Ephemera Critica; Or, Plain Truths About Current Literature

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES [9]

II. TEXT BOOKS

If any proof were needed of what has been insisted on over and over again, that, until the Universities provide adequately for the proper study of English Literature—for the study of it side by side with Classical Literature—there will be small hope of its finding competent critics and interpreters, it would be afforded by the volume before us. For this volume the delegates of the Oxford University Press are responsible; and in allowing it their imprimatur they have been guilty of a very grave error. No such standard of editing would have been tolerated in any other subject in which they undertake to provide books. A work pertaining to Classics, to History, to Philosophy, to Science, marked by corresponding deficiencies, would have been suppressed at once, until those deficiencies had been supplied. To Mr. Rossetti himself we attach no blame. What he was competent to do he has, for the most part, done well and conscientiously,—conscientiously, as may be judged from the fact that, while the poem itself occupies twenty pages in large type, Mr. Rossetti's dissertations and notes occupy one hundred and twenty-eight in small type. It was, indeed, his misfortune, rather than his fault, to be entrusted with a work which required a peculiar qualification, an intimate acquaintance, that is to say, with Classical Literature. That he has no pretension to this is abundantly plain from his Introduction and from every page of his notes.

When one of the Universities undertakes to provide our colleges and schools with comments and notes on a poem so saturated with classicism as Adonais, the least that could be expected from bodies who are, as it were, the guardians of classical literature, is the provision that the classical part of the work should be done at least competently; it would be hardly too much, perhaps, to expect that it should be done excellently. Of this part of Mr. Rossetti's work we scarcely know which are the worse—his sins of commission or his sins of omission. His classical qualifications for commenting on a poem as unintelligible, critically speaking, without constant reference to the Platonic dialogues, particularly to the Symposium and the Timæus, and to the Greek poets, as the Æneid would be without reference to the Homeric poems and the Argonautica of Apollonius, appear to begin and end with some acquaintance with Mr. Lang's version of Bion and Moschus. We will give a few specimens. Mr. Rossetti is greatly puzzled with Shelley's allusion to Urania in stanzas 2 to 4.

"Why out of the nine sisters," he asks, "should the Muse of Astronomy be selected? Keats never wrote about astronomy." Perhaps, he suggests, Shelley was not thinking of the Muse Urania, "but of Aphrodite Urania." Yet, if so, why should she be called "musical"?—a question to be asked, no doubt, as our old friend Falstaff would say. However, after balancing the respective claims of both, he finally comes to the conclusion that the Urania of Adonais is Aphrodite. If Mr. Rossetti had been acquainted with a work to which he never even refers, but which exercised immense influence over Shelley's poem—the Symposium of Plato—it would have saved him two pages of speculation. His ignorance of this is the more surprising as Shelley has himself translated the dialogue. But Mr. Rossetti need not, in this case, have gone so far afield. Has he never read the prologue to the seventh book of Milton's Paradise Lost? In his note on the lines—

it is really pitiable to find him supposing that this is an allusion to "the universal mind," and "the individuated minds which we call human beings," when any schoolboy could have told him that the allusion is, of course, a technical one to the Platonic "forms" or archetypes; while "the power" in stanza 42, the "sustaining love" in stanza 54, and the "one spirit" in stanza 43, are allusions respectively to the Aphrodite Urania in the discourse of Eryximachus in the Symposium, and to the Divine Artificer in the Timæus. And these dialogues form the proper commentary on Shelley's metaphysics in this poem.

Still more extraordinary is Mr. Rossetti's note on "wisdom the mirrored shield"—

(st. 27), which is as follows: "Shelley was, I apprehend, thinking of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto (!). In that poem we read of a magic shield which casts a supernatural and intolerable splendour ... a sea monster, not a dragon, so far as I recollect, becomes one of the victims of the mirrored shield." This slovenly and perfunctory mode of reference is, we may remark in passing, hardly the sort of thing to be expected in works issued from University Presses. We wonder what the Universities would say to an editor of Virgil who, in commenting on some Homeric allusion in his author, contented himself with observing that Virgil "is here thinking of the Iliad," and, "so far as I can recollect," etc. The reference is, we need hardly remark, not to any magic shield in the Orlando, but to the scutum crystallinum of Pallas Athene, as any well-informed fourth-form schoolboy would know. If Mr. Rossetti will turn to Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients, chap. vii., he will find some information on this subject, which may be of use to him, should this work run into a second edition. Take, again, the note on the symbolism of the flowers and cypress cone in stanza 33:—

