prisonment. "Even," she said, "if you tear me limb from limb, and even if you kill me, I will not tell you anything further. And even were I forced to do so, I should afterwards declare that it was only because of the torture that I had spoken differently."
But when fear failed, fraud succeeded. Just what happened at the stake, where Joan was persuaded to make what was proclaimed by the English to be a recantation, it is difficult to decide. De Quincey vehemently rejects the "calumny," as he calls it. Michelet believes that she tried to save her life; "whether she said the word, is uncertain; but I affirm that she thought it," is his phrase. But Michelet had his own theories of women, which it was necessary to his peace of mind that he should support in the case of every woman; and a little twisting was sometimes necessary. It appears from obtainable evidence that Joan,—how worked upon, who shall say?—did put her mark to something that day in the square at Rouen, when she was brought to the stake and taken away. In view of her courage before and of her fortitude afterward, the most likely solution is that she was as much tricked as bullied into an abjuration that she only half comprehended. Certain it is that she seems to have believed herself to have only promised to abandon her man's dress and to submit herself to the will of the church. Cochon's plot appears the more atrocious the more it is investigated. The unfortunate girl protected her modesty at the cost of her life. She resumed the man's dress that she was forbidden to wear; and whether the danger were real, or only a base threat, it was equally efficacious. Joan was brought before her judges. She admitted that she had seen her supernatural guides, that they had told her that she had "commited a bad deed" in denying what she had done. "Then," cried the bishop, "you retract your abjuration?" "It was," said Joan—and this is the clearest testimony we have on the vexed subject—"it was from the fear of being burnt that I retracted what I had done; but I never intended to deny or revoke my voices." And when Cochon asked her if she no longer dreaded being burnt, she answered, "I had rather die than endure any longer what I have now to undergo." Whereupon Cochon fared gaily to Warwick and said to him in English, "You can dine now with a good appetite. We have caught her at last." On the 30th of May, 1431,—the next day but one,—Joan of Arc met her dreadful fate. She died with a patience and constancy—the first natural recoil past—that affected even her judges and made an indelible impression on the weeping spectators. And not only on the spectators: the imagination of France has never been more deeply stirred. Twenty years later, the French clergy, after a solemn trial, rehabilitated the memory of Joan. Her family was ennobled, and monuments were erected by the king to the giver of his crown: a tardy justice, to which, however, was added what Joan would have valued more than all—the enduring love of her countrymen.
Lord Gower's book is printed and illustrated sumptuously; the etched illustrations of the scenes of the story being supplied by Mr. Lee Latrobe Bateman, who made the sketches from the spot during a pious journey which Lord Ronald and he made together to the scenes of Joan's life. It is seldom, I may add, that one leaves a work of history with a feeling of more confidence in the research, judgment, and conscientious fidelity of the historian.
Briefs on New Books.
Studies of the Greek Poets.The two volumes of "Studies of the Greek Poets," by the late J. A. Symonds, have just been reissued in a stately third edition (Macmillan), with a few changes from earlier forms of the text. Of these changes, the only one at all noteworthy is the new chapter upon the recently discovered mimes of Herondas, which includes long translated passages. The chapters have been arranged in a better chronological order than before, some further translations have been inserted, and an occasional footnote appended. In one of these foot-notes, the author gives his reasons for not re-casting more fully the text of the work. "Owing to the way in which they were first composed, it is impossible to avoid a certain amount of repetition without a laborious re-casting and re-writing of all the chapters. That would involve a thorough-going change of style, and would deprive the work of the one quality it claims—youthfulness." We think it best, on the whole, that such a revision should not have been attempted, for the "youthfulness" of the work—that is, its spirit of generous enthusiasm for its subject—is the very quality that has made it the most useful, if not the most important, of the author's many books. For young readers, whether students of Greek or not, these chapters offer the best introduction in our language to the study of Greek literature; and in these days, when the value of that study is questioned more than ever before, such books are capable of doing a world of good. We do not know, either, that the author's riper judgment could have
