40
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. xii. JULY 10, 1915.
author has had the advantage of consulting
Swedish work on the subject.
This is No. 97 of the Manchester Publications, and certainly not the least worthy..
The Vernacular Form of Abjuration and of Con- fession of Faith used by the Eighth -Century German Converts of the Devonian Wynfnth. By Henry Harrison. (Eaton Press, 3d.) THIS interesting little brochure of half-a-dozen pages gives the text of the formula in the Old Low German dialect, with translations thereof into Old West Saxon, English, and Modern German. Mr. Harrison inclines to the belief that the formula is contemporary with \probably the work of) St. Boniface. Abjuration and Confession each consists of three simple questions and answers. In the former the convert, in forsaking all the works of the devil, puts with these Thunaer (Thor), Uuoden (Woden), and Saxnote. Mr. Harrison gives short notes on ten of the words of the formula, and winds up with the story of how St. Boniface rebaptized certain converts, at whose baptism a priest, ignorant of Latin case- endings, had used the words " in nomine Patria et Filia."
THE July Nineteenth Century gives us two articles of which the interest is preponderantly literary : Rowland Grey's ' Waterloo in Romance,' and Miss R. M. Bradley's ' The Romance of a Detenu. The former is restricted to the Waterloo of the greater novelists : Thackeray, Lever, Victor Hugo, and Stendhal ; it hardly does justice to the last of these, and misses the fine workmanship of the description of the battle in ' La Chartreuse de Parme.' The latter is an account of nine years spent in Paris by one John Blount during the earliest part of the nineteenth century detained there by Napoleon, yet, owing to something fortunate in his nature, so well able to effect any purpose of his and to make people his friends that his lot was no intolerable one, even apart from the romance. Mr. J. Ellis Barker in ' The Secret of Germany's Strength' gives a most useful, clear, and well-documented account of the character and measures of the three great sove- reigns who made Prussia. Two interesting his- torical notes are Dr. Armitage Robinson's ' Array of the Clergy in July, 1415,' and M. Yves Guyot s account of ' The Great Mistake of Talleyrand and Lord Castlereagh ' the creation of Rhenish Prussia.
IN The Burlington Magazine for July Sir Claude Phillips discusses an ' Adoration of the Magi by Battista Dossi, in the production of which his greater brother, Dosso Dossi, seems to have had part. A photogravure of the picture forms an effective frontispiece to the magazine. Mr. \nanda Coomaraswamy supplies an article on 4 The Gods of Mahayana Buddhism,' with a page of illustrations. Mr. Edmund Gosse reproduces fragments of the Autobiography of his grand- father, Thomas Gosse, which casts some light on various artists of the beginning of the last century. In continuation of ' Notes on Pictures in the Royal Collection ' Mr. Lionel Cust and Mr. F. Jos. van den Branden discuss ' A Picture Gallery by Gonzales Coques of Antwerp, of which a full-page illustration is given. Further details are supplied of the exhibition of Chinese art at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, with some interesting reproduc- tions of jades and bronzes.
FRENCH BOOKS.
THE following short notice concerns the most interesting French items in the small number of new Catalogues which we received last week. We shall notice in our next number sundry items in this subject which had struck us in reading a handful of earlier lists.
Messrs. Leighton send us two delightful brochures a Catalogue describing nearly 1,500 early printed books arranged by presses, and an accompanying collection of reproductions from these, issued separately. The presses of Germany and Italy furnish the bulk of the matter, but a few may be taken to belong to France. There are five examples of Lyon counterfeits of Aldine editions : three Lucans, a Silius Italicus, and a Pontanus. The best of the Lucans is the Huyon (either the third or fourth Lyon counterfeit) of 1521 (31 5s.). The Silius, 1514 (3?. 5s.), is in- teresting as being an imitation of Aldine work, but actually anticipating the Aldine edition of this particular ' Opus de Secundo Bello Punico,' which was issued in 1523. There are also two of the Torresano Aldine imitations printed at Paris: Egnatius's ' De Exemplis illustriumvirorum Venetaa civitatis,' the printer of which is Menier, 1554 (31. 3s.), and the ' Epistolce clarorum virorum ' of 1556 (11. 10s.).
Messrs. Maggs have a " grangerized " copy of the memoirs of La Valette two volume s extended to four by the insertion of 210 portraits and views, and bound by Riviere, 1831 (211. ); and they have a similar copy of an English translation of Masson's' ' Napoleon and the Fair Sex,' 1894 (31Z. 10s.). They describe three items under Hugo ; we may mention the first edition of ' Lcs Travailleurs de la Mer ' (2?. 10s.), and an Album of portraits and autographs of the poet and his friends, collected by Charles Asplet (61. 10s.).
In the Catalogue sent us by Messrs. Simmons & Waters of Leamington we noticed three cheap ' Dictionnaires ' : Francais-Breton and Breton- Francais (10s. Qd.), and, offered together, a ' Dic- tionnaire du Patois Normand ' and a ' Dictionnaire du Patois Savoyard ' (6s.).
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