Here the editor's ignorance of ancient Classical Literature has led him into a whole labyrinth of blunders and misconceptions. "The ivy," he says, "indicates constancy in friendship"! Is it credible that a Clarendon Press editor should be ignorant that ivy—doctarum hederæ præmia frontium—is the emblem of the poet? The violet, he remarks, indicates modesty. It neither indicates, nor can possibly indicate, anything of the kind. Its traditional signification, deduced perhaps from Pliny's remark (Nat. Hist., xxi. c. 38), that it is one of the longest-lived of flowers, is fidelity. But the passage of which Shelley was thinking when he wrote this stanza—a passage to which Mr. Rossetti makes no reference at all, was Hamlet, act iv. sc. 1: "There is pansies that's for thoughts.... I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died." So that it is quite possible that the "faded violets," associated as these flowers are with the Muses and the Graces, merely symbolize the fading and drooping towards what may be further symbolized in the cypress cone,—death. We are by no means sure, however, that the cypress cone does, as Mr. Rossetti remarks, "explain itself." Shelley, assuming he gave the image another application, was doubtless thinking of Silvanus—"teneram ab radice ferens, Silvane, cupressum," Georg. i. 20 (see, too, Spenser's Faerie Queene, I. vi. st. 14), and may possibly have been symbolizing his sympathy with the genius of the woods—have been referring to that "gazing on Nature's naked loveliness," which he describes in stanza 31. In any case, Mr. Rossetti has entirely misinterpreted the meaning of the whole passage.

Wherever classical knowledge is required—as it is in almost every stanza—he either gives no note at all, or he blunders. Thus in stanza 24 he gives no note on the use of the word "secret." In stanza 28 he has evidently not the smallest notion of the meaning of the word "obscene" as applied to ravens. The fine adaptations from Lucretius (II. 578-580) in stanza 21, and again from II. 990-1010 in stanzas 20 and 42; the adaptation from the Agamemnon (49-51) in stanza 17; from the fragments of the Polyidus of Euripides in stanza 39; from the Iliad (vi. 484) in stanza 34; from Theocritus, Idyll., i. 66, and Virg., Ecl., x. 9-10 in stanza 2; and again from Theocritus, Idyll., i. 77 seqq., from which the procession of the mourners is adapted, and on which the whole architecture of the poem is modelled—all these are alike unnoticed. Nor is Mr. Rossetti more fortunate in explaining allusions to passages in other literatures. The adaptation of the sublime passage in Isaiah (xiv. 9, 10), by which one of the finest parts of the poem was suggested, stanzas 45 and 46; the singular reminiscence in stanza 28:—

of Marlowe's Jew of Malta, act ii. sc. 1, where he speaks of the raven which

the obvious reminiscence of Dante, Inf., 44 seqq. in stanza 44; of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, v. 3, which forms the proper commentary on lines 7 and 8 of stanza 3; of none of these is any notice taken. On many important points of interpretation we differ toto cœlo from Mr. Rossetti. The "fading splendour," for example, in stanza 22, cannot possibly mean "fading as being overcast by sorrow and dismay" (cf. stanza 25), it simply means vanishing, receding from sight—a magnificently graphic epithet. Is Mr. Rossetti acquainted with the proleptic use of adjectives and participles? We may add that Mr. Rossetti has not even taken the trouble to ascertain who was the writer of the famous article, of which so much is said both in the preface of the poem and in the poem itself, but "presumes," etc. Et sic omnia. And sic omnia it will inevitably continue to be, until the Universities are prepared to do their duty to education by placing the study of our national Literature on a proper footing.

It is, we repeat, no reproach to Mr. Rossetti, who has distinguished himself in more important studies than the production of scholastic text-books, that he should have failed in an undertaking which happened to require peculiar qualifications. Indeed, our respect for Mr. Rossetti and our sense of his useful services to Belles Lettres would have induced us to spare him the annoyance of an exposure of the deficiencies of this work, had it not illustrated, so comprehensively and so strikingly, the disastrous effects of the severance of the study of English Literature from that of Ancient Classical Literature at our Universities.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES [10]

III. TEXT BOOKS

More than a century and a half has passed since Pope thus expressed himself about philologists,—

We need scarcely say that we have far too much respect for Dr. Aldis Wright and for his distinguished coadjutor to apply such a description as this to them as individuals, for no one can appreciate more heartily than we do their monumental contribution to the textual criticism of Shakespeare, but we can make no such reserve in speaking of this edition of Hamlet. A more deplorable illustration, we do not say of the subjection of Literature to Philology, for that would very imperfectly represent the fact, but of the absolute substitution of Philology, and of Philology in the lowest sense of the term, for Literature it would be impossible to imagine. Had it been expressly designed to prove that its editors were wholly unconscious of the artistic, literary, and philosophical significance of Shakespeare's masterpiece, it could scarcely have taken a more appropriate form.

