early Celtic croziers are pictured, has been published since the appearance of Mr. Warren's work; it may be recommended to Mr. Warren's attention before his second edition is made ready for the press. We may safely conclude that the "baculum auro tectum" of St. Patrick, as described in Bernard's Life of St. Malachy, is not, as Mr. Warren (p. 115) supposes, a staff "made of gold," but a staff with a golden covering, "gemmis pretiosissimis adornatum." Certainly it is entirely misleading to describe the Bachul-More of St. Moloch of Lismore as "a black-thorn bludgeon with traces of a metal covering" without noticing that a part has been broken off, so that the shape of the curved head is not discernible.

But it would be ungrateful to dwell on these and other indications that Mr. Warren is not so familiar with Celtic archaeology as he is with the wide liturgical literature which he brings with such discretion to illustrate the sense of the few precious fragments that alone remain of the service-books of these islands. The volume is simply indispensable to the English student of liturgiology.

JOHN DOWDEN.

The Wandering Jew. By Moncure D. Conway. (Chatto & Windus.) THIS curious book contains very interesting historical information, combined with speculation of more questionable value. The various documents on the legend of the Wandering Jew in chap. i., and the catalogue of various poems it has inspired in modern Europe (chaps. xv.-xvii.), though not implying much original research, is very instructive, and supplies a want for English readers. There is also an excellent essay in criticism on Shakspere's Merchant of Venice in the chapter entitled "The Pound of Flesh" (xiii.). Many of the rapprochements between this and other legends about Jews are interesting, and based upon some positive evidence. Still more important, in the present day, is the author's sound and rational attitude towards the Jewish nationality. He brands (p. 251) they deserve the 255,000 German barbarians, or idiots, or both, who signed a formal petition, headed by a not-disMissed Court chaplain, against the liberties of the Jews in Germany. At a time when the Germans are vaunting themselves to be in the van of culture, this shameful movement, which reaches into the so-called better classes, should be constantly held up to its merited opprobrium. And this is well done by Mr. Conway. But he adds that England is not free from blame in the same direction. "The chief scandal is that there should be an organised society for converting them—as if they were savages" (p. 273). "It is not civilsed," he adds, "for men to suppose that a good Jew is inferior to a good Christian."

Indeed, there are many other passages in the book which imply that a "good Christian" wants conversion just as much, or more, and which contain strange outbreaks against the benevolence, the justice, and the reasonableness of Christian theology. These disclosures of the author's creed, if definite creed it can be called, are all in the form of Tague epigrams, indirect suggestions, and

possible interpretations which will prove as distasteful to the accurate-minded reader as they are agreeable to that large class of society who are pleased to see any number of problems started, but will not work out the solution of a single one. The same may be said of his treatment of legends, which, after the fashion of the most daring comparative mythologers, are declared identical if there be the remotest resemblance of any kind. Here is a specimen or two:-(p. 49) "When the abyss between Biblical and other mythology has ceased to be convenient [mark the innuendo], perhaps there may be traced some connexion between the ravens that fed Elias and those birds of Odin that circle round Ravens' Hill where Barbarossa sleeps." Perhaps there may be traced some connexion, and perhaps not, between any two things in the world. Again (p. 73), "It is doubtful whether any such person as Judas ever lived. The name is the Greek form of Judah, and the traitor may be a personification of the kingdom which refused to part with the sceptre at the demand of the Christians' Shiloh." The italics are mine. Again (p. 68), "The tale of the wanderings of Odysseus would appear to have touched the Spanish variant of the Seven Sleepers myth, which probably influenced the mind of Columbus." The only similarity is that the seven bishops sailed westward! Such examples could be multiplied. It would almost be a fair statement of the theory underlying them, that, whenever among any people in the world you find a legend, it discredits the reality of all the historical facts recorded by any other people which bear the remotest resemblance to this legend. Until we have some law ascertained from good evidence, all these random identifications are hopelessly unscientific. Often the most trivial reason is the true one for a fact in folk-lore. If Dr. Schliemann found a shrine dedicated to Elias on the site of a temple of Helios, it is not because Elias (p. 50) was a disguised Sun-god, but because his name, of all the saints, happened to be nearest in sound to Helios. One must apologise for these protests against Mr. Conway's theories, for his book is very interesting, and ought to be largely read, and our censure is only of value because it is attractive.

As regards the form of the book, it rather wants accuracy in allusions, such as the Isle of Knossus (p. 67), Elias for Enoch (p. 58), "the hat and feather of Fra Diavolo" (p. 153) apparently for Mephistopheles, and some questionable German. The only complaint I will make as to style proper is the use of infranatural, as if supernatural meant better than human nature. It means no such thing. The appearance of a demon is as supernatural as that of an angel. Superhuman means better than human, and 80 infrahuman would have the sense Mr. Conway wants for infranatural, but both compounds are against the genius of the English tongue, which does not use infra, like super, in composition. We find the verb to "boycott," for the first time probably in non-journalistic English (p. 256), and perhaps it may be allowed to stand as expressing briefly a peculiar idea.

It may be remarked that the chapter called Ahasuerus Vinctus, which is really

about Lord Beaconsfield, contains strings of apophthegms or epigrams more or less smart, but true inversely as they are smart. One cannot help connecting them with Mr. Conway's known admiration of Thomas Carlyle, with whom he spent so much time, and who was wont, in later years, to pour out this kind of talk about Lord Beaconsfield by the yard to his visitors. But one word more. Our author alludes (p. 159) to a beautiful Lancashire superstition that the wail of the (green) plover at night is the voice of the Jews who helped at the crucifixion, and who were doomed to wander in the air. There is no cry in nature more unexpressibly sad than this wail on a gloomy night. But the bird is then always solitary, or at most in pairs, and never in stands, as sportsmen call them, not coveys, as Mr. Conway has it. But this is hypercriticalor shall we say infracritical? J. P. MAHAFFY.

The Kentish Garland. Edited by Julia H. L. De Vaynes. With Additional Notes, &c., by J. W. Ebsworth, M.A., F.S.A. Vol. I. -The County in General. (Hertford: Stephen Austin & Sons.)

Ir has fallen to Miss De Vaynes to carry out what neither Mr. Ebsworth, with his research and acumen, nor, earlier yet, that prolific benefactor of Kent, John Russell Smith, found time to achieve. This first volume of The Kentish Garland deals with the county in general-electoral, volunteer, archer, tourist, cricket, and hops. A second is promised of persons and places, to embrace towns, districts, seats, such as Cobham, Knole, and Penshurst, and perhaps a small group of Kentish rivers. To those who boast in their veins the blood of a man of Kent, this is as it should be; and we welcome heartily a compilation to which Mr. Ebsworth's notes have lent so much weight. It will not be pretended that all, or even three parts, of the pieces admitted into it are worthy of repeated perusal. But it may be fearlessly averred that many have a real historic merit; many cherish in song and ballad the fame of the garden of England for its hops, apples, cherries, cricket, fearless men, and pretty girls; while most have a claim to commemoration on the score of Cantium's right in William Wordsworth's sonnet, " Vanguard of Liberty, ye men of Kent," more especially as, in the present instance, the work of editing has been done with a wholesome regard to propriety.

To every man of Kent the κάλλιστον ὄνειδος is how their ancestors, sword in hand, obtained from the Conqueror the ratification of their valued customs. "The Old White Horse' still keeps her ground," writes Mr. John Brent in his Lays and Legends of the county; and Lambard, with numberless followers, avers that the whole shire of Kent oweth to Swanscombe everlasting name, while men of Swanscombe fear neither man nor devil-no one on the earth, and no one under it. In p. 10 of this volume we are indebted to the kindness of Mr. James R. Scott, F.S.A., for a statement of his grounds for deeming that the leader of the demonstration in favour of Kentish rights at Swanscombe

was a member of Swene the outlaw's family, a son of Godwin, Earl of Kent, and brother of Harold. Swanscombe, in early charters, is written Swenescamp; and, though it could not have been Swene the outlaw who met William at Swanscombe, it seems pretty certain that his son, Swene of Essex, headed the Swanscomb demonstration, secured part of the estates formerly held by his father, and obtained for the men of Kent, inter alia, the peculiar privileges of the custom of gavelkind. The manor of Swanscomb, we find in the same paper, was, at the Conquest, one of the most important in the county. Furthermore, "Birnam Wood's coming to Dunsinane," as recorded in Macbeth, would seem to have had its counterpart at Swanscombe, where the Danes in England disguised the numerical strength of their host, and so won their rights of William the Conqueror. We learn that in 1793 the standard presented to the Society of Kentish Bowmen at Blackheath bore-or, in a canton the arms of Kent, the field charged with three piles of arms: crest, an arm arising from a wood, Invicta. Motto: "Leges teneamus avitos." Thus the Society marched under the same device described by Drayton as borne by the Kentish troops embarking for France to fight the Battle of Agincourt.

"First in the Kentish streamer was a wood

Out of whose top an arm that held a sword
As their right emblem; and to make it good
They above other only had a word,
Which was unconquered as that freest had
stood" (p. 381).

We know no finer metre in

poesy

than Drayton's outburst à propos of Sir J. Erpingham's 300 Kentish bowmen, of his own training and signalling, at Agincourt:

"Well it thine age became,
O noble Erpingham,
Which did the signal aim
To our hid forces :
When from a meadow by,
Like a storm suddenly,
The English archery

Stuck the French horses.
With Spanish yew so strong,
Arrows a clothyard long,
That like to serpent's sting
Piercing the weather.
None from his fellow starts,
But playing manly parts,
And like true English hearts,
Stuck close together.

When down their bows they threw,
And forth their bilbows drew,
And on the French they flew,
Not one was tardy;
Arms were from shoulders sent,
Scalps to the teeth were rent,
Down the French peasants went,

Our men were hardy" (p. 391). Amid the choicest wreaths of this Kentish Garland we reckon, fearless of contradiction, Drayton's passage in the eighteenth song of the Polyolbion anent the motto "Invicta," pp. 728-40,

"Of all the English shires, be thou surnamed the

Free,"

and only wish we could quote the whole. The editor, with great good taste, has given all the eighteenth book minus the Roll of English-rather than county-worthies, and we can think of no passage of Drayton finer than his description of the Pomona fruits, 671-85, which may well serve as a specimen of one of Kent's noblest poets :—

make war,

The Wilding, Costard, then the well-known Pomwater,

And sundry other fruits of good yet several taste," &c. (p. 49).

But a garland should not be lavish of posies, and we must not multiply songs of the Royalist rising in Kent (1648), or the poems to Charles II. on his restoration, which, as we gather from Mr. Ebsworth, were writ by an Aristophanic translator, who had published another tragi-comedy beside the Plutus. Another doubtful poem finds a place in this Garland, written on occasion of the death of Capt. Scot, who was burnt in one of his Majesty's ships at Chatham, in reference to which Mr. Ebsworth sees a clue to the gist of the poem in a satirist's venom against Episcopacy. But the more poems, extracts, and broadsides in the collection the better if the men of Kent care to possess and study it. None of the modern sort will beat "When Harrold was invaded," none will beat for strong asseveration a poem which in one line tells us that "Canaan sure was Kent." Open where he will, we warrant that the reader will be prouder of his native county. Take, for example, such a stanza as the following:"Green Maidstone it has orchards sweet, and Farleigh it has hops,

And grassy fields by Medway banks full many

Don Quixote: his Critics and Commentators.

By A. J. Duffield. (C. Kegan Paul & Co.) THIS little work bears somewhat the same relation to the author's translation of Don Quixote as the Chips of Prof. Max Müller do to his labours on the Rig-Veda. It is good-naturedly and pleasantly written, and may prove a welcome introduction to the works of Cervantes, and to the earlier editions and commentaries on Don Quixote, to those who are unacquainted with them.

To ourselves, the author seems to be still labouring under the same misconceptions which marked his larger work. Thus, in 42 we read:

p.

"Perhaps no more melancholy page of general reading exists in the literature of our own day than that which testifies of the regard in which the present race of Spanish writers hold their great countryman."

Without mentioning that most of the literary men now living in Spain have tried their hands on Cervantes in one shape or another; until within the last few months, when the great Calderon Festival turned all attention to the works of the latter writer, we have rarely taken up a Spanish literary periodical, even of the most remote provinces, One of the most distinguished recent lecturers without finding some article on Cervantes. on Calderon thought it necessary to warn his audience that he did not wish to see schools of Calderonistas rise like the too fervent

Cervantistas. We write under correction, but we doubt if any Welsh periodical can show a series of articles on Shakspere like those of Cervantes-Bascofilo in the Euskalerria of San Sebastian; and we have read similar studies in Asturian, Gallician, AraCatalans, perhaps, busy themselves about gonese, Andalusian, and other journals. The him least, because their own literature is so vantista is as well known a type in Spanish rich. Throughout the Peninsula, the Cerliterary circles as is the member of a Shakspere society in English. Strange is the expression that the Viaje del Parnasso remains "in the obscurity of the tongue in which it was originally written." There are philologists of no mean order who-looking at the character of the idioms and the vast extent of territory occupied by those who use them-opine that English and Spanish will at no very distant future be the most current languages on earth. We differ, too, from our author when he represents Cervantes as hostile to the Church, and as unusually daring in writing against the dominant religion. A recent Spanish writer has shown by large extracts that the Inquisition troubled itself very little about satires on the clergy when there was no suspicion of heresy on the part of the writer, and points out that all the satires and sarcasms of the poets and novelists were as nothing in comparison with the burning reproaches contained in the writings of the ascetics. So, too, in writing

a white sheep crops, But from Maidstone's bloomy orchards and from Farleigh's hopfields sent, I shall see no more the Medway flow through the green fields of Kent." We might link to this G. W. Thornbury's Ride to the Shrine (272), a lively tale of the annual progress to St. Thomas's shrine in Kent, to say nothing of the extract from the Devon Songster's poem (W. C. Bennett's) From the Banks of the Tamar, which is thoroughly worthy of such a collection. But in truth we have done little more than open our stores, or we might tell of Sir Charles Sedley's Soldiers' Catch, or cite the Goodhurst Garland, or offer a choice between The Curate of Kent and The Curate of Romney Marsh. Last, not least, we would draw attention to a poem grouped in this collection, calculated to repay examination, albeit not without a parallel from the scrinia of a learned antiquary. This is The Wizard, a poem lamenting the disappearance of many noble families, which appeared partially in the Censura Literaria. "No words can convey to the unfettered mind It will interest some to see the reminiscences of an ordinary thoughtful being of our own day of Knole and Buckhurst, Ulcomb, Cobham, the mental horror of hundreds of thousands of

Spaniards in the time when Philip II. governed Spain with thumbscrews and tight boots," Mr. Duffield puts English ideas into Spanish minds. Strange as it may seem to us, the Inquisition, after the first novelty, was not unpopular with the mass of Spaniards; its chief rigours fell on those who either were, or were supposed, or suspected to be, enemies of Spain. The reign of Philip II. is still looked on by many Spaniards as the era of their nation's greatest glory, just as many Frenchmen still regard that of Louis XIV.

Looking too much from one point of view, Mr. Duffield also fails to remark Cervantes' real sympathy with the good in chivalry, the exaggeration and absurdities of which he has so admirably ridiculed. His own favourite of his productions was ever the Galatea, a pastoral romance. Through all bis madness, Don Quixote is a perfect gentleman; his amorous fancy never becomes in the least erotic-he is pure almost as Sir Galahad; and his discourse on the qualities of a knight-errant pictures a noble ideal. It is, perhaps, just this true sympathy with the best qualities of a subject, while perceiving its grotesque or ridiculous side, which constitutes the difference between humour and mere wit or satire; and it is this deep sympathy and tenderness for the waning light of true chivalry which makes the work of Cervantes perhaps the noblest specimen of true humour that the world has ever seen.

WENTWORTH WEBSTER.

A Book of Rhyme. By Augusta Webster. (Macmillan.)

WHATEVER else may be said in praise or disase of Mrs. Webster's verse, this must ways be said of it-that it is a voice, and Lut an echo. One may find here, perhaps, an explanation of the fact that, though her work has been heartily greeted and warmly praised by those whose greeting and praise are sufficient attestation of its worth, it has been little talked about, and has attracted toparatively little attention among the Zeneral mass of readers, who seem to prefer to its simplicity and sincerity the affectations of that throng of versifiers whose highest ambition is to recal-by mode of thought, or trick of phrase, or melody of cadence-the peculiar and inimitable quality which gives a eLarm to the work of Mr. Tennyson or Mr. Browning, Mr. Swinburne or Mr. Rossetti. Mrs. Webster is in the second rank unoubtedly; but her place there is held by Latural right, not by frantically clutching the rts of the great singers who stand in front of her.

And, in virtue of the perfect sponneity of her utterance and the absence from it of all aggressive self-consciousness, she may trathfully say with the most distinguished of them,

"I do but sing because I must,

And pipe but as the linnets sing." It may frankly be admitted by Mrs. Webster's Warmest admirers that her muse has grown to, rather than been born with, this perfect, it never obtrusive, self-possession. There were days when it seemed unable to trust

lf to walk alone. The volume of dramatic studies in blank verse entitled Portraits

testified to the strong, and for the time overpowering, influence of Mr. Browning; but even there the echo was of Mr. Browning's intellectual method rather than of his literary manner, and of late her emancipation has become complete. She has what so many of our minor poets lack-an artistic individuality; and just at present this in itself, if combined with fairly competent craftsmanship, amply suffices to give any book of verse a claim to the grateful recognition of lovers of poetry.

I have said that Mrs. Webster's poetic career has been one of growth, and I think that most of her readers will agree with me; but they will probably also agree that there have been intermissions of advance, and that this Book of Rhyme, though her latest work, is not her best. The one weakness of many of these poems is the want of adequate motive. Mrs. Webster has a true lyrical gift, and this gift always brings with it a peculiar temptation-the temptation to sing before sufficient material for song has been fairly grasped by the imagination. Shelley, our greatest lyrist, was often thus tempted, and often fell; and, in our own day, Mr. Swinburne, who, as a pure singer, stands only below Shelley, has been similarly tempted, and has also fallen. Mrs. Webster, therefore, sins in good poetic society; but she sins nevertheless. She cannot deal successfully with unbodied joys; the joy or the sorrow, the hope or the despair, which supplies her with a motive must be, as it were, a thing of flesh and blood. Though in her dramas she shows herself possessed by the dramatic impulse rather than by the dramatic endowment, her lyrical work is always the strongest when suggested by a dramatic situation, or, perhaps I ought to say, a dramatic attitude. The lyrics of hers which strike one most forcibly, and which one remembers longest and best, are the utterance of a mind or soul set in a certain pose which lends itself readily to artistic treatment, half-dramatic and half-lyrical. In A Book of Rhyme the song is more frequently than usual devoid of what may be called its skeleton of situation, and is in consequence more limp and invertebrate than Mrs. Webster's work has any right to be. Even here, however, there are poems in the poet's true and best manner. "The Oldest Inhabitant" is a very impressive piece of workmanship of the kind just referred to; but its length hinders me from giving it as a whole, and its unity forbids the outrage of extract. The following poem, in two sonnet stanzas, is much less striking, but has the advantage of brevity:

66

THE OLD LOVE, "I. "You love me, only me. Do I not know?

If I were gone your life would be no more Than his who, hungering on a rocky shore, Shipwrecked, alone, observes the ebb and flow Of hopeless ocean widening forth below,

And is remembering all that was before. Dear, I believe it, at your strong heart's core I am the life; no need to tell me so. And yet-Ah! husband, though I be more fair, More worth your love, and, though you loved her not,

(Else must you have some different, deeper name For loving me,) dimly I seem aware,

As though you conned old stories long forgot, Those days are with you-hers-before I came.

II.

"The mountain traveller, joyous on his way, Looks on the vale he left, and calls it fair, Then counts with pride how far he is from there,

And still ascends. And, when my fancies stray, Pleased with light memories of a bygone day,

I would not have again the things that were. I take their thought like fragrance in the air Of flowers I gathered in my childish play. And thou, my very soul, can it touch thee If I remember her or I forget? Does the sun ask if the white stars be set ? Yes, I recal, shall many times, maybe, Recal the dear old boyish days again, The dear old boyish passion. Love, what then?

Mrs. Webster is not quite at her best even here, for the poem is marred by inelegancies of phrasing and by a tantalisingly inconclusive close; but it is still a fair specimen of the effective and interesting manner in which Mrs. Webster treats a personality in pose. The following is much more perfect; it is a true lyric with the beating pulse of song in every line, and it will be seen that the poet again works on her favourite method.

66 THE SKY-LARK'S SONG.
"Winged voice to tell the skies of earth,

Dear earth-born lark, sing on, sing clear,
Sing into heaven that she may hear;
Sing what thou wilt, so she but know
Thine ecstasy of summer mirth,

And think, "Tis from the world below!'
Instant old wont returns fresh brought,
And her desire goes seeking me,
For whom her whole world used to be
And all my world for sake of her ;
She cannot think an earthward thought

That shall not seem my messenger.
"She will be glad for love, and smile,
Saying, 'Thank God for love like ours;'
Saying, "There come the kind home hours;
His work-day will be sped ere long,
That keeps him hence this little while."

Sing, lark, until she know thy song.
"Sing of the earth, but sing no care,
Sing thine own measureless content;
She will remember what it meant ;
Griefs are too base, but, carolling thus,
Thou with thy joy mayst reach her there,

And she joy too remembering us." A higher point than that touched here is reached by but few poems in this Book of Rhyme. The volume contains much that has a faint, elusive, though quite distinguishable, charm; but, as a whole, it will be somewhat disappointing to those who know Mrs. Webster's verse best and admire it most. Her past achievements prompt large present demands. JAMES ASHCROFT NOBLE.

NEW NOVELS.