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THE SCOTTISH REVIEW. 



THE 



SCOTTISH REVIEW. 






JULY AND OCTOBER, 



1896. 



VOL. XXVIII. 



ALEXANDER GARDNER, 

)9uti!C0i^er to |^.rr ittafrists ti)r iSiufen, 
PAISLEY; and 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON. 

MPOCCXOVI. 



INDEX TO VOLUME XXVIII. 



A. 

Aarboger for Nordisk Oldkyn- 
dighed og Historie, 173, 302 

Aikipan, Dr. C. M., Milk, its 

Nature and Composition, ... 200 

American Historical Review, 175, 404 

Annandale Family Book, The, 

byA.H. Miliar, 203 

D^Arbois de Jubainville, H., 
Deux Mani^res d'ecrire 
I'Histoire 416 

and Paul OoUiuet, 

Etudes sur le droit Celtiqae, 

Tome II., ... ... ... 417 

Archivio Storico delle Pro- 
vince Napolitane, 383 

Asiatics in America, The, by 

Major C. R. Conder, LL.D., 78 

Athena, ... ... ... ... 174 



B. 

Badham, F. P., St. Mark's In- 
debtedness to St. Matthew, 310 

Biblioth^que Universelle et Re- 
vue Suisse, ... ... ... 402 

Birrel, Augustine, M.P., The 
Duties and Liabilities of 
Trustees, 201 

Black, Margaret Moyes, A 

Most Provoking Girl, ... 423 

Blair, J. Fulton, B.D., The 
Apostolic Gospel with a 
Critical Reconstruction of 
the Text, 178 

Boucherett, Jessie, and Helen 
Blackburn, The Condition of 
Working Women, 425 

Brown, J. T., The Author- 
ship of the Kingis Quair, ... 200 

Burns' Poetical Works, Edited 
l)y Robert Chambers, re- 
vised by William Wallace, 185 

Burus' Poetical Works, Edited 

by J. Logic Robertson, ... 420 

Byron's Poetical Works, Ox- 
lord Edition, 420 



C. 

Caldwell, William, D.Sc, 
Schopenhauer's System in its 
Philosophical Significance, 

Callaway, Henry, M.D., D.D., 
First Bishop of Kaffraria, by 
Mary S. Benhani, 

CatuUi Veronensis Liber, 
Edited by Arthur Palmer, 
Litt.D., LL.D., D.C.L, .. 

Christina, Queen of Sweden, 
by Rev. R. S. Myliie, M.A., 
15. O.Ij., f .o. a.., ... ... 

Cockburn, Rev. J., M. A., John 
Chinaman, 

Colville, James, LL.D., Scot- 
land under the Roundheads, 

Conder, Major C.R., LL.D., 
The Asiatics in America, ... 

Cook, Rev. Thos., M.A., In a 
Far Country, 

Corelli, Marie, The Murder of 
x^eiicia, ... ..• ... 

Coronation of James I. of Eng- 
land, by Guy le Strange, ... 

Craigie, W. A., B.A., The 

Poetry of the Skalds, 
A Piimer of Burns, 

Cultura, La, 

D. 
Deuteronomy, * Modern Reader's 

^^LUi\?« ••■ ••• ••• 

Dickson, Elliot, Mv Bagda'l, 



409 

190 

195 

122 

200 

103 

78 

424 

4-22 

293 

331 
417 
383 



424 
424 



£. 

Economista, 384 

Eimreidin, ... 404 

Emporium, 159,384 

English Dialect Dictionary, 
Edited by Joseph Wright, 
M. A., Ph.D., Part L, ... 195 

EspaRa Moder ua, 170, 398 

Evergreen, The, 200 

Eyre-Todd, George, Scottish 
Poetry of thie Eighteenth 
Century, ... 201 



VI 



INDEX. 



F. 

* Famous Scots, ' 200, 425 

Fisher, Prof. George Park, 
D.D., LL.D., History of 
Christian Doctrine (Inter- 
national Theological Library') 177 

G. 

Gardner, Ernest Arthur, M.A., 
A Handbook of Greek 

Sculpture 198 

Gee, Henry, B.D.,F.S.A., and 
William John Hardy, F.S.A., 
Documents Illustrative of 
English Church History, ... 182 

Gids, De, 172,399 

Giornale Dantesco, 384 

Giornale degli Economisti, ...160. 383 
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 
Studies Subsidiary to the 
Works of Bishop Butler, ... 407 
Green, J. R., History of the 

English People, 201,425 

H. 

Hadden, J. Cuthbert, Music in 
Old England, 264 

Hedley, Bishop, The Chnstian 

Inheritance, ... ... ... 424 

Hjaltland, by Col. T. Pilking- 

ton White, 1 

Hort, Arthur Fenton, Life and 
Letters of Fenton John 
Anthony Hort, D.D., D.C.L., 
LL.D., etc., 188 

Hutton, William Holden, B.D., 
Philip Augustus, * Foreign 
Statesmen,' 191 

J. 

Job and Ecclesiastes, * Modern 

Reader's Bible,' by Prof. 

Moultou, 199 

Journal of the Historical and 

Ethnological Society of Greece, 401 
Journalism from the Interior, 

by William Wallace, ... 354 

K. 

Kennedy, William Sloane, Re- 
miniscences, etc., of Walt 
whitman, 420 

L. 

Lambakes, George, Christian 
Sacred Art of the First Nine 
Centuries, 408 



I^ggOf F. Serapis — A Study 
in Religions, 

I^ Strange, Guy. Coronation 
of James I. of England, 

Liberal Education, A : the 
Function of a University, by 
G. W. Prothero 

Lodge, Prof. Richard, M.A., 
Richelieu ( * Foreign States- 
men'), 

Lubbock, Sir John, Bt., LL.D., 
The Scenery of Switzerland 
and the Causes to which it 



is due, , 



M. 



Mackay, Sheriff ^Eneas J. G., 
A History of Fife and Kin- 
ross (County Histories of 
Scotland), 

Mackinnon, James, Ph.D., The 
Union of England and Scot- 
land : a Study of Interna- 
tional History, 

Mackintosh, John, LL.D., The 
History of Civilisation in 
Scotland, Vol. IV., 

Maughan, W. C, Annals of 
Garelochside, 

Millar, A. H., The Annandale 
Family Book, 

Montefiore, C. J., The Bible 
for Home Reading, 

Morris, W. O'Connor, Ireland, 
1494-1868, 

Munro, Archibald, M.A., The 
Story of Burns and Highland 
xvxary , ... ... ,,. ,., 

Murray, Dr. James A. H., 
LL.D., and Henry Bradley, 
M.A., A New English Dic- 
tionary, Diffluent to Disbur- 
den, and Field-- Fish, 

Murray, David, LL.D., An 
Archaeological Survey of the 
United Kingdom, 

Music in Old England, by J. 
Cuthbert Hadden, 

Mylne, Rev. R., M.A., B.C.L., 
F.S.A., Christina, Queen of 
Sweden, 



33 
293 

346 

191 

418 



184 

183 

184 
411 
203 
181 
410 

201 



196 

425 
264 

122 



N. 

Napoli Nobilissima, 159 

Natura ed Arte, 160,383 

Nichol, Professor John, Memoir 

by Prof. Wm. Knight, ... 189 
Nuova Antologia, 155,379 




iN^bEJt. 



Vll. 



p. 

Palmer, Roundell, Earl of Sel- 
borne, Memorials — Part I. — 
Family and Personal, 1766- 

AoO£y, ••• ••• ••• .•• 'xx^ 

Pensiero Italiano 1 59, 384 

Poetry of the Skalds, by W. 

A. Craigie, 331 

Prothero, G. W., A Liberal 
Education : the Function of 
a University, ... ... 346 

Q. 

Quarterly Journal of Economics, 405 

R. 

Eassegna Nazionale, 157f 381 

Reid, Rev. H. M. B., B.D., A 
Cameronian Apostle, being 
some Account of John Mac- 
millan of Balmaghie, . . . 415 

Revue Celtique, 387 

Revue des Deux Mondes, ... 385 
Revue des JEtudes Juives, ... 165, 393 
Revue de THistoire des Re- 
ligions, 161,390 

Revue du Monde Latin, ... 170 
Revue Philosophique, 167, 388, 398 

Revue <le8 Religions, 163, 388 

Revue S^mitique d'Epigraphie 
et d'Histoire Ancienne, ... 1 68, 396 

Rif orma Sociale, 382, 384 

Rinder, Frank, Sutherland Folk- 
i-iOre, ... ... ... ... JAXi 

Rivista Italiano di Filosofia,... 384 
Romanes, George Johh, M.A., 
LL.D., F.R.S., Darwin and 
after Darwin, Vol. II., ... 199 
Rooskahyah Mysl, 377 

S. 

Schechter, S., M.A., Studies in 
Judaism, 192 

Scotland under the Roundheads, 

by James Colville, LL.D.,... 103 

Seeley, Sir J. R., K.C.M.G., 
Litt.D., Introduction to 
Political Science, ... ... 197 

Serapis — A Study in Religions, 

by F. Legge, ^^ 33 



Sheldon, W. L., An Ethical 

Movement, 200 

Stuart, Esm^, Victor Hugo 

the Poet, 223 

St. Mark's Indebtedness to St. 

Matthew, by F. P. Badham, 310 
Sutherland Folk- Lore, by Frank 

Rinder, 246 

T. 

Theologische Studien und Kri- 

tiken, 153,373 

Theologische Zeitschrift aus 

der Schweiz, 175 

U. 

Universities of Europe in the 
Middle Ages, by J. Wells, ... 56 

V. 

Victor Hugo the Poet, by 

Esme Stuart, 223 

Vita Italiana, 159,383 

Voprosi Philosophii i Psycho- 

logii, 154,374 

W. 

Wallace, William, Journalism 
from the Interior, 354 

Wallace, William, Burns' 
Poetical Works revised by, 
edited by Robert Chambers, 185 

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, Sir 

George Tressady, 421 

Wells, J., The Universities of 
Europe in the Middle Ages, 56 

White, Col. T. Pilkington, 

Hjaltland, 1 

Wilson, John, M.A., The 

Carrisford Tablets, 424 

Wisdom of Solomon, The, 
* Modern Reader's Bible,' by 
Professor Moulton, 199 

Wordsworth's Poetical Works, 
Edited by William Knight, 194, 419 

Wright, Rev. Arthur, M.A., 
A Synopsis of the Gospels in 
Greek after the Westcott 
and Hort Text, 180 

Wright, Joseph, The English 

Dialect Dictionary, 195 



THE 



SCOTTISH REVIEW. 



JULY, 1$96. 



Art. I— HJALTLAND. 

' And wake the gales on Foula's steep 
Or lull wild Sumburgh*s waves to sleep.' 

—The Pirate. 

IN a former number of this Review * I endeavoured t6 sum- 
marise for the reader certain main characteristics of the 
Orkney Isles in respect of their natural scenery, early history, 
antiquities, etc. In the present paper I propose to treat on the 
same lines the more remote twin-group of our Northern British 
archipelago, the Isles of Shetland, or, to give them their Norse 
appellation, Hjaltland. 

If the tourist finds it a far cry to the Orkneys, much more 
will he account it so to the Shetlands. For, whereas the Pentland 
Firth is but a span of some six or seven miles across, reckoning 
from the Caithness shore to the nearest of the Orcadian islands, 
— the northernmost land of Orkney and [excluding Fair Isle] the 
most southerly point of Zetland, Sumburgh Head, are separated 
, by a fifty miles' interval of as turbulent Atlantic water as can be 
found over the wide world. But this distance by no means 
measures the length of the sea journey the British voyager to 
Hjaltland must perforce take. For*, the shortest possible un- 
broken spell of shipboard is by steamer between Kirkwall and 

* Scottish Beview, April, 1896. — ' The Orkney Isles.' 
XXVIII. I 



2 . BjaUland. 

Lerwick, a passage of 9 or 10 hoars, sometimes more, acoocding 
to weather. 

Thus, it might be inferred that the divergences from the 
normal typical conditioning of the Scottish mainland, which I 
noted in discussing Orkney, would be still more marked in the 
isolated region of Zetland. And in regard of place-names, 
speech, history, traditions, manners, and customs, even to the 
aspects of the landscape of Hjaltland, this is so. The dullest 
observer could hardly fait to notice it. When it is remembered 
that the extreme northern point of the Shetland Isles is not 
much farther distant from the Norwegian coast than it is from 
the Caledonian mainland, it seems less strange to think of those 
isles as having once belonged to Norway as completely as do 
now the adjoining Faroes and Iceland to the sovereignty of 
Denmark. 

As in Orkney, vestiges of early Christian settlements are 
strewn thick through the Shetlands. But the actual remains of 
the ancient church buildings are scanty and fragmentary ; nor 
has Shetland anything to show like the noble Minster of Kirk- 
wall. As for the Pictish Towers (brughs or brochs), they also, 
as we shall see hereafter, abound in the outer cluster of the 
Nordreys. Of incidents of domestic life, or those dramatic per- 
sonal adventures which tinge with such vivid colour the Saga- 
story of Orcady, we have comparatively few concerning the 
homesteads and notables of Hjaltland. Still, there are ample to 
demonstrate the frequent visits of the Nordreyan Jarls and the 
kings of Norway to Zetland^ and the constant intercourse which 
was maintained between the Scandinavian motherland and its 
dependencies in this northern Aegean of Britain. Substantially, 
the Norse history of Orkney is the Norse history of Zetland. 
The same suzerainty exercised from Bergen ; the same dynasty 
of rival Jarls contending one with another for supremacy. Be- 
twixt the two insular groups fleets of galleys were continually 
sailing, bent on plunder or vengeful errand. Orkneyman and 
Hjaltlander had a like zest for wassail or war : the island homes 
of both were nev^ pecure from the foraying of swashbucklers. 
The clash and clapg of arms were perennial : and, in the deadly 
sea-fights where ship engaged ship at close quarters, assuredly 



HjaUhnd. 3 

^ every battle of the warriors' was ^with confased noise and 
garments rolled in blood I ' 

From the artist's standpoint Shetland, if we except the highly 
picturesque isle of Hoy, stands head and shoulders above Orkney 
for interest. Cultivated fields and vegetable patches are far less 
in evidence : for the most part the Zetland isles present wilder 
wastes of heath, more barren soil, duskier peatbogs interspersed 
with innumerable small lakes in the moorland hollows. But, 
above all, it is beyond question the desolate grandeur of the 
massive cliffs along the coastline, torn and shattered into shapes 
fantastic of stack, skerry, arch, and vaulted cavern, which in 
Shetland appeal so to the lover of seascape scenery. 

In the domain of romance, again, Hjaltland must ever take a 
special place as having been made to captivate for all time the 
imagination of reading men and women in the pages of The 
Pirate, For myself, if the egoism may be excused, I may say it 
was the dream and aspiration of my life, ever since on the verge 
of my teens I read that fascinating book, to see with my own 
eyes the rugged rifted precipices of Sumburgh and Fitful Head, 
to tramp the mosses of Dunrossness with Mordaunt Mertoun, 
to explore the ancient mansion of the convivial old Udaller, and 
to track the footsteps of the Sybil Noma through the principal 
scenes of her wanderings. And this, after long waiting, it was 
recently given me during two summers in some sort to do. 