The volume contains 117 pages of Shakespeare's text, printed in large type; the text is preceded by a preface of twelve pages, and followed by notes occupying no less than 121 pages in very small type; so that the work of the poet stands in pretty much the same relation to that of his commentators as Falstaff's bread stood to his sack. In the case of a play like Hamlet, so subtle, so suggestive, so pregnant with critical and philosophical problems of all kinds, commentary on a scale like this might have been quite appropriate. But in this stupendous mass of exegesis and illustration there is, with the exception of one short passage, literally not a line about the play as a work of art, not a line about its structure and architecture, about its style, about its relations to æsthetic, about its metaphysic, its ethic, about the character of Hamlet, or about the character of any other person who figures in the drama. The only indication that it is regarded in any other light than as affording material for philological and antiquarian discussion is a short quotation, huddled in at the conclusion of the preface, from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and an intimation that "Hamlet's madness has formed the subject of special investigation by several writers, among others by Dr. Conolly and Sir Edward Strachey."

A more comprehensive illustration of the truth of the indictment brought against philologists by Voltaire, Pope, Lessing, and Sainte-Beuve than is supplied by the notes in this volume it would be difficult to find. Dulness, of course, may be assumed, and of mere dulness we do not complain; but a combination of prolixity, irrelevance, and absolute incapacity to distinguish between what to ninety-nine persons in every hundred must be purely useless and what to ninety-nine persons in every hundred is the information which they expect from a commentator, is intolerable. We will give a few illustrations. A plain man or a student for examination comes to these lines:—

and, though he knows what the general sense is wishes to know exactly what Shakespeare means. He turns to the note for enlightenment, and the enlightenment he gets is this:—

"Enginer. Changed in the quarto of 1676 to the more modern form of engineer. Compare Troilus and Cressida ii. 3. 8, "Then there's Achilles a rare enginer." For a cognate form mutiner see note on iii. 4. 83. So we have pioner for pioneer Othello iii. 3. 346. Hoist may be the participle either of the verb 'hoise' or 'hoist.' In the latter case it would be the common abbreviated form for the participles of verbs ending in a dental. Petar. So spelt in the quartos, and by all editors to Johnson, who writes 'petards.' In Cotgrave we have 'Petart: a Petard or Petarre; an Engine (made like a bell or morter) wherewith strong gates,' etc."—

And so the hungry sheep looks up and is not fed. Again, he finds—

turns to the note, and reads:—

"Polacks. The quartos have 'pollax,' the two earliest folios read 'Pollax,' the third 'Polax,' the fourth 'Poleaxe.' Pope read 'Polack' and Malone 'Polacks.' The word occurs four times in Hamlet. For 'the sledded Polacks' Molke reads 'his leaded pole-axe.' But this would be an anticlimax, and the poet, having mentioned 'Norway' in the first clause, would certainly have told us with whom the 'parle' was held."

The poet Young noted how

The Clarendon Press editors are certainly adepts in these accomplishments. Take one out of a myriad illustrations. The line in Act i. sc. 2, "The dead vast and middle of the night," is the signal for a note extending to twelve closely printed lines. "'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart," says Francisco. If any note were needed here, it might have been devoted to pointing out to tiros the fine subjective touch. The note is this:—

"Bitter cold. Here bitter is used adverbially to qualify the adjective 'cold.' So we have 'daring hardy' in Richard II. i. 3. 43. When the combination is likely to be misunderstood, modern editors generally put a hyphen between the two words. Sick at heart. So Macbeth v. 3. 19, 'I am sick at heart.' We have also in Love's Labour's Lost ii. 1. 185, 'sick at the heart,' and Romeo and Juliet iii. 3. 72, 'heart-sick groans.'"

