Notes on Books.
THIS selection forms one of the French series of Modern Language Texts which is being issued by the Manchester University Press under the general editorship of Prof. Kastner. Prof. Weekley tells us in his Preface that he chose a preparation of Courier's work as his contribution to the enterprise because of his long familiarity with it—the 'Lettres écrites de France et d'ltalie' having been for some thirty years his favourite livre de chevet. His introduction and notes certainly have that sureness of touch which betokens thorough and well-established knowledge, while in the matter of the appreciation of his author, not in Courier's case a very easy matter, he shows himself a discriminating guide.
He has done well, we think, to omit the 'Lettre à M. Renouard'—though giving us the 'Avertissement.' The story of the pâté is, at bottom, a tedious as well as a discreditable affair, in fact, we believe that only a highly cultivated taste for style, combined with the tolerance of triviality characteristic of middle age, can make the famous letter endurable to any one. These qualities are not to be looked for in the readers for whom the Text is designed, though once acquired they open up surprising avenues of keen enjoyment. If, however, one were asked to demonstrate the defects which prevent Courier, in spite of his wit, his skill, his brilliancy, and no small measure of shrewd judgment, from being a great writer, it is from the 'Lettre à M. Renouard' that one could most easily do it. It is not merely that he is spiteful and, therefore, except taken in snatches, depressing; nor yet that he is a palmary example of the "Geist der stets verneint," the whole activity of his mind tending towards the negative, towards destruction; nor yet, again, that he is often palpably insincere and so artificial as never to lose consciousness of himself and his methods: it is more than anything else the fact that there is in his work no central reference, and, therefore, no sense of proportion. He must be enjoyed in isolation: he has the merits and demerits of the "precious."
Prof. Weekley, while agreeing more fully than we find ourselves able to do, with Sainte-Beuve's appreciation of Courier, justly demurs to that critic's dictum that Courier was "le moins Gaulois possible." It is his gauloiserie which makes the greatest part of his attraction, and which also, we think, renders Sainte-Beuve's "délicat" inappropriate. Irritable—in the stricter sense of the word—we should rather have called him.
His immense direct debt to Mme. de Sévigné should perhaps be emphasized more than it commonly is, or has been here. Thus—to give an instance or two—the celebrated "Nous venons de faire un empereur" begins with a favourite joke of hers which the taste of the present day would not, indeed, well permit an editor to elucidate; but it might be pointed out that the method of the narration is hers, shorn of some amplitude. Again, Prof. Weekley notices that "marquer" is often used by Courier in an unusual sense, as: "Que te marquerai-je-encore?" But this is a most frequent use of the word in Mme. de Sévigné.
The notes are excellent. Prof. Weekley is especially to be congratulated on the mass of references he has, so to say, nailed down; by the aid of these the student will appreciate the true quality of the astonishing tour de force presented to him in Courier's style. If we mention one or two minute slips it is merely that they may be rectified in a subsequent edition. At p. 209 the monkish "facere officium suum" is rendered "to do one's duty;" in the context it rather means "discharge one's office," "do one's job." At p. 213—by an obvious misprint—(
Greek characters) hass been translated "the law the master" instead of the "the law is master."
The book includes a virtually exhaustive bibliography and an index, but it lacks a table of contents—the list so-called comprising the whole of the selections under the one word "Text."
Devonshire House Reference Library.
Lecture on Quaker Printing and the Library's Treasures.
In three years' time what is certainly the most complete denominational library in this country, if not in the world, will be celebrating its 250th anniversary, as it was by a minute of the "fifteenth of seventh month, 1673," that the Society of Friends recorded their determination to see that "two of a sort of all books written by Friends be collected and kept together. . . . and one of every sort written against truth." The library thus begun is still in existence and is being steadily added to, though to-day only one copy of these Quaker and opposition books is kept on its shelves. Its elaborate series of indexes to persons, places, and subjects contain quite a quarter of a million references.
Something of the history of the Devonshire House Reference Library was given by the retiring President of the Friends' Historical Society, Miss Anna L. Littleboy, at their annual meeting at Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, on Thursday, April 22. After quoting the minute referred to, the provisions of which were to be attended to by William Penn and George Whitehead, she said that the first library committee also acted as censors of Friends' publications, and did not scruple even to hold up some of the writings of George Fox. The writing of one book by a Welsh Quaker baffled the Committee, who, after trying to read twelve pages, ordered it to be sent back to the author "to be better composed and made shorter." In 1681 Abraham Bunnifield was advised that his 'Word of Advice to All Sleeping Virgins' should be condensed into a sheet or two.
In early days Friends were very active in getting a display of their literature in ordinary booksellers' shops—a plan which is being followed out again to-day—and there are records of Quaker books being distributed by means of Mercury women, specially to those shops where anti-Friend books were on sale.
In 1697 there was an entry regarding a set of Quaker books in High Dutch for presentation to the Czar of Muscovy (Peter the Great), who used to visit Friends' Meetings when living at Deptford. They were, however, found to be too finely bound, and were ordered to be rebound "in Turkey leather" before William Penn and the rest of the deputation gave them to the Czar.
Something of the literary activity of Friends at this time can be gauged by the record of a total of