With these preliminary observations, I will ask the reader to 
make a start with me from Kirkwall by steamboat en route to 
the chief town of the Shetlands, Lerwick. Let us suppose it 
may be near about midsummertide, and not the typical British 
weather described by the Latin historian *foul with frequent 
storms and mists,' though we may pray for his qualification as to 
the temperature.* In this extremity of Britain at that season 
we shall be able to endorse the further observation of Tacitus 
that one may distinguish but little interval between the end and 
the beginjiing of daylight. And if, wrapped up in an adequate 
overcoat you prefer sitting out on deck and can keep your eyes 

* ' Codlum crebris imbribus nebulisque foedum : asperitas fngorum 
abest.' — Tacitus, Agric. Vit, XII. 



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•^ 1."'- 11-^ tne r^Hir.wneti nvo", S^ein 
•»-"j.<* i . tt:-^ ^ for *iieirer in stress of 






■J ^ T'. v^ */<:' ir»^» w-i miy picture to o^^seIvesa 
^ '- --.t *' r- •; ■ ^T " n .n r^iese waters and apon our little 
r^' .. .>♦, '/,'.-**- r>r-ik** ir.i H -'▼ir!, in tnat memorable August 
of L^xx j.^^ ^- ^^j ^^ J iivxtnr.tal the Spaniard in the chops 
*^*^ *^^-i:!;^r. Char.r.r:l, and when even the stars in their courses 



Hjaltland. 5 

had begun to fight against him, the great Armada,, still number- 
ing 120 vessels, was driven by the elements to steer for the 
Orkneys, and try to work back to Spain by way of the Pentland 
Strait and outside Ireland. With the pen of a pastmaster in 
graphic description, James Anthony Froude at this point in the 
drama reveals to us the situation : — 

With ' a sea growing wilder as they passed the shelter of the Scotch 
coast,' the ships * lost sight of each other for nearly a week. On the 9th- 
19th (August) the sky lifted, and Calderon found himself with the Almir- 
ante of Don Martinez de Kecalde, the galleon of Don Alonzo, the San 
Marcos, and twelva other vessels. Sick signals were flying all round, and 
the sea was so high that it was scarcely possible to lower a boat. The large 
ships were rolling heavily^ their wounded sails had been split by the gusts, 
and masts and yards carried away. That night it again blew hard. The 
fog closed in once more, and the next morning Calderon was alone on the 
open sea without a sail in sight, having passed between the Orkneys and 
the Shetlands. Recalde and da Leyva had disappeared with their con- 
sorts, having, as Calderon conjectured, gone north.' 

Calderon luckily was able to catch up Medina Sidonia and the 
main body of the fleet miles outside Cape Wrath, but Becalde 
and Aloiizo da Leyva, with five and twenty ships, steered north- 
west after passing the Orkneys. * They went on,' says Froude, 
'to latitude 62^,' shaping course for Iceland, but ^the wild west 
wind came down once more.' What a wild wester or nor' wester 
here must have meant to the hapless crews of Andalusians, 
Catalans, and Castilians, only those who have been out in such 
gales can realise. 

' One galleon was driven on the Faroe Isles ; the rest turned about^ and 
made for the Shannon or Galway. ... A second was lost on the 
Orkneys.' 

Though Fair Isle, as a matter of fact, is classed among the 
Shetlands, it was doubtless to the wreck of a galleon or transport 
on this desolate spot that the historian was referring. The ship 
was El Gran Grxfon^ belonging to the squadron [8th division of 
the fleet] commanded by Don Juan Gomez de Medina. Two 
hundred or more of the crew [soldiers and sailors] managed to get 
ashore, of whom — for we know many of the galleons were desper- 
ately short of victual and without fresh water — some died of star- 
vation, thirst, or both ; and some were thrown over the cliffs or 




HjaWandL 



otherwise despatched by the islesmen. A circiiinstantial and 
highly interesting narrative of the Spaniards* reception and 
doings daring their five or six weeks' stay in the island is sap- 
plied by James Melvill, who fell in with the strangers, and ex- 
tracted from them a recital of their adventnres. The ZeUanders 
appear to have regarded the onfortnnate foreigners with horror 
and apprehension as bringers of famine to the island: nay worse, 
as emissaries of the Prince of Darkness sent to eat them np.* 
Ultimatelyy the shipwrecked aliens got over to Danrossness, and 
from thence to Dankerqae, calling in at Anstrather on the 
vojrage soath. These Spaniards, says Melvill, were, 'for the 
maist part yoang beardless men, sillie, traachled, (worn oat), 
and hungered/ The minister and bailies of the ancient Fife 
town, compassionating their sorry case, fed them for a day or 
two on ^ kail, porridge, and fish.' On reaching France, Gomez 
de Medina showed his gratefal sense of this kindness by making 
interest for the release of an Anstrather ship then detained in 
arrest at Calais. 

The current story is that the remnant of the castaway Spani- 
ards beguiled their enforced leisure in Fair Isle by teaching the 
natives how to dye and weave, after the fashions of Cadiz and 
Malaga, the quaint patterns in woolwork for which the island is 
still famed. Likewise, it has been supposed that in the physiog- 
nomies and complexions of some of the islanders one may still 
see traces of the consorting of the swarthy Spaniard with the 
Zetland women. As to the Spaniard's supposed weaving lessons, 
the tradition or common idea has certainly obtained large accept- 
ance, and figures in many published works. On the other hand, 
an eminent archaeologist has represented to me with much force 
that, considering the brief stay of the Iberians in Fair Isle and 
the determined hostility shown to them by the islanders, the 
popular notion hardly holds water. Moreover, there is the fact 
that the dyes used in the Fair Isle worsted work are produced 
from the lichens and peaty matter indigenous to the islands, 
while both dyes and patterns of the yams appear to be much 

* See the Diary of Mr, James MdviQ, (Bannatyne Club), p. 174 ; and 
an Aoooant by Monteith of Egibay, written in 1633. 



Hjaltland. 7 

the same as those generally met with throughout the Scottish 
Isles. 

My first introduction to Hjaltland proper was in one of those 
dense sea-fogs which, evolved from the warm currents of the 
Gulf Stream, are so common in Shetland waters, especially 
during the months of July and August. We had been steaming 
alternately half-speed or dead slow for some hours, swaying 
about in the long swell of the Roost of Sumburgh, and cease- 
lessly sounding our fog whistle. We had crept unawares into 
some spot in the Dunrossness peninsula near enough to make 
out for a moment a grim beetling precipice, when the mist closed 
again. Thereafter nothing whatever was visible till, all in an 
instant, a gap opened in the dense vapour, and there abreast of 
the steamer loomed up a huge rampart of dark rock fissured and 
caverned, with a glimpse of a grand natural archway at its ex- 
tremity, and above it the white walls and buildings of a light- 
house. The array of stern -faced cliffs turned out to be the 
southern shore of the isle of Bressay, and the point surmounted 
by the lighthouse was Kirkabister Ness. Here rounding the 
comer of the coast-line we pass a cluster of houses and the site 
of the ancient chapel of St. John, which evidently gave the Ness 
its name. A couple of miles onward the steamer enters Bressay 
Sound [Breideyarsund], and, curving in sharply to westward, 
unfolds to us a very striking and picturesque view of the town, 
shipping, and fine sheltered harbour, of Lerwick, the Zetland 
capital. Half-an-hour later we are alongside the quay and 
ashore on the main isle of Hjaltland. 

No visitor should leave Lerwick without if possible making a 
day's excursion to the island of Noss lying outside Bressay ; for 
its eastern cliffs are undoubtedly a marvel of wil(l and desolate 
grandeur hardly to be matched in the circuit of Great Britain. 
From Lerwick quay we can boat or ferry across to the western 
side of Bressay, landing near about the old church by the Yoe or 
creek of Leiraness. Or, again, one can land at the jetty below 
Maryfield, where I believe it is customary to apply for permission 
to visit Noss. From here it is a pleasant walk of some 2^ to 3 
miles over the hill [that is, the dorsal ridge of the island] past 
two lochs to Brough. As one mounts the hill-slope and looks 




tk«j ^mhti 60 9fxeiiW9ri to ti 
&tM of the HakoQ Sags ^co acaRr of 
IdjjetiMT aofe AOBenxB bests * ihaa xheat cf ^ tke pHnnt fmr^ 
rmtmnti mooarc V ^ tbe vise as-i gkravi prince;' who had 
IfMight «ita Lim in his 'se^-bome vooden coonen* pries^ 
ehanberlairiOy and figLtln^ men ^breakers of tempered aKtak,' to 
ieltle (Met for all who shoald be permazKct xnwragja of the 
Western Isks.* And three centories later Kirfcraldy of Grrange, 
who with Monaj of ToIIibardine after Caiberrr ^^t made 
iail for the Orkneji in hot ponoit of the fngitiTe BolhweU, was 
wrecked in the ship Uniecm on a reef oot^de BreasaT SoQnd.t 
French and Spanish resKls, too, have been in these waters upon 
hostile errands against the Hollander, eith^ fighting his wanhips 
or damaging his fishing craft. 

From the eastern shore of Bressaj one may hare to signal for 
the ferrjr'boat to come orer from the Noss side, som^imes — 
especially if it be a sea-fog as on the day I was there — ^by shoot- 
ing a hail at the top of one's voice across the Sound of Noss, a 
narrow strait only a coaple of hundred yards or more in width, 
bttt a veritable roost (rost) for the rapidi^ of its cnrrent. 
Having landed and passed the min of a little ancient chapel 
overlooking Nesti Voe, and the adjoining farm-stead, the best 
route^ if we want thoroughly to explore the majestic cliffs, is to 
make their entire circuit or nearly so, a walk of perhaps four 
miles. Skirting the Yoe of Mels and holding to the right along 
the cliff edge, we find ourselves mounting and mounting ; the 
crags growing ever higher and higher, caverns and rock crannies 
gloomier and wilder^ screams of sea-^fowl shriller in chorus, boom 

* In the pages of this Beview [See Art. ' The Orkney Isles,' April 1896], 
1 traced the further progress of this Norwegian expedition. 

t Beo Sohiern's Life of James Hepburn , Earl of Bothwell, translated by 
D. Berry. Edinburgh : Douglas, 1880. 



Hjallland. 9 

of .the breakers albeit in remoter depths below yet more 
thunderous in its rumbling echoes* 

For, the island is a sort of down or sloping heathy plain tilted 
up towards the east or seaward side, where the cliffs attain their 
highest altitude, and drop abruptly and almost vertically into the 
sea. When the extreme southern point of the island, Fladda 
Ness, is reached, the line of precipices takes a sharp turn to the 
left, and we find ourselves on the verge of a sheer and profound 
chasm over against the Holm of Noss. This holm is a tiny rock- 
islet, walled all round with a precipitous face, but flattened atop 
into a small area or plot of scant herbage, which in the breeding- 
season is a perfect aviary of sea-birds, chiefly gulls of sorts, 
swartbacks and kittiwakes, and pufiin. Here they swarm, nest, 
and rear their broods, and across the narrow but tremendous 
abysm one sees them crowded together over the guano-bleached 
flat in serried rows, sitting or standing, and filling the air with 
their alarmed and discordant shrieks. Yet, notwithstanding 
one's presence in full view, with the instinct of wild creatures 
they seem to realise the assurance of safety for themselves, their 
eggs, or their young, afforded by the isolation of their nesting- 
place. 

At one time a frail rope and cradle-bridge spanned the inter- 
vening chasm, by which the few sheep the islet could pasture 
were wont to be conveyed over to it season by season. This 
rude sling-bridge was first put in use about the middle of the 
*17th century, the cradle or conveyance-car being a box large 
enough to carry a man holding a sheep between his legs. 

From the Holm, all the way up the ascent of Setter to the 
Noup or Head of Noss, is one succession of recessed giosy under- 
scarped with caves and perpendicular cliffs, with vantage-points 
here and there whence to look ahead round the sweep of Kum- 
ble Wick (the rumbling bay) to the majestic culminating steep 
of the Noup, a plumb-drop of close on 600 feet. Then, if one 
has a good head, and will peer down over the edge of the great 
precipices, an extraordinary concourse of birds may be seen 
perched, rank below rank, along the ledges and projections far 
down in the dark gulfs below ; those on the lowermost shelves, 
mostly cormorants, craning out their long scraggy necks over the 



10 Iljablamd. 



ceaseless surf and dashed with its spray, while the swartback 
gulls sit higher tip motionless, brooding stolidly ont over the 
water, some of them (the younger birds) so close under your 
nose that you could almost touch them with a long stick. Then 
drop a stone or two among the conclave, and ont from the walls 
of the Rumbling amphitheatre the birds will flash and flurry in 
the wildest pell-mell confusion, with an indescribable din of 
screeches, and alight at length, a legion of minute black and 
white specks far out in the dark heaving cauldron of waters 
below. One more note I made was that, seen from the brink 
of the highest acclivities, the gulls, as they flew about near the 
clifiF-base, looked so diminutive as to suggest the idea of white, 
fluttering butterflies. 

Such, then, are the wild aspects of nature to be had in a day's 
walk round the rock-ramparts of outlying Noss. 

Facing inland from the Noup, one sees nought but a sloping 
plain of rough pasturage descending to the point we started 
from. Traversing this plain, my companion and I came across 
mushrooms in great abundance and fine condition, but, curiously, 
these do not appear to be prized in Shetland, for the tenant of 
the island-farmhouse by the chapel told us he had never heard 
^or thought of making any use of them. When we told him the 
price these mushrooms would fetch per lb. in an English market, 
he and his wife seemed utterly astonished. 

Bressay Island deserves a day's exploration to itself. The 
gio8j stacks, caverns, and cliff-arches along the rifted stretch of 
shore, which converges wedge-like to the promontory of Bard, 
are something to be remembered. Then, besides Kirkabister, 
already mentioned, there are the ruins of two other ancient 
churches — St. Olafs, at the north end of the island, overlooking 
Aith Yoe, and St. Mary's on the shores of the Voe of Culbins* 
burgh. It was near the Culbinsburgh church that a memorial- 
slab was found bearing rude Christian emblems, plait-work 
patterns of the so-called Runic style, and an inscription in 
Ogham characters. To these we may add some archaic tumuli, 
and the indications of the Brough or Picts' Tower which has 
fastened its cachet upon a neighbouring loch and farmstead. 
And there are many lakes in the island, one of them named from 



Ujalthnd. 11 

a solitary monolith or menhir near bj, ^ Loch of the Standing 
Stone.' Here, too, as throughout Hjaltland, a glance at the 
maps of the National Survey suffices to locate us at once in old 
Norseland, for the Icelandic topographical nomenclature abounds; 
such place-names as Grimsetter, Wadbister, Sweyn Ness, Gun- 
nista, along with the garths^ holmsj ayresy taings^ and gios^ 
repeated from our Orkney experiences, but with the foreign 
smack in yet greater measure. Nor must I forget the diminu- 
tive, shaggy Shetland ponies, herds of which, mares and foals, 
run wild on Bressay, and are a ruling feature of the landscape. 
* Long-backed and short-legged,' says Sir Walter Scott, * more 
resembling wild bears than anything of the horse tribe. The 
stallions are, I believe, or were, segregated on Noss Island. The 
object is to reduce to the utmost the size of this breed of ponies 
in order to fit them for draught service in the mines. It is 
almost sad to think of the fatQ of these poor little shelties, for 
the most part destined to be transported from the free, fresh air 
of their native moors and buried underground away from the 
daylight, never to re-ascend the dismal shaft for a glint of sun- 
shine or a sniff of pure atmosphere. 