Now let us see how the poor student fares when real difficulties occur. Every reader of Shakespeare is familiar with the corrupt passage, Act iv. sc. 1:—

a passage which, as all Shakespearian scholars know, has been satisfactorily emended and explained. We turn to the notes for guidance, and find ourselves treated as poor Mrs. Quickly was treated by Falstaff, "fubbed off"—thus:—

"We leave this hopelessly corrupt passage as it stands in the two earliest quartos. The others read 'ease' for 'eale,' and modern writers have conjectured for the same word base, ill, bale, ale, evil, ail, vile, lead. For 'of a doubt' it has been proposed to substitute 'of worth out,' 'soul with doubt,' 'oft adopt,' 'oft work out,' 'of good out,' 'of worth dout,' 'often dout,' 'often doubt,' 'oft adoubt,' 'oft delase,' 'over-cloud,' 'of a pound,' and others."

This, it may be added, is the sort of stuff— incredibile dictu—that our children have to get by heart; for this Press, be it remembered, practically controls half the English Literature examinations in England. As students know quite well that nine examiners out of ten will set their questions from "the Clarendon Press notes," it is with "the Clarendon Press notes" that they are obliged to cram themselves. But to continue. Even a well-read man might be excused for not knowing the exact meaning of the following expression:—

He turns to the notes, and having been briefly informed that clepe means "call," and addition "title," is left to flounder with what he can get out of—"Could Shakespeare have had in his mind any pun upon 'Sweyn,' which was a common name of the kings of Denmark?"

Another leading characteristic of the genus philologist, we mean the preposterous importance attached by them to the smallest trifles, finds ludicrous illustration in the following note:—

exclaims Hamlet to his mother. This is the signal for:—

"There is supposed to be a difficulty in these words, because in the earlier scenes the Ghost is in his armour, to which the word 'habit' is regarded as inappropriate. In the earlier form of the play, as it appears in the quarto of 1603, the Ghost enters 'in his nightgowne,' and as the words 'in the habit as he lived' occur in the corresponding passage of that edition, it is probable that on this occasion the Ghost appeared in the ordinary dress of the king, although this is not indicated in the stage directions of the other quartos or of the folios."

As a possible solution of this grave difficulty, we would suggest that, as the Ghost was undoubtedly in a very hot place, he might have found his nightgown less oppressive than his armour, and though it would certainly have been more decorous to have exchanged his nightgown for his uniform on revisiting the earth, yet, as the visit was to his wife, he thought perhaps less seriously about his apparel than our editors have done. We have nothing to warrant us in assuming that he was in his "ordinary dress." The choice must lie between the nightgown and the armour. But a truce to jesting.

If any one would understand the opacity and callousness which philological study induces, we would refer them to the note on Hamlet's last sublime words, "The rest is silence":—

"The quartos have 'Which have solicited, the rest is silence.' The folios, 'Which have solicited. The rest is silence.' 'O, O, O, O. Dyes.' If Hamlet's speech is interrupted by his death it would be more natural that the words 'The rest is silence' should be spoken by Horatio."

We said at the beginning of this article that there was not a word of commentary on the poetical merits of the play. We beg the editors' pardon. They have in one note, and in one note only, ventured on an expression of critical opinion. We all know the lines—

etc., etc. We transcribe the note on this passage that it may be a sign to all men of what Philology is able to effect, an omen and testimony of what must inevitably be the fate of Literature if the direction and regulation of its study be entrusted to philologists:—

"This speech of the Queen is certainly unworthy of its author and of the occasion. The enumeration of plants is quite as unsuitable to so tragical a scene as the description of Dover cliff in King Lear iv. 6. 11-24. Besides there was no one by to witness the death of Ophelia, else she would have been rescued."

As this beggars commentary, transcription shall suffice.

Now we would ask any sensible person who has followed us, we do not say in our own remarks—for they may be supposed to be the expression of biassed opinion—but in the specimens we have given of such an edition as this of Hamlet, and of such an edition as we have just reviewed of Adonais, what is likely to be the fate of English Literature, as a subject of teaching, so long as our Universities ignore their responsibilities as the centres of culture by not only countenancing, but assisting in the production and dissemination of such publications as these? How can we expect anything but anarchy wherever the subject is treated?—there an extreme of flaccid dilettantism, here an extreme of philological pedantry. Conceive the tone and temper which, especially at the impressionable age of the students for whom the book is intended, the study of Shakespeare, under such guides as the editors of this Hamlet, would be likely to induce. Is it not monstrous that young students between the ages of about fifteen and eighteen should have such text books as these inflicted on them?

