120
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. i. FEB. 5, mo.
Mr. Belloc in ' The Strain of Transition ' points
out that the conditions of England make the
adoption of Tariff Reform dangerous, owing to
the amount and nature of our imports. Mr.
Edward Salmon, writing on ' The Peers as
Democrats,' ventures the opinion that " five-
sixths of them are among the best intellects
in the land." Mr. Salmon's ideas of intellect must
be extraordinary. Meredith's ' Celt and Saxon '
is advanced to the sixth chapter. In 'The
Responsibility of Authors,' an address to the
Authors' Club on December 20th, Sir Oliver
Lodge deals with the censorship assumed by
the Libraries, the general pessimism as to litera-
ture, &c. ' Mrs. Julia Ward Howe,' by Con-
stance E. Maud, gives a pleasant view of the
veteran Suffragist, who is sbill active and alert
at the age of ninety. ' Greece : Renaissance or
Revolution ? ' by Mr. Spencer Campbell, resolves
itself largely into an apologia for the King and
Crown Prince. Of the former we read : "Nobly
and unostentatiously he has been making the
most of his family connexions." It is a pity that
the writer lacks a negative sense of humour.
Dr. Stanley Lane-Poole writes on ' The Alleged
Marriage of Swift and Stella,' in which he does not
Relieve. The paper is ingenious, and makes out
as good a case as can be made ; but it contains
suppositions as to motives and feelings which
cannot be regarded as certain. As far as our
present evidence goes we regard the question as
insoluble. In ' The Hugo Legend ' Mr. Francis
Gribble makes a bitter expose of Victor Hugo's
doings and inventions. Like Balzac, he de-
clared himself of better family than he was ;
and when his wife was alive he shared his life with
her and a show girl from the theatres of no
Teputation. So great, however, was his mastery
of the romantic that he succeeded in regarding,
and making others regard, his proceedings as
worthy of a sublime genius. Katharine Tynan's
article on ' Francis Thompson ' appears to us to be
a little belated. It says much with which all
lovers of true poetry must agree, and we only pro-
test against the affected style in which the lady
writes. This preciosity is more likely to keep
iovers of English from reading Thompson than
recommend him to the wider circle he deserves.
The Rev. E. H. R. Tatham has in ' Some Un-
published Letters of W. S. Landor ' given us a
great deal of genuine interest, especially in
literary criticism. Landor wrote these letters to
Walter Birch, a scholar and contemporary of
his at Rugby. Landor's writing is always
'vigorous, and here he shows a taste in advance of
his age, though he strangely depreciates the work
of Plato, and seems to consider the style of Aris-
totle excellent. He is a great admirer of
Cicero, and of Genoa and Bath as magnificent
cities.
IN The Cornhill Magazine Bishop Welldon has a fine tribute to the virtues of ' The Late Provost of Eton,' his old head master. Mrs. Violet Jacob's verse, ' The Howe o' the Mearns,' is a pretty piece of Kincardineshire dialect. Mr. A. C. Benson writes a plea for ' Humanistic Education without Latin,' which is worth con- sidering. At the same time we may point out that his experience as a reader of essays of the history men of his college does not go very far. We know of very different results taken from a larger field. There will be general agreement, perhaps,
among those interested in education that too
many subjects are squeezed, into the curriculum
a superfluity, which ends in no secure grasp of
anything. ' Ower Young to Marry Yet ' is a
pretty story by Miss Jane Findlater. Mr. C. R. L.
Fletcher makes fun of ' The Lord Mayor's Visit to
Oxford in 1826 ' and the pomposities of diction
which it produced. An historical article of
interest, as somewhat off the ordinary lines, is
' The Life and Destinies of Magister Laukhard,' by
the Rev. A. T. S. Goodrick. Laukhard was a
soldier in the campaign of the Duke of Brunswick
against France in 1792, and took part in the
retreat from Valmy. He was meant for a clergy-
man, which he finally became, and few records can
be more extraordinary than his own account of
his vagabondage. The impudence with which lie
deceived people of all sorts carried him through
difficulties which would have daunted any
ordinary man, and his writing is evidently of the
vivid and frank sort which tells us much of a
vagabond life. ' More Humours of Clerical Life,'
by the Rev. S. F. L. Bernays, introduces us to
some amusing stories, and some sensible reflec-
tions, especially as to the frequent misunder-
standing of long words and rounded phrases by
a section of the listeners to political speakers or
preachers. We have ourselves heard a preacher
in a small rural parish refer to Rationalistic
writers as " our friend the enemy," which a lady of
cultivation in the axidience took to mean the
Devil. ' The Ghost in the House,' by Mr. Austin
Philips, is an effective short story concerned,
not with a supernatural visitant, but a man who
publishes his own work as belonging to another.
10
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A. MORELLI ("Mitred Abbots"). See the lists at 10 S. x. 455 ; xi. 16, 117.
CoRRK4ENDUM. Ante, p. 76, col. 2, line 20, for "Canon Ellacombe's" read Johnson's.