Lerwick, the chief town of the County of Zetland, has in 
great measure the primitive aspects of Orcadian Kirkwall and 
Stromness, especially of the latter; yet it has withal certain 
distinct characteristics of its own. Its main street has the same 
narrow and tortuous peculiarities we noted in the Orkney towns, 
and is paved like them with large flagstones, but without the 
central carriage track. A feature of the shops of Lerwick is 
the exquisite knitting in shawls, neckerchiefs, etc., almost 
rivalling lace work in fineness, and as soft as the Indian muslins 
of our younger days. The best specimens fetch high prices. 
Then, there are the comely and picturesquely clad Hjaltland 
women to be admired, ruddy and weather-tanned, brisk and 
bright-eyed. Of Sunday evenings, one notices the curious 
separation of the sexes. The male-folk would be seen either 
marching about in groups or seated in rows by themselves on 
suburban walls and palings ; while the girls and women in knots 
of three or four together would be strolling up and down the 



12 HjaUland. 

streets with linked armSi very mach as is the wont of the 
paysannei in Brittany. 

Naturally, all peasant-women in Shetland can row; and 
wherever one meets them along the country roads or on the 
moorlands, it is generally with an enormous peat creel on their 
backs, and incessantly knit-knitting as they walk. I was much 
struck with this : so also with the delightfully frank sympathetic 
manners and kindly aspect of the Zetland women-folk every- 
where. Their comeliness, too, as I have said, is quite noticeable. 
Frames shapely and well-grown, and this notwithstanding their 
prevailing poverty and necessarily spare diet : light-brown hair, 
dark blue or violet eyes with well-marked lashes. An Iberian 
brunette strain is to be traced here and there among them, 
revealing itself in dark hazel eyes, black tresses^ and slightly 
swarthy or olive complexion; but these are the exception. Their 
manner of salutation, too, accent, and colloquial phrases, have 
something of foreign flavour ; different from the Orkney speech, 
different from the accost and intonation of the mainland Scots. 
In converse with them, a common expression of assent with your 
views of things in general will be ' that's true,' or ' Ay indeed 
and that's exactly true,' or * Weel and that's right too.' Another 
quaint way of expressing surprise at something said, was ' I hear 
you.' These and such like characteristics give a dash of genuine 
salt to one's intercourse with these Hjaltland folk : a spice of 
piquancy refreshing indeed at this fag-end of our Steele^ when 
the smart and the superfine and the ^ up-to-date ' have well-nigh 
played out every possible sensation of humanity. 

Lerwick is still a great centre of the Shetland herring fishery ; 
but its halcyon days, when the Dutch Mynheers used to swarm 
over with an immense fleet of smacks, and almost crowd out the 
Zetlanders from their own chief town, are long gone by. Yet 
even in these days some hundreds of the Hollanders' boats find 
their way across the North Sea to Bressay Sound during the 
annual fishing season : and doubtless still achieve in miniature a 
little of the smuggling of Schnapps and Schiedam, tobacco, and 
other miscellanea, which once gave a flourishing contraband 
trade to the great Netherlands fleet fishing year by year in 
Zetland waters. 



JBjaltland, 13 

Most of the writers of topical treatises on Shetland have 
hitherto assumed it to be the Thule of the ancient geographers. 
The great Sir Walter, with a romancist's license, gives expression 
to the same idea all through The Pirate. And when recently 
the town of Lerwick was granted municipal armorial bearings, 
the motto adopted in the coat was taken from Tacitus — *dispecta 
est Thule.' Ctesias of Cnidios, Diogenes Antonius, and Pytheas 
of Massilia, the Humboldt of his day, who in the course of his 
explorations penetrated far north into Scandinavian waters, 
wrote about Thule. The name was familiar to Strabo : it was 
known to Pliny and Juvenal : and Virgil in one of his poetic 
flights sings of ' ultima Thule.' Modern compilations of the 

* Orbis veteribus notus/ based upon the geography of Claudius 
Ptolemaeus, label Shetland as Thule. Tacitus, moreover, when 
making mention of the circumnavigation of Duncansby Head by 
Agricola's fleet and the discovery of the Orkneys, proceeds to 
tell us that * Thule, till now obscured by snow and winter, was 
descried.' And, to make the prevalent theory square with this 
passage, it has been inferred that the rocky outlying isle of 
Foula with its lofty heights and precipices may have been the 
part of Shetland alluded to as visible from the Roman ships. 

The most recent discussion, however, on this vexed question 
seems to bring to light in the older designation of the name of 
Iceland the true Thule. * Houl-i' (Celtice, 'Isle of the Sun '), 
suggesting the classic ' sol ' and * helios,' passes easily into the 
' Thyle ' of the venerable Bede ; into Thile, and the Thule no 
less of the Irish monk Dicuil than of the ancients ; all signifying 
that in that vast sombre volcanic yet glacial island, the sun at 
about the summer solstice stayed above the horizon for days to- 
gether. * No other island ' [than Iceland], says Mr. Benediktsson, 

* corresponding with the earliest descriptions, could have been 
known to the ancient Greek writers in which the sun for days 
never set.' * 

* See an interesting paper read before the * Viking Club * by Einar 
Benediktsson entitled ' The ancient Thule or the Isle of Sun/ 21st Feb- 
ruary, 1896. The President of this learned Society, in closing the discus- 
sion, told the meeting that ' he had come there as a Shetlander prepared 
to resent any attempt to locate Thule elsewhere than in Shetland, but he 
was bound to say the lecturer had converted him.' 




r»7>A¥ </ * ---;:% lrJ^ arM F'j^fxl H^oifa. :.ii ao ri 
#tfyr.7*7ar^>^, i^ tias tie 'rLiir..c a irl-TKi :» iirie a poor-haned 
tA:T*^'^*i if ---^ want* to tni=.«p:rt iizaeif ami Im ba^^sage to 
tr/>v^ f/artf. We wCI scpccae t2:e reader tias pr: Tided for, and 
/jti hU war, if he has be«pck*a rhccs, to the oolj habtuble 
fz/iinW Wl;nnfr% thcreawsn^, nainelj. the h-xoe near Spiggie, 
f/^J//ri;rfri;( to the estimable brcthers HeOiJeTsca, fiiheiy agmts, 
farr/i^rs unirer^al pronriders — and one of them a notable ^master 
in UfiMjl ' to W>t, 

At^/tit a rnile ont of the Zetland capital^ the road passes a 
itumt \n(^nn^^{nfi little lake, the Loch of Clickhimin, from the 
%\\(rf¥^ iff which a «pit or neck of land mns oot into its waters. 
At tliM (K;irii of this «pit is a remarkable example of one of those 
iMMtnlva circular towers, variously styled *Pictish towers,' 
* hroclm/ * hvouff}tn/ ^ borgs/ * burghs,' to which we were intro- 
iliirod in Orkney. All over our northern archipelago these 
oIiJmcIh (ft antiquity cluster thick. They are numerous also in 
( UlUintiMN, Huthorlttnd, and some of the Hebridean isles ; and a 
f«w ImoUMkI N[Mi(simons are met with elsewhere on the Scottish 
nmlnlHtidi Thsy wore built without cement, with no windows 
ur NpurturttN In th« tixternal walls except usually a small con- 
Ii'mmIimI (Innrwnyi The walls were enormously thick, and con- 



Hjaltland. 15 

tained galleries or chambered spaces sometimes with ascending 
spiral stairways. From three to four score of these towers have 
been traced in the Shetlands; about an equal number in Orkney: 
a like number in Caithness, Sutherland, and the Western Isles 
respectively, bringing up the total to over 350. The invading 
Norsemen, we know from the Sagas, found many a ' borg ' stand- 
ing when they established themselves in these northern parts of 
Albyn. But we have no written record of the people or race 
who built the towers : the only clue to what manner of folk they 
were is to be sought in the relics found within the buildings. 
The bbrg-dwellers used rude pottery, and * there is abundant 
evidence,' says Anderson, * that they were not only expert hunters 
and fishers, but that they kept flocks and herds, grew grain and 
ground it by handmill, practised the arts of spinning and weav- 
ing, had ornaments of gold of curious workmanship and were 
not unskilled workers in bronze and iron.' * It has been usual 
to conjecture them as the aboriginal Picts or Celts of the coun- 
try, for lack of any certain information. 

Leaving Clickhimin, we pass first the head of the Voe of 
Sound, a tidal water famous for its autumnal sea-trout fishing, 
and next two lonely lochs buried in dark peat mosses. Then at 
the * Hollander's Knowe ' the road leaves the highway to Scallo- 
way, making a sharp turn, and in another mile or so we are 
abreast of the Bay of Gulberwick. Some spot in or near this 
picturesque inlet was the scene in the twelfth century of one of 
those stirring incidents — in this case a shipwreck — which the 
old Sagas are given to record with such vividness and circum- 
stantiality. In our Orkney excursions, it will be remembered, 
the personality of a mighty Jarl of the Nordreys, Rognvald Kali, 
came conspicuously to the front. He it was who brought over a 
crusading band from Norway, and spent a winter in the Orkneys 
en route to Jorsalaland. 

It was while this expedition was being organised in Norway 
that Earl Rognvald set out thence homeward bound for the 
Orkneys, intending to pass two winters there. The Norwegian 
King, Ingi, to speed him on his voyage, gave Rognvald two 

* Orkney Saga, In trod., p. ex. 



r 

r 

^ 



16 BjalOand. 

loDgships, small but swift and very beaatifuL Of these one 
named Fifa was assigned to the Earrs young kinsman, Jarl 
Harald : the other, the Hjdlp^ Earl Rognvald reserved for him- 
self. In these vessels on a certain Tuesday night the two Barls 
put to sea, holding westward with a fair wind. *Bnt on the day 
following/ says the Saga, * there was a great storm, and in. the 
evening they saw land.' It was very dark, and breakers beset 
them on all sides ; insomuch that there was no choice but to run 
the ships ashore, which they did on a narrow and strong beach 
engirt with crags. All hands on board were saved, but great 
part of their stores were lost, though some afterwards washed up 
as wreckage. Through all the turmoil and peril Earl Rognvald 
was very blithe, and heartened up his crews by singing snatches 
of Scaldio song. The Earl sent off a dozen of his men to Eiaar 
of Gulberwick to crave shelter, and meanwhile the shipwrecked 
Norsemen distributed themselves among the neighbouring farm- 
steads. Rognvald lived a long time in Hjaltland after this 
untoward mishap, and then fared on to his Orkney dominions, 
whence he returned to Norway to make his final preparations at 
Bergen for the crusading voyage to the East. 

A little further along our route are two more Pictish Towers, 
one on the lonely lake of Brindister, the other on a projecting 
cape known as the Brough of Burland : and next we descend on 
the church and hamlet of Quarff. Here the peninsula of Dun- 
rossness narrows to less than two miles' width, and a valley runs 
across it from sea to sea, connecting the East and West Voes of 
the parish. The advantages of this natural hollow traversing 
the isthmus suggest themselves in the place-name Quarff, which 
1 believe is in Norse *Hvarp' (Warp), the equivalent of the 
Tarherty or Tarbet^ of Celtic Scotland ; where boats and small 
vessels could be warped^ towed, or dragged along overland upon 
rollers between the shores of two separate waters. The Norse- 
men were well up to this kind of work. King Magnus Berfoettr 
accomplished it at Tarbert \_Tara'baf'ty draw-boat] in Loch Fyne 
eight centuries back. So did royal Hakon in 1263, when, 
transporting some of his fleet from the ocean at Arrochar in 
Loch Long, he re-launched them at Tarbet in Loch Lomond, 
and was able to ravage its beautiful shores and to scourge the 



Hjaltland, 17 

Colquhoun country with impunity. Here at QuarfiF, for vessels 
hailing from Lerwick on the eastern side of Hjaltland and bound 
for Scalloway or the havens on the western side, the short-cut 
across Quarff isthmus would not only save some fifty miles of 
coasting, but also avoid the risks and rampage of the tides of the 
terrible Dynrost. 

Proceeding — with magnificent vistas of cliff, headland and 
ocean expanse both near and far, notably the southern crags of 
Bressay, — we pass Fladdabister, and reach the tract of Cunnings- 
burgh, whose native habitants are said to be of ancient British 
descent — Pictish or Celtic rather than Norse — and to have 
lacked the islanders' customary virtue of hospitality. The long 
promontory of Helli Ness, screening its taing, holrriy and skerry, 
stretches away to our left ; and, passing another ruined hrough 
at Mail and the site of an ancient Celtic church of St. Columba, 
we sight at the far-end of the deep bay abreast of us the island of 
Mousa, and the ruin of its famed tower standing dark and solitary 
by the water's edge. Soon we round a little rocky inlet (Wick 
of Sandsayre), and drop down upon a cluster of cottages and a 
pier, near to which is Sand Lodge, the residence of a member of 
the present ruling family in Dunrossness. Here it is necessary 
to obtain permission to visit the isle of Mousa, a permission given 
as a matter of course to any respectable stranger, and accom- 
panied in my own case with much courtesy, assistance, and 
friendly hospitality. The Sound of Mousa, the passage betwixt 
the island and mainland, is perhaps three quarters of a mile 
wide ; but if one takes boat across from Sand Lodge pier as I 
did, and makes straight for the ' Castle of Mousa/ the distance 
comes to near about twa miles. 

The borg^ or * Castle' (so-called) of Mousa, is perhaps the 
most perfect and typical example of its class extant. There is 
one among a small group of these Picts' Towers surviving in a 
valley of Glenelg, Inverness-shire, which for completeness and 
preservation [when I saw it three or four and twenty years ago] 
would rank as a good second to Mousa.* But Mousa has the 



* See a detailed account of the Glenelg brocks with woodcut in I think 
the third of a series of illustrated articles contributed by the present writer 
to Good Words (May to September, 1874,), entitled * On the West Coast.' 

XXVIII. 2 



18 Hjaltland. 

superior reputation, andi from its having more than once figured 
in historic times, has secured an interest such as to make it the 
premier antiquity of Shetland, or very much what Maeshowe 
among the chambered tumuli is in relation to the Orkney Isles. 

The tower of Mousa stands over 40 feet high, and consists of 
a ring or circular wall of masonry enclosing a small internal area 
or court of about 10 yards diameter. The ring-wall is of immense 
thickness, and is hollowed inside into a number of galleries built 
one over the other in tiers by means of horizontal cross-slabs, 
these slabs serving also to bond the masonry of the wall. A rude 
stone stairway ascending spirally within the wall connects the 
galleries, and there are openings here and there from the galleries 
into the court, doubtless to provide light and ventilation. On 
the ground level three small oval-shaped and domed cells or 
chambers are built in the thickness of the wall next the court, 
and are entered from it. Whether the tower was originally 
roofed in or not is uncertain ; the court is now open to the sky. 
Altogether, this structure has a singular and primeval aspect, 
and its tapering yet partially bulging profile, as seen from the 
outside, with no external aperture except the entrance doorway, 
heighten the impression of its strangeness and antiquity. And 
then the utter desolateness of the spot, situated as the tower is 
on the very verge of the fissured and surf -lashed rocks of this 
tiny islet. 

The tower or ' Castle ' of Mousa (Moseyjar-borg) figures twice 
in the Norse Sagas ; and, curiously, in both cases, the incidents 
related in connection with it are the old, old story— elopements. 
The eai'lier record occurs in the Saga of Egill Skalagrimson, the 
warrior-poet, and refers to a period about a.d. 900.* A certain 
Bjorn Brynulfson cast eyes on the daughter of Thora Roald, and, 
for that his sire was obdurate and refused sanction to their mar- 
riage, the lovers fled away from Norway oversea, and were ship- 
wrecked on Mousa Isle. Bjorn managed to get his cargo safe to 
land, and in this forlorn tower he and his love celebrated their 
union, passing the winter here ; thereafter they escaped to Ice- 
land. Thu6, even at this early date of Bjorn's coming to Mousa* 
the borg was apparently deserted. 

