Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/225

This page needs to be proofread.

12 s. i. MAK. 11, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


219


beyond those which gain a middle-class com- petence," three of the daughters in the same generation should have mothered respectively a distinguished novelist, an original man of science, and a merchant millionaire James Jenkins on Bibby of Liverpool. The novelist was Dinah Maria, daughter of Dinah Mellard and Thomas S. Mulock, and wife of George Lillie Craik. She pub- lished in 1856 ' John Halifax, Gentleman,' the novel which brought her literary fame. Nearly seventy pages are occupied with interesting matter relating to this lady and her family circle. The Mulock family had the advantage of having its pedigree traced by the late Sir Edmund Bewley, an eminent Irish judge, who brought to bear upon genealogy the fruits of his legal training and experience, achieving results which were decidedly some of the most notable on record. The man of science referred to above was Thomas Mellard Reade, whose mother was Mary Mellard. He acquired considerable note in the domain of geology, and his published writings were numerous and valuable.

The Appendix contains pedigrees of the families of Jenkins on of Stoke-upon-Trent and Bucknall of Newcas tie-under- Lyme. At the end are chart pedigrees of the Mellards and Bibbys.

Numerous evidences for the descent of each family are given in the shape of extracts from parish registers, from wills and other documents, and copies of monumental inscriptions. There are twenty -five illustrations, and a good index.

IN the new Fortnightly Review Dr. Dillon and Mr. Sidney Low, to whose papers in the February number we drew attention, again set before their readers weighty considerations on the national problems of the present and the near future. The postscript to ' The Need for Closer Organiza- tion ' Dr. Dillon's article has a touch of the sensational about it. The writer knows the terms of peace proposals which have emanated from Berlin, but which have found no spokesman to lay them before any Allied Cabinet/ one con- dition put forward by Germany being that a separate arrangement should be made with each of the Allies. Mr. William Archer in ' Fathers and Sons : Ibsen, Bjornson, and the War,' shows a surprise, which we cannot share, at the fact that the sons of those two illustrious authors should be found on the side of Germany.

The concluding instalment of ' Aristophanes, the Pacifist,' by the editor of The Fortnightly, is as attractive as the former one : it is acceptable somewhat in the same way as Bolssier's well- known study of Cicero. Miss May Bateman has a very interesting subject in ' The Catholic View in Modern Fiction,' and says many things about it which are unquestionably true ; but she some- what weakens her effectiveness by writing of second-rate fiction as if it were on a level with classical work. Mr. E. A. Baughan on ' British Humour and Opera ' is well worth thinking over. The admirers of Mrs. Meynell will like to be told that a poem of hers is to be found here.

The Nineteenth Century for March gives a good proportion of its space to questions of interior national economy, and the problems of imperial reorganization. One of these papers has, in addition, an academic interest that in which Mr. Cecil Chesterton replies to Mr. Mallock's article * Current Theories of Democracy,' pub-


lished in the January number of this review, reviving and justifying the theory of Rousseau's ' Contrat Social.' Sir Thomas Barclay contri- buted to the August number an " historical phantasy " showing the interplay of influences in Berlin which led up to the war. He now gives us a similar phantasy three dramatic scenes between the Kaiser, his entourage, and repre- sentatives of his people which set forth a guess as to the development of affairs. It is a clever bit of work, though considerably less convincing than the first one. Bishop Bury writes about ' Holy Russia ' ; and Gertrude Kingston wittily and forcibly about the American view of the war, and of England, and the English assumptions concerning America. The Abb Ernest Dimnet's survey of the present situation in France ' The Cry for Authority in France ' is its significant title makes very instructive reading alongside of Lord Cromer's ' Vox Populi.' The one paper, however, which is well within the province of ' N. & Q.' remains to be mentioned it is Prof. Foster Watson's interesting study of Erasmus as ' The Educator of Europe.' It is a study which should not only stimulate and inform our interest in the memory of a singularly lofty and fascinating character, but might suggest reflection on how much we have lost in losing the use of a common tongue for the learned throughout Western Christendom, and even on the possibility of retrieving the loss.

The Cornhill Magazine for March begins with a page or two of notes by Thackeray for an essay on Napoleon, accompanied by a caricature ' Boney '-^-of the author's drawing, and an introduction by his daughter, Lady Ritchie. Sir Frederick Kenyon's ' Ideals of English Culture 'the Rede Lecture for 1915 takes the whole of English literature for its province, and makes clear, what is probably the vague opinion of most people who have thought about it, that the peculiar and characteristic features of our national ideal of culture are independence, common sense, and morality. There are four papers on the war : a picturesque description of Lemnos as it is to-day, interwoven with reminis- cences of its past, from the pen of General MacMunn, D.S.O. ; Mr. Jeffery E. Jeffery's The New " Ubique " : a Battery in Being,' a telling account of a bit of a day's work between the observation post and a battery at the front as it is actually carried out ; a sketch of the work of the " Friends " in France, by Mrs. M. E. Clarke ; and a striking tale called ' The Fear of Fear,' by Mr. Boyd Cable. ' Practical Purpose in Scientific Research,' by Prof. Gregory, tackles with authority and common sense a long-standing and obvious deficiency alike in our theory and practice of science. Mrs. Livingstone Wilson's account of her visit to the monument of her father in North- East Rhodesia, where he died, will certainly be read with great interest.

The Burlington Magazine for March has for frontispiece a reproduction of a drawing hitherto little noticed, from the collection of M. Eugene Rodrigues. Though the familiar monogram is missing, Mr. Campbell Dodgson has no hesitation in assigning this drawing to Diirer ; nor will there be many, we imagine, to disagree with him. Mr. Horatio R. F. Brown notices in a lengthy article Commendatore G. T. Rivoira's recent