The Library. Johnsonian Gleanings, Part V. The Doctor's Life, 1728-1735. By Aleyn Lyell Reade. London. Percy Lund. Humphries and Co. for the Author). STUDENTS of 66 Johnson are now well acquainted with Mr. Aleyn Lyell Reade's methods their scope and their results. This new part of his Gleanings is more substantial than are most of the regular harvests in biography; more substantial even than the former Parts. Much is added to our knowledge in the way of minute particulars about the persons in contact with Johnson during the period; and these persons are often themselves of real interest. But acknowledgments and congratulations to this admirable reseacher and compiler must go beyond this. Three or four points in Johnson's earlier life. which come to have their place in every one's idea of him, yet have not before been fully made out, are here pretty well settled. First, there are the famous shoes: who was that gentleman of his college, the father of an eminent clergyman now living" whom Hawking describes as their donor? Mr. Lyell Reade shows good cause for taking him to have been William Vyse. More important is the question of the length of Johnson's stay at Oxford. Authorities, so far, have been divided some say he was there from October, 1728, only to December, 1729; others that he was there, with intervals of absence, till 1731. The evidence for either opinion lies mainly in the buttery books of Pembroke College, according to which he was for the thirteen months or 60, continuously in residence. After that his name appeare in the books in isolated odd entries till 1731. The chapter showing the true significance of the odd entries, brought out by a complete study of the buttery books which takes in the entries connected with other mon, might be adduced to a sceptic as proof of the true advantages of exhaustiveness in investigation. Combined with close study of the scant remains of Johnson's letters for the period 1729 to 1731 it shows clearly enough that when he went down in December, 1729, it was for good. Why did he go? Again, Mr. Lyell Reade is able to provide an answer which seems conclusive: his health gave out, probably in a bad attack of his life-long enemy melancholia. The small disputed question as to what Adams meant when he called himself Johnson's nominal Tutor " (it will be recalled that he added the generous words: "But he was above my mark") is also solved by the date of departure from Oxford being fixed. It had been arranged, when Johnson's tutor received a living in December, 1729, that Adams should take his place, but Johnson, going down in the same week as Jorden left, never returned for the new tutorship to become a reality. The general effect of this volume is greatly to enhance one's sense of the deep misery of the early years of Johnson's man hood and one's understanding of his later desire that they should be unremembered. How was Johnson ever enabled to get to Oxford at all, and to live there, as far as the buttery books show, much as other undergraduates did? Mr. Reade suggests that a certain legacy of £40 which, we know, was left to his mother, may explain this. Is it not, though, rather excessive to estimate the purchasing Power of £40 at the time as equal to that of hundreds of pounds in modern money?" several The chapters on the period of unemployment after leaving Oxford, on Johnson's life as an usher at Market Bosworth-one of the most miserable times he ever knew, and of longer duration than has been supposed-and on his sojourn in Birmingham are crammed full now of new facts, small perhaps but significant, now of confirmation or correction of old ones. It is interesting to observe the dawning respect for Johnson's mind and character. The Appendixes, of which there are fifteen, would merit, in reality, a separate review. Most of them are biographical and genealogi. cal, but one is devoted to setting forth and discussing in detail the entries in the Pembroke buttery books on which the conclusion regarding Johnson's stay at Oxford is based, and another gives all the contents of that undergraduate library of one hundred odd books which Johnson on his hasty departure left in charge of a friend and did not reclaim till 1735. It is everything to the diligent reader, in the examination of such a mosaic as this work presents to have on each page references to the other occurrences of the several topics. Mr. Reade's generosity in this respect will not fail of receiving hearty gratitude. The Plantagenet Ancestry. By Lieut.-Col. W. H. Turton. (London. Phillimore and Co. £2 28. net). THIS is an ingeniously constructed system of tables showing over seven thousand ancastors who reach up into the dark backward and abysm of time from the person of that Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, whose marriage with Henry VII reconciled the conflicting claims of York and Lancaster, herself being heíress of the Plantagenets. This ancestral kin has all been grouped, as far as possible, in semi-circles, a method which we believe the author to be right in claiming as new-at any rate not worked out on this considerable scale elsewhere. As he describes it: Pages 2 and 3 give the ancestors of Elizabeth Plantagenet to four generations, i.e. the seize quarters, as they are usually called. Then each of the 16 names in the outer line [except Gaunt which would merely duplicate York] starts a large semi-circle, with six more generations This divides the book into 16 sections, as they may be called, and allows room for every ancestor within ten generations. The names on the outer line of the large semicircles are then either continued on the following pages (when there are only a few additional entries) or else they start small semicircles on one of the subsequent pages." The fancies of early genealogists are omitted: there is nothing entered before 300 A.D., and but little before 800 A.D. Colonel Turton's Preface gives a useful aperçu of all the main elements in the pedigree, geographical, historical and genealogical. Taking the year 1000 he gives a list of fiftyfour rulers of European countries and provinces, and marks forty-four of these as either ancestors or brothers of ancestors of Elizabeth. A singular personage among her royal forbears was Pedro of Castile, who, by his parents having been first cousins twice over, had but four great-grandparents. It is, however, largely through its non-royal elements, the ascendants of Cicely Neville, and Wydeville, and again of Jacqueline de Luxemburg, that the pedigree is most interesting. The number of Popes whose near relatives in seven cases In a brother-enter into it, is remarkable. fact, while as a whole this is a most valuable contribution to genealogy, it is particularly in regard to foreign connections that the student will find it valuable. uses mainly a Greek Bible, of which the text WE have received from the Cambridge University Press Sir Michael Sadler's Rede Lecture Thomas Day (2s. 6d.). It tells most attractively the story of the idealist admirer of Rousseau, who made the famous educational experiment with Sabrina and Lucretia. It contains a happy characterisation of the eighteenth century, and of the forces which broke up its settledness, forces to which Day was early subject. The story of Sandford and Merton', Day's one claim to immortality, is skilfully summarized, and throughout there is a most pleasant sprinkling of epigram. Two other books we have received from Cambridge are Mr. Edward J. Dent's translation (The Servant of Two Masters, 3s. 6d. net) of Goldoni's 'Il Servitore di Due Padroni with a short introduction-made for the performance by the A.D.C. Cambridge last June, an easy, well-pointed and readable translation; and Mr. A. H. Sleight's edition for schools of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1s. 9d.). The text of this is from Sir A. W. Ward's 1604 Quarto; the Introduction is good, not without originality and suitable for its purpose, while the notes are interesting, sufficient in substance and meritoriously terse. The cross-references, in system and in frequency, are excellently calculated and there is an Index of more than one-third of the entries which gives country and reference to authority with each name. Nor must it be forgotten that the tables are followed by fuller notes on certain disputed or harder cases. In one of these, dealing with Musa ibn Nuseir the ancestor of Elizabeth, who was born at Mecca and conquered Spain at the beginning of the eighth century, Colonel Turton says that there is probably a descent from Mohammed himself, which, owing to the little attention FROM the Oxford University Press we have paid to the female side, is hard to trace. No two interesting experiments. The first is a one who examines this work can fail to admire new volume of Dr. Robert Bridges's Collected the labour and ingenuity which have been Essays, Papers, etc., containing the Lecture on expended upon it-and to so good effect. free verse entitled Humdrum and HarumThe Old Testament in Greek. Vol. II. The Scarum with the essay on poetic diction Later Historical Books. Part I., I. and II. printed with the new symbols, which were Samuel. Edited by Alan England Brooke, first tried in the volume we reviewed at Norman McLean and Henry 342. St. John cliii. We continue to think that Thackeray. (Cambridge University Press. use of the numerous symbols for different £1 net). sounds now indicated by the one letter a would create more difficulties than it removes. The second is Mr. W. R. Dunstan's translation of Racine's 'Les Plaideurs into rhymed anapaests. We should say this is successful if short passages and details are considered, but that the metre at a long sketch becomes heroic couplets. wearisome somewhat sooner that do rhymed THE Prefatory note to this first part of the Second Volume of the Old Testament in Greek reminds us that the last part of the First Volume was published in 1917. The collection of manuscript evidence for the new volume has been made much easier by the use of his photographs of LXX MSS. granted to this undertaking by Professor A. Rahlfs of Göttingen. The text is that of the Coder Vaticanus supplemented from other uncial MSS., and with a critical apparatus containing the important variants. The new volume follows the lines laid down in the first, with small alterations. For full descriptions of MSS. students are referred to Dr. Rahlf's Verzeichniss der griechischen Handschriften des A.T.' A most interesting point which comes into view with the books of Samuel is the evidence for the Greek text furnished by Josephus. For the later historical books he Printed and Published by The Bucks Free Press, Ltd., at their Offices. 