Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/386

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NOTES AND QUERIES.


12 S. I. MAY 6, 1916.


OUT of sixteen papers The Fortnightly Review for May gives four to literature and one to a quasi- historical study of men and manners. This last is by Mr. T. H. S. Escott, has as its centre Disraeli's Marquis of Abergavenny, and furnishes some lively passages of Victorian political gossip. * Two Unpublished Essays by A. C. Swinburne ' form the most remarkable of the literary items. The one is on Marlowe in relation to Greene, Peele, and Lodge, and is, Mr. Edmund Gosse informs us, the last finished prose composition of Swinburne's. It is genuine Swinburne his vituperative power, not indeed at its highest known vibration, but energetic and characteristic none the less : his view of Mar- lowe what we already know : his discrimination of merit, as so often, less striking but far more inter- esting than his hurling about of opprobrious adjec- tives. The other is a critical monograph on Thomas Nabbes, which should certainly be made a note of "by students of the sub-Shakespearian drama. Mr. W. J. Lawrence, in a most interesting paper on the Elizabethan theatre, shows good reason against most stage antiquaries for believing that towards the second quarter of the seventeenth century the public theatres, competing with the more luxurious private houses, began to be entirely roofed in. Mrs. armichael Stopes adds to her many services to the memory of Shakespeare what she calls a clearing away from it of cobwebs the old, more or less discreditable traditions, that is, which, picturesquely perhaps, but unfairly, hang about the common notion of him. In one particular (and this expression is not meant to exclude the rest) we feel pretty sure she is right : it was indeed a crass stupidity to misrepresent poor Thomas Whittington's 40s. "in the hand of Anne Shake- speare " as having necessarily been a loan to her and not, as common sense and experience suggest, a deposit with her. Mr. Arthur Waugh writes on 4 The New Realism ' with a sympathetic eloquence which is attractive, but without sufficient back- bone of theory which circumstance makes his remarks less profitable than they might have been.

THE new Nineteenth Century ranges over many fields, and contains one article which should be of capital interest to readers of 'N. & Q.' the admirable account, that is, given by the Dean of Wells of the data available for reconstructing the early career of John Cumin, Archbishop of Dublin. Historical scholars of no mean standing have rather hastily put Cumin down as a monk of Evesham Abbey, whereas there is abundant evidence to show that he was a busy man of the world, very active with Emperor and Pope on his King's behalf for many years before his consecration as Archbishop. ' Fighting in Flanders in 1793-4 ' is the diary of Charles Hotham of the Coldstream Guards a very full and careful and keen account of military operations in which the writer took part, on the interest of which it is hardly necessary to expatiate. These pages are contributed and prefaced by Mrs. Stirling. Mr. P. P. Howe writes in a lively strain on aspects of Germany and of warfare generally as presented, a few years later on, to Crabb Robinson at Frankfort-on-Mam. Lord Cromer, taking Prof. Vaughan's recent work as a basis, has a vigorous article on Rousseau, which is valuable as adding to the academic estimate of Rousseau's significance for civilization that of a trained man of the world. Not that there eeems to be any great definable difference between


the two. We should think a good number of readers will turn first, as we did ourselves, to Sir Oliver Lodge's paper on * A Classical Death Phantom.' We fear they will meet with a dis- appointment.

THE May Gornhill opens with an article by Lady Wilson upon ' The Crown Prince of Germany! * The writer saw something of the Prince in India, and travelled with him on a P. & O. liner from India to Port Said. There is a charming little episode illustrating his sympathy with children, and his " unaffected kindness and great simplicity " are mentioned with praise ; the rest of his portrait is chiefly remarkable for such stupidity, fiightiness, and inconsequence as must be truly maddening to those about him. Admiral Sir Albert Markharu gives a welcome sketch though hardly a complete one, even judged as an outline of the late Sir Clements Markham. Mr. G. W. E. Russell has a vigorously written and interesting paper on 'Miss Jenkins and the Duke,' intended to correct im- pressions possibly made by Dr. Fitchett's article on the same subject in the January CornhilL The tendency is to belittle Miss J. and to throw ridicule on the rather heavy admiration which has been expressed in some quarters for the curious relations between these two strangely assorted persons. The difficulty about the line of minimizing the esteem due to Miss J. is that the Duke thereby becomes more incomprehensible than ever. On the war the principal article is Mr. J. R. M. Macdonald's description of an English hospital in France for the French wounded ; and there is an attractive English version, in irregular rhythm and rime, of a voung French soldier's account of the charge of Notre Dame de Lprette, where he was wounded, written out in this fashion by Evelyn St. Leger.


The Athenceum now appearing monthly, arrange- ments have been made whereby advertisements of posts vacant and wanted, \vhich it is desired to publish weekly, may appear in the intervening weeks in ' N. & Q..'


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