SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1881. THE EDITOR cannot undertake to return, or It is particularly requested that all business LITERATURE. 66 ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS." Walter Savage Landor. By Sidney Colvin. (Macmillan.) NONE of Mr. Morley's excellent series of "English Men of Letters" has greater claim to be considered indispensable than this volume. It is, perhaps, not above several others in literary merit, though assuredly it is not far below any. But it is, in a special sense, called for. Landor, as Prof. Colvin says with truth and force, "has, of all celebrated authors, hitherto been one of the least popular." Those to whom it has not been given to wade through Mr. Forster's cumbrous work possess, for the most part, little idea of Landor except as a man of obscure learning, who wrote the Imaginary Conversations, quarrelled with his wife, wrote Ithyphallics which even Byron found too strong, and closed a long career by practical exile on account of a disreputable libel case at Bath. Recently, no doubt, the homage paid to Landor by Mr. Swinburne and other writers has revived a sense of curiosity as to its object. But even now Prof. Colvin has to allow (p. 220) that "true Landorians may be counted on the fingers," and to define how much has to be done "to extend to wider circles the knowledge of so illustrious a master." It is this that makes Prof. Colvin's work so well-timed. In little over 200 pages he has told the story of a life which reached its eighty-ninth year, and a literary career which may be regarded as about the longest on record. Landor's first work was published in 1795, his last in 1863; he "was twenty-five when Cowper died, and ... he survived to receive the homage of Mr. Swinburne." Nor was this patriarcbal life quiet and uneventful. He fought as a volunteer in Spain in 1808; he was in the heart of France during " the Hundred Days;' he claimed to have seen Napoleon during his final flight from Paris to the West coast after Waterloo. He had relations, either of friendship or enmity, with almost all the great writers of his time. He had sat at the feet of that curious Gamaliel, Dr. Parr; he lived out his last years under the fostering care, if not in the actual presence, of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Of all their claims, many as they are, to the gratitude and admiration of posterity, none is more memorable than their kindly and watchful care for the old dying lion, of whom it may be said, with bitterly literal truth, that, in his eighty-fifth year, he came unto his own and his own received him not. Such a career Prof. Colvin has endeavoured to narrate It may be that the interest of the task, and If we turn to Prof. Colvin's literary written it, was very likely a genial exaggeration; but that it was uttered "with little meaning ' (p. 148) seems improbable. The portrait of Shakspere himself is no doubt slight, and not very effective, but the worthy Sir Thomas Lucy is beyond all praise. Nowhere outside Scott's best novels shall we find more admirable secondary characters than Sir Silas Gough, the rather carnal chaplain; Joseph Carnaby and Euseby Treen, the bumpkin informers against the youthful Willy; nowhere a more demure piece of audacity than Willy's reproduction of the university sermon. It seems as if the sketchiness of the most illustrious character in this dialogue had somewhat deterred Prof. Colvin from recognising the high merit of the others. Nor does he seem to dwell adequately on the admirable prose-poetry of such passages as (Pentameron, Second Day) the description of Acciaioli's retreat at Amalfi, and his death and funeral at the Certosa. In dealing with a writer so little generally known as Landor, more extracts would have been gratefully welcomed; though no fault can be found with those actually selected. Few will read unmoved the exquisite analysis (pp. 158, 159) of the scene between Dante, Francesca, and Paolo-whom Prof. Colvin, for some reason, calls Piero. Nor, perhaps, will Mr. Freeman's most vigorous diatribe move any mind so strongly against the form of slaughter called sport as this touching extract (p. 55)— "Let men do these things if they will. Per- As a specimen of the best classical poetry, Four not exempt from pride some future day. This man loved me'-then rise and trip away." It only remains to hope that Prof. Colvin's book may have the success it deserves in adding to the number of Landorians, which he holds to be so sadly small. It is little less than a calamity that neither a careful anthology nor an easily accessible and portable edition of Landor's works are obtainable. There is no better