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The Library.

Keats. By H. W. Garrod. (Clarendon Press. 58. net).

THE Professor of Poetry at Oxford deals with us all rather severely over Keats. We have nothing to object to in his castigation of Miss Lowell, except perhaps that he seems to ignore the fact of her death. Miss Lowell, in her book on Keats,, illustrates a trend in American pursuit of letters which goodwill itself would constrain those who know better to oppose sharply and with their might. But, having set out to administer chastisement, the Professor seems not able to put off the mood with which he fortified himself for that occasion, and, still swayed by it, corrects things and people in many directions and with sternness. This, throughout the book, makes noticeable atmosphere; it is sure, to many readers, to mean additional zest, but, to our thinking, it is not really suitable to poetry. This is the more to be regretted because Mr. Garrod betrays here and there his ability to write about pure poetry, and its essential nature and significance better than most critics can. A page of positive illumination is worth chapters of negative work showing where previous criticism went astray.

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The main-but by no means the only-profit the student will draw from this book is realisa

tion of the struggle that went on in Keats between the native impulse of his genius and the influence on him of prevalent quasi-philosophical thought, to which poetry born of, and having its movement and being in, sense-perception, appeared inferior and insufficient. (Mr. Garrod in this connection talks about Keats's sensuosity"-rather an unpleasing word). This struggle is, perhaps, the most important fact we have in Keats's mental life and development, and to get a true idea of it is an essential condition for understanding him to any purpose we entirely agree.

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There is some acute and interesting analysis of the poet's metre, of which the part that really matters is the discussion of the stanza forms of the great Odes in the light of the sonnet. To beginners this study should prove most instructive, not only as regards Keats, but also as regards the being of poetry; to the well-established lover of Keats, it offers both challenge and suggestion.

Antigone. Translated by Hugh Macnaghten. (Cambridge University Press. 28. net).

THE first thing to look for in a translation of a Greek play is the rendering of its movement, of the balance of character in it, of the development of its central or final significance. In this respect we think Mr. Macnaghten'sAntigone' successful. A good deal here depends on how Ismene and Haemon come out. Mr. Macnaghten accepts the theory that it was Ismene who threw the first dust

on the body of Polyneices. This reading greatly affects the dramatic value of the char acter of Antigone. bringing her more fully within the scope of irony, and also deepening the sense of harshness in her treatment of Ismene. The devotion of Haemon is the more wanted to redress the womanly and endearing side of her: and Haemon is made to play his part effectively. Creon in Sophocles is more subtly wrought than might at first appear: he affords plenty of scope for argument and disin English seem to us very faithfully to reproputed interpretation. Again, his lineaments duce their original. The only weak point in the translation is that, as poetry, some of it is flat. It is, of course, true and well-known that Sophocles in his severity and appearance of simplicity is impossible to translate satisfactorily. None the less, there are many places here in which mere consideration of rhythm in the English, and care to avoid tracts too long of unbroken monosyllables, or weak monosyllables in places where force is needed, might have made much difference. As an example take the great culminating line of Antigone's dispute with Creon,

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I was not born to join in hate but love. The choruses, though occasionally they lack spring, are, where most obviously poetical, also, we think, best rendered. We like Πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ and ἔτλα καὶ Δανάας.” Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-boy. Collected and edited by Franz Rickaby. (Harvard University Press; London, Milford. 15s. net). THE golden age of American lumbering was from 1870 to 1900. It was the age when great fortunes were made out of forests still virgin. The wealth of wood allowed of wasteful methods; and if strength and skill were required in the lumber-man, they were of that primitive quality found in abundance throughout a vigorous population. Mr. Rickaby's Introduction gives hints by which to frame some picture of the shanty-boy's life, a life which has, more or less, disappeared now from the face of the West, superseded by machinery and methods directed by science and economy, and run by men who hardly sing. The function of song in the golden age of the shanty-boy points us back to olden days in our own history, when it was taken for granted that everyone could and did sing. Among such a people the singers par excellence are prized. Here is a pleasant story of an old Scotchman, who wandered into the shanties of a Michigan camp, half-frozen: Taken in and restored, he was duly asked if he could sing. He sang them "Bonnie Doon" in a fine tenor voice, and after that "he couldn't get away." was given work all that winter," although he couldn't shovel snow and do it right," and till spring came was a favorite member of the crew.

