his palace, but the master of it. There is a sort of asceticism in all Which with the change of seasons cannot change, "Teach me your wisdom, patriarchs! Ye have stood Mr. Symonds has made translations of a number of the mediaval Latin songs, of which the "Confession of Golias," attributed to Walter Map, is the most famous and popular. In the prose essay that accompanies the rhymed versions, Mr. Symonds deals with the literary problems of a period that is not usually included under the nickname Renaissance. It shows pretty clearly that it was not the "Renaissance" that brought freedom of thought and language for the first time into Christendom. Mr. Repes is a correct poet. He has a praiseworthy sense of the obligations laid upon writers of verse, and he keeps the rules. His poems are attractive with their grace of style, though the graces are occasionally somewhat euphuistic, e.q., in the line “With tuneful trouble of the trembling chords." "The Rueing of Gudrun " is unnecessary after Mr. Morris's "Lovers of Gudrun," and in every way a mistake. The other poems are better; the versification is uniformly careful; there is a preference shown for old French and Provençal metres. "Florien "§ is an interesting play, with 'prentices, highwaymen, and other vigorous personages belonging to the London of the "Fortunes of Nigel." It is written partly in blank verse, somewhat flat, and partly in prose. There is no excessive effort to make the language look antique. In 1610 "quarters" would not have rhymed to "waters" as it does in the song on p. 33. Mr. J. R. Sibbald has published a translation of the "Inferno" (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1884), and there is a version of the whole of the "Divine Comedy" by Mr. J. C. Minchin (Longmans). Both translators have had the courage to choose the terza rima for their English. Mr. Sibbald has been on the whole successful in avoiding the dangers of harshness and obscurity. He has executed a most ingenious version, which does not fatigue the reader by straining London: Chatto & Windus. 1884. "Wine, Women and Song." +"Poems." By A. R. Repes. "The Rueing of Gudrun, and other Poems." By the Hon. Mrs. Greville Nugent. London: David Bogue. 1884. Florien a Tragedy in Five Acts, and other Poems." By Herman C. Merivale. : Rivington. 1884. after an impossible accuracy. Sometimes, however, he is a little careless. "Upon their resemblances of bodies" is a very weak rendering of "sopra lor vanità che par persona" (Inf., vi. 36). And why does he make the blunder, hardly to be named without some Greek ceremony or formula to avert bad omen, of translating Galeotto into. Galahad? This blunder was good enough when it was new, but it has grown tiresome. Does no translator of Dante even ask himself what the book was that Dante thinks worth mentioning in this way? and whether the passage exists anywhere that Dante had certainly read and remembered? Scartazzini, in his commentary, gives the old Italian version of the chapter in the Romance of Lancelot, and there the name is to be found in its original form-Gallehault. Mr. Minchin's rendering of the "Divine Comedy" is much inferior in finish and smoothness to Mr. Sibbald's, and certainly not superior in accuracy. "O brothers,' then I said, who here have joined Through many thousand perils to the west.'"-(Inf., xxvi. 112 -3). -this is to be literal but not accurate. 66 Drawing the breezes with the eternal plumes That like our mortal hair ne'er change nor fail."—(Purg., ii. 35–6). -this is neither poetry nor even sense. Musurus Pacha has continued his translation of Dante and issued the second part called Καθαρτήριον. The new poems of M. de Bauville* are meant as sketches of the day and notes of the vanities and humour of Paris, for the readers of newspapers. It is not all vanity-on the contrary, there is the Academy, and there are the philosophical lectures of M. Caro-these find their place in the farrago of the journalist's verse, perhaps not without some loss of dignity. Nor, on the other hand, are the poor forgotten. Hunger, cold, and crime are taken into the book by the impartial chronicler. The following verses come from the poem addressed to the Master on February 26, 1884 "Et les humbles et les petits Les femmes, si savent en pleurs Les têtes blondes ; Les enfants dont tu sais les noms, Te disent: Maître nous venons De ton génie. O grand songuer plein de pitié, Vis! Aime! Chante! Marche, auguste, dans ton chemin, The poet at the end of the book seems to be thinking of an excursion out of Paris into some more shadowy table-land. W. P. KER. “Poésies Nouvelles-Nous Tous." By Théodore de Bauville. Paris: Charpentier. 1884. III.-GENERAL LITERATURE. BIOGRAPHY.