corrective of the " snip snap style" of Macaulay, nor of more tawdry or more fanciful modern literature, than 66 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Even Mr. Williamson, whose Graphic biography of Carlyle was singularly full and accurate, must have found his excellent first chapter in this work anticipated before publication by the article on Carlyle's family and early history which Mr. Froude lately contributed to the Nineteenth Century. The character, merits, and demerits of this new Life of Carlyle are easily stated. It consists essentially of a collection of letters, most of which have already been published, in whole or part, with connecting links of narrative, and very full references to the origin and nature of Carlyle's various works as they appeared. Among the letters which strike us here as new, some of the most interesting are notes, chiefly of a business nature, addressed to Mr. J. W. Parker, the publisher. They all show the strong fibre of Scotch shrewdness and sagacity in Carlyle. One is curiously valuable, as proving him to have received only a little over £17 for an important magazine article. The same fibre of good sense is shown in a letter to Thomas Ballantyne, a kindly and hero-worshipping, but rather unstable, "kite-flying," and, consequently, unfortunate Scotchman. Ballantyne was at the time editor of a newspaper in Manchester, and had consulted Carlyle about some differences he had had with one of his contributors, Mr. Francis Espinasse, subsequently known as the author of the first volume of a Life of Voltaire, and otherwise. It is thus that Carlyle expounds the "With brains, sir," theory of editing: "I would say that, though an editor can never think a serious, sincere man cannot very did not take advantage of a chance or business WILLIAM WALLACE. Country Pleasures: the Chronicle of a Year, chiefly in a Garden. By George Milner. (Longmans.) The industry of Messrs. Shepherd and Wil- There are In Mr. Ir has often been noticed that Gilbert White's delightful book on Selborne, notwithstanding interest alike as literature and science, owes little of its value to the richness of the flora and fauna it describes. many places in England where the attractions are much greater, but they have lacked the observant eyes that found such an endless variety in the little world of wonders that grew within the narrow boundaries of the Most is seen quaint Hampshire parish. where most is looked for-with intelligent eyes. We are not about to compare Mr. "Thus Jonson went along-increasing in esteem, in kindness and good-will, with all that Milner's Country Pleasures with Gilbert knew him. With his patron the Councillor White's Selborne, for, although they have Herberts, who had alike obliged him and been much in common, they have also much that obliged in return, he stood in the double is dissimilar. The interest in White is relation of the giver and receiver of gratitude, chiefly scientific, and depends upon the ob and therefore could not wish to stand much servations of natural phenomena. better: but with the Councillor's young and Milner's book the interest is chiefly literary, and depends rather upon the associations cononly daughter, the beautiful and lively MarHow did she like him? Bright airy garet? White finds his commonplace fields and sylph! Kind, generous soul! I could have necting bird and flower with poet and moralist. loved her myself if I had seen her. Think of a slender delicate creature-formed in the very hedges full of scientific material; and Mr. mould of beauty-elegant and airy in her Milner makes a charming record of country movements as a fawn; black hair and eyes-pleasures in an old Lancashire parish that is jet black; her face meanwhile as pure and fair fast being overtaken by the urban advances as lilies-and then for its expression-how shall I describe it? Nothing so changeful, nothing so lovely in all its changes: one moment it was sprightly gaiety, quick arch humour, sharp wrath, the most contemptuous indifference then all at once there would spread over it a celestial gleam of warm affection, deep enthusiasm ;-every feature beamed with tenderness and love, her eyes and looks would have melted a heart of stone; but ere you had time to fall down and worship them-poh! she was off into some other hemisphere-laughing at you-teasing you-again seeming to flit round the whole universe of human feeling, and to sport with every part of it. Oh! never was there such another beautiful, cruel, affectionate, wicked, adorable, capricious little gipsy sent into this world for the delight and the vexation of mortal man.' "" The two most exhaustive chapters in the work are those which give an account