The radical fault of those who regulate education in our Universities and elsewhere, and prescribe our schoolbooks, is their deplorable want of judgment. They seem to be utterly incapable of distinguishing between what is proper for pure specialists and what is proper for ordinary students. There is not a page in this edition which does not proclaim aloud, that it could never have been intended for the purposes to which it has been applied, that it is the work of technical scholars, concerned only in textual and philological criticism and exegesis, and appealing only to those who approach the study of Shakespeare in the same spirit and from the same point of view. Anything more sickening and depressing, anything more calculated to make the name of Shakespeare an abomination to the youth of England it would be impossible for man to devise. It is shameful to prescribe such books for study in our Schools and Educational Institutes.

OUR LITERARY GUIDES

I. A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE [11]

This Short History is evidently designed for the use of serious readers, for the ordinary reader who will naturally look to it for general instruction and guidance in the study of English Literature, and to whom it will serve as a book of reference; for students in schools and colleges, to many of whom it will, in all likelihood, be prescribed as a textbook; for teachers engaged in lecturing and in preparing pupils for examination. Of all these readers there will not be one in a hundred who will not be obliged to take its statements on trust, to assume that its facts are correct, that its generalizations are sound, that its criticisms and critical theories are at any rate not absurd. It need hardly be said that, under these circumstances, a writer who had any pretension to conscientiousness would do his utmost to avoid all such errors as ordinary diligence could easily prevent, that he would guard scrupulously against random assertions and reckless misstatements, that he would, in other words, spare no pains to deserve the confidence placed in him by those who are not qualified to check his statements or question his dogmas, and who naturally suppose that the post which he occupies is a sufficient guarantee of the soundness and accuracy of his work. But so far from Professor Saintsbury having any sense of what is due to his position and to his readers, he has imported into his work the worst characteristics of irresponsible journalism: generalizations, the sole supports of which are audacious assertions, and an indifference to exactness and accuracy, as well with respect to important matters as in trifles, so scandalous as to be almost incredible.

Sir Thomas More said of Tyndale's version of the New Testament that to seek for errors in it was to look for drops of water in the sea. What was said very unfairly of Tyndale's work may be said with literal truth of Professor Saintsbury's. The utmost extent of the space at our disposal will only suffice for a few illustrations. We will select those which appear to us most typical. In the chapter on Anglo-Saxon literature the Professor favours us with the astounding statement, that in Anglo-Saxon poetry "there is practically no lyric."[12] It is scarcely necessary to say that not only does Anglo-Saxon poetry abound in lyrics, but that it is in its lyrical note that its chief power and charm consists. In the threnody of the Ruin, and the Grave, in the sentimental pathos of the Seafarer, of Deor's Complaint, and of the remarkable fragment describing the husband's pining for his wife, in the fiery passion of the three great war-songs, in the glowing subjective intensity of the Judith, in the religious ecstasy of the Holy Rood and of innumerable passages in the other poems attributed to Cynewulf, and of the poem attributed to Cædmon, deeper and more piercing lyric notes have never been struck. Take such a passage as the following from the Satan, typical, it may be added, of scores of others:—

And this is a poetry which has "practically no lyric"! On page 2 the Professor tells us that there is no rhyme in Anglo-Saxon poetry; on page 18 we find him giving an account of the rhyming poem in the Exeter Book. Of Mr. Saintsbury's method of dealing with particular works and particular authors, one or two examples must suffice. He tells us on page 125 that the heroines in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women are "the most hapless and blameless of Ovid's Heroides." It would be interesting to know what connexion Cleopatra, whose story comes first, has with Ovid's Heroides, or if the term "Heroides" be, as it appears to be, (for it is printed in italics) the title of Ovid's Heroic Epistles, what connexion four out of the ten have with Ovid's work. In any case the statement is partly erroneous and wholly misleading. In the account given of the Scotch poets, the Professor, speaking of Douglas' translation of the Æneid, says, he "does not embroider on his text." This is an excellent illustration of the confidence which may be placed in Mr. Saintsbury's assertions about works on which most of his readers must take what he says on trust. Douglas is continually "embroidering on his text," indeed, he habitually does so. We open his translation purely at random; we find him turning Æneid II. 496-499:—

