)> S. I. MAY 28, '98. ]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
421
LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1898.
CONTENTS. -No. 22.
>TBS : Historic Perspective. 421-Shakspeariana, 422- Jarrel of Gunpowder as a Candlestick Russian Cage-birds et Free, 423 Ringers' Articles Siamese Names Dr. T. Rutherfortb English Doorway, 424 "To^Chi-ike" New- ingt,on Causeway Author of 'Sylvan Sketches,' 425 Riding the Marches "The echoes of Ben Nevis" ' Jonkanoo" Rosalie Curchod, 426.
QUERIES: Honest: Honestly Arms of the See of Wor- cester Aldridge, co. Stafford Pownalls, 427 Goethe's Mason-Lodge' Jasper Cleiton Church Tradition Cromwell Epitaph ' Reading Mercury 'Nathan Todd, 428 Col. Robert Scott General Benedict Arnold Hyde Arms of Slaiie Authors Wanted, 429.
REPLIES : " Harry-carry," 429 Short a v. Italian a, 430 City Names in Stow's Survey ' Punch Windward and Leeward Islands "The Hempsheres," 431 Mendoza Nursery Lore Hugh Massey Du Plessy Battle-axes, 432 King James I." On his own" Swansea English Grammar 'The Colleen Bawn,' 433 "Dargle" " Mari- fer" Slaughter, 434" The defects of his qualities "San Lanfranco Bath Apple Archer Bacon" Dawkum" Motto of the College of Surgeons, 435 Arms of De Kelly- grew Gladstone Bibliography Sentence in Westcott "Hoast": "Whoost" John Loudoun Oriel=Hall Royal Samuel Ireland. 436 " Hamish " Rev. John Logan- Inventories of Church Goods " Merry " Boulter Port Arthur, 437 Major Longbow Robespierre and Curran " A crow to pluck with," 438.
NOTES ON BOOKS: Beazley's 'John and Sebastian Cabot' Arnold's 'Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey,' Vol. III. Moss's 'Folk-lore* Russell's 'Sonnets on the Sonnet 'Allen's ' Ambassadors of Commerce.'
Notices to Correspondents.
HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE.
' We are too close to see in accurate vision either of these men [Carlyle and Ruskin]. We lack the perspective of time."
These words, which suit me admirably as a text for what follows, are dislodged (not abruptly, I trust) from their context, which is a readable ' Bibliographical Biography ' of the second -named writer penned in 1879 by Mr. W. E. A. Axon. I select them in prefer- ence to others because of their concise ex- pression of a thought which I have long regarded as inaccurate. Historic perspective, or "the perspective of time," as applied to persons and periods, is to me a sheer literary fallacy. The process is as radically false as an inverted telescope with equal results. It narrows the view to vanishing point, the sole merit of which is concentration, but at the price both of clearness and accuracy. "Accurate vision" is possible only in the foreground whether of scenery or history. " Time has a strange contracting influence on many a widespread fame," wrote Carlyle C Essays,' vol. i. p. 18), whereas expansion is the attribute of the present. If their con- temporaries have no " accurate vision " of the doers of deeds and the makers of thought,
will it be found in the discoloured medium
and dim remoteness of that which is proverbi-
ally untrustworthy? Will generations yet
unborn be better able to gauge the character
and genius of Kuskin and Gladstone than
they who have lived and moved and had
their being with them? Ditto of current
events. Will any historian of the future
judge more soundly or narrate more accurately
the causes and incidents and issues of the
Crimean War than Kinglake 1 And if current
events be (as they sometimes are) alarmingly
distorted and living celebrities misjudged,
is the treacherous "perspective of time" or
history likely to give the world a presentment
of both nearer the truth ? The tardy recog-
nition of merit is altogether different from a
correct or incorrect estimate of it. Byron
and Keats both suffered from the former, but
none save the wilfully perverse denied the
genius of either. And so of Browning and
Meredith. Who questions their power or
fails to appreciate their talent, though their
sentences be of tenest like the Delphic Oracles
in mystery 1 And will the twenty-first cen-
tury read their lines with less difficulty or
belaud what it cannot understand more
loudly than the nineteenth 1 More likely it
will relegate them (though unfairly), by the
contraction of perspective, to the limbo of
things unreadable. Tasso, to go further
afield, may have been, to use Lamartine's
phrase, " bafoue jusque dans son genie," and
Dante expelled from Florence "nell' mezzo
cammin di sua vita," and Victor Hugo ex-
patriated for years ; but they were neverthe-
less prophets, if not in their own country,
certainly in tneir own times. And Tennyson
and Goethe, will posterity bid them climb to
a higher gradient up the slopes of Parnassus
than that which they have already reached ?
I doubt it. No ; the verdict of the future is
passed by a jury utterly incapable of viewing
a case except through partj^- tinted lenses and
furnished only with fragments of evidence
upon which to base it. Distance lends eri-
cnantment or disenchantment to a view
which never possessed either; judgment is
given upon mutilated documents or personal
bias. Of such is the making of history.
Gibbon, Macaulay, Freeman, and Lecky are
samples in point; McCarthy's 'History of
our Times ' witnesses for the plaintiff. One
such volume is worth, in point of accuracy, a
whole library of the former. I am not over
hopeful, however desirous, of winning many
proselytes to my theory, and so shall cease to
dilate my phylacteries further ; the rather
am I in plight to call into being a swarm of
literary wasps about my path. Whichever it