of Carlyle's lecturing career, and tell of his relations of different kinds with the authorities of the British Museum-nothing so complete in such a connexion has hitherto appeared. Mr. Shepherd's method of writing biography is decidedly Dryasdust-ish; but it is only fair to him to say that he does not pretend to much else. At the same time, he is modest and fair, except when he rides some hobby or falls in with a bête noir. Then he shows himself rather too good a hater. His account of his personal dealings with Carlyle is commendable as indicating that he of Manchester. repay The plan of the book is of the simplest The author lives in an olddescription. fashioned house at Moston, four miles from the cotton city. Round the house is a good old-fashioned garden, where the flowers have an individuality of their own, and can be made into acquaintances and friends. Here the birds find a haven of rest, and kindness and protection with songs of thanksgiving. The author takes us into his confidence, as it were, day by day; and we watch with him the blooming of new flowers, the alternations of storm and fine weather, the coming and snow, and the other changes that make up going of the birds, the sunshine and the the story of the English year. Mr. Milner is not only a keen and accurate observer of the external world, but a diligent student of literature, and thus the varying moods of the garden and the sky recal to his well-stored memory those passages in which the poets have interpreted the subtler meanings or analogies of scenery. Naturally, Wordsworth is most frequently laid under contribution, no less than twenty-seven quotations being made from him; but the names of Shakspere, Clough, Longfellow, Lowell, Allingham, Keats, and Barnaby Googe will serve to show that Mr. Milner is sufficiently catholic in his tastes. His descriptions of in his own neighbourhood at Moston or in scenery, whether H excursions to the Lakes or to Arran, are always scrupulously exact, and often imbued with a fine poetical spirit. The gossip about birds and bees, about the fogs of November and the frosts of February, about the throstles' nest in May and the wild west wind in September, will be pleasant reading both in town and country. We need more such observers. So far from all things being known and recorded, we still lack data respecting some of the commonest of phenomena. Hence the value of such notes as that which records "the singing of birds in thunder." Usually, the feathered tribes are "dumb and dowie" while the elemental strife is proceeding, but some bolder spirits among them will occasionally proclaim their emancipation from superstitious fears by loud if not light-hearted singing. Perhaps, like the lords of creation, they only "whistle aloud to keep their courage up." Mr. Milner's Country Pleasures should be a popular book. It can be read through with interest, and afterwards dipped into with a constant renewal of pleasure. WILLIAM E. A. AXON. Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity. By Paul Stapfer, Professor at the Faculté des Lettres of Grenoble. Translated from the French by Emily J. Carey. (C. Kegan Paul & Co.) origin and development of the Troilus fable as and in almsgiving very charitable; but her heart was changeable. The story is the one familiar to us all, only there is yet no Pandarus. She is led by Diomedes to the Greek camp; she declines to grant him her love at that time; she is received in the camp as in Shakspere's play; and, when faithless, she excuses herself with touching coquetry, "I was in mortal anguish at receiving no comfort from Troilus; I should have died outright had I not sought to console myself." For the Troilus of Shakspere or of Chaucer we look in vain to Homer. In the Iliad Spoilers settled on Benoît's poem and made we read only that Priam lamented the it their own. Most fortunate among the death of Troilus, his son, a dauntless spoilers was Guido Colonna, a Sicilian physicharioteer. A tragedy named "Troilus" cian, who, a century later than the Norman is among the lost works of Sophocles. trouvère, turned his "Roman" into bad Ancient commentators on Homer tell how Latin. The success was immense. Guido the fate of Troy and of Troilus were was translated into every language of Europe, bound together; if he died before his even into French. In Chaucer's House of twentieth year, Troy town must fall. A Fame his statue stands on a pillar near the stripling in his teens he remains until, in the statues of Dares and "the great Omere.” fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, Guido's book was the fabulous Iliad of the appeared the chronicles of the siege of Troy Middle Ages, and the