We open Æneid IX. 2:—

We find it turned:—

We turn to the end of the tenth Æneid and we find him introducing six lines which have nothing to correspond with them in the original. And this is a translator who "does not embroider on his text"! It is perfectly plain that Professor Saintsbury has criticised and commented on a work which he could never have inspected. The same ignorance is displayed in the account of Lydgate. He is pronounced to be a versifier rather than a poet, his verse is described as "sprawling and staggering." The truth is that Lydgate's style and verse are often of exquisite beauty, that he was a poet of fine genius, that his descriptions of nature almost rival Chaucer's, that his powers of pathos are of a high order, that, at his best, he is one of the most musical of poets. We have not space to illustrate what must be obvious to any one who has not gone to encyclopædias and handbooks for his knowledge of this poet's writings, but who is acquainted with the original. It will not be disputed that Gray and Warton were competent judges of these matters, and their verdict must be substituted for what we have not space to prove and illustrate. "I do not pretend," Gray says, "to set Lydgate on a level with his master Chaucer, but he certainly comes the nearest to him of any contemporary writer that I am acquainted with. His choice of expression and the smoothness of his verse far surpass both Gower and Occleve." Of one passage in Lydgate, Gray has observed that "it has touched the very heart strings of compassion with so masterly a hand as to merit a place among the greatest poets."[14] Warton also notices his "perspicuous and musical numbers," and "the harmony, strength, and dignity" of his verses.[15]

Turn where we will we are confronted with blunders. Take the account given of Shakespeare. He began his metre, we are told, with the lumbering "fourteeners." He did, so far as is known, nothing of the kind. Again: "It is only by guesses that anything is dated before the Comedy of Errors at the extreme end of 1594." In answer to this it may be sufficient to say that Venus and Adonis was published in 1593, that the first part of Henry VI. was acted on 3rd March, 1592, that Titus Andronicus was acted on 25th January, 1594, and that Lucrece was entered on the Stationers' books 9th May, 1594. This is on a par with the assertion, on page 315, that Shakespeare was traditionally born on 24th April! On page 320 we are told that Measure for Measure belongs to the first group of Shakespeare's plays, to the series beginning with Love's Labour's Lost and culminating with the Midsummer Night's Dream. It is only fair to say that the Professor places a note of interrogation after it in a bracket, but that it should have been placed there, even tentatively, shows an ignorance of the very rudiments of Shakespearian criticism which is nothing short of astounding. Take, again, the account given of Burke. Our readers will probably think us jesting when we tell them that Professor Saintsbury gravely informs us that Burke supported the American Revolution. Is the Professor unacquainted with the two finest speeches which have ever been delivered in any language since Cicero? Can he possibly be ignorant that Burke, so far from supporting that revolution, did all in his power to prevent it? The whole account of Burke, it may be added, teems with inaccuracies. The American Revolution was not brought about under a Tory administration. What brought that revolution about was Charles Townshend's tax, and that tax was imposed under a Whig administration, as every well-informed Board-school lad would know. Burke did not lose his seat at Bristol owing to his support of Roman Catholic claims. If Professor Saintsbury had turned to one of the finest of Burke's minor speeches—the speech addressed to the electors of Bristol—he would have seen that Burke's support of the Roman Catholic claims was only one, and that not the most important, of the causes which cost him his seat. Similar ignorance is displayed in the remark (p. 629) that "Burke joined, and indeed headed, the crusade against Warren Hastings, in 1788." The prosecution of Warren Hastings was undertaken on Burke's sole initiative, not in 1788, but in 1785. A few lines onwards we are told that the series of Burke's writings on the French Revolution "began with the Reflections in 1790, and was continued in the Letter to a Noble Lord, 1790." A Letter to a Noble Lord had nothing to do with the French Revolution, except collaterally as it affected Burke's public conduct, and appeared, not in 1790, but in 1795.

