Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/534

440 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. ix. NOV. 26 , 1921. philosophy can be concentrated upon a hyphen presents itself as a sort of parallel to the now out- of-date problem about the number of angels that could stand on a needle's point. The man whose hyphens neither crop up in wrong places nor fail to appear where they are wanted is proved thereby to be a thinker of some discern- ment. What confusion the hyphen may make when in the hands of a careless writer Mr. Fowler demonstrates by numerous amusing examples. From most of the errors pilloried a little con- sideration and common sense would have been sufficient defence ; but there are many cases when these will pronounce uncertainly, and one must then fall back on rule and principle. Mr. Fowler proposes to recognize four main functions of the hyphen. The most interesting is its use to indicate a transition stage in the formation of a single word from two separate words which, when left apart, mean, or may mean, something different from the idea conveyed by their com- bination. The true note of such a word in transition is to be found in its accent. The rela- tion of the hyphen to speech forms, indeed, one of the most interesting lines of thought in this essay. We would recommend it as a most useful practical guide on a question which has a distinct importance for the conservation and the develop- ment of pure English. The second article on " shall " and " will," " should " and " would " is so full, and the examples given both so clear and so various that we believe any English person who gives his mind to it will be safe as to this difficulty for the rest of his life. The Year's Work in English Studies. Edited for the English Association by Sir Sidney Lee. (London : Humphrey Milford. 6s. net.) THE English Association is much to be con- gratulated on the publication of this first volume of a proposed annual survey of English studies that for the year November, 1919 November, 1920. The design had been conceived before the outbreak of the war, but had to wait till the peace for its fulfilment. ' The Year's Work in Classical Studies,' published by the Classical Association since 1906, may be pointed to as one illustration of the value of such a record as this. The writers whose help Sir Sidney Lee has enlisted each well known to students of his or her several period or department of English have very successfully fallen in with the general plan, and furnish together an appreciative, but critical, review of a year's work which, if it contains little of outstanding or epoch-making merit, yet amply testifies to the vitality on some lines one might almost say the exuberance of the interest in English letters. Mr. Montague Summers had in appearance one of the easiest, in fact perhaps the most difficult, of these divisions allotted to him that on the Nineteenth Century and after. He delivers himself on a variety of topics with great skill, acumen, and verve (even to the point of charging one writer with " diabolic nonsense "), and readers in search of a competent resurn^ of modern literary work will find him of value. Sir Sidney Lee himself tackles most of the books on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Drama. Here Mr. Bay field's theory of Shake- speare's versification comes in for examination as it has already done in Professor Dewar's article on General Works. It finds but little favour with either authority, though the care with which it has been worked out and its abundant illustration are justly recognized. The eighteenth-century book of most import- ance is Mr. Paget Toynbee's ' Supplement to the Letters of Horace Walpole ' : of this and of several interesting studies on minor characters, or minor aspects of greater characters, Dr. Edith Morley writes very well. Mr. Montague Summers discusses the books on the Restoration ; and Dr. Edith Wardale and Miss M. L. Lee respectively deal with Anglo-Saxon and Middle English studies, in both of which the year brought two or three works of real importance. A History of the Last Hundred Days of English Freedom. By William Cobbett. With an Introduction by J. L. Hammond. (London, The Labour Publishing Company, 5s.) THESE letters, which first appeared in The Weekly Political Register during the summer of 1817, are among the most characteristic of Cobbett's writings. His present editor claims for him the especial praise of wisdom. We should hesitate to call wisdom an unusual sense for fact, for reality, which enabled a man to see more clearly than most people the existence and working of wrongs and dangers without supplying any suggestions towards construction and remedy. Apart from this Mr. Hammond gives a fair and stimulating account of Cobbett and his position. A biogra- phical index gives some help towards understand- ing the letters, but we think that most of the readers whom this edition is intended to reach would have welcomed either a few judicious historical notes on the text, or, better still, an explanatory essay on the political situation in 1817. to EDITORIAL communications should be addressed to " The Editor of ' Notes and Queries ' " Adver- tisements and Business Letters to "The Pub- lishers " at the Office, Printing House Square, London, E.C.4 ; corrected proofs to The Editor, ' N. & Q.,' Printing House Square, London, E.C.4. 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