378
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. in. MAY 13,
cumulative or backward repetition or refrain to
the widely known ' The House that Jack Built, a
system of games or rhymes to which we may fairly
attach considerable antiquity, if we believe that
the original of our old friend (in the style of the
well-known 'Old Woman and her Pig') is to be
found in the Chaldean language, and that another
of the same is in existence in a Hebrew MS."
MR. WATSON will see from the authorities I there give that neither do I claim any credit in this discovery.
J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.
Antigua, W.I.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
Die Aufnahme Lord Byron* in Deutschland mid sein
Einjiuss auf den jungen Heine. Von Dr. Wilhelm
Ochsenbein. (Berne, Francke.) Tins work is solid and valuable as presenting ample materials concerning the reception of Byron's poetry in Germany. It has, in fact, if we may be allowed to say so, the merits and defects of German writing as they appear to our insular self-compla- cency. The author has no lightness of style, and reiterates somewhat needlessly quotations from early German criticisms of Byron which have no particular force or distinction. On the contrary, in a sentence or two of Goethe such as he gives, and such as Matthew Arnold has quoted in his essay on Byron, we find both illumination and unim- peachable authority. In the main Dr. Ochsenbein takes, we think, a just view of the reasons for Byron's success ; but when after careful exposition of evidence we expect a generalization or a sentence which will place Byron in the stream of literary tendency of his day, and show why he went so swimmingly, we are disappointed. We have, how- ever, all the circumstances and symptoms of Ger- man Byronism laid out before us, and, in particular, we have an account of Goethe's attitude to his brother bard which ought to enable us to mitigate the surprise we may feel at Byron's success on the Continent. Byron wrote mainly about himself, and it was the extraordinary power of his personality which made him so famous, aided by the fact that, as is abundantly shown here, the public \vhen they bought his poetry had the sensation of being ad- mitted to a foreign tragedy in high life which was both mysterious and scandalous. There was much more, of course, in Byron than that ; he was a pattern romantic, being in perpetual revolt; he struck fair blows at cant and Philistinism as well as Scotch reviewers; and he was cosmopolitan in the sense that he travelled and put his travels into highly personal verse. It may be conceived that the elder Goethe saw in the Childe Harold of 1812 a being not unlike the young Werther of 1774, sentimentally sad and wounded by the fact that the world did not endorse elective affinities and repulsions. Such seems a much more reasonable comparison than those quoted from a German book on 'Byron's Type of Hero,' which talks of the Prometheus of ^Eschylus and the Satan of Mil- ton's ' Paradise Lost.' These imperishable figures are no mere Brocken enlargements of their creators, nor are two such severe artists (severe, we mean, in their restraint on themselves and their concep-
tion of the dignity of their gifts as writers) to be
ranked with one who confessedly wrote in a hurry,
and could not do justice to splendid talents, though
he had the need of self-expression. Many of the
critical notices quoted by Dr. Ochsenbein dwell on-
Byron as containing many beautiful passages. That
is, in fact, a confession of failure ; he could nob
make an equal, concrete whole ; he did not see life
steadily ; he had passionate moments and an under-
lying sincerity, but he was more evidently a poseur
than anything. We may say that he was damned
at birth, or even before it, since the ingenious his-
torian of the Gordons, Mr. J. M. Bulloch, has shown
the degeneracy of his forbears some way back. His
fame in England has somewhat decayed, because,
perhaps, a later generation of critics has found that
much that used to be called first-rate poetry is
really first-rate rhetoric. So at least it seems to
the present reviewer, who was born into a period
of many voices and no distinct authority, which
naturally leads to irreverence, and a private re-
valuation of public reputations.
But whether Byron's lyrics are first-rate or not, he had, as Dr. Ochsenbein points out, influence on a supreme lyrist, Heine, some of whose phrases may be derived from the poet he translated. How- ever, in this case, the pale cheek, animated skele- tons, and other signs of gloom were to hand before Byron's influence came in Heine's training. Both were bitter pessimists, unhappy in love, cynically proud, and full of mocking laughter ; but the like- nesses between their lyrics are not prominent, except in the period of Heine's translation of Byron's 'Farewell' to his wife. Some of the parallels of language offered Dr. Ochsenbein wisely rejects ; others are distinctly uncertain, as contain- ing merely in each case the natural stuff of a darkened romantic mind returning with increasing satiety to its own enfeebled resources. Our author devotes two chapters to Heine's tragedies ' Alman- sor' and ' RatclifP and their connexion with Byron. These plays, however, are of no great moment, and do not, at any rate, call for notice in this country. We simply remark that here, as elsewhere, Dr. Ochsenbein is both industrious and ingenious, though he does not arrange his matter well, and his style is heavy. He quotes, as is natural, German books on Byron. We wonder if he knows well the views of French and English critics on his subject, of Taine, Scherer, and Matthew Arnold, himself a troubled spirit, who has left us both prose and poetry on Byron and Heine. This inheritance of poets one from the other is a good thing to see and understand, but it is all wasted if it does not bring with it the taste and the intuition for the thing which is poetry, which is in itself supreme, and shares with that other divine art, music, the quality of being essentially beyond analysis.
A Register of National Bibliography. By William
Prideaux Courtney. 2 vols. (Constable & Co.) THE compilation of the present work has been the dream of twenty years of Mr. Courtney's life and the occupation of four. Collecting materials, a task desultory at first, became a fixed pursuit,, which has been continued without intermission- Its accomplishment is opportune. For years the question of a bibliography of bibliographies has occupied the attention of scholars. A dozen years have elapsed since our late friend Chancellor Christie employed the words which Mr. Court- ney prints as a motto on his title-page : " The-