It seems impossible to open this book anywhere without alighting on some blunder, or on some inaccuracy. Speaking (p. 277) of Willoughby's well-known Avisa, the Professor observes that nothing is known of Willoughby or of Avisa. If the Professor had known anything about the work, he would have known that Avisa is simply an anagram made up of the initial letters of Amans, vxor, inviolata semper amanda, and that nothing is known of Avisa for the simple reason that nothing is known of the site of More's Utopia. On page 360 we are told that Phineas Fletcher's Piscatory Eclogues, which are, of course, confounded with his Sicelides, are a masque; on page 624, but this is perhaps a printer's error, that Robertson wrote a history of Charles I. On page 482, John Pomfret, the author of one of the most popular poems of the eighteenth century, is called Thomas. On page 550, Pope's Moral Essays are described as An Epistle to Lord Burlington, presumably because the last of them, the fourth, is addressed to that nobleman. On page 587 we are told that Mickle died in London: he died at Forest Hill, near Oxford. On page 556 we are informed that Prior was part author of a parody of the "Hind and Panther," and that he was "imprisoned for some years." The work referred to is wrongly described, as it only contained parodies of certain passages in Dryden's poem, and he was in confinement less than two years. On page 358, Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, is actually described as the son of Æneas. If Professor Saintsbury were as familiar as he affects to be with Geoffrey of Monmouth, with Layamon and with the early metrical romances, he would have known that Brutus is fabled to have been the son of Sylvius, the son of Ascanius, and, consequently, the great-grandson of Æneas. Many of the Professor's critical remarks can only be explained on the supposition that he assumes that his readers will not take the trouble to verify his references or question his dogmas. We will give one or two instances. On page 468, speaking of seventeenth-century prose, he says, with reference to Milton: "The close of the Apology itself is a very little, though only a very little, inferior to the Hydriotaphia." By the Apology he can only mean the Apology for Smectymnuus, for the defence of the English people is in Latin. Now, will our readers credit that one of the flattest, clumsiest and most commonplace passages in Milton's prose writings, as any one may see who turns to it, is pronounced "only a little inferior" to one of the most majestically eloquent passages in our prose literature. That our readers may know what Professor Saintsbury's notions of eloquence are, we will transcribe the passage:

"Thus ye have heard, readers, how many shifts and wiles the prelates have invented to save their ill-got booty. And if it be true, as in Scripture it is foretold, that pride and covetousness are the sure marks of those false prophets which are to come, then boldly conclude these to be as great seducers as any of the latter times. For between this and the judgment day do not look for any arch deceivers who, in spite of reformation, will use more craft or less shame to defend their love of the world and their ambition than these prelates have done. And if ye think that soundness of reason or what force of argument so ever shall bring them to an ingenuous silence, ye think that which shall never be. But if ye take that course which Erasmus was wont to say Luther took against the pope and monks: if ye denounce war against their riches and their bellies, ye shall soon discern that turban of pride which they wear upon their heads to be no helmet of salvation, but the mere metal and hornwork of papal jurisdiction; and that they have also this gift, like a certain kind of some that are possessed, to have their voice in their bellies, which, being well drained and taken down, their great oracle, which is only there, will soon be dumb, and the divine right of episcopacy forthwith expiring will put us no more to trouble with tedious antiquities and disputes."

And this is "a very little, only a very little, inferior," to the "Hydriotaphia"!

On page 652, Swift's style, that perfection of simple, unadorned sermo pedestris—is described as marked by "volcanic magnificence." On page 300 Hooker is described as "having an unnecessary fear of vivid and vernacular expression." Vivid and vernacular expression is, next to its stateliness, the distinguishing characteristic of Hooker's style. It would be interesting to know what is meant by the remark on page 445 that Barrow's style is "less severe than South's." Another example of the same thing is the assertion on page 517 that Joseph Glanville is one of "the chief exponents of the gorgeous style in the seventeenth century." Very 'gorgeous' the style of the Vanity of Dogmatizing, of its later edition the Scepsis Scientifica, of the Sadducismus Triumphatus, of the Lux Orientalis, and of the Essays!

Indeed, the Professor's critical dicta are as amazing as his facts. We have only space for one or two samples. Cowley's Anacreontics are "not very far below Milton"(!) Dr. Donne was "the most gifted man of letters next to Shakespeare." Where Bacon, where Ben Jonson, where Milton are to stand is not indicated. Akenside's stilted and frigid Odes "fall not so far short of Collins." We wonder what Mr. Saintsbury's criterion of poetry can be. But we forget, with that criterion he has furnished us. On page 732, speaking of "a story about a hearer who knew no English, but knew Tennyson to be a poet by the hearing," he adds that "the story is probable and valuable, or rather invaluable, for it points to the best if not the only criterion of poetry." And this is a critic! We would exhort the Professor to ponder well Pope's lines: