriendly and a dangerous
by Sir Šidney Lee. Second Supplement,
Mr. Algernon Cecil's article on Lord
jurisdiction.
Vol. I. Abbey-Eyre. (Smith & Elder. )' Salisbury is greatly ad rem ; and, except
The question of Defence is, of course,
that it is rather lacking in dates, there is
the outstanding topic in any survey of SUPPLEMENTS to the ‘Dictionary of hardly a fault to be found with it. He
Pennsylvania’s record, and especially of National Biography' must present edi- seems to have consulted the family papers
her relations with the British Government. torial difficulties which were mostly absent on certain obscurities in Lord Salisbury's
The subject is full of difficulties, and, from the preparation of the original issue ideas ; and, though for their full examina-
therefore, has been easily exploited by of that great undertaking. Here we have tion we must wait for Lady Gwendolen
prejudice and passion. From these stir-
a volume of 500 articles, dealing with note- Cecil's promised biography, Mr. Cecil has
ring motives Mr. Root is almost distres- worthy persons who died between January thoroughly assimilated the speeches and
singly free, yet the difficulties have been 22nd, 1901, and December 31st, 1911. the articles in The Quarterly. The Liberal
too much for him. The impression which The problem before Sir Sidney Lee was leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
he conveys does, we think, less than clearly how to get these worthies into their receives eulogistic yet judicious treatment
justice to the provincial case. This is true perspective; to make the record fit at the hands of Lord Pentland, who makes
the result partly of the lack of what we the man, and to suppress the well-meant no attempt to disguise the differences
have called mental thoroughness and eulogies of friends and relations as well as which prevailed in the party at the time
the consequent failure to bring into the desire to fight old controversies over of the South African War. All the more
account a good many circumstances again.
prominent statesmen have been entrusted
which do not appear in a mere citation of We may say at once that he has to competent writers. The wide know-
the “facts” of command and refusal. been highly successful in his delicate task. ledge and mastery over detail acquired
For instance, in the refusal during 1751-4 Some people whose work is of no great by Sir Charles Dilke are duly recognized
to build a fort on the Ohio there were half import have been concisely dismissed. It by Mr. Thursfield, though the reference
a dozen other motives besides pacificist is just as well that records of their industry to The Athenæum and Notes and Queries
prejudice. If it is wrong to write more trustworthy than the hasty obituaries may create a false impression to those
Colonial history from a post-revolutionary of the daily press shall be generally acces- who do not know the facts. Regarding Sir
point of view, it is more manifestly wrong sible, but posterity has no need for a Charles's intercourse with King Edward,
to write of that refusal from the stand- complete list of Dr A. 's sermons or Miss a cross-reference might have been made
point of Braddock's defeat or Pontiac's B. 's novels. Most of the military and
Most of the military and to the account of that monarch, which
conspiracy.
naval articles, too, notably those of Col. gives their relations in fuller detail
Injustice also results from a failure to Lloyd, are models of information definitely (p. 574). In the article concerning Lady
keep distinct stages separate, to observe conveyed. Elsewhere there is a certain Dilke, her connexion and that of her first
both the historical and the moral chrono- lack of completeness, especially in the husband with Middlemarch' as proto-
logy of the story. The things that have references to authorities. Thus Mr. de types are clearly stated. Though there
been done by recent British writers of Montmorency might have elucidated the was a certain irony in entrusting an old-
high acceptance in the way of jumbling part played by Sir Charles Adderley in fashioned Trade Unionist like Henry Broad-
chronology, and launching promoting the compromise over the Fran- hurst to Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, the
their eloquent denunciations from the chise Bill of 1884 by an allusion to the result is admirably impartial.
scrapheap of dates, are almost past narrative of the negotiations in Mr. The philosophy of Alexander Bain can
believing of honest men. Mr. Root is Andrew Lang's 'Life of Sir Stafford hardly be said to have endured, but
not entirely free from this fault, though Northcote,' and there are other instances nothing could be clearer than Miss
innocent of the eloquence; but the of the insufficient ransacking of political Haldane's exposition of his somewhat
observance of the moral chronology, of biographies. Mr. Charles
Boyd's article materialistic and emphatically utilitarian
the modifications of opinion and temper on Alfred Beit does not indicate where teaching. An unsigned article on Edward
within a given period, is a counsel of the Report of the British South Africa Caird, Master of Balliol College and philo-
perfection which has hardly come before Committee is to be found, and other sopher, provokes speculation as to its
him. Yet we believe there can be no contributors follow him with vague refer- authorship; it is uncommonly well done.
reasonable account rendered of this sub- ences to blue books on Egypt, or It is pleasant to see present-day digni.
ject which does not recognize that the Turkey, or somewhere else. Those whose taries of Oxford and Cambridge paying
year 1747–8—the year of the Association doom it is to labour in the Newspaper affectionate tributes to their friends who
or Volunteer Movement represents a sort Room of the British Museum know to are gone. Thus Prof. Henry Jackson
of moral landslip in Pennsylvania, and their cost that the hunting down of a aptly estimates the scholarship of Archer-
that orthodox or pacificist Quakerism was · particular report or dispatch takes time. Hind, and Dr. W. H. Hutton the social
## p. 675 (#505) ############################################
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
THE ATHENAUM
675
are
6C
qualities of Dr. Bellamy, President of Marchant has refrained from doing so. long life embody the contents of tho‘Ency-
St. John's, Oxford. Miss Mary Bateson's Sir Walter Besant may not have con- clopædia Britannioa ' in one romance.
erudition is well weighed by a sciously reckoned himself as a philan- Dr. Wolff has observed some parallels
fellow-mediævalist in Prof. Tout. Mr. thropist, but he was one. Mr. W. B. between Richardson and Sidney so in-
A. H. Johnson rather understates Montagu Owen, one of the editor's assistants, tells significant that we cannot take seriously
Burrows's activity in political affairs at the story of the People's Palace skilfully, his remark that “ Richardson's indebted-
Oxford. During the turmoil of 1880 and does justice to Besant's crusade on ness to Sidney does not seem to have
Burrows's zeal in the Conservative cause behalf of his brother-authors. Another been thoroughly investigated. ” But those
considerably outran his discretion. valorous crusader was Frances Power between Sidney and the Greeks
We must not linger too long, however, Cobbe, and Mr. Alexander Gordon sets convincing. The Arcadia' as a whole
in academic groves. By way of contrast forth her many activities with sympathy has the same kind of frame — the com-
the typically Bohemian figure of Robert and moderation. It is of interest to be plications are the same in kind, some-
Buchanan presents itself, and Mr. Thomas reminded that in 1862, when she read times actually copied. Hence, in the
Bayne is to be congratulated, both on his before the Social Science Congress a paper words of Dr. Wolff,“ one who reads for
handling of the old “Fleshly School of advocating the admission of women to pleasure simply cannot understand the
Poetry. ” controversy, and on his winnow- university degrees, the proposal was Arcadia. '» Of the resemblance in detail
ing of the few novels that count from the received with universal ridicule. " Doro- we have quoted one example. One other
pot-boiling trash. Mr. Seccombe almost thea Beale, of Cheltenham, who laboured will suffice: it shows that Sidney had
persuades us to regard Samuel Butler, the for the education of her sex is to be found before him the contemporary version of
author of 'Erowhon,' as a deliberate not far from Ada Ellen Bayly (Edna Heliodorus by Underdowne, where may
philosopher, but it would be nearer the Lyell), who wrote novels with purposes, be found this account of a feast :-
mark to look on him as a whimsical and devoted much of their proceeds to
satirist. Surely there should have been charitable causes.
The tables were furnished with delicate
There is, in fact, much
some mention of Seven Sonnets and a fino, confused interest in this volume, those that were slaine, being in steede
dishes, some wheroof laie in tho handes of
Psalm of Montreal' and 'God the Known and if some may question the propriety of weapons. . . . Besides, the cuppes were
and the Unknown,' first published in The of including a patent medicine vendor in overthrowen, and fell out of the bandes,
Examiner of 1879. Mr. Seccombe some- its scope, whereas not a single plumber or either of them that dranke, or those, who
what oddly refers to Butler's “outwardly pastrycook is to be discovered in it, still had instead of stones used them. For that
conventional aspect. ” Did he expect him the hoardings are always with us, and soudaine mischiefe wrought nowe devises,
and taught them in stoade of weapons to
to wear a cap and bells ?
It would have act as passports to fame of a sort.
been pertinent to say that his way of life
use their pottes. . . . bruing bloude with wine,
joyning battaile with banketting. ”
was unconventional, and that the books
which are now well known brought him
Sidney followed with this :-
little profit in his lifetime.
On the whole, the men and women
The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose “Thus was their banquette turned to a
of letters in this volume are not of
Fiction. By Samuel Lee Wolff. (New battaile, their winie mirthes to bloudia
exceptional interest. Miss Elizabeth Lee
York, Columbia University Press ; Lon- rages. . . . They never weyed how to arme
has the mot juste for poor Ouida (Marie
themselves, but tooke up everything for a
don, Henry Frowde. )
weapon, that furie offered to their handes.
Louise Do la Ramée), whose novels on DR. WOLFF's book consists of summaries
. . . . Some caught hold of spikes (though
Italy are by no means to be despised ; but of three Greek romances by Heliodorus, death. And there was some such one, who
serviceable for life) to be the instruments of
she does not seem sufficiently conscious of Longus, and Achilles Tatius, and a very held the same pot wherein he drank to your
the value of Aubrey De Vere as a pioneer careful study of their matter and literary health, to use it to your mischief. "
of the “Celtio Renascence. ” Mr. Bickley method, followed by summaries and studies
makes no attempt to pigeon-hole John of the prose romances of Sidney, Greene, Sidney, however, seems to be thinking of
Davidson, and therein he acts wisely. and Lodge, showing the correspondence the Virgilian “furor arma ministrat. ”
Much of Davidson's verse is nimble and the actual connexion between the In our opinion the multiplication of
rhetoric, and even the Fleet Street English and the Greek. Dr. Wolff's such examples is not to be encouraged.
Ecologues' await their final critic. Mo- thoroughness does not conceal itself. Far fewer would have been enough to
berly Bell touched literature at some His 500 pages present not only what prove Dr. Wolff's power of observation,
points, but he can scarcely be said to have we suppose are all his conclusions, but and for the rest, references should suffice.
belonged to it, and, as Mr. Monypenny also virtually all his grounds for them, As it stands at present the book is a
candidly admits, many of his enterprises quoted at length. A characteristic para- model for students, but by no means
strictly beyond the bounds of graph is where he notices that,
for writers. The method of work is ex-
journalism. "
cellent, but the amount of paper covered
No great artists figure in this volume ;
“in Sidney's episode of the Princess's lamentable. Nor is it for lack of
but an architect whose fame cannot fail captivity, the brutal Anaxius, forcing his ability to do anything else that Dr.
to endure, John Francis Bentley, receives chin (* Arc. , III. xxvi. 352) Putting Wolff adopts this monumental method ;
his
due from Mr. Paul Waterhouse. him away with her faire hand, Proud beast for, wherever he personally intervenes
Among the actors, Lionel Brough is, (said she), yet thou plaiest worse thy comedy, with argument or comment, he is lively
perhaps, the most noteworthy; an un- then thy Tragedy. '". Thersander, forcing his and sensible, though we do not think his
signed article on him gives little idea of caresses upon Leucippe, also takes her by style one that bears the sudden use of
his powers as a raconteur.
the chin, and also receives a sharp reproof.
"Twaddle! ” Once, probably to relieve
We will conclude our survey by It is, in fact, his principal aim to show the tedium--though if unconsciously, then
mentioning some of the philanthropists not only that was Sidney indebted to the naturally—he gives way to the style
who figure in this closely packed volume. Greek romances, but also that he alone under discussion by speaking of "the
Foremost comes the Baroness Burdett- among Elizabethans has developed the heroic spectacle, and the spectacular
Coutts, whose wise use of her wealth is form further on his own account, and " has heroics, of shipwrecked Pyrocles. "
clearly described by Mr. J. P. Anderson. actually brought nearer perfection the His study of this style is the most
The list of portraits adds value to this, complex architectonics of Greek Romance. " interesting part of the book, and he has
as to many other, articles in the ‘Supple- Dr. Wolff will find fow to challenge the ventured to coin a new word,
“ homeo-
ment. Mr. James Marchant says just last part of his statement, since the phony,” as a generic term for one of its
enough about Dr. Barnardo. There was Arcadia' is a book which there are devices, the rhetorical use of similarities
no necessity to go into all the litigation many to praise and very few to love and in sound-repetition, assonance, allitera-
in which Barnardo became involved read. A committee of Senior Wranglers tion, rhyme. These, on a small scale,
through the reception of children of Roman night still further elaborate and perfect are the result of the same hard external
Catholio parentage into his homes, and Mr. ! the architectonics, and in the course of a sense of form which the romances as a
were
## p. 676 (#506) ############################################
676
THE ATHENÆUM
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
ور
no
never
66
was
nor
" the sense
sense.
whole, and all of their parts, exhibit to an touchwood, but from the old roots of the
extraordinary degree. For modern ex- faith still spring as beautiful examples
SOME RECENT VERSE.
amples of homeophony equal to the old, of love and human charity as those which
The King: a Tragedy en a Continuous
readers must turn to the prose and the mediæval world enshrined in its Series of Scenes. By Stephen Phillips.
verse of Swinburne. Some of his prose legends. It is a thousand pities that these (Stephen Swift. )-Mr. Phillips has a prolific
seems to be written for the joy of con- folk-stories and mediæval traditions which pon, and writes with some passion, fluency,
structing formally perfect sentences which Mr. Gales touches upon in papers such as and spaciousness of conception. But his verso
must have hovered before his mind's The Lore of the Three Kings,' The often lies open to the imputation of spurious-
eye before he had anything to pour into Queen of Festivals,' 'The Land of Par-
ness of effect, owing to a tendency to forcing
them. At other times he was the subject dons,' should either have faded from the into artificial and extravagant postures.
a genuine capacity for emotional expression
of fitful inspiration, as when, having memory of the English Church or were
His latest poetic drama is much inferior to
spoken of “a curious monotony in the never transplanted here by Continental his best work, and accentuates its blemishes.
variety," he thought well to ask “if piety. Mr. Gales says aptly :-
Its motif is that of unconscious incest,
there be not a curious variety in the
culminating, on discovery, in the suicide
monotony," but went
further. “It is one of the normal functions of of the lovers. Though less crude and
Rhyme bad entered into his soul. There religion to provide an immense background transpontine than Ford's famous treatment
“ breath”
divided from
to life, to create an atmosphere, to bring of a similar theme, it can bear no comparison
death, "light" from
something large and imaginative into the to it in tragic massiveness and poignancy.
night," most contracted lives. Normally this is It carries frequent evidence of slovenly
and he gave the most perfect example of done for the mass of the people by their workmanship, and Mr. Phillips ignores
prolonged homeophony to be found when religion. "
many opportunities of heightening his lan-
he wrote,
guage into lofty relationship with tragic
In Catholic countries, perhaps, but in Eng- possibilities. The scenes drift lazily and
Slowlier than life into breath,
Surelier than time into death. . . . . . land our author, we fear, is right in his mistily past us, carelessly picked out and
contention that a
in 'To Walt Whitman in America. ' bound to lose its hold upon the mass of
“colourless religion ” is without any sharp, concrete realization of
outlines. The characters, too, are lack-
His poetry was the first entirely happy simple souls by neglecting to emphasize oratorical mouthpieces. Indeed, the play
ing in
individuality; they are merely
place for this treatment of words. Prose, in its “ Feasts and Festivals
as a whole is metallic and otiose, untouched
which approximates to the language of of joy and wonder in human life. In this by the authentic wand of inspiration. The
speech, can never perhaps be trained connexion an interesting essay might be quality of the poetry itself is fitful ; some-
to such completeness of artificiality as written on the atrophy of the aesthetic
written on the atrophy of the æsthetic times curiously naked and divorced from
verse, without announcing itself as non-
This completeness, unlike the indirect appeal for the cultivation of the rhetoric. The speech of Carlos, the king's
sense in the English people. Mr. Gales's Mr. Phillips's peculiar genre ; sometimes
sweeping, processional
nonsense, is not to be met in Sidney old brotherliness and gracious charity son, is typical -
or his predecessors. Dr. Wolff might among men unseals religious springs
establish a connexion between Swinburne which have been silting up slowly, but
Why you encircle me as doth the air,
And nothing breathes or moves apart from you.
and Achilles Tatius, but purely as an surely in the last two centuries. Theo-
The Universe hath got from you à soul;
ingenious exercise, not as
Since first I saw you on a fated night,
a contri-
retically the Church inculcates brotherli- From the dark palace casement secretly
bution to knowledge worthy of pub- ness among all men, but how different
Leaning with loosened hair to midnight lilies
lication” with Prof. Thorndike's impri- was the spirit of its work in the mediæval Thou art more sweet than souls of evening flowers
matur.
In
village from our modern practice !
In a dim world, and ere a star hath come.
this light our author's catholicity, his This is self-consciously purple”; clever,
ardent sympathy with the poor and simple but too affected to be born of lively
Studies in Arcady. Second Series. By joyous and beautiful in human feeling
minded, his appreciation of all that is spontaneity.
R. L. Gales. (Herbert & Daniel. )
appear both as a survival and a revival Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti.
With
of
Translations of
It is pleasant to encounter a writer whose Southern lands. It is pleasant to add "I cannot trust the reader," says Mr.
them, and
a priestly ideal not uncommon in
Introduction by Ezra Pound. (Swift. )
humble pages shine with the gracious that Mr. Gales's tone, though scholarly, Pound, " to read the Italian for the music
light of a great
spiritual tradition, and is simple and homely, and perfectly free after he has read my English for the sense. ”
Essays from a Country Parsonage’ may from the tinge of artificiality which mars Therefore he has abandoned his intention
do far more to reconcile the modern the utterance of many of our latter-day of printing the Italian of Guido Caval-
thinker with the authority of the Church School of ritualists. Many of his best canti's poems with what he calls an una
than the works of many imposing and
celebrated divines. One muses on laying essays, indeed, as · Dickens in Real Life' rhymed "gloze. He has, in fact, written a
and Town and Country English,' show doubt as to his aim, he announces that
down Mr. Gales's delightful little volume
a native sympathy with the racy spirit of he has tried “ to bring over the qualities of
dogma is necessary for the nurture of the old English life, while others demonstrate Guido's rhythm, not line for line, but to
living seeds of faith-as the majority of his cosmopolitan outlook. , The Breton embody in the whole of my English some
Churchmen have strenuously held. But peasant, the Russian muzhik, the English trace of that power which implies the man. "
clerics as broad - minded as Mr. Gales villager to him are equally as interesting Such hopes are alone enough to handicap
rare, and evidence is abundant
in their common family features as in him. Ho has desired and hoped to write
their innate temperamental differences like that of Guido
what shall have on English readers an effect
that the letter killeth. " Studies in
Arcady,' indeed, at the first glance has The only, passage we have noted which looking at this distant goal he has become
but an indirect bearing on the Church's fails a little in brotherly charity is one
blind to nearer things. He has become
in which the name of Dr. Clifford is cited. blind to the necessity of writing English and
problems or policy, but, as one turns from It is natural that the great schism of being intelligible ; or, if not blind, then he
one to another of these pleasant ‘Dis dissent should still rankle in the minds of has allowed rhyme and a purely self-conscious
cussions and Digressions' on villagers and
He
their ways, on Christian legends, folk-
even the most broad-minded Anglicans, choice of words to make him appear so.
speech, Medieval traditions, Colourless and it is one of times ironies that the to put it mildly), or furlon (for which
Religion, &c. , one recognizes that their social root of that schism, viz. , “the
he has to give a note), or forlendye" (to
Poor Man's gospel » should be less and rhyme with
comprehend me,'' but of
springs not merely from the author's kindly less propagated by the Free Churches as doubtful meaning): "he will say :-
springs not merely from the author's kindly their congregations become more and
humanity, but also from his cultivation
Deadly 's the poison with thy jogs connected ;
of the flower of medieval religious senti-
more prosperous.
and speak of “where Love is situate
ment. All the dogmas of the schoolmen,
will brighten up Guido by saying that
all the tangled growths of doctrinal con-
troversy have rotted slowly away to
Ramour, courier through the mind, ran crying,
"A vileness in the heart, Oyea I lies dying. . .