* Orkney Saga (Anderson), Introd., p. cxi. 



Hjaltland. 19 

The other Saga-story associated with Mousa sets forth how 
Jarl Harald (Maddadson), wroth with Erlend Ungi for daring 
to woo his (Harald's) widowed mother Margaret, sought to slay 
Erlend: how Erlend collected men and carried off Margaret 
from Orkney to Hjaltland, making for Mousa : how he, the lady, 
and his followers, ensconced themselves in the borg; how he made 
preparations for its defence. Earl Harald pursued the fugitives 
and blockaded Moseyjar-borg, but found it a tough nut to crack. 
Then followed negotiations which ended in a reconciliation, and 
Erlend Ungi was allowed to wed the Earl's mother and become 
his man.* 

Just opposite Mousa, on the mainland, at the point of Hoga 
in Burra-land, another burgh can be traced; and beyond this juts 
out the ^curious peninsula of ^ No Ness/ caverned, and atone 
spot tunnelled through by a subterranean passage, and having a 
Liliputian lake at its extremity. 

Returning to Sandwick, we have a singularly wild bit of 
country to traverse en route to Spiggie. A narrow road winds 
about till we reach the Bay of Channerwick, and here two ways 
part, one route keeping to the east side of the long dorsal ridge 
of the peninsula from Gord Hill to Ward of Scousburgh, the 
other crossing the ridge and skirting its western slopes. The 
latter was the route I took, and it has the advantage of opening 
up a perfect panorama of' the majestic western cliffs of Dunross- 
ness, and bringing into view below you the fine crags and green 
downs of St. Ninian's Isle, a spot of very remote and saintly 
traditions. A narrow elongated mole or spit of seabeach connects 
this little isle with the mainland. Vestiges of the ancient church 
with its burial-ground and Holy Well are still visible, and a 
walk round the island reveals along its sea-marge a wonderful 
series of detatched holms, rock-stacks, caverns, and a fine natural 
archway. 

A whole chapter of The Pirate is devoted to this highly 
venerated ruin — ' the haunted kirk of St. Ringan ' as Swertha 
styled it — which in Scott's time was evidently half-buried in 
sand-drift. Here, he tells us, * the rude and ignorant fisherm^ 

* Orkney Saga, Chap., xcii. 



Hjaltland. 21 

attached, looking out over the fine Loch of Spiggie and away 
across it to the uplands of Fitful Head. 

* How refreshing/ wrote Edward Fitzgerald to Fanny Kemble 
of one of Scott's novels, * is the leisurely easy movement of the 
story, with its true and well harmonised variety of scene and 
character.' Much the same may be said of The PiraUy but per- 
haps what one notes most in that romantic story is the singular 
fidelity with which the great master has caught and limned for 
us the sombre colouring, fantastic forms, changeful moods, and 
strange underlying mystery withal, of Nature's architecture in 
Hjaltland. What, for example, could better bring before us the 
impressive grandeur and twilight hyemal gloom of the seascape 
than this description of the scenery of Dunrossness, in which 
Mordaunt Mertoun passed his later boyhood. * Precipices and 
headlands, many hundred feet in height — amid perilous straits 
and currents and eddies — long sunken reefs of rock, over which 
the vivid ocean foams and boils — dark caverns to whose ex- 
tremities neither man nor skiff has ever ventured — lonely and 
often uninhabited isles — and occasionally the ruins of ancient 
northern fastnesses dimly seen by the feeble light of the Arctic 
winter.' Or, again, Minna Troil's weatherwise warnings to 
Mordaunt before the great storm. * Oh, the morning mist lies 
heavy upon yonder chain of isles. . . . The fowl are winging 
their way to the shore and the sheldrake seems, through the mist, 
as large as the scart. See the very sheerwaters and bonxies 
(skua gulls) are making to the cliffs for shelter.' And how 
wonderfully in touch and harmony with the character of this 
peculiar scenery is the figure of Minna. Slie loved Hjaltland : 
her spirit rose to its inward charm : ' the love of natural objects 
was to her a passion.' In Sir Walter's time sentiment and 
romantic imaginings bad not been killed out of the Minnas and 
Brendas of the social circle by the brusque deportment and 
tomboy diversions of the modem mannish matter-of-fact young 
woman, who has neither leisure nor palate for much else than the 
latest phases and crazes of fashionable excitement. 

So, then, at Spiggie — with Sumburgh Cape and Fitful Head 
each within the compass of an easy day's walk — we seem to feel 
we have reached the main arena of the 'Great Unknown's' 



22 HjalOand. 

story, and can pursue our rambles round the cliffs wiili an 
intenser interest. 

To reach Fitful Head from the Spiggie domicile, it is best to 
get down at once to the seashore and climb the slopes of Fora 
Ness, making for the edge of the cliffs, which are full of indenta- 
tions, each revealing in succession a new picture. From one of 
the gio$ here there is an especially grand view, worth a day's 
walk for itself, looking towards the great rock-stack of Oray 
Noup and the * Nev * of Fitful Head beyond. One immense 
slanting rock-shelf here with a fairly even surface was simply 
alive with disturbed gulls hovering and screaming in mid-air : 
and a carious thing I noticed was their shadows projected on the 
cliff-face in the bright sunshine, giving the effect of dark phan- 
tom duplicates of the birds flitting about. The whole way on is 
an ascent, round the Wick of Shanni, along the precipices of 
the * Windy Stacks ' and past ^ Rushy Cups,' till the summit of 
the Head, a line of lofty clif ted steeps two miles long, is attained, 
928 feet above the sea. A spot frightfully exposed to all the 
winds of heaven, bare, stern-faced, desolate, and, meteorologically 
speaking, eminently jitfuL Truly a congenial haunt for the 
* Reim-kennar ' and witch-seer. Noma. A long spur, Siggar 
Ness, garnished with stacks and skerries, sticks out from the 
southern extremity of Fitful Head, and another very bold scarped 
promontory. Garths Ness, interposes before we arrive at the fine 
sheltered Bay of Quendale. 

It was to this bay that the shipwrecked Spaniards from Fair 
Isle were conveyed, and here they were lodged awhile and hos- 
pitality treated by a Zetland odaller till passage for France 
could be got for them. And into this inlet, we are told, some 
fifty years since, a prodigious shoal of whales numbering many 
hundreds was driven and captured in two or three hours. I 
remember a visit to this charmingly situated bay on a certain 
first of July. The day was one of brilliant sunshine, and a 
delicious little sandy nook, shut in by rock ledges baked hot 
under the solar rays, tempted one to bathe. But the sea-water 
was intensely cold, rather surprisingly so considering the air 
temperature and time of year. I had no towel, but was very 
soon sun-dried. 



Hjaltland, 23 

For Sumburgh Head another day should be reserved. The 
conformation of the peninsula of Dunrossness, it may here be 
observed, is not unlike that of Italy : a long boot with a toe and 
heel. The heel is Fitful Head with its backing of hill slopes. 
The toe is the cape of Sumburgh, with an offshooting spur or 
prong, Scatness. 

From Spiggie, one's way to Sumburgh is to get round the 
Lioch of Brow, and strike the highway near the parish church. 
The road then runs about due south two or three miles, crossing 
the Ward Hill^ till the little inlet, Virkie Pool, where the toe 
narrows to an isthmus, is reached. Here the road forks, one 
branch conducting to Scatness, the other continuing across the 
* Links of Sumburgh,' towards the bluff promontory which is the 
main objective of our walk. These * links ' are a delightful 
breezy stretch of low heathy sandhills, clothed with short crisp 
turf of velvety verdure interspersed in the floweret season with 
king-cups and large patches of the golden sweet-scented cypri- 
pedium (lady's slipper). The exquisite green and aureate tints 
of this heath in early summer contrast charmingly with the grey 
background of Sumburgh Head and with the dun hues of the 
bare scrub wastes we have been hitherto traversing. The links 
draw in to a low flat neck enclosed between two sea-inlets. One 
is the creek named Grubness Voe, a great depot for fish-curing : 
the other on the western side is the Voe of Sumburgh. 

It is on the shore of this latter bay that the old mansion- 
house of Jarlshof is situated, in which the moody misanthrope of 
Scott's romance, Basil Mertoun, took up his abode and led the 
life of a recluse, far away in sooth * from the madding crowd.' 
The building is now a roofless and deserted ruin, but it may 
originally with adjunct ofiices have been a domicile of respectable 
size. It appears to have been erected by one of the later Orkney 
Earls. Close by is the fine modern residence, Sumburgh House, 
of the proprietor of a large tract of the adjoining country, its 
garden wall at one corner scarce half-a-dozen yards from the 
sea-beach. 

For a description of the Sumburgh headland, it would be hard 
to better Sir Walter Scott's. * A cliff of immense height, which 
presents its bare scalp and naked sides to the weight of a 



24 Hjaltland. 

tremendous surge. . . • This lofty promontory is constantly 
exposed to the carrent of a strong and fmrioas tide. . • 
On the land side the promontory is covered with short grass and 
slopes steeply down to a little isthmus, upon which the sea has 
encroached in creeks.' The isthmus and creeks are the heathy 
neck and voes I have just referred to : and, as the great novelist 
accurately observes, the encroachment of the sea on either side 
at the neck will probably in the lapse of time altogether insulate 
the rocky mount itself, * when what is now a Cape will become a 
lonely mountain islet severed from the mainland.' The eastern 
side of the mount is composed of enormous smooth slabs or 
layers of grey sandstone (called by Scott ' sand-flag ') sloping or 
* dipping ' down to seaward ; and these slabs, crumbling away 
and becoming detached, lie in loose masses along the hillside and 
can be slid down with the foot : — a desolate chaos of rock-debris. 

Here it was that the Mertouns, father and son, climbed the 
day after the tempest, and stood contemplating the tumultuous 
heaving waters of the Roost. How vividly the scene is borne in 
upon us. The sighting of the dismantled vessel, the generous 
impulse of the young Mordaunt to rush down the cliff and save 
the wrecked mariner, the innish and smash-up of the hulk on 
the rocks, tlie rescue of the pirate, the approach of the merciless 
wreckers, for, as the old harpy Swertha put it, in these isles a 
ship ashore was * a sight to wile the minister out of his very 
pu'pit in the middle of his preaching, muckle mair a puir auld 
ignorant wife frae her rock and her tow !* 

More Pictish towers. Yonder, at the extreme point of Scat- 
ness was a brought as we might infer from the designation of the 
spot, ' Ness of Burgi.' Higher up the coast is another, which 
has given its name to an adjacent islet ; and further on, near 
Boddam, yet another of these strongholds, looking out upon 
caves, and over a * Stack of the Brough ' on the seashore below. 

On the extremity of Sumburgh Gape is a fine lighthouse, 
which I shall ever remember as seen long while from steamer- 
deck brilliantly flaming out on a certain dark autumnal night, in 
a heavy gale, with the Koost running * mountains high.' 

Besides the large loch of Spiggie, there is another smaller one 
quite close to it, the Loch of Brow (Brough again, evidently). 



HjaUland. 25 

The trout-fishing in the former is disappointing. So demoralised 
have the fish in it become from the use of indiscriminate and 
xinsportsmanlike lures, that now they can hardly be got to look 
at a fly, nor does the artificial minnow seem to be much good. 
A common practice is to bait with a lump of herring, and an old 
Spiggie man told me he once in autumn time impaled on his 
hook a mouse he had caught in a trap, and with this uncanny 
morsel captured a trout over a pound weight. The fisherman, 
however, so they said, may do better sometimes on the water of 
Brow, where the trout, though not running so large as on Spiggie 
lake, take the fly more readily. 

Dunrossness is the haunt of many wild birds of comparative 
rarity in our islands. In the desolate cliffs of Fitful Head the 
peregrine falcon still nests and breeds : and an occasional pair 
as late as 1894 were known to frequent the cragged cape of 
Sumburgh. Merlin are occasionally shot in these parts. The 
owl — a long-eared greyish variety — is met with, of which I was 
shown a fine stuffed specimen shot not long since. On the loch 
of Spiggie the osprey has been seen on rare occasions, generally 
pursued and screeched at by innumerable seagulls. In the rock- 
scarped islet of Oolsay the eider-duck breeds. And here too the 
raven has his habitat, more mischievous depredator even than 
his brother, the hooded crow, particularly at nesting time in 
spring when his young have to be fed. The inroads made by 

the ravens on the cottagers' poultry, is serious. Mr. H 

told me of one that had actually pounced on a full-grown duck 
in his yard, and had made off with it some distance before he 
was shot. 

The first time I visited Dunrossness, one of those Shetland 
sea-fogs already spoken of hung over everything 

' Like the dun wimple of a new- made widow,' 

and continued without break the two or three days I was able to 
remain at Spiggie. Thus I had to leave without even a glimpse 
of Fitful Head or the cliffs adjoining. Two years before a 
weather experience of a different kind though equally aggravating 
had befallen a German artist, who had come to Spiggie to paint 
a stormy sea for a picture of the Saviour in the tempest on the 



26 HjaUland. 

lake of Galilee. The poor man passed in fraitless expectancy 
three weeks of nnintermpted fair calm weather, and then de- 
parted in despair: the Spiggie fishermen declaring they would 
they could hare him always with them I 

A curious and distinctive feature of the Zetland landscape is 
the prevalence of the little walled enclosureSi or ' plantie cmives,' 
along the hillsides. They are really small vegetable gardens or 
kailyards, which by Shetland custom any cottar may reclaim for 
himself from the bleak heathland wastes so common and exten- 
sive in Hjaltland. The dry-stone wall built round these plots is 
absolutely necessary to shelter them from the piercing winds 
which sweep over the bare wolds. You see them in all parts of 
the Shetland Isles ; and, looking across a wide stretch of country, 
the new-comer wonders what on earth these high-walled struc- 
tures can be, scattered promiscuously about in such numbers. 

Unless prevented by fogs or stress of weather, the steamer 
plying between Stromness and Scalloway calls in about bi-monthly 
off Spiggie going northward. This gives an alternative route 
whereby to get back to Lerwick, or proceed on to the further 
parts of Shetland. Going this way, one has fine views of the 
cliffs, fiords, and outlying isles along the western side of the 
mainland (Meginland). Among these latter, the two Burras 
which shut in Glif t Sound are the largest and most interesting ; 
West Burra being generally accepted as the locus of Magnus 
Troil's mansion-house, Burgh Westra. From here Minna in the 
story could espy the distant heights of Fitful Head : and here 
in the old mansion we can picture Eric Scambester on convivial 
occasions launching his master's huge punch-bowl loaded with a 
full cargo of ' good Nantz, Jamaica sugar, and Portugal lemons.' 