true creator, Benoît, by the pseudo-Dares and the pseudo-Dictys, was forgotten. With Guido, Cressida beone giving himself out for a Phrygian priest comes a passionate woman of the South; on on the side of Troy, the other for a Cretan parting from her lover she shed upon her fellow-soldier of Idomeneus. Homer retired garments such an abundance of tears that before these two impostors of the Latin quite a large pool of water might have been decadence. Great "historiographer" as wrung out of her gown; and with her cruel Homer was, he lived a hundred years after nails she tore her cheeks, already flecked with the siege of Troy; "but Dictys of Crete and blood, until they looked like lilies torn to Dares of Phrygia "-Jean le Maire des Belges pieces, mingled with shreds of roses. THE first part, crowned by the French tells us as late as the end of the fifteenth Academy, of Prof. Stapfer's work on Shak-century-" have written down all that they spere is here presented in an excellent translation. The writer, who is singularly free from literary partizanship, aims at that cosmopolitan criticism which, perhaps, we may say was begun by Goethe-of which, certainly, Goethe has left us a conspicuous example. Still, M. Stapfer is a French student of the literature of the world; and French standards of comparison suggest themselves to him, to be rejected or accepted, where we would raise no question of right or wrong. It widens and quickens our intelligence to see Shakspere's work submitted to new tests, and to observe how it behaves under the experiment. The French genius, Prof. Stapfer urges more than once, is not chiefly distinguished by gaiety, brightness, élan; the literature which expresses that genius most completely, the literature of the age of Louis XIV., is remarkable for the supremacy it accords to reason. To read Molière is "une fete moins pour l'imagination que pour la raison." "Nothing less light, nothing more grave, at bottom than French literature;" and the cause is that "nothing is less light, nothing more grave, at bottom than the genius of the French nation." How Shakspere's plays of Greece and Rome exhibit themselves to a critic of French, yet not exclusively French, training cannot but interest English students of his poetry. And recognising the extraordinary beauty, the truth, and the passion of Racine, M. Stapfer does not hesitate to give it as his opinion that the neoclassical tragedy of the age of Louis XIV. is an artificial genre, an anomaly; while Shakspere's tragedy is "the natural and regular blossoming of the antique drama." Nowhere, probably, in any English book can so careful an account be found of the saw and heard done, one on either side, during The real inventor of the story was the From Guido's the story passed to greater hands-those of Boccaccio. He was then the lover of La Fiammetta, and the passion of Troilus is the passion of Boccaccio himself. Hence it is in church that Troilus first meets Cressida, for it was there that Boccaccio first met the woman he loved; and he added another touch, drawn from his own history, in the transformation of the daughter of Calchas into a young widow. The "Filostrato" is not a pure narrative; it is a lovesong from the heart of Boccaccio, tender and soft and sweet. Troilus, an Italian type of character, sinks beneath the violence of his emotion. "All the strength of his body left him, and so little force remained in his limbs that he could scarcely hold himself up." He falls ill, and takes to his bed. Gentlehearted dames and maidens, with all kinds of melodious instruments, stand around trying to comfort him, each tenderly asking him from what pain he suffered. It is in the "Filostrato " that Pandarus first appears, a devoted friend of Troilus, a true servant of Love. "He is indeed," says M. Stapfer, "by far the noblest character of the story.' "" How Chaucer transformed his Italian original; and how Shakspere, rediscovering in his own genius the original creations of Benoît de Sainte-More, altered and mingled from Chaucer, Caxton, and Chapman, is known to most students of English literature. I have given no account of the general scope of Prof. Stapfer's book. Perhaps the title sufficiently indicates its purpose; it is a study of Shakspere in connexion with classical learning, authority, and precedent, with detailed examination of his dramas of Greece and Rome. Some chapters are less needed by the English than the French reader. Some topics have been already admirably treated by our own Shakspere students; by Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1654. Edited by Mary Anne Everett Green. (Longmans.) THE historical importance of a calendar such as this in no way depends on the number of amusing extracts that may be culled from its pages. Viewed in this light, it must be owned that this volume is far less noteworthy than some of its predecessors. 1654 was a time of internal peace, for the few armed gatherings which took place cannot properly be regarded as more than local riots. The power of the Protector was becoming more consolidated every day; and the evidence is overwhelming that that power did not rest solely on the army, but was supported by a great body of the civilian class, who were, above all things, anxious for quiet, and knew that this was to be attained (if attained at all) only through the agency of the justest and strongest. people in 1653. Lancashire, Cheshire, and We imagine that they belonged almost solely "the Lord has permitted us, in our ignorance The question whether Oliver Cromwell was a popular ruler has been the text of well-nigh as much illiterate disquisition and windy rhetoric as the character of Mary of Scotland or the causes of the French Revolution. No answer worth considering can be given to such a question until we have far more intimate knowledge of the time than we possess at present. It is not easy, nor possible, indeed, without guarding ourselves carefully by explanations, to affirm whether this or that modern Prime Minister was a popular favourite. To draw trustworthy deductions as to men's feelings from documentary evidence alone is far more difficult than to come to roughly just conclusions concerning the minds of those with whom we are contemporary. So far as the evidence goes which we have had an opportunity of examining, we should say One of the most noteworthy papers in this that a very considerable majority of the volume is John Lisle's account of the propeople of England were glad to be ruled by ceedings of the High Court of Justice which one whom they could trust, but that tried the conspirators in what is known as Oliver had hardly any personal following Vowel's Plot. It is an interesting docuof men who loved him with the unselfishment in many ways, especially as an authentic devotion which many far less noble natures have inspired. However this may be, the Calendar before us shows unmistakeably that his power, great as it was at first, went on increasing almost from day to day. That justice was done irrespective of rank or political party is evident, though instances of miscarriage might be picked out from the papers before us. Still, the effect on the mind of anyone who takes them in the mass will be that strenuous endeavours were made after fair dealing, though arbitrary measures were sometimes used. It is singular to find a land question not relic of a man who was foully murdered in a We believe it is the common opinion that Notices of literary men are very thinly scattered. Mrs. Green directs attention to much unlike the Irish one of to-day agitating a petition of Sir William Davenant, who was imprisoned for loyalty to the King. J. THE LIFE OF JOSEPH SALVADOR. Euvres et ses Critiques. Par le Colonel Gabriel Salvador. (Paris: Calmann Lévy.) Salvador: sa Vie, ses SPANISH and French Jews in the Middle Ages were forcibly exercised in religious controversy. Prelates and kings took delight in public disputations with Jews concerning these matters. But the chief actors on the Christian side were mostly converted Jews, who, probably out of spite, and in order to show themselves more Christian than the Christians themselves, provoked public disputations. The enumeration of these controversies cannot be given here; it will suffice to mention the dispute of Donin with the Parisian rabbis before Louis IX. of France, of Paulus Christianus in Provence and at Gerona in the year 1269, and of Alfonso of Burgos in the year 1336. Controversial works, the rabbis in Spain, France, and Germany to issue of such disputations, influenced other multiply this kind of literature, the reading of which was in some respect the consolation of the persecuted Jew in dark and troublous times. Moreover, Marans, as the neo-Christians were called who had escaped from the cruelties of Torquemada and his successors, gave vent to their feeling of hatred against the religion which tortured and burnt while it proclaimed love and brotherhood, by writing treatises in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian against the Christian faith. Such are the works of Orobio de Castro, Belmonte, and others. The late Joseph Salvador, as well as Spinosa, were the offspring of the victims of the Inquisition; and probably the reminiscence of the sufferings of their ancestors led them to the study of the history of Judaism and its daughter-religion, Christianity. Both