60
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. JULY 15, wie.
The Numbered Sections in Old English Poetical
MSS. By Henry Bradley. From the Proceed-
ings of the British Academy. (Published for the
British Academy : Humphrey Milford, Is. Qd.)
A CURIOUS feature of Old English narrative poems "in MS. is the division of the text into sections which, in ' Beowulf ' and in some other cases, do not always correspond with natural divisions in the sense. The sections are marked by roman numerals, and by the occurrence of a word in capitals. Already, in his article on 'Beowulf in 'The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' Dr. Bradley had conjectured that these numbered sections might correspond to numbered loose sheets from which 'the scribe who wrote the codex copied. There is certainly no difficulty in seeing that the repro- duction of this tale of divisions might be useful in several ways.
In the article before us Dr. Bradley takes leaf by leaf, line by line, the Old English poems in which this numbering occurs, and the result of this examination, and explication of the evidence thus brought together, is indisputably to transform the original conjecture into a well-proved con- elusion. It will be gathered that this is a critical > paper of real importance.
There arises, naturally, the further interesting question as to whether the writing on the loose sheets may be taken as the original autograph of the author of the poem. In the four poems dealt with here the paraphrase of Genesis, the translation of the Old Saxon ' Paradise Lost,' the ' Exodus,' and Cynewulf 's ' Elene ' Dr. Bradley has demonstrated the astonishing uniformity as to quantity of matter sheet by sheet throughout each several poem. He also points out that each sheet, almost without an exception, finishes with a full stop at the end of a verse. He cannot well be wrong in the opinion that only the original author could have brought this to pass; and that the measure of his sheet was taken by the poet as a structural measure in the composition of nis poem. As he truly says, this is not a more strictly ^mechanical method of construction than many which poets have resorted to ; it must, in fact, in itself have been considerably easier to manage than a sequence of sonnets. Dr. Bradley sees in this an additional reason for refusing to attribute the paraphrase of Genesis to Caedmon an attribution which has lately been attempted afresh.
In conclusion we may utter a word of gratitude for the lucid and attractive way in which matters, dry and technical despite their great interest, are here set before us.
The Church Bell* of Lancashire. Part I. The Hundreds of West Derby and Leyland. By F. H. Cheetham. (Manchester, Richard Gill, 3*. 6rf. net.)
THIS reprint from the Transactions of the Lanca- shire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society gives us alphabets of the places within these two hundreds where are to be found churches built before 1800, or bells made before that date. All the bells of the pre nineteenth - century churches are carefully described : their inscriptions are given in full, and, in the case of the more interesting examples, in facsimile ; matters relating to the bells from the parish accounts and other original sources are lavishly supplied. Mr. Cheetham prefaces each alphabet with a general introduction about the bells
of the hundred, adding to that for West Derby
notes on the different bell-founders with whose
work he conies to deal. Only 50 copies of this
reprint are to be sold, and are to be obtained of
the author at 53 Walnut Street, Southport. Lovers
of the subject who have not seen this excellent
piece of work in its original form may be glad to
know where to obtain it.
THE July number of The Burlington Magazine has for frontispiece a reproduction of the ' Adora- tion of the Magi ' by Bramantino, one of the few pictures belonging to the Layard bequest which have recently been placed on exhibition at the National Gallery. It is an early work, Mr. Tancred Borenius agreeing with P'rof. Suida in fixing its date shortly before the year 1500. Mr. O. C. Gangoly follows with an article on Southern Indian lamps, accompanied by two pages of photographs of these elaborate works of art, which are used as personal votive offerings to the deities in Hindu worship. Mr. Lionel Gust discusses and reproduces the portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, recently secured by the National Portrait Gallery. This portrait is, he thinks, based upon a drawing probably by Francis Clouet, and represents, therefore, an early period in the life of the unfortunate Queen. Mr. Robert Boss has an article on the frescoes on the walls of the Buddhist cave temple at Ajanta, and repro- duces some of the copies taken in 1909-11 by Lady Herringham and her assistants, and now published by the India Society. He is rather inclined to consider these frescoes over-estimated as works of art, and casts some doubt on Lady Herringham's claim for them of primitive origin. Mr. Archibald G. B. Russell writes on heraldry in connexion with the exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Mr. C. Stanley Clarke illustrates some fine specimens of Dravidian swords, selected from the collection lent by Lord Kitchener to the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum. These splendid weapons represent an art now practically extinct in India, though in 1889 Mr. E. B. Ha veil reported the finding of three of the hereditary ironsmiths at Sivaganga in Madura.
The Athenaeum now appearing monthly, arrange- ments have been made whereby advertisements of posts vacant and wanted, which it is desired to publish weekly, may appear in the intervening weeks in *N. & Q."
Y. T. Forwarded.
MRS. E. C. WIENHOLT. Forwarded to B. B. MR. W. R. WILLIAMS. Forwarded to MAJOR LESLIE.
H. K. ST. J. S. ('Shakespeare's Falcon Crest' ante, p. 35). MR. A. R. BAYLEY is grateful for the j passages in Tennyson where that poet makes the , falcon feminine.
MR. AXEURIN WILLIAMS (" Wordsworth's friend
Jones "). Some correspondence on this subject will
be found at 11 S. vi. 55 and 211. At the latter refer-
j ence is an account of Jones from the pen of our
| valued and lamented correspondent W. P.
I COURTNEY.