At the extreme north-end of Olift Sound is Scalloway (Skala- 
vag, bay of the shali)^ a cluster of houses grouped round a little 
voe or inlet, which forms a sheltered harbour. As one steams up 
alongside the pier, the ruined old castle built by a dreaded and 
rapacious Earl of Orkney, Patrick Stewart, is seen close by rear- 
ing its head above the intervening town buildings. This castle v 
is of the usual sixteenth century Scottish type and, though much '"^ 
plainer and smaller, is not unlike in style to the Palace at Kirk- < 
wall erected by the same noble. It has small projecting angle- "^ 



Hjaltland. 27 

tovreUeSy finished oflf below with ornamental corbelling. Over 
the main doorway of the castle is a stone escutcheon with the 
inscription, * Patricias Orcadi89 et Zetlandiae comes,' and a Latin 
couplet ; and high up in the wall flanking this doorway may be 
seen an iron ring attached to a pinnacle of the masonry. This 
ring served the purpose of a gallows, and is so placed that, when 
a man was hoisted up and hanged by a rope reeved through it, 
his body would dangle just in front of the doorway and window 
above it. On the other side of the building, also high up near 
the eaves, a small lancet aperture, almost invisible from below, is 
pointed out as the airlet to a secret chamber, in which Earl 
Patrick lay hid when under arraignment for sundry high crimes 
and misdemeanours. The story goes that a posse of the King's 
men who were in pursuit of the Earl had unsuccessfully searched 
the castle in quest of him, and were on the point of departure, 
when some one of the company, scanning the battlements from 
below, espied a faint curl of smoke escaping from the tiny aper- 
ture in the wall. The smoke came from the fugitive's tobacco 
pipe, and, the search being renewed, the obnoxious Earl was 
captured and afterwards executed. 

There are a few oldish dwelling-houses in Scalloway. , Above 
the entrance doorway of one I noted a scutcheon with the date 
1755, and a quaint motto, *Tace aut Face,' over the names 
James Scott and Katharine Sinclair. 

As at Stromness in Orkney, an enormous herring fishery trade 
is done at Scalloway. During the season it is a sight to see the 
quays. The usual practice here is to assort the fish going to 
market into three classes, the rest of the herrings not good 
enough for classification being thrown aside for manure. 

An ancient usage prevalent in the Faroe Isles is said to be 
still traceable as a survival in Hjaltland. This is the winter 
custom of what is called going * hussamillie,' that is, between or 
among the houses. The term appears to be in frequent use 
throughout Zetland as well as in Faroe. ' After dinner and a 
thorough * wash and brush-up they ' [the Faroe folk] * go hussa- 
millie. All the young people gather into a house or two, the 
women bring their knitting, and the men their wheels and cards.' 
Then they dance, etc., • High and low are socially equal 



28 Hjaltland. 

hussamilliey and all mingle together on eqaal terms. In Shet- 
land, it is said, there are two classes, an upper and a lower, bat 
no middle class/* After all, there is something commendable in 
the idea of this Arcadian simplicity, fraternity, or whatever we 
may style it. And from my own observation of the Zetland 
people, I should judge such a custom to be exactly in accord with 
their forthright sympathetic manners, which, especially when 
coming from women to men, are so attractive. 

The limitations of space are such that I must hurry over what 
remains of the Shetlands with few words. 

From Scalloway a charming trip may be made to the north- 
western regions of Zetland, round by Papa Stour and across the 
spacious bay of St. Magnus to Hillswick. The whole journey is 
a vision of strange rock-shapes, fissured precipices, and wave- 
washed islets, grouped in such sort that, if Hjaltland is not the 
' Ultima Thule,' it might well pass for it. The mere names of 
the coast features in themselves carry a suggestion of darksome 
sea-alleys and gloomy grots — vestibules, it might be, of Erebus 
— ^haunted by an under-world of hyperborean mermen and 
marine monsters ; spots where, in the words of the classic singer, 
* the seas dashed upon the rocks re-echo.' 

Especially striking is the stretch of coast-line betwixt the 
Sounds of Vaila and Papa. On the islet of Vaila a great rock- 
stack stands up like a ruined castle-tower of old; and from 
Watsness to Quilva Taing is a majestic chaos of nature's battle- 
ments breached and riven into ragged buttresses and pinnacles by 
the never-ceasing assaults of the tremendous surge. The sea- 
margin of Papa Stour isle itself is a marvel of indented notches 
— creeks or voes where the furious tides have eaten their way far 
into the island core. Here, too, are caves, natural arches, sub- 
terraneous rock-tunnels, skerries in numbers. Then, rounding 
the corner of Sandness and holding north-east, we can just sight 
over yonder the deep-embayed inlet which terminates in West 
Burra Firth, or Borgarfiord [fiord of the Borg]. Near here 
stood the Pictish Tower whence the Norsemen gave its name to 

* See an interesting account of this primitive custom in The Scotsman of 
5th July, 1894. 

I 



Hjaltland. 29 

the spot ; and where, the Orkneyinga Saga tells us, Jarls Mag- 
nus and Hakon in their earlier days of amity slew a famous 
chieftain, Thorbiorn. 

The approach to Hillswick, the tourist's portal to Northmaven, 
is characteristically Zetlandish. The steamer passes up Ura 
Fiord, a long, narrow, and perfectly sheltered haven : and brings 
to in the little o£F-shooting loop or vik^ where a few houses, 
sheds, and fishing craft cluster together along a low isthmus. 
Behind and across this isthmus, a grand vista of lofty cliffs, the 
* Heads of Grocken/ are seen looming up in retreating perspec- 
tive. As for this strange outlying northern region of North- 
maven — all but severed from the mainland isle, for the connecting 
ligature at Ellwick scarcely exceeds fifty yards in width — its 
broken coast-line is reckoned perhaps the wildest and most diver- 
sified in all Shetland, and that is indeed saying much. But to 
do these labyrinthine sea-shores justice would be to write another 
article : and so we must borrow a rhyme from the poet-fiction- 
ist, and say with Claud Halcro, 

* Farewell to Northmaven, 
Grey Hillswicke farewell ! 
To the calms of thy haven 
The storms on thy fell.' 

As for Foula, solitary and remote, planted like Fair Isle 
leagues away from the main Zetland group, it is a spot hard to 
get at, but "wondrous worth seeing. For are there not its sites 
of ancient church, Picts' House, and burial mounds ; its lefty 
summit-ridge, * the Sneug ; ' the adamantine fantastically-shaped 
wall of cliffs between the Hcevdi capes and on to the Wick of 
Helliberg, facing out to the golden sunset ; and the marvel of 
superabundant bird-life which makes this island-fastness its 
home? 

It still remains to devote a word to the north group of the 
Hjaltland isles. Starting from Lerwick in a coasting steamer, 
one skirts the eastern shores of the mainland, passing many a 
voe, fiord, ness, and skerry, till Whalsey is reached — ^an isle which 
still retains vestiges of its three ancient churches, brocks two, 
a Picf 8 house, many lakelets, and a farmhouse which bears the 
unsavoory name of Sodom. Leaving Whalsey to our right, we 



► -• 



ffjallland. 

Lioga Sound, sightiog the 'Oat Skerries,' and thur 
>wer. Thence passing the Ness and Holm of Lunna, 
Yell Sound [Jalasund], we stand over to Fetlar, and 
ick or Bay of Tretta, which, should a south-easter 
will not commend itself to us as a very sheltered har- 
'hb islaud has some interesting antiquities both pre- 
mediseval. Of the three or four relics of the latter 
ined ' kirk ' or chapel near the Free Charcli Manse 
ve been dedicated to a patron saint, whose name I 
mber to have come across before in Scotland, though 
own to English lawyers, St. Hilaiy. Great things 
a of the trout fishing in the little loch, 'Papil Water,' 
s behind the spit of beach at the head of the Tresta 
doubtless others like myself would gladly stay a few 
interesting island to explore its treasures, if one only 
to lodge and could make sure of catching a return 
r a reasonable interval. 

3 the chance — or mts-chance, some might hold it — 
'oyage I have been describing in a pretty stiff half- 
3 happened to the present writer], will best realise 
jd character of the Shetland coast. For, as one 
nd again the vast swart rock-piles and spires laslied 
ets of sea foam, and the vessel plunges through the 
the sounds, quite close to a Scylla on the one hand, 
iis on the other, — one begins to grasp the risks and 
is coasting service, carried on as it is all through the 
darkness of the Zetland winter I 
lar our steamer crosses over to the eastern shores 
largest of the Shetland isles next after the main 
we have noted elsewhere in the Zetland archipel- 
and is all but cut in two at a central point where 
ive run up into the heart of the land to within a 
another. It is into the eastern of these two Voes 
id our way, entering it by a narrow passage, and 
bin a stone-cast of its northern headland. Once 
e Mid Yell Voe, the view of inlet and valley is veiy 
not to Bay romantic, and oonveya an absolute 
id-locked shelter. Yell is rich in sites or ruins of 



Hjaltland. 31 

quondam Catholic churches and Pictish towera Of the latter, 
there is a fine example at Burra Ness, which we pass on the 
way to Unst. And here it may be observed that the place- 
name, ' Burra,* is continually recurring all through Shetland, 
tacked on to firths, capes, islands, or whatever it may be, and 
all pointing to the near vicinity of some one or other of these 
archaic burghs or broughs. 

Of Yell Sound (Jalasund) we hear something in the Saga of 
the Orkneys. One summer, in the early years of the 12th 
century, came Jarl Rognvald over to Hjaltland from Norway, 
bringing with him two noble chieftains, Solmund Sigurdson 
and J6n P^trsson, with a band of warriors and a few galleys. 
They reached Hjaltland about midsummer, but, strong and 
contrary winds springing up, they brought their ships to Jala- 
sund, and, being well received by the Baendr (landholders) of 
Yell, went feasting about the country. 

Unst, the northernmost of the Shetland Isles, is separated 
from Yell by a narrow strait, half a mile to a mile in width. 
Shaping now our course north-eastward, we sight the islet of 
Uyea, interCvSting from its group of Picts* houses and its ruined 
chapel, which has the same special feature seen in some early 
Irish oratories, and in certain of the old Orkney churches. 
This is a doorway constructed without rebate for a door, thus 
suggesting, thought Sir Henry Dryden, the primitive method 
of closing an entrance to a building by a hide or curtain. 
Next we pass the Castle of Muness, of like style and date with 
the crumbling ruin at Scalloway, and not unlike Orkneyan 
Noltland. A few miles further the steamer runs in between the 
islands of Huney and Balta into the fine haven named after 
the latter, Balta Sound. Here one finds an excellent little 
hotel, and one or two comfortable ' pensions ' to select from. 

From Balta Sound, a walk of three or four miles across the 
intervening high ridge of Vailafield, brings you down to the 
western shore of Unst, overlooking the boundless Atlantic. 
At any point between Hevda Hill and Hagdales Nest a really 
marvellous panorama is obtained away round and across ocean 
to the far-away Gloups of Yell, but to the north, along the 



IfjaUland, 

the Tiew 19 barred by the BroBgh of Valaberg. It 
id vjata oDce seen never to' be forgotten. Aootber 
lay's occupation is to walk or drive over to the 
mity of the Loch of Cliff, take a boat for the day 
row slowly over the three miles' length of this 
I picturesque lake, with a fishing-line or two out 
len fieh down the half-mile of rivulet which cou- 
jch with the sea at the head of Burra Firth. A 
E past the site of the broagk, which has ^ven its 
B Firth, and on to the promontory of Hertnaness, 
)od day's work. From the hill of Hermaness you 
the waters of the Burra Firth to the precipices of 

Then, to northward, the eye gazes down over the 
ip of skerries, on one of wbich, Muckle Fladda, is 
le, and travels on over a dark swirling- surge of 
le rocky ' Out Stack,' outmost skerry of them all, 
ting as the most northerly spot of land in the 
I j 

I, it may be noted, was a terminal station of the 
ional arc observed and computed by the staff of 
36 Survey of the United Kingdom. The southern 
the arc was at Dunnose in the Isle of Wight, 
und is associated with memories of two eminent 
Qce, who, in the early years of the present century, 
igside of one another, though independently. One 
S, a French savant, who was sent over here to make 
s in connection with the length of tbe seconds 
a this latitude. The other was Captain Colby of 
Engineers, afterwards chief of the Ordnance Survey, 
1 out work of a similar kind and with a similar 
tie little island of Balta, which in ancient days had 
tower and chapel, forms a natural and perfect 

to the sound, and here Colby and his surveyors 
ir quarters. 

Vick, the fine bay next-door to Balta isle, is, says 
e spot where in the ninth century the great Scan- 
ing, Harald Harfagri, came ashore on his first 
to Hjaltland to root out the unruly Vikings, and 
inds for himself. 



Serapis — A Study in Religions. 33 

*I do not,' says Virgil in one of his Georgios, *hope to 
include all things in my verses, not if I had a hundred tongues, 
a hundred mouths, and a voice of iron.' Nor does the present 
writer pretend to have done more than offer here a representa- 
tive selection from the abundant store of interesting material 
that appertains to Hjaltlaud. As the topmost boughs of a tree 
yield the finest blooms and fruit, so will the tourist often have 
to go afar for the scenes and regions best worth seeking. Aud 
if these few pages shall have satisfied the reader that there is 
treasure-trove in remote Hjaltland well worth searching for, 
they will have served their purpose. 

T. PiLKiNGTON White. 



Art. II.— SERAPIS— a STUDY IN RELIGIONS. 

* rpHE Egypt which you so praised to me, my dearest Ser- 
X vian I ' wrote the Emperor Hadrian to his brother-in- 
law, ' I have learned to be thoroughly false, fickle, and swayed 
by every breath of rumour. Those who worship Serapis are 
Christians ; and those who call themselves bishops of Christ 
are vowed to Serapis. There is there no ruler of the Jewish 
synagogue, no Samaritan, no priest of the Christians, who is 
not an astrologer, a diviner, and a charlatan. The very pa- 
triarch, when he comes to Egypt, is compelled by some to adore 

Serapis ; by others, Christ ' The language of 

the Imperial writer was perhaps a little exaggerated, for the 
Alexandrians about whom he was writing had done their best 
to provoke a ruler even of his statesmanlike temper. As he 
tells us in the same letter, he had during his stay in their city 
renewed their privileges, granted them new ones, and showered 
benefits upon them, to be repaid as soon as his back was turned 
by lampoons upon himself, his adopted son Verus, and his fa- 
vourite Antinous. Yet the Alexandrians probably knew with 
whom they were dealing. Had they shown as much levity 
towards his predecessor, Nero, it might have proved so con- 
xxviii. 3 



34 SerapU — A Study in ReligioM. 

genial to that vain and hysterical nature as to oonfirm him in his 
desire to transfer his household, with its cruelties and intrigues, 
to the mouth of the Nile. Had they chosen one of his half- 
barbarian successors as the theme of their jests he might have 
massacred half the town, as the savage Caracalla afterwards 
did for much the same reason. But the dilettante Hadrian, 
though capable of awful severity when the interests of the 
State were in danger — as his extermination of the Jewish na- 
tion a few years later showed clearly enough — ^was, like our 
own Charles II., too cynical and perhaps too good-natured to 
take serious vengeance for merely verbal insults to himself. 
So, after declaring that the god which all the Alexandrians 
really worshipped was money, he concludes his letter by the 
wish that they may suffer no worse punishment than to be fed 
on their own chickens, whose incubation in a manure heap 
seems to have been very offensive to the Roman sense of de- 
licacy.* 

But who was this Serapis whom Hadrian found adored by 
Pagans and Christians alike? The answer to this question, 
though it takes us into some rather musty history, affords us a 
bird's eye view of the evolution of an ethical cult from the 
most primitive beginnings, which is, I believe, without parallel 
in the history of Religions. 

To begin at the very beginning : — Some 6000 years before 
Christ the fertile plains between the Tigris and the Euphrates 
were inhabited by a people known to science as the Sumerians. 
They seem to have been of the Mongoloid stock, and to have 
resembled the modern Chinese, who are, according to writers 
of high authority,! to be counted among their direct heirs more 
closely than any other nation. Like the Chinese, they spoke 
an agglutinative language and shewed an amazing aptitude 
for the material side of civilisation ; while even at the early 

* The letter is given in the Satuminus of Fl. Vopiacus (Hist. Amq. Scrip- 
tor, VI., Lugd, Bat, 1671, 11. pp. 718-780). Its authenticity has been suc- 
cessfully defended by Bishop Lightf oot. (See The Apostolic Fathers, Lond. 
1869, I., p. 481). 

t See the review of recent works on Oriental Archaeology in the Scottish 
Beview for October, 1894. 