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The shanty songs are not folk-songs in the

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sense of having no one author, though few authors' names are known. Mr. Rickaby, however, is able to mposed under the pseudonym give a biography of a maker of "Shan T. Boy." It is noteworthy that little trouble was taken by these makers to write their songs down. They were carried in memory, passed from camp to camp by mere singing, and given permanent existence by repetition. Some of them, as their origin would lead one to expect, show contamination" by mere literature, and some are imitations. But the mixture of humour and pathos is much after the ballad manner. To be estimated at their due worth they must be taken with their tunes. Mr. Rickaby, to our surprise, writes rather apologetically about having given the tunes-all the tunes, except for a few which he could not find. This is a proceeding he rather should glory in-or, if not then only on the ground that it ought to be taken as matter of course. It would be an interesting to make out which counted for most, in

point inter night's gathering in the shanty,

when these songs were sung, the tunes with the singer's voice or the words. Pleasant features in several of the songs are expressive craft words, and sundry melodious French Canadian names. Eight or nine photographs of scenes in a shanty-boy's life help to bring the sense of the songs home.

La Question de la Langue en Italie. By Thérèse Labande-Jeanroy. (Humphrey Milford, 5s. net.)

THIS work, a thesis for the doctorate of letters at Strasburg University, treats at length the two rival theories concerning the true life and being of modern Italian. According to the one, modern Italian is fundamentally the language of Florence, and writers who are carrying on and developing the central tradition of Italian language and letters are to look on the Florentine speech as the source and main stream from which they should and must draw; according to the other, there exists and should be cultivated as such, an Italian language independent of any local speech-be that even Florentine. Dr. Labande-Jeanroy shows that each theory runs out to two modes of practice. Writers are counselled to use-whether their language is conceived as Florentine or as Italian-in the one school the older words, idioms and constructions for the sake of purity in the other school the living speech of their cwn day. The main part of the treatise discusses various works in which this old dispute has been carried on from the sixteenth century onwards; and the conclusion seeks to establish Italian as a 'dialecte privilégié," like French. with Florence in the place of Paris. The work would, we think, have gained by compression. None the less, it is worth reading and consideration.

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By Cecil Torr. Small Talk at Wreyland. (Cambridge University Press. 7s. 6d. net.) Wabout the three volumess of Whall Talk at e have already expressed what we feel Wreyland (see 12 S. iv. 315; ix. 420; cxlv. 498), and the feeling-interest and admiration and amusement-seems to have been universal among their readers. Mr. Torr has now put together one volume from the three, using the first as frame-work, and fitting pieces from the second and third into this, with some little further adjustment where necessary. The whole makes a delightful book-one which we have just spent more time over than we intended, and have laid aside reluctantly. The charming qualities of the book naturally ap pear all the stronger in this concentration of the best pieces, and one is impressed anew by the amount and variety of the original information given. And the author has added much to our indebtedness by the addition of an index.

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THE current by Dr. Sparrow-Simpson on the Roman Index of Prohibited Books. Several facts in the incidence of prohibition are curious. Mr. Bohun Lynch's paper on Caricature offers a good summary of the general history of the subject. It seems rather significant that caricature did not flourish in the seventeenth century. A useful and suggestive article is that by Major-General Sir George Short Histories of British Aston, entitled Wars,' his point being to indicate some of the general student's requirements, and also to urge the need for taking account of the influence of war upon historical developments-in accordance with the tendency that has set in to allow more weight to war and to the indiProbably vidual in the progress of history. many people will turn first of all to what Mr. E Beresford Chancellor, basing himself on the late Humphry Ward's book, has to say about The Athenæum-a very pleasant account. torians in Limbo,' by Mr. H. G. Hutchinson, revives many good but fast fading memories old books, that pleased the mid and later nineteenth century, of which, however, no one can yet write quite fairly, for those who read them in their youth are somewhat biassed witnesses (for or against as may be), while the younger generation still represent living reaction from those days and ideas. Professor Weekley's Americanisms-with all his usual vivacity about it, and abundance of amusing illustration-is a solid piece of work on a question of great moment.

Quarterly Review begins with

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APPROVED Queries' are inserted free of charge. Contributors are requested always to give their names and addresses, for the information of the Editor, and not necessarily for publication.

Printed and Published by the Bucks Free Press, Ltd., at their Offices. High Street, Wycombe. in the County of Bucks.

FOR READERS AND WRITERS, COLLECTORS AND LIBRARIANS. Seventy-Seventh Year.