-The son of a farmer of Pennsylvania, Bayard Taylor,* who died in Berlin, December, 1878, the American Minister to Germany, was one of the most instructive examples of what literary activity without a spark of the highest writing genius can accomplish in this journalistic period. It is no contradiction that through every stage of his fevered experiences he was writing poems, the latest of which he was always dubbing more immortal than that which went before. For those who wish insight as to the real causes of American mediocrity in poetic conception and execution, these two handsome volumes of biography, chiefly made up of the would-be poet's letters, are a revelation. Replies and congratulations from men like Longfellow, Lowell, Bryant, Whittier, and others of less note, on the publication by Taylor of such poems as "The Picture of St. John," "The Masque of the Gods," "Lars," and a world of similar correct but unpoetic material, show that the Transatlantic appreciation of harmonic art in word is not far above that of that exercise period of culture which requires the mutual admiration society as its too genial climate. What little there is of biographic work beyond the chronological arrangement of letters and other related papers, is tastefully enough done by Marie Hansen, a German, Taylor's second wife, and by Horace E. Scudder. There are suggestive portraits and illustrations in the work.-Dr. Humphrey Sandwith employed some of the leisure of his later life in writing an autobiographic account of his remarkable career, primarily for the use of his children and grandchildren, but not without the idea that some of it, at least, might be eventually given to the general public. We are glad that this idea has been carried out, for the story is much too well written and too full of interest to be confined to a narrow circle. Mr. Humphrey Ward, who has selected from this autobiography the portions that seemed of most general interest, has also supplied the links that were necessary to form them into a continuous narrative,† and he has done his task with great skill, and given us a readable and stimulating book. Dr. Sandwith's character is attractive, and his life was very varied, sometimes rising into stirring and even heroic incident, as in the defence of Kars, and always bringing him into contact with important persons, and as his faculty of observation both for men and nature was uncommonly good, we have no want of interesting information. The portrait is rather coarsely engraved.-A career, hardly inferior to this in variety or in romantic elements, is described to us in "The Episodes of my Second Life," by Antonio Gallenga. A political exile at twenty-one, he had to begin the world anew, first for a few years in the United States, and then for the rest of his days in England, whose physical climate curiously enough, considering he came from Italy, was no less attractive to him than its political one. He devotes a whole volume to his life in America, which was in no way eventful, but the second volume, comprising his experiences as a teacher and literary man in England, his patriotic experiences in Italy in 1848 and * “Life_and_Letters of Bayard Taylor." Edited by Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder. In Two Volumes. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, E.C. 1884. "Humphrey Sandwith, a Memoir compiled from Autobiographical Notes. Nephew By his 1859, and his missions for the Times, is full of very interesting matter, laid before us with an easy and practised pen. Mr. Gallenga has had his grievances, but he writes always without malice and in a serious. and modest spirit.-Dr. Mozley's sister, who has just edited her brother's letters,* is probably right in believing that the only way of writing a true biography of a quiet and retired scholar is to publish his letters in chronological order. Dr. Mozley however was a scholar who kept up a close observation on the world in general, and who was connected with the leaders of some of the most important ecclesiastical movements of the time. There is, therefore, much to interest in the book. Many glimpses are given us of Newman and the Tractarians, with whom Mozley was personally in intimate daily intercourse up till the period of their secession to Rome. The writer's views on their theological position and on other questions that subsequently rose in the Church are stated with the moderation and vigour that characterized him. The life of Edward Miall,† which was undertaken by Mr. Henry Richard, M.P., but given up in consequence of the increasing pressure of Parliamentary business, has at length been written by Mr. Miall's son and successor in the editorship of the Nonconformist newspaper. Even the keenest opponent of Dissent must admit the book to be a bracing record of a sustained and courageous fight against ecclesiastical privilege. The interest of the book does not travel beyond the history of that struggle, but for that struggle it is important. Some of Mr. Miall's sketches of the statesmen he encountered in the House are very clever and graphic, and we have a story of O'Connell which shows what a different spirit he was of from the Irish Parliamentary party to-day. Miall visited the Liberator in prison in 1844, and says, "When I congratulated him on the quiet demeanour of the Irish people, I shall not soon forget the sudden gleam of joy which lighted up his countenance as he asked, 'Isn't it beautiful?""