Serapis — A Study in Religions. 35 

date of which we are speaking, their religion had developed 
from the rude Fetichism of all primitive peoples into a worship 
of * great Fetiches,' or personifications of natural phenomena^ 
presided over by a Triad consisting of the gods of the sky, the 
earth, and the intermediate atmosphere.* Their principal pur- 
suit was agriculture, as was perhaps natural in a country where 
wheat grows wild, and from very early times they seem to 
have been pressed hard by the shepherd nomads of Semitic 
race, who poured in upon them from the neighbouring deserts. 
It is possible that a faint echo of this fact may be preserved in 
the Biblical legend of the strife between Cain, the tiller of the 
soil, and Abel, the keeper of sheep.f 

The coming of the Semites into Mesopotamia naturally 
brought with it some modification of the national religion, but 
it is very unlikely that this involved any of the violence and 
bitterness with which the modern world is apt to receive any 
interference with its sharply-defined theologies. For, in Meso- 
potamia as elsewhere in the ancient world, religion was very 
much an affair of locality. As Apollo was worshipped at 
Delos, Athena at Athens, and Hera at Argos,so Anna the Sky- 
god was best adored at Erech, En-lilla the Air-god at Nipur, 
and Ea the Earth-god at Eridu.J Hence, on the formation of 
a new town, it was only necessary to raise a temple to some 
personification not previously possessing one, for a new god to 
be added to the Mesopotamian pantheon, without interfering 
with the privileges or exciting the jealousy of its former occu- 
pants. To such an extent was this system carried that, some 
seven centuries before our era, it was possible for a king of the 



* For a fuller account of the Sumerian pantheon, see the article men- 
tioned in last note. 

t It was not until Semitic influence began to be felt that bloody sacri- 
fices were dffered to the gods of Mesopotamia. The earliest Sumerian 
inscriptions — those of the kings of Lagash — provide for offerings only * the 
fruit of the ground.' 

X All these places were situate in ancient Babylonia. Erech is the mo- 
dern Warka ; Nipur is still called Niffer ; Eridu, once a seaport on thei 
shores of the Persian Gulf, is now covered by the inland ^' 

Shahrein. 



36 Ser^)i» — A Stmthf m JUHyioiu. 

Meac^tuniui coDobr where the Semitie elemant was 
Btroogest to d«cUi« his befaef in ' 6o,000 great goda of heaven 
and earth.' * 

It was DO doubt in this war that a god origiaaUy came to be 
worshipped in the great citj of B^tIod, who was destined to 
figure more largelj- in the e^es of posterity than all the rest of 
the Mesopotamian divinities pat togethtf. This was the god 
Mardnk or Merodach, the god of the Snn, who was worshipped 
there certainly as early as 4000 B.C He was always known 
aa the first-born of Ea, either becanse the Snn appears to 
primitive peoples to bu bom every day from the earth, or, as is 
more likely, because Babylon was itself peopled by a colony 
from Eridu, the seat of the earth-god's worship. It ia possible, 
too, that the worship of Merodach may have first spmng np 
nnder Semitic inflttence, though this really rests upon no sorer 
foaodation than the marked fondness of the Semites for solar 
deities. Bat it was to bis association with £a that he owed bis 
principal characteristic, which was his benevolence towards 
maukind. Fur Ea was the colture-god of the Sumerians, who 
had himself brought to them, accordiug to their legends, the 
rudiments of all their arts and sciences. And when the wr- 
god Eo-lilla tried to destroy mankind by a flood, Ea contrived 
to save a remnant, in exact correspondence with the story of 
Genesis, by shutting them up in an ark which floated over the 
waters.f Yet in these good ofBccs he was far excelled by his 
son Merodach, <the creator and redeemer of mankiod,'^ between 
whom and hia father he eventually became the mediator.^ 
The clay tablets, inscribed with the hymns used in his worship, 

• So Assur-natair-pal. Prof. Sayce (Bibbert Ltctures for 1S&7, ji. 216), 
thinka that there was ' a little royal exaggeration ' in the number. 

t A full translation of the legend is given in Sayce's HightT CriUcam, 
Lond., 1894, Chap. III. 

X Por the creation of mankind by Merodach see T. O. Pinches' Nexo 
Vertion of the (Jieation-atory, (Trans. Ninth Intern. Congress of 
OrientaliBta, Lond., 1893, II. pp. 191-192). He is called their redeemer in a, 
text translated by Sir. Boacanren in the Babylonian and Oriental Record 
(1889, IT. 11.) It seems to refer to the (Biblical) Fall of Man. 

5 See Hommel'e Der bahyUmiicht Urtprung dtr Ugyptwktn KaUvr, 
Mdnchen, 1892, p. 21. 



Serapis — A Sttidy in Religions. 37 

a good mimber of which are now in the British Museum, are full 
of praises of his forethought for man. When Tiamat, the 
monster of chaos, seeks to wreck the ordered world of the 
gods, it is Merodach who, in spite of the horns, claws, and tail 
with which like the mediaaval devil she is armed, overthrows 
and destroys her.* When the plague is in Babylon, it is 
Merodach who mourns over his city, and finally gets the 
curse transferred to Erech 1 And when the demons of disease 
or death assault any of his people, it is Merodach who, on the 
performance of the proper ceremonies, obtains leave from his 
father to pronounce the Great Name, at the sound of which all 
demons fly away.f Hence he is spoken of in the cuneiform 
texts as * The merciful one among the gods, the merciful lord 
who loves to raise the dead to life.'J * The establisher of the 
lowly and the supporter of the weak,'§ and by many other 
epithets of the same kind. Even his proper name is significant 
of the same qualities. It is in its extended form Asari-uru- 
dugga^ * The chief who does good to man,'|| or, to take the last 
two syllables, uru-dugga, * The benefactor,' in later Sumerian 
Mirri-dugga^ from whence the still more modern name of 
Merodach. 

From Babylon to Egypt may seem a long step, but it is one 
that the worship of Merodach can nx)w be proved to have 
taken. The long struggle between the Mesopotamian king- 
doms and Egypt for the mastership of Western Asia must have 
begun before the dawn of history, and about the year 3800 
B.C., we find Sargon of Accad, the hero king of Babylonia, 
forcing his way westward to the shores of the Mediterranean 
and planting his victorious standards in the island of Cyprua 
So close a neighbourhood to Egypt implies some interchange 
of ideas, and we are therefore in some degree prepared for 
Professor Norman Lockyer's discovery of two years ago, that 
some of the Egyptian temples show considerable acquaintance 
on the part of their builders with the Mesopotamian calendar. 



* Sayce's Hibhert Lectures, p. 102. 

t The texts on this subject are well brought together by M. Laurent in 
Xa Magie et la Dvvi^iation chez lea Chaldio-Asayriensy Paris, 1895. 
t Sayce Hibhert Lectures, p. 99. § Ibid, p. 300. || Ibid, p. 106. 



'38 Serapii — A Study in Seligions. 

But it is more surpriang to learn that the beet-known god 
worshipped by the Egyptians was but the Merodach of 
Babylon in a foreign dress. Yet this is the result of the 
researches of Professor Hommel of Munich and Mr. G. J. 
Ball. The name of the god whom the Egyptians called Uasar 
or ITsir and the Greeks Osiris has no meaning in Egyptian, 
but corresponds closely to Aaari, which formed (as we have 
seen)» the first part of the proper name of Merodach. Both 
have the bull as their symbol, and the resemblance is com- 
pleted by the epithet Un-nofer or Onophris, which is almost 
invariably associated in Egyptian texts with the name of 
Osiris, this being, like Mirri-dugga^ simply *the benefactor.' 
While, as if to make all doubt impossible, it is now shown that 
at a date when the Sumerian script was still pictorial or 
ideographic instead of cuneiform, the sign for Merodach's 
name was identical with the hieroglyph afterwards used by the 
Egyptians to denote Osiris, namely, a stool and an eye. It 
seems, therefore, impossible to resist the conclusion that Osiris 
was not originally an Egyptian god at all, but that his worship 
was brought into Egypt from Babylon where he was known 
as Merodach.* 

The worship of Osiris, however, became in Egyptian hands 
a very different affair from that of his Asiatic prototype. It is 
true that he was like Merodach, a solar deity, the son of the 
earth-god Seb, and the husband of his own sister Isis — two 
names which Dr. Hommel has identified on linguistic grounds 
with thoso of their Sumerian analogues, Ea and Istar. He 
was also the slayer of a serpent who seems to typify darknes& 
But here the parallel ends. For the national characteristics 
of the Egyptians differed toto coelo from those of the Baby- 
lonians among whom the idea of a solar god first took definite 
shape. The Sumerian, like the Chinese, was tenacious, prac- 
tical, and ingenious ; the Semite, then as now, was fierce, cruel, 
and greedy ; but the Egyptian was, in the words of Herodotus, 
* religious to excess, far beyond any other race of men.' Un- 



* The Babylonian origin Dot only of the worship of Osiris, but also of 
the whole civilisation of Egypt is fully dealt with in the review mentioned 
in the note on p. 34. 



Serapis — A Study in Beligiona. 39 

like the Sumerian, who was by nature and inclination either 
an agriculturist or an artificer, or the Semite, who was a 
warrior or a trader, the Egyptian longed above all things to 
be a priest Full of that melancholy * which rejoiceth ex- 
ceedingly and is glad when it can find the grave,* to live in a 
temple all day, to compose hymns to the gods, and to muse on 
the life to come seemed to the Egyptian the highest delight 
that this world had to oflFer.* Among such a people, the 
deity who in Babylon was the warrior of the gods, became a 
god not of the living but of the dead. The Egyptian priests 
taught that Osiris had once come down from heaven to rule 
over men, to whom he had taught all useful knowledge in- 
cluding the cultivation of corn and the vine; that he had 
been treacherously torn in pieces by his brother Set, his widow 
Isis wandering weeping over land and sea until she had col- 
lected and buried with pious care his mangled remains ; and 
that his son Horus when arrived at man's estate had avenged 
his father, and now ruled over the world as the visible Sun, 
while Osiris retained the sovereignty of the underworld to 
which all men must go after death.t Henceforward, to the 
Egyptian, this life became more than ever a preparation for 
the next. If he could commit to memory the spells and 
formulas which would enable him to combat successfully the 
demons and monsters who would beset his path beyond the 
tomb ; if he could ensure that after death his carefully em- 
balmed body should be laid in a sepulchre enriched with the 
offerings of food and fruit, either in actual or in pictorial form, 
on which he might feed in the centuries to come ; if he could 
be buried with all the ceremonies which attended the interment 
of the dead Osiris : — why then his double or phantom might 
hope to come forth from the tomb, to win its perilous way to 
the Hall of the Two Truths, there to make its denial of sin 
before Osiris as judge of the dead, and thereafter to become 

* Compare the statement of Diodoros (A. 51) that the Egyptians ' called 
the dwelling-place of the living, guest-chambers, as we inhabit them but a 
short time, while the houses of the dead they name eternal mansions, be- 
cause we abide in the house of Hades for a boundless age.' 

t G. Maspero The Dawn of Civilisation^ Lond. 1894, p. 174-176. 



40 Serapis — A Study in Beligioni. 

identified in some not very intelligible way, with Osiris him- 
self. Bnt such privileges were naturally within the power of 
the rich alone : to the poor was held out no hope beyond the 
grave save of a wretched existence for a few weeks, during 
which the soul might wander upon the earth feeding upon 
filth and refuse, until complete annihilation put an end to its 
sufferings. Those who praise the pure ethics and spiritual 
character of the Egyptian religion seem to forget that its 
promises, like its ceremonies, concerned none but a small part 
of the nation who professed it * 

Let us turn now from the creeds of Asiatics and Africans to 
that brilliant and wonderful people to whom we are directly 
indebted for our science, our art, our literature, and in fact for 
nearly all our intellectual possessions. The religion of the 
Greeks was not, in its origin, very unlike those of the barbarians 
just noticed. In the Iliad, the gods preserve epithets which show 
that they, like the deities of Babylon and Abydos, were once 
merely ihe fetiches or tutelary spirits of the little communities 
in which their worship grew up. Aphrodite is still Kypris ; 
Hera, Hera of Argos, and Apollo the god who watches over 
TenedoB. Even Zeus, the father of gods and men, has such 
local adjectives as Dodonaian appended to his august name. 
But these deities were, for the most part, the gods of the 
kings and warriors, that is to say, of the conquering Dorian 
race who played in Homeric Greece the part acted in England 
by the Normans. The rustics and peasants of Attica held fast 
to the worship of their native divinities, and foremost among 
these was Demeter, the goddess from whom they learned the 
art of agriculture. 

The legend of Demeter has been made so familiar to us by 
both ancient and modem art that there can be no need to do 
more here than refer to it. Everyone has heard how Demeter, 
a personification of the earth in its smiling and beneficent 
aspect, bore a daughter, Persephone, whose beauty breathed 
desire into Hades the king of the lower regions ; how he carried 

* See Jequier Le Livre de ce qu'U y a dans VHadh, Paris, 1894, pp. 9-10 : 
Maapero Et de Myth, and d*Arch, Egypt Paris, 1893, I., pp. 347-348. 



Serapis — A Study in Religions. 41 

her off to his gloomy abode ; and how Demeter refused to 
allow the earth again to bring forth fruit until a treaty was 
arranged by which Persephone was to spend half the year 
with her mother above ground, and the rest with her new 
consort. This seems to have been in its origin a nature-myth 
setting forth the rude ideas of an agricultural people as to the 
mystery of the germination and growth of the com sown in 
the earth, and it was originally portrayed in dramatic form at 
festivals held at particular times of the year, in the way that 
Mr. J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough has shown to be common 
to tillers of the soil nearly all over the world. But about the 
year 600 B.G., a new element was introduced into these agri- 
cultural festivals of ^ttica by the addition of a new actor. 
This was the god of the vine, the Thracian Dionysos. 

The first home of this god is not very clear. The old ex- 
planation of his name is that it meant ' the Zeus of Nysa/ but 
as nobody has been able to identify Nysa with any place 
known to the ancients, this does not take us much further. 
M. Langlois would make him out to be the Vedic god Agni- 
Soma, but although the myths of the two deities present many 
features in common, the parallel is not so close as to make it 
necessary to suppose any direct connection between the two. 
The most that we know about his origin with tolerable cer- 
tainty is that the Thracian immigrants into Boeotia brought 
with them a god of thfs name, who seems to have been looked 
upon as the supreme god of vegetation and reproduction, 
from which, by a very natural association of ideas, he became 
the god of the underworld, and therefore the deity who pre- 
sides over the life and death of man. Him Epimenides, — a 
wise man of Crete who had been sent for to purify Athens 
from the murder of Kylon and the plague which was supposed 
to be its consequence — introduced into the festivals of Demeter, 
and particularly into that prolonged one which culminated in 
a solemn procession from Athens to Eleusis. The secret rites 
celebrated on that occasion were probably already known as 
the Eleusinian Mysteries. 

