9* s. vm. DEC. 2i, i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
515
Mr. Nichols aims at doing for the great thinker
what has not hitherto been done, and enabling the
student to read the correspondence in the order in
which it was written. He supplies, accordingly,
a chronological register. Beginning with the letters
written from the Augustinian monastery of Emmaus
at Stein, near Gouda, Erasmus's convent residence,
in 1482-3, the register ends with the close of
1517, when Erasmus, at the height of his reputa-
tion, and then in his fifty-second year, was keeping
the Christmas festival at Louvain. It comprises
more than seven hundred letters. The epistles of
a later date are more numerous, but owing to many
causes among which may be counted knowledge
of the circumstances under which they were written
and the personages to whom they were addressed
the task of fixing their dates is less difficult. A
translation of the whole or portions of two hundred
and eleven of these letters is given, with a com-
mentary and foot-notes concerning them, which,
besides constituting the book to a certain extent
a biography, supply the original date, if any,
assigned to each letter on its first publication, and
such additions to date as were made " in the later
authorized editions of the Latin text." Every
letter in the register of which a translation is not
given is described in the commentary. For further
explanations of the principles on which the trans-
lation has been executed, and the nature and extent
of the omissions, the reader is referred to the book.
No intention to attempt a complete translation
of the epistles is entertained by Mr. Nichols, who,
however, speaks of a second and complementary
volume being in contemplation. The task Mr.
Nichols has set himself is well executed, and the
arrangement of the letters will facilitate greatly
the labours of the student. In some points, how-
ever, we find ourselves at disaccord with our author.
It is undeniably better to give a portion of a letter,
as is done, than an abridgment. We have com-
pared many of the letters with the originals as
given in the thirty-one books of the collected
letters of Erasmus, Melanchthon, More, and Vives,
printed in London by Flecher & Young in
1642 ("Sumptibus Adriani Vlacq"), and find the
omissions both more numerous and more im-
portant than is desirable. Nor do we agree with
the counsel, or perhaps rather the assumption,
that the first two books of the letters should be
skimmed over, and the reader's attention be con-
centrated upon the books which follow, when the
correspondents of Erasmus were men of greater
eminence and when the style of the writer was
more formed. The letters to Servatius are not
wholly satisfactory. They illustrate, as is said, a
" somewhat feminine side of the character of Eras-
mus, whom they exhibit as having formed a devoted
attachment to one of his own sex, which not being
returned with equal fervour, was a source of pain
to himself and or some annoyance to the object of
his affection." That they were to some extent
intellectual exercises, in which Erasmus, in spite
of the character for extreme truthfulness which he
somewhat superfluously assigns himself, loved to
indulge, is conceivable enough. The language is
that, however, of human passion, and in the case
of a man of reputation so unblemished as Erasmus
we cannot afford to neglect the evidence of the
kind of friendship which was common in his days,
as in the subsequent times of Michel Angelo and
Shakespeare. These letters, which are accepted as
genuine, have escaped the attention of biographers.
A translation of the ' Compendium Vitee,' whic h is
generally attributed to Erasmus, and supplies the
leading details concerning his birth and parentage,
is given. We agree with Mr. Nichols in admit-
ting both the compendium and the epistle of
Erasmus to Goclen, though doubt has been thrown
by recent writers upon both. We have noted for
comment some scores of passages during the perusal
of the book. In so doing we have ourselves defeated
the aim with which we set out. Within the space
at our disposal it is obviously impossible to deal
with all these matters. No resource is left but to
pass by them, and recommend the reader to turn
for himself to the book. No student of fifteenth-
century literature can afford to neglect this; and
though we should have preferred a more liberal
policy in regard to the translations, we are aware
of the difficulties in Mr. Nichols's path, and are
indebted to him for a thoughtful and serviceable,
and to some extent a captivating volume.
Les Portraits de V Enfant.
THOUGH no name of author or publisher appears to this sumptuous volume, concerning which all the information vouchsafed us is that it issues from the press of Lahure, we can scarcely be in error in assigning it to the eminent Parisian house of Hachette. In almost all respects it is a com- panion volume to ' L'Image de la Femme' of M. Armand Dayot, the Inspecteur des Beaux - Arts, issued by that firm a couple of years ago (see 9 th S. iv. 549). The character and method of the work and the illustrations are all but identical, and the title-pages and the designs in both are of ravishing elegance. In some respects the volume is likely to be even more popular than its predecessor. No subject whatever can be of more inexhaustible interest to the one half of human beings than the other half, and we cannot but wonder whether the spirited publisher to whom we owe ' L'Image de la Femme ' will dare in a couple of years more to give us * L'Image de 1'Homme,' and whether the fair sex will study its coarser, if more trustworthy half with the same unwavering devotion that the sterner sex has displayed to itself. On the ground of children both sexes meet, and the father is as proud of the grace and affection of his daughter as the mother is of the approaching virility of her son. The scheme of the book is, then, to show the child as it appears in the works of the greatest artists from the infancy of art until to-day. Mate- rials are fortunately abundant, more than they would have been had not the cult of the Mother of God involved that of the infant Godhead. Wher- ever the Madonna had to be shown in Christian art, her inseparable companion was necessarily il Bambino, a caressing Italian word, the liquid music of which disappears from the enfant and the child, though a measure of it is preserved in bdbe and baby. Italy, as the source of most religious art, comes practically foremost in the volume, and is assigned the largest space,though an opening chapter of no great extent is devoted to the child in clas- sical art. Next it, sed longo intervallo, comes Spain ; after it arrive Flanders and Germany, France, and, lastly, England. A final chapter is occupied with the art of to-day. The earliest representation of a child is an Egyptian girl, the lithe, graceful figure of which is very seductive. It comes from the Turin Museum. With this must be compared the bas-relief from the Mus4e du Louvre of Sesostris as a child, a curious but artis-
