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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 s. v. MAY 20, 1000.
Mr. Everard Home Coleman, and many other sup-
porters of * N. & Q.' The work appears quarterly,
and contains much matter of interest to dwellers
in St. Pancras. Like many similar productions it
trenches upon our province. Space, however, is
lacking to deal in * N. & Q.' with many matters
that appear in local productions of the sort, and we
give each and all an introduction and a welcome.
A SERIES of "Popular Stories in Mythology, Romance, and Folk-lore" is being issued by Mr. David Nutt at sixpence each. Their value must not be gauged by the price. No. 5, by Mr. Charles J. Billson, M.A., deals with The Popular Poetry of the Finns, a subject that has inspired much interest since the formation, in 1831, of the Finnish Literary Society. No. 6, by Mr. Alfred Nutt, deals with The Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, a subject pre- viously treated by Halliwell-Phillipps in his ' Illus- trations of the Fairy Mythology 01 Shakespeare,' one of the publications of the Shakespeare Society. Mr. Nutt's work is an important contribution to comparative folk-lore, and is followed by a short bibliography of the subject.
THE stress of politics and what are called imperial questions shows itself in the Quarterly Review as much as elsewhere ; one-half of the articles in the present issue are what we hope we may be per- mitted to describe as of a non-literary character. That on the Duke of Wellington, which is mainly a review of Sir Herbert Maxwell's ' Life,' stands mid- way between the past and the present. It is power- fully written, but we do not think it gives a fair picture. Of the duke's merits as a soldier there can be no two opinions, and as to his narrowness of view in home concerns there is now, we believe, pretty well unanimity of opinion ; but these things being granted it by no means follows that his nature was intrinsically hard in other relations. That he had great faults of character we must admit. He did not shine as a family man in relation either to his wife or his children, but his general coldness and reserve have, we believe, been much exaggerated, and due allowance has not been made for the in- fluence of his solitary greatness on the manifestation of his character. In his position familiarity with any one was almost impossible. The singular relation in which he stood to royalty and successive Prime Ministers precluded almost entirely those intimate personal friendships which come naturally to most of us. Under other circumstances, we may well believe, a far different side of character would have become manifest, but this is perhaps only saying in other words that in such a case he must have possessed a different class of faculties from those with which we know him to have been en- dowed. John Ruskin forms the subject of a very good article. It is fair and not unduly laudatory. We are glad that the writer fully appreciates that marvellous prose style which has assuredly never been surpassed in English literature. At a time when external pressure was brought to bear, even more forcibly than it is now, to induce men to write badly, Ruskin set a noble example by always giving to the world the best work of which he was capable. 'Tolstoi's Views of Art' will come as a revelation to the many people who are quite ignorant of the strange eddies which occur from time to time in the literature of some of our continental neighbours. We poor simple souls have been content to think that nowadays it is only religious fanatics of the lower sort who wish to wage war on things beau-
tiful. Here, it seems, a mistake has been made
which under certain conditions might lead to grave
results. Art, in the only sense in which the term
can now be rightly used, includes the production of
beauty in every form ; of this there exists here, as
elsewhere in some quarters, a hatred which if not
dangerous is, to say the least, exasperating. The
strange thing about it is that we find it to a far less
extent among those who live by the labour of their
bands than in the classes above them. It has so
often been assumed as to have become a common-
place of conversation, that the lowest point Eng-
land ever reached in this respect was somewhere
about the middle of the last century. This opinion,
we would suggest, is founded on too circumscribed
an outlook. We think that if literature be left out
the darkest time was the period between the battle
of Waterloo and the accession of Queen Victoria.
The paper entitled ' Churchmen, Scholars, and
Gentlemen' is a telling sketch of some eminent
clergymen of the Church of England who have been
our contemporaries. It is laudatory as a matter
of course, but, on the whole, not unduly so. No
partiality is shown. The personal convictions of
the writer are not indicated. There is also a short,
but appreciative account of the late Mr. Whitwell
Elwin, a former editor, who entered into rest a
short time ago.
COL. CHARLES THOMAS JOHN MOORE, C.B.,F.S.A., J.P., D.L., one of the best known of the Lincoln- shire landed gentry, died after a lingering illness at his residence, Frampton Hall, Boston, on the 17th inst., in his seventy- third year. He raised the Royal South Lincoln Regiment from fifty inefficients to a band of a thousand strong. For many years he was a correspondent of 'N. & Q.,' chiefly on heraldic and genealogical matters.
to
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B. (" Doctrine of Previous Existence"). Look up the Platonic doctrine of Reminiscence and the com- mentators thereon.
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