The agricultural side of these rites is fairly well known 
to us. They displayed the carrying-off of Persephone, the 



42 Serapu — A Study in ReligioM. 

wanderings of Demeter in her pursuit^ the gift of corn to 
Triptolemos, the fosterling whom Demeter had taken to con- 
sole her in her a£9iction, and the departure of the same hero 
in his winged car drawn by serpents to spread the knowledge 
of agriculture throughout the world. The part at first played 
in them by Dionysos is not so clear, but in any case the wave 
of religious thought which swept over Greece about the 
middle of the sixth century before Christ must have completely 
transformed it For, at about this period, a sect known to us 
as the Orphic Brotherhood sprang up in Greece. These 
sectaries — ^it is doubtful whether they were ever formed into a 
regular association or not — claimed to have an exclusive 
knowledge of such recondite matters as the creation of the 
world, the legends of the gods, and the future lot of man, 
special revelations as to which they professed to have found 
in the poems of the mythical Thracian singer Orpheus.* At 
first their ideas seem to have made little way but they were 
favoured by Peisistratos, then tyrant of Athens, and received a 
great accession of strength on the break up of the Pytha- 
gorean schools of Magna Graecia in b.g. 510. From that time 
forward, Orphic ideas permeated the whole teaching of the 
Mysteries, until at last Orpheus was looked upon as their 
founder. As Dionysos was the God whose worship formed 
the central point of the Orphic system, he naturally, under 
their influence, assumed a more important place at Eleusis. 
The form which his legend finally took was as follows : — 
Dionysos Zagreus, or ^ the hunter,' was the son of the omni- 
potent Zeus by his virgin daughter Persephone. He was the 
favourite son of his father, who gave to him the kingdom of 
this world, and sent him upon earth to escape the jealousy of 
Hera. But the latter incited against him the Titans, who sur- 
prised him by a trick, tore him in pieces, and ate his flesh. 
The heart was saved by Athena, from which was born again 
the infant Dionysos, the mystic child ^hose birth formed one 

* It is now generally admitted that the poems attributed to Orpheus 
werip not the work of any person of that name. The earlier ones extant 
are iiearly all by different members of the first Pythagorean schooL See 
AbePs drphica, Lips., 1885, pp. 139-140. 

1 



SergpU — A Stwdg tk Rdigiotu. 43 

of the most in nn oo uiy e acaies of the Mysteriea. Zeus destroyed 
the Titans nith his 1hiiiidai>oltBy aod out of their ashes men 
'were bom. But, as the Titans had swallowed the flesh ci 
Dionysos, every man has within him a spaik of the Divine 
natnre, which is inmiortaL Its gradnal pnrification is effected 
by saccessiTe incarnations^ nntil at last the Dionysiac ^»ark is 
free from the stains of Titanic matter, when it will again 
become nnited to the deity fix>m whom it was violently 
severed. Snch was the stoiy set forth in the later form of the 
mystic rites, where the whole drama of the life and ' Passion ' 
of Zagrens was enacted before the eyes of the initiata He 
was also shown, as appears from nuiny passages in the Attic 
dramatists, a representation of the torments of the wicked and 
the delights of the jnst in the underworld. How mnch of this 
was consciously borrowed from Egyptian teaching is very 
difficnlt to say, but it is worth while noticing that the worship 
of Oidris had early penetrated to Crete, from whence Epi- 
menides the reformer of the Mysteries came, and that all 
Greek travellers from Herodotns to Diodoros assigned an 
Egyptian origin to the Elensinian rites.* 

Unfortunately for those who love a clear outline in such 
matters, the Orphics were not content with assigpung to their 
own peculiar deity the most honoured place in the Greek 
worship. They — or at least such of them as had once been 
Pythagoreans — ^were above all things, philosophers, and had 
inherited much of the teaching of that Ionic School which 
jSrst arrived at the truth that Natnre proceeds only by fixed 
and immutable laws. Hence to them the stories told in the 
Mysteries were not historical facts, but allegories shadowing 

*Theodoret, TherapeuHca, lY. (Migne), p. 796, sqq., says distincUy that 
the Elensinia were brought to Greece from Egypt, and that the hierophant 
knew that the Passion of Zagrens referred to the murder of Osiris. In a 
memoir presented to the AccuUmie des Intcriptioru in 1893, M. Foucart, 
whose authority in such matters is very high, advances' the same theory, 
and at any rate makes it clear that the Mysteries were not indigenous to 
Greece. Towards the end of last year the Greek Archaeological Society 
were said to have discovered at Eleusis proofs of the correctness of M. 
Foncart's theory. Details are still wanting. 





44 Serapis — A Study in Religions. 

forth the causes of natural phenomena. Dionysos was not for 
them, as for the ignorant multitude, a man who had taught his 
fellows the art of wine-making and had been deified for his 
pains: he was the Universal Soul or animating principle which 
the Supreme Mind had breathed into his ordered world. But 
as this principle was necessarily one and not several, it fol- 
lowed that all the gods worshipped by the multitude were 
but the same principle under different aspects. Thus arose 
the work of fusion or absorption of one god into another — 
Theokrasia the Greeks called it — which in the early Christian 
centuries made such wild work in the classical Olympus. 
Herakleitos of Ephesus, whose date may be put at 505 B.G., 
proclaimed openly that Hades and Dionysos were the same 
divinity, thus making the likeness of Dionysos, as a god of the 
dead, to Osiris still closer. Then Euripides identified him with 
the Delphic Apollo, which, as Apollo had already swallowed 
up the Homeric Sun-God Helios, gave to Dionysos as to 
Osiris a solar character.* And while Dionysos was thus iden- 
tifying himself with the gods of the Homeric pantheon, 
Demeter was doing the same with the goddessea The dis- 
tinction between Demeter and Persephone— of the earth and 
the seed which she receives in her bosom — never very marked, 
began gradually to fade away. Then came her fusion with 
the mother-goddesses Rhea and Cybele on the one hand, and 
with the daughters of Zeus, Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite, 
on the other. Dionysos thus became at once the father, the 
son, the brother, and the spouse of the goddess with whom 
his legend was linked, and this in its turn hastened his own 
identification with that omnipotent god of whom he was 
originally merely the vicegerent. Some writers even think 
that there are signs of an eventual fusion between Dionysos 
and Persephone as representing the active and passive forms of 
the same energy. It is not too much to say that at the time 
of Alexander, the educated and initiated class in Greece, 
Among whom alone the Orphic theories had taken root, wor- 
shipped a Deu8 PaniheuSj from whom all things came, and to 

* Abel, op, dt,, pp. 148, 217. 



SerapU — A Study in Religions. 45 

whom all things must return. But they believed that thie 
god manifested himself in three principal forms, which were 
these: — 

(1) The architect and ruler of the Universe^ who was called 

Zens among the living and Hades among the dead. 

(2) The female principle or receptive power of Nature, 

usually invoked as Aphrodite and Persephone. 

(3) The son of the two preceding, the mediator between his 

father and mankind, known indifferently as the infant 

Dionysos, Eros or Apollo. 
Now it is a commonly observed phenomenon in the history 
of religions that a creed which seems incapable of expansion in 
its native country will often meet with widespread acceptance 
so soon as it is transplanted to a slightly different soil ; and 
something of this kind seems to have taken place with the 
Orphic teaching. Its really distinctive feature — the transmi- 
gration of souls — never met with any great success in Greece. 
It might be sung about by poets like Pindar, or taught by 
philosophers like Plato ; but there is no reason to think that it 
ever became part of the popular beliefs, while most of the 
learned were formally opposed to it. The Mysteries must have 
been the only centre from which it could be spread, and these 
Mysteries were not only confined to a very limited number, but 
were protected against profanation by terrible sanctions. But 
when, on the division of Alexander's Empire, Ptolemy, the son 
of Lagos, received Egypt as his portion, the Orphic doctrines 
were given an impetus that sent them all over the civilised 
world. For Ptolemy, carrying out it may be one of his dead 
master's unfulfilled plans, set about establishing in his new 
capital Alexandria, a mixed worship which should form a link 
between his Egyptian subjects and the ruling class of Greeks 
and Macedonians who formed the support of his throne. With 
this purpose he sent for Timotheos, one of the sacred family 
from whom the hierophants of the Mysteries were chosen, and 
entrusted to him and Manetho, an Egyptian priest of high 
rank whom he had won over to his service, the task of devis- 
ing a religion which should satisfy the spiritual aspirations of 
Greek and Egyptian alike. 



46 Serapis — A Study in Religions, 

The result, which, more hellenieo^ was sanctioned in due 
course by the oracle at Delphi, was pretty nearly what might 
have been expected from the relative position of the two na- 
tioD& The g^ds of Elensis passed into the new religion under 
Egyptian names; but, though they might thus be invested 
with a few Egyptian attributes, they yet lost none of their 
own. The child-god of the Mysteries became the child Horns 
— ^in Egyptian, Har^pa-Khrat^ of which the Greeks made Har- 
pocrates ; Demeter was called by the name of Isis, which had, 
perhaps, been originally hers ; while her spouse, Dionysos, took 
that of Osor-hapi^ or Osiris in his earthly form as the Bull Apis 
— ^for he, like Merodach and Dionysos Zagreus, was a tauriform 
god — corrupted by the Greeks into Sarapis, of which Serapis 
is the Latin form. These identifications dated from the time 
of Herodotus, and the Egyptian legend of the tearing in pieces 
of Osiris, the wanderings of Isis, and the birth of Horus so 
closely corresponded with the Eleusiuian stories that they can 
hardly have required much alteration. But in all other respects 
the worship of Serapis was but that of the Mysteries in another 
and rather simpler form. The neophyte had to undergo a long 
and gradual initiation before he was admitted to the full know- 
ledge of the religion ; he was taught the dogma of the rein- 
carnation of souls, which was entirely foreign to the ideas of 
the native faith ; * and he was most plainly given to under- 
stand that the new names given to his deities did not prevent 
him from worshipping them in their old guise if he were so 
minded. All the plastic representations of the Alexandrian 
Triad yet found are fashioned according to the rules not of 
Egyptian but of Greek art. Serapis is always portrayed in 
them not as a bull or a mummy, as was the Egyptian Osiris, 
but with the lofty brow and noble features of the Greek Zeus ; 
and * Serapis alone is Zeus* is a watchword which is repeated 
with wearisome frequency on most of the monuments of the 
cult. As has been well said, the new god was a Greek soul 
dwelling in an Egyptian body. 

•Sir Peter Renouf (HihbeH Lectv/rts for 1879, p. 182-183) has 
made it clear that the Egyptians of Pharaonic times were utterly ignorant 
of the Greek doctrine of metempsychosis. 



Serapis — A Study in Religions. 47 

At first, the innovation produced little practical result. 
Although a few Egyptians and even some temple-servants of 
the lower class may have given in their adherence to the new 
faith, the great native priesthoods held coldly aloof from it. 
The priests of Memphis, where there was a native temple of 
Osor-hapi, allowed the king to build a Serapeion close to their 
own, but it is significant that the two are separated by a long 
avenue of sphinxes and that the Greek votive inscriptions do 
not include a single Egyptian name. Like the Papacy, the 
Memphite priesthood had seen many dynasties come and go, 
and they no doubt felt that Ptolemy's best policy would have 
been not to set up a new religion but to have managed a con- 
version to theirs. The event proved them right ; for Epi- 
phanes, the 5th Ptolemy, was glad enough, after the suppression 
of a native revolt, to be crowned like the ancient Pharaohs 
as the incarnate Sun-God and the descendant of Ptah, 
with all the ancient ritual pet out upon the Rosetta Stone.* 
Yet, though he thus failed in his immediate purpose, Ptolemy 
Soter was building better than he knew. The worship of the 
Alexandrian gods spread wherever the Alexandrian traders 
went : and under his politic rule, Alexandria soon became the 
trading centre of the Hellenist world. The novelty-loving 
Athenians were so pleased with it that they soon began to use 
the oaths * By Isis ' and * By Horus ' in ordinary conversation 
— ^to the great wrath of the dramatists of the New Comedy. 
A few years later we hear of it in the cities of Boeotia, then 
in the islands of the Aegaean and throughout Asia Minor. 
And a yet wider field was now opening to it. In the early 
part of the second century B.C., the Alexandrian gods had 
established themselves in the seaports of Southern Italy fre- 
quented by foreign merchants. From thence their worship 
proceeded with slow but certain step towards Rome until, 80 
years before our Era, it gained a foothold in the Eternal City. 
Thenceforth its future was assured. As early as the days of 
the First Triumvirs, one of the proscribed could find no disguise 
so little likely to attract attention in the streets of Rome as 



See ReviUout, Bhme ArcMologique, 1887, pp. 339-340. 



48 Serapit — A Study in Religioni. 

the linen robe of a prieat of leis, and under Nero the worship 
of Serapis and Isia was formally recognised by the State. 
From that time, they marched with the Romaa legions into 
every comer of the Empire, and their monumeota have been 
found in France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and even 
ID countriea bo far from the first seat of the cult as Morocco, 
Spain, aud Great Britain. Ptolemy's gods, like Ptolemy's 
master, might have boaated that they had conquered the whole 
world." 

For some time, it must have seemed as if their kingdom 
would have no end. The philosophers who were once, per- 
haps, the worst enemies of the mystic rites, now gave them 
their support. Stoicism, which for some centuries was fashion- 
able at Rome, taught like the Orphics that all the gods were 
interchangeable forms of the same energy. The Pythagorean 
school was also revived, and renewed the forgery of Orphic 
verses, while they discovered hidden meanings in the Mys- 
steriee which must have astonished no one so much as their 
fellow-iDitiatee. Kor did the worship of the stranger gods 
who during the first three centuries poured into Rome, do 
much to damage the credit of the Alexandrian divinities. 
True to the system of 'Theokrasia' which had given them 
birth, they hastened to assimilate to themselves almost every 
deity of the ever increasing pantheon. ' The Phrygians, first- 




4S^ 



to 
behiiid hm 
foonded vidi 

the lialf.PciS2L s^d lE:::r:v. Ii sens w if ^ wiisr% if 
any famgm fiiiErr ^iid rcjj ^ Vseoo^ prccjc !;:• £&£ a 
place in In tarzue. 