20, High Streef High Wycombe, in the County of Bucks. NOTES:-Berkeley Hunting Papers, 147-State Trials and Robert Blaney, 149-John Harrison, author of The Survey · of the Manor of Sheffield '-Heraldic Notes: seals on old deeds, 151-" Cabinet Councils " and "Prime Ministers," 152-The Community Clock, 153. QUERIES:-Cloth-making from nettles-H. B. Farnie The Family of Kindleside, 153-" Barrack shiner "-Branscome, E. 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Subscriptions (£2 28. a year, U.S.A. $10.50, including postage, two half-yearly indexes and two cloth binding cases, or £1 158. 4d. a year, U.S.A. $9, without binding cases) should be sent to the Manager. The London Office is at 14, Burleigh Street, W.C.2 (Telephone: Chancery 8766), where the current issue is on sale. Orders for back numbers, indexes and bound volumes should be sent either to London or to Wycombe; letters for the Editor to the London Office. Memorabilia. THE correspondent of The Times in Turkey sends to his paper (Aug. 28) an interesting account, which we here abridge, of the new Turkish alphabet. It is remarkable that whilst our own reformers are striving to introduce additional symbols into our alphabet, the like reformers in Turkey have taken the extreme opposite course, reducing their 482 characters to no more than twentynine. They have adopted the Latin symbols, rejecting (which is such a common symbol with us in the transliteration of Oriental words), and also X, and adding to the vowels ö, ü and an undotted i, and to the consonants, a soft g, and a ch. As in French, there is no w. Another drastic innovation will be the reading from left to right instead of from right to left. The alphabet has been arrived at after careful study of the English, German, French and Italian alphabets, and its authors consider that in itself it resembles the English and German, though there was expectation that the development of the Turkish language would show large influence from French. Work is being done on grammar and dictionary in the new alphabet, and much consideration bestowed on the questions of accent and pronunciation, for which it has been decided that the speech of Constantinople shall be the standard. Towards the end of this year a law is to be drafted at the Grand National Assembly at Angora, providing for the general adoption of the new characters on Jan. 1, 1931. Meanwhile everything possible will be done to prepare for so drastic a change. Already newspapers have begun printing short paragraphs in the new characters, and soon it will be compulsory so to print three columns of news. Then in Angora there is to be a school of languages where the principal Turkish books -historical, literary, scientific-will be used transliterated into the new characters, and it it said the Ghazi himself intends to give lessons there. The THE recent gift of Old Hull MSS. made by Miss Dorothy Mackail to Hull - MSS. principally acquired by her from Californiais the occasion for a suggestion, made in a letter to The Times (Aug. 18) from Lady Wolseley, that some supporter of archæology and research work should turn his attention to the Battle Abbey Charters now lying useless to the student and as yet uncatalogued, in the Huntington Library at San Marino, California, and should present the County of Sussex with photostat copies of them. charters are contained in ninety-nine folio volumes: the first is the foundation charter of the Conqueror, and the rest follow on through the whole of the Abbey history. The cost of the photostats would be 50 cents. each, and thus the total expense not exactly small; but beyond what could be achieved if several we agree with Lady Wolseley that it is not lovers of antiquities in general, and Sussex history in particular, combined forces for the purpose. We hope it may not be long before a start is made. IN the September Cornhill our readers will note with pleasure an article on Butterflies by our old and valued correspondent, Mr. W. Courthope Forman. He gives vivid pictures not only of butterflies themselves, but of scenes in which he has found them, and incidents in the capture of them. Thus there was a garden he knew which had three tall green fig-trees in it, to which, when the figs were ripe "Red Admirals" resorted in hundreds, who drank the luscious juice all day so greedily that at evening many of them were not able to go home, but had to sleep where they lay. There is an account of a tramp in Herefordshire, where acquaintance with the rare "" a "" Comma was effected; moment in Essex bright with an enormous number of " Orange Tips," flying lazily on either side of the way; a colony of Adonis Blues," found on a certain hill in Surrey, and all the butterflies that haunted the writer's house and neighbourhood on the downs south of Winchester. Mr. Courthope Forman has a word of criticism for Hardy's bold amber-coloured butterflies on Egdon Heath, which "sported with the point of Clym Yeobright's hook while he was furze cutting. |