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QUERIES: 'Woe-begone Forged copper money-Lord Plunkett and the popish premier "-Hohenlohe-Amias Almshouses Inverness Toll-booth Carpets and rushes, 116 Design in glass quarry, XVI or XVII cent. The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography-Trade Labels-XVI and XVII century Guns: St. Mawes Castle-Edward Moxon and John Forster The Reflector Harcourts at Hastings, 117-Author wanted, 118. REPLIES:-Cromwell's Head, 119-Sir John Colshill: The Agincourt Roll, 120 Queries from Evelyn's Diary: Cardinal Wolsey's tomb Inscription on brass bowl-Glastonbury: allusion in Great Expectations,' 121 Mogila apud Saxones " : Crome-Ambling-Plutarch on Protective Colouring, 122-Strode's Regiment Milk Chocolate-The Stuart Rose-Thackeray and Great Coram Street-" Taps "salute, 123 Gifts of dresses "Scotsgrove "-Heathcote, V.C.-The Executioner of Charles I-Registers: St. Benet Fink; St. Michael, Bassishaw 'Dr. Johnson and Dr. Dodd Author wanted: Theatrical Portraits epigrammatically delineated,' 124.

THE LIBRARY:-"A Greek-English Lexicon

Venus and Arichises '-' Le Thème et le Sentiment de la Nature dans la Poésie AngloProceedings of Saxonne' the British Academy.'

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NOTES AND QUERIES is published every Friday, at 20, High Street, High Wycombe, Bucks (Telephone: Wycombe 306.). 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 22, Essex Street, W.C.2 (Telephone: Central 396), 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.

FEW official papers ever published by any Government equal in tragic interest the narrative of the loss of the Hampshire which has now been issued as a White Paper by e Admiralty. The fierceness of the storm; e raging sea; the swiftness of the vessel's om; the hopeless struggle of the floats, ith the discipline and self-sacrifice of the en in them; the greatness of the task on vhich a great leader was going out, and this termination of it, and of his life, before he had well entered on it all these things people will once more gaze at imagination with some return of the numbness and awe that fell on them upon the first breaking of the terrible news. But the strange and poignant part of the story as we now have it is the multiplication in it of unhappy coincidence. The German submarine laying mines along the route the Hampshire took was acting on inaccurate information, for this was not a warship route; no great prize, in an ordinary way, could be expected here. Considerations of weather, as late as the morning of the disastrous day determined the change from the usual to a quite unusual course. More than this, the mines which wrecked the Hampshire, could be dangerous only during a limited time, and in certain conditions, even to a vessel of her draught: rat slack water, that is, or when the ship was pitching heavily in a head wind. But it was precisely with those conditions prevailing that the Hampshire came upon them.

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The various stories of spies on board; of Lord Kitchener's survival; of the likelihood of his body having been washed up on the Scandinavian coast and buried there should now, by this full setting out of all the available evidence, be finally silenced.

IN the August number of the Connoisseur

Mr. John A. Knowles gives a further account of Forgeries in Stained Glass. A glass panel, broken and mended with lead and proclaiming itself ancient should be taken to pieces and the fracture examined: if the edges are not clean the glass is not old. If it is suspected that a new piece of glass has replaced a missing piece, examination of undulations, streaks and bubbles should be made. These cannot be imitated, and a portion in which they correspond not with those of the surroundings is thereby condemned. Obviously glass professing a certain age must not exhibit the methods of subsequent centuries: thirteenth-century glass must not show yellow stain, nor fifteenth century glass enamels; pink made from gold betrays latish seventeenth century; and green from chromium oxide cannot be earlier than the eighteenth century. Then, when the forger removes red film by means of hydrofluoric acid, he is to be detected by examination of glass in section, for the acid eats straight down and leaves the "flash" with sharp perpendicular edges, but the old method of grinding it away with a wheel left a rough edge and made a concavity. Moreover, the grinding did not leave the cleared portion bright as acid generally does. Forgers also imitate the little holes which decay produces in medieval glass, not only by drilling but by spattering the glass with paint to give the effect of pits filled with dirt. One of the the marks, all of a size and pattern, are illustrations shows a faked corrosion, where dabs from a square-headed instrument, and were detected as such by comparison with real corrosion marks which appeared in parts of the glass stained yellow. Another among several interesting illustrations shows the way of using a grozing iron.

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