having devoted themselves to philosophical studies (J. Salva. dor, more especially, having passed the university curriculum), their works on the history of both religions took a philosophical instead of a polemical form. This method proved certainly more successful among Christian readers than the controversial would have done. Both effected a revolution in the conception of the Old and New TestamentsSpinosa throughout Europe, and J. Salvador at least in France. Like The latter, like most of the Jewish authors before him, led a quiet and retired life of contemplation, and, accordingly, there are few biographical facts to give of him. Maimonides, whose famous philosophical work was the pioneer of Spinosa, and also like Mendelssohn, he devoted himself to medicine, in which he graduated as doctor with great success in 1816 at Montpellier, being then foreign literary circles, without having had "On the occasion of a birth there were scarcely twenty years old. The dissertation intéressée." literature of his subject, or perhaps he did à Jésus les lois existants." J. Salvador's Institution de Moïse, like M. Renan's Vie de Jésus, was read by ladies of the highest rank. The biographer quotes the following interesting letter, from a lady of distinction, concerning that work: "A propos de Salomon, vous nous confondez en m'apprenant que l'auteur de la Loi de Moise est un jeune homme; tant d'érudition ne Le s'allie guère qu'avec un âge très mûr. J'ai rela cet ouvrage si neuf, si plein d'idées, de sens et de faits, j'en ai été plus contente encore. Mon oncle (le baron Louis) et moi serons charmés de faire la connaissance d'un auteur dont l'ouvrage nous a tant interessés. C'est une belle idée que d'avoir révélé au vulgaire les secrets cette philosophie hébraïque si érangement defigurée; de nous apprendre que Moise a constitué une véritable république et non une théocratie, et qu'enfin la rigueur de la firme religieuse était pour opposer une barrière l'esprit toujours envahissant du dogme et des superstitions orientales. Mais un mot encore sur M. Salvador; est-il juif ou ne l'est-il pas? Son nom, son érudition qui ne peut appartenir qu'à l'homme élevé au milieu de cette zation, le sujet de son livre ne me le faisaient as mettre en doute. Mais il écrit avec tant légance, une si grande modération et une tile impartialité, qu'après l'avoir bel et bien lu et relu, je me suis demandé et je vous demande encore: est-il juif ?" The controversy in the daily papers in France on both sides, the accusation against Lis work in the Chamber, the pastoral letters of the bishops, critiques of men like Dupin, Guizot, and others in France, Gioberti in Italy, the late Dean Stanley in England, which Col. Salvador has put so ably and patiently together, will give an idea of the stir which J. Salvador made in French and His book neither does, nor professes to do, for the North-east of Scotland what Mr. Campbell's did for the North-west. It has but little style, too, and lacks the pleasant continuity of (for instance) Hender a work often referred to by Mr. Gregor himthey are details accurately given by a comself. It is simply a museum of details: but petont collector, and arranged in apt and orderly sequence. Birth, Childhood, Marriage, Death; Times and Seasons; Weather; Witchcraft; Fairies-under these and suchlike heads the beliefs proper to each are grouped and briefly stated. Mr. Dyer, who bound to no topographical limits, follows the same obvious arrangement, and was quoting many inferior critics. The bio-gathers in his anecdotes from far and near, A. NEUBAUER. TWO BOOKS ON FOLK-LORE. Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-east Domestic Folk-Lore. By Rev. T. F. Thisel- to tell is found, with slightly varied form, in other collections. If there are changelings in North-east Scotland, there are poulpicans (though Mr. Gregor does not mention them) in Brittany; if the Scotch fairies had to pay a teind to hell" every seven years, the human race have often had to sacrifice their loveliest maiden to some periodical monster; if a new-born child, or its mother, must go up stairs before going down, this is true also in Yorkshire, and even (for we have seen it) in London. In some cases, however, the same belief acts differently in different places. Thus, Mr. Gregor says that, if a boy and a girl were to be baptized together, the girl first baptized, would leave his beard in the must be baptized first; else the boy, being water, and the girl would have it. But the very same expectation, according to Henderson, makes it necessary for the boy to be baptized first. If he is not, he will be beardless; Henderson and the girl, coming first to the font, |