an
are
6
on
: he
## p. 677 (#507) ############################################
No. 4416, JUNE 15, 1912
677
THE ATHENÆUM
s like
66
no
His vocabulary seems to have been taken Boy' and 'The Carol of the Poor Children. ' the native kilt, and the kindly, serene face,
from dictionaries or a crude and disorderly, In the last-named Middleton's tender fanci. | they felt that something of the sturdy
if picturesquo, memory, so that time after fulnoss is at its meridian :-
independence of the folk of the Western Isles
time he ghooks us and blinds us to Guido
We are the poor children come out to see the sights
among whom he was born and bred, and
with words which he has not made his own. On this day of all days, on this night of nights,
something, too, of their gentle introspective-
This astonishing example is not solitary : The stars in merry parties are dancing in the sky
A fine star, a new star, is shining on high !
ness, had passed into him. It was in going
The grace of youth in Toulouse ventureth;
up and down these islands in the exercise
She's noble and fair, with quaint sincerities,
We are the poor children, our lips are frosty blue,
of his calling that he gradually accumulated
Discreet she is and is about the eyes
We cannot sing our carol as well as rich folk do,
Most like to our Lady of sweet memories.
Our bellies are so empty we have no singing voice,
those stores of lore concerning old rites and
so that within my heart desirous
But this night of all nights good children must rejoice. customs, and those collections of Gaelic
She hath clad the soul in fashions peregrine. We do rejoice, we do rejoice, as hard as we can try, hymns, charms, and 'Blessings' which he pub-
Such verse suggests that Mr. Pound has
A Ane star, a now star, is shining in the sky!
lished in 1900 in the two sumptuous volumes
And while we sing our carol, we think of the delight
lost his natural feeling for the value of The happy kings and shepherds make in Bethlehem to.
which he named “Carmina Gadelica. ' Here
words. Where Rossetti says
night.
we have over 200 poems and fragments
cross," he says cruciform," as if it were But as a poet Middleton was seldom more
in Gaelic and English, and we may truly
the same, and not a rigid technical word than a charming literary butterfly. Had he say that in no other published material is
somewhat difficult to raise into poetry. Nor lived, the bad habits generated by facility the inner soul of the Highlander revealed as
is he afraid of ineptitude, as in the lines :- would probably have prevented him from
it is in the beauty and delicacy of these
An archer is he as the Scythians are
making of versé a vehicle for the seriousness poems. Many of them retain a half-pagan
Whose only joy is killing some one else. of thought, depth of emotion, and freshness note, and show evident signs of pre-Christian
He will speak of a “ spirit” in one line and of vision that were beginning to mark his origin ; even as we possess them, coloured
as they are by later Christian influence,
"
sprites" in the next, without distinction, prose.
they are among the most precious testimony
and translate mia donna" as “Milady. "
The Widow in the Bye-Street. By John
we possess to the native cults of these
It is unnecessary to give further examples
of the kind of difficulties which Mr. Pound
Masefield.
islands. But, apart from all scientific uses,
(Sidgwick & Jackson. )- The
has added to those created by a poet of Widow in the Bye-Street, which appeared well worthy of the labour bestowed upon
another age and another tongue, difficulties in the pages of The English Review, has by their collection and publication. For many
months before his death Dr. Carmichael had
conceal the translator's insight. He has Everlasting. Mercy, which, if an unequal, been busied in arranging for the press a
never overcome the disadvantage of not
was a genuine product of the imagination. second collection, almost equal in number
knowing that a writer of verse may do any-
We expect rather better things from Mr.
to the first; but ill-health has prevented
thing rather than be both unreadable and Masefield than the former, in which the the fulfilment of this design.
unintelligible. Rossetti, at least, is seldom realism inclines to be mechanical and the
Dr. Carmichael was a well-known figure
either and never both ; Mr. Pound's version versification bare and arid. The elimination
cannot, as poetry, supersede his, and as a
of all ornament is too evident; to attain wherever the native tongue and the old
crib it is not sufficient.
to the baldest diction becomes a kind of customs survived. He was President or
ideal. There is nothing here of the romantic,
Chief of many Gaelic societies, and he was
magical naturalness of Wordsworth's sim- the inspirer of many younger men. Fiona
Poems and Songs. By Richard Middleton.
plicity. After all, metrical exigencies do Macleod's best work, in particular, was done
With an Introduction by Henry Savage. entail some poetic vraisemblance. Prose and when in his company or under the influence
(Fisher Unwin. /Richard Middleton's death,
verse are not interchangeable ; their spirit of his writings and spirit. He helped Dr.