-Lady Pollock's "Macready as I Knew Him" is extremely interesting. It is an account of her personal recollections of Macready, the actor, and of his conversation on many different questions, artistic, literary and social, during the last twenty years of his life. His observations are often striking, and Lady Pollock's account of the man himself is very agreeable and very well written.-Sir William Muir, author of the standard English work on Mahomet, has done a useful service by publishing a short life of the prophet for the use of the general reader.§ It is written very clearly, and gives a fairly adequate account of Mahomet in the compass of 250 duodecimo pages. A brief appendix is added, explaining the religion of Islam, and there are various illustrations, and a map of Arabia. TRAVEL. The present season has produced much fewer works of travel than usual. In a second book || Lady Brassey has to contend with the popularity of her first, but she will not suffer. Her story is bright and chatty, and by no means without a due admix "Lectures of J. B. Mozley, D.D." Edited by his Sister. London: Rivingtons. "Life of Edward Miall, formerly Member of Parliament for Rochdale and Bradford." By his Son, Arthur Miall. London: Macmillan & Co. London: Remington & Co. "Mahomet and Islam." By Sir William Muir, K.C.S.I. The Religious Tr Society. "In the Trades, the Tropics, and the Roaring Forties." P London, Longmans & Co. . Bras ture of good gritty information, and it is enlivened by an infinity of little vignettes-hardly a page wants one-beautifully drawn and engraved. The voyage was from Madeira to the West Indies, and interesting descriptions are given of Trinidad, Jamaica, and the Azores. One of the best parts of the book is the account of the Republic of Venezuela, where the President has ten times the salary of his big neighbour, the President of the United States, and rules exactly as he likes. He has recently built a State railway, and invested it with an unheard-of monopoly, for he has in its interests prohibited all other vehicles of whatever kind from running on the ordinary roads, and when a fish-plate was, in revenge, placed across the rails, he made no investigation, but simply imprisoned every inhabitant within half-a-mile of the district. The yacht it seems, though she weathered a cyclone during the voyage, had all the time rotten rudder and timbers," the truth about the Sunbeam' "not having been discovered by Sir Thomas till his return to port. * MISCELLANEOUS.-It is curious that what seems at first so droll an idea as the translation of "Robinson Crusoe" into Latin should have been executed about the same time independently by two different scholars, M. Goffaux, in France, and Professor F. W. Newman, in England. Professor Newman is still fain to believe that Latin is to be the universal language, and if we are to be able to speak it, we ought to learn it, as we learn modern languages, by wide reading rather than as it is learnt now, by minute study of certain limited class books. But then none of the ancient classics supply the modern reader with a sufficient vocabulary of familiar objects, and they all puzzle him continually with historical and other difficulties, so that to Mr. Newman's mind there seems no other alternative but to construct a new modern Latin literature to smooth the way into the ancient. That is the benevolent object with which he has undertaken the labour of recasting and abridging "Robinson Crusoe," and turning it into excellent Latin. He has in some cases to create his vocabulary. A gun, for example, is ignipulta. The days of speaking Latin are gone, however, and we fear Mr. Newman's labour is thrown away.—Mr. Leland has made a discovery of some importance for comparative mythology, a body of legends-as many as two hundred in numberamong an Indian tribe in New England, which seem really to deserve, in a peculiar sense, the name of the Indian Edda which Longfellow falsely applied to his Hiawatha legends. They are almost Norse in spirit and conception. Glooshap, as Mr. Leland remarks, is just an intensified Odin, and Lox is Loki in nature as in name. Many other coincidences are pointed out, and there is probability in the suggestion that Norse influences may have been conveyed to the Algonquins through the Eskimo, who were in relations with both. The legends are in themselves very interesting apart from their value as a contribution to ethnological science. "Rebilius Cruso: Robinson Crusoe in Latin, a Book to lighten Tedium to a Learner." By Francis William Newman, Emeritus Professor of Latin in University College, London. London: Trübner & Co. "The Algonquin Legends of New England, or Myths and Folklore of the Macmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobrest Tribes." By Charles G. Leland. London: Sampson Low & Co. |