Does tiw errL^T- Fafng'g rtafwrv-ri r-at :b» AjsxxD^baais 
w oiB l iip ped at ttue «E:»>r irae: Seeagni a&i Cfcrst? Ti^zznng 
is not at fiat agfe rzipiagrus, f :ras A Vxa'' iaa cdisesaaaBrL ^wsam 
in the aic Etcc '^'^ Jrvs tail s> &r ji^isA ic ibsr iLfusDOf 
of tiieplaee that *=. TTt«cr^ ii=^ P^ :« c-cie it trt^anDiC «nn&- 
ent amoa^ tfaeau ?:a1 z^it f :r±. a €«:r=Lp:»riii -cif li»fr r'";F,T.niTi£ 
pliiloeo[J iy and J^-^m-. vrSi:!:^ ff ::•:( tcej Grwt. w»^ x£ .klx 
rate aa far VEBHs'jTtsA as z»:»ah'I-r irrxr, ibt fii^ df izi* H 



zirrct -' 



tingoislied fc-r its c^trcdixr, i-rr J i fi « t.: LaT^ ^^^"f^ ^*i2 if 
that stiaoge fartr wi5i^ w>e: eaZ. f :r wa=.t -iv a hsc^sr -awsmf-^ 
Gnoatiam. So-v ccie c€ trie ^scri^x^^I t-rc^Ca ct iLe 'j^nsasa 
was thai it vas psT^iKTce f ::r tLea to m&flE az.^ :.n-a-ir£ 
religion that thsr j oeasedp ao 1:^45 aa rlrj b=Il :a^ ib* kni'w- 
ledge of the magarar fim^Lis ani cerrstn-icSes wiSii Tirore- src- 
pnaed to gire tbeci prsiij»r£zacice in tK* =rffn irirli. ^^^^^ iui-w 
also from Hippoljtcs tLat sicie of the Gr^:ac5cs v^r^ racrnini- 
larlj food of freq;3«:tnLz tt* MTStarf^s cf las and b-r z: 
ons analogoei^ of vLfcL irT^<rries tLej drclkz%d 
alone weve c^aUe of p»=2i^nbisg tLe tree =yar^g H: 
it is poflsible that Ha.ir5a:u wio was extr^df^i j rziz; 
all matteia relating t*> reH^<:TL, icaj xeaEj liax^ cticus: 
some hen^deal sect wto .i:i combine the inir^ciz- ijC SangBS 
with the befief ia the ^frine siisca of J<5sa& 3:ir s.^t^nsSi'Zim 
tiiere is one fact wiich aeezss fataL CbjysiA-.i^ri' wjs zjcv 'rirf- 
JadainUy a ^efi^ firsfez in tLe Roman Empc^ ani we: siiLj se 
qnite anie that Hadrian wcfili nerer Lare all-ied ta a rTrrff- 
tian * Patinrefa,' or hare known anjttingcf the ■'?« -r-.g^ if joda. 
an officer had he been in efzistenee. F'^rtteediieactedtsaaKaa 
Bome wcve in eatnfleAe zeal or aSected xgnoracee ct tbs^ tinie 
podltion of the Chrirtiac^ whom tL^ coo^antij cccfiaEd wft& 
the Jewa. It is tiberefore probable that the patcarcSL neftrafj 

XXTDL 4 



50 Serapis — A Study in Religions. 

to is some Jewish functionary — ^perhaps the ethnarch himself 
— and that Hadrian, who is credited in the traditions of the 
Rabbis with a prolonged enquiry into their faith, had failed to 
grasp the distinction between the First and the Second Per- 
sons of the Trinity. If it be objected to this that the Jews 
were too constant to their creed to bow the knee in the temple 
of Serapis, I can only reply that the author of the treatise on 
Isis and Osiris which passes under the name of Plutarch, for- 
mally accuses them of trying to introduce Jewish history into 
the legend of these gods, that they attempted to identify Sera- 
pis with (of all people in the world) the Joseph of Exodus, and 
that those Sibylline Verses which are most plainly the work of 
Alexandrian Jews, treat Serapis and Isis with marked tender- 
ness. There is therefore no reason to suppose that the Jewish 
ethnarch — if it be he who is meant — would be more squeamish 
in such a matter than others of his co-religionists. 

But whatever was the real faith of Hadrian's eclectics, it 
was to the zeal of a party among the Christians that the 
Alexandrian gods owed their final overthrow. The severity 
with which Diocletian in 296 suppressed the rebellion of 
Egypt under Achilleus rather than any nobler motive, led to 
the conversion of the native Egyptians en masse; bxiA. the per- 
secution which followed six years later proved too short to 
shake their adhesion to the creed with which the Roman 
Emperors were at war. A great factor in this steadfastness 
was the institution of monachism, which was, perhaps, a legacy 
from Pharaonic times, and which certainly had analogies with 
certain practices common to the Athenian and Alexandrian 
Orphics.* Moreover, the Egyptians had always, as has before 
been said, a hankering after the priestly character, and this, 
coupled with the exemption from the cares of civil life that it 
even then conferred, caused such a passion for its assumption 
that the whole male population of Egypt were said a little 
later to be in holy orders. But even Christianity (to use 

* Euripides, in a fragment preserved by Porphyry, speaks of certain 
Orphics as vowed to chastity and abstinence from food which had had life. 
Cells were reserved for such devotees in the Greek Serapeia of Alexandria 
and Memphis. See next note. 



Serapis — A Study in Religions, 51 

Pascal's phraae), cannot at once make an angel out of a beast, 
and there was more of the beast than of the angel about the 
majority of the Egyptian monks. Sprung from the dregs of a 
people who had groaned for centuries under the Kourbatch and 
corvee, utterly ignorant and unlearned, and with brains set on 
fire by fearful austerities, they brought with them into their 
new faith nothing but a fanatical hatred of Greek culture, and 
a dog-like obedience to the shrewd and ambitious prelates who 
ruled at Alexandria. With such recruits, the Egyptian Church 
soon showed that she had gained strength without learning 
tolerance, and on the adoption of Christianity by Constantine, 
boasted that she had received the Imperial orders for the ex- 
tirpation of heresy. The supposed edict may be a forgery, 
but there is ground for supposing that the Gnostic sects which 
had formed a bridge between Paganism and Christianity were 
stamped out at this period with great cruelty. Yet later, the 
Arian and Sabellian controversies came to deluge Egypt with 
blood, and to provoke the remark from a contemporary 
historian that the wild beasts were not so dangerous to man 
as most of the Christians to one another. The temporary 
revival of Paganism under Julian did little to check theee dis- 
sensions, and in the reign of Valens the struggle between 
Arian and Athanasian broke out afresh. It was not until the 
accession and baptism of Thedosius that Arianism was finally 
abandoned by the Court, and the Church found herself at 
liberty to take up the task of rooting out the ancient worships. 
Yet even in the death-throes of Paganism Serapis main- 
tained his supremacy. Although Theodosius had forbidden 
the practice of any religion but Christianity, and in 384 had 
given to Cynegius the Praetorian Prefect a commission to 
destroy all heathen temples, sacrifices to Serapis continued 
for seven years longer to be oflFered in the great temple, at 
Alexandria. For the Alexandrian Serapeion was a monument 
of which the whole city was proud. Within its spacious courts 
was included the famous library containing the 200,000 
volumes given by Antony to Cleopatra, and second only to 
the great library of the Museum. There,, too, was the school 
of medicine founded on the observation of nature in which 




52 Serapis — A Study in Religions. 

Galen had studied. Thea came the shrines of all the gods 
with whom Serapis claimed affinity, the vaults necessary for 
the celebration of the mysteries, the houses of the ministers of 
the cult, and the cells of the recluses who were devoted to 
Serapis and • interned,* like the Enclosed Orders of the Catholic 
Church.* In the midst was the temple of Serapis himself, 
shining with gold, and adorned with the master-pieces of Greek 
art. Conspicuous among them was the colossal statue by 
Bryaxis of the god represented with the features of the 
Olympian Zeus, but with the mystic head ornament and 
caressing the figure of Cerberus which typified his rule over 
the lower as well as the upper world. Gold, silver, and ivory 
had been lavished on its construction, and many even among 
the Christians believed the prophecy which foretold that the 
skies would fall if a sacrilegious hand were raised against it 

But all this splendour was now doomed. Theophilus, * the 
perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, whose hands were alter- 
nately polluted with gold and blood,' f had for some time filled 
the episcopal throne of Alexandria, and had taken a leading 
part in the destruction of the smaller temples. At length (in 
391) he decided that the tim3 was come to strike a blow at the 
Serapeion itself, and unfortunately for science, a pretext was 
easily found. A riot after the pattern of those lately occurring 
in Constantinople was provoked (as the ecclesiastical historians 
themselves admit) by the means taken by the bishop to insult 
and vilify the ancient religion. J The maddened Greeks, few in 
numbers, but still formidable from their wealth and position, 
flew to arms, and a fight ensued in which considerable numbers 
were killed on both sides. It is reported by Sozomen that the 
Greeks threw themselves into the Serapeion in which they stood 

* The petitions of Ptolemy, son of Glaucias, to Ptolemy Philopator and 
his successors show that the recluses of the Serapeion at Memphis were 
shut up in cells which they might not leave even for an interview with the 
king himself. The papyri on which these petitions were written are now 
scattered through the different museums of Enrope. See Brunet de 
Presle Notices <fh Extraits^ ttc,y t. xviii. pt. 2. 

t Gibbon III., p. 418. 

X Sozomen, Bist, Ecclesiast., L VIIL, c. 15 : Socratej, Hist Ecclesi€U!t,f 
L v., c. 16, etc. 



Serapia — A Study in Religions, 53 

a siege in form, but this is not stated by other writers, and was 
probably invented to excuse the acts of vandalism that followed. 
It is clear, however, that by some means Theodosius was per- 
suaded to give the bishop a free hand in the matter, and that the 
latter and his monks entered the place under the protection of 
the Imperial troops. Once there, they broke in pieces or melted 
down all the statues of the gods on which they could lay their 
hands, and razed the temple to the ground. There is some doubt 
as to whether the destruction extended to the library and other 
buildings, but as M. Botti, the Curator of the Alexandrian 
Municipal Museum, claims to have discovered the site of the 
Serapeion, and his excavations will probably solve this question, 
it seems unnecessary to dwell further upon it. It is at any rate 
certain that a Church dedicated characteristically enough to no 
Christian saint but to the feeble Emperor Arcadius, was built 
upon the ruins of the Serapeion, and that the worship of the 
Alexandrian gods after having endured for a period of 700 years 
was thus finally extinguished. Ecclesiastical writers have it that 
a great number of the worshippers of Serapis immediately re- 
ceived Christianity, * and it is to this fact that Protestant con- 
troversialists have attributed the introduction into the Church of 
the adoration of the Virgin, the doctrines of the Immaculate 
Conception and the Beal Presence, the use of images and incense, 
and, in short, all the dogmas and practices of the Catholics 
which the sects rejected at the Eeformation. But this matt^ 
also is beyond the scope of this paper. 

Some notice of the causes which led to the success of this — the 
first world-religion which appeared in the West— may not be so 
much out of place. First, it must be remarked that anything 
like a priestly caste was unknown to the Greeks. In some cities, 
the priests were chosen for their personal beauty ; in others, for 
their wealth ; in all, their functions were so purely ministerial 
that they did not interfere with their lay occupations, and carried 
with them no obligation to extend the worship of the divinities 
whom thev served. But in the Alexandrian cult all this was 
changed. In Ptolemaic Egypt the worship of Serapis was an 

* Socrates, op. oit.j L. V., c. 17. 



54 Serapis — A Study in Religions. 

established and endowed religion, the ministers of which were 
officers of state. In other parts of the Hellenist world, as in 
Rome, its propagation was at first the work of voluntary associa- 
tions, but so soon as a temple was built, its services were provided 
for out of the offerings of the faithful. In both cases the same 
result was achieved. The priests of Serapis became, in their 
own phrase, * a sacred soldiery,* * devoting their whole lives to 
the service of the religion and profoundly interested in its ex- 
tension. From this came stately processions through the streets, 
a splendid ritual in which even the uninitiated were allowed to 
join, and the use of all the means by which priests in all ages 
have tried to arouse the enthusiasm of the indifferent. The 
Alexandrian worship probably did more to spread the knowledge 
of its faith in a single decade than did the Mysteries of Eleusis 
during the thousand years of their existence. 

Another point that must not be lost sight of is the great sim- 
plicity of its theology. In the Mysteries the devout must al- 
ways have been puzzled to reconcile their duty to Zeus * father 
of gods and men,' but the ruler of a third only of the Universe, 
with the reverence which the mystic rites taught them for the 
gods of the underworld. But the universal supremacy of Sera- 
pis, * the greatest of the highest, and the ruler of the greatest 
gods,* t was asserted from the first. ^ He is an independent (i.e., 

self -existent) god,' says Aristides * not inferior to 

a greater power, but is present in all things, and fills the Uni- 
verse.* ' Wouldst thou know what god I am ? ' said his oracle in 
the reign of the first Ptolemy to the Cyprian King, Nicocreon ; 

* I myself will tell thee. The world of heaven is my head, the 
sea my belly, my feet are the earth, my ears are in the ether ; 
my far beaming eye is the radiant light of the sun.' J The 

* monotheistic pantheism,' as it has been called, of the Orphics 
could hardly be more precisely stated. 

But, after all, the world accepted the Alexandrian worship be- 
cause it came to it in its hour of need. Alexander's conquests 
had carried the Greek language and culture to the furthest limits 

* Apuleius, MetamorphoseSf 1. XI., c. 15. t Ibid,^ c. 30. 

t MacrobiuB, Saturnalia, 1., I., c 20. 



Serapis — A Study in Religions. 55 

of the then known earth, and had broken down the barriers 
which a jealous patriotism had set up between people and people, 
as well as between god and god. The rise of the S.oman power 
had followed to establish the reign of law throughout the world, 
and to accustom the nations to the idea of a Supreme Ruler be- 
fore whom, as before a father, all the peoples of the earth should 
be equal. But side by side with this, a conception of the Deity 
as an all-ruling Providence, the personification of mercy and 
love, was forming in the minds of men, and only at Eleusis had 
it found expression in a formal creed. * Those masculine god- 
desses,' to quote the words of Kenan, * for ever brandishing a 
spear from the height of an Acropolis, no longer awoke any senti- 
ment,' nor was it very natural that they should. The Hera of 
Homer does not conceal her scorn for the * creatures of a day ' ; 
Athena rages with implacable spite against any mortal who is 
unlucky enough to offend her ; even Aphrodite is forward to 
thrust herself into scenes of blood and battle. Alone among the 
Greek divinities, Demeter stands as the ideal of the gentler and 
more humane emotions, the type of divine sorrow and of purified 
affection. And it was this type that the Alexandrians gave to 
the world. Isis was to her worshippers * the haven of peace and 
the altar of pity.' ' Thou holy and eternal protectress of the 
race of men,' prays to her the suppliant in Apuleius, ' thou who 
ever givest good gifts to comfort-needing mortals, thou bestowest 
upon the lot of the wretched the sweet affection of a mother.' 
While her consort Serapis, true descendant of the ' merciful 
lords,' Merodach and Osiris, extends to the human race the pro- 
tection which they formerly confined to particular nations, * The 
protector and saviour of all men ' ; ' The most loving of the gods 
towards mankind ' ; ' He alone among the gods is ready to help 
him who invokes him in his need ' ; ' He is greatly turned tovrards 

mercy turning ever to the salvation of those who 

need it alway.' Such are the terms in which Aristides addresses 
him. And in this way, too, it has been said* his worship did 
much to * prepare and facilitate ' the advent of Christianity. 

F. Legge. 

* Lafaye, op, city p. 169 (quoting Bottiger's Im Vesper). 



(56) 

Abt. IIL— the universities of EUROPE IN THE 

MIDDLE AGES. 

The Univernties of Europe in the Middle Ages. HASTINGS 
Rashdall. 2 vols. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. 
1875. 

ris not so long ago that it was the fashion to say that the 
days of Universities were over ; Carlyle laid it down that 
the University of the future wonld be the library of books, 
where the scholar wonld roam and read at his wilL But so 
far is this firom proving to be the case, that it may well be 
donbted whether Universities have ever, since their early 
days, played a more vigorous part in the life of their respective 
countries than at the present time. In France the freedom of 
the provincial Universities is being emancipated from the cen- 
tralization of Paris ; in Germany the * Socialists of the Chair ' 
have contributed and are contributing a powerful solvent to 
the present organization of the relations between CSapital and 
Labour; in Great Britain the Universities, old and new, have 
never attracted more students to themselves, while their in- 
fluence makes itself felt in all departments of education ; in 
the United States so popular is the idea of University culture 
that it draws from the pockets of the munificent millionaire 
endowments which bid fair soon to eclipse the ancient wealth 
of Oxford and Cambridge, and the State subventions of Ger- 
many. 

It was natural that this revival of present interest should 
stimulate study as to the past history of the Universities, and 
it was high time that something should be done in this direc- 
tion. Not that patriotic sons had failed in the past to write 
the stories of their Almse Matres ; each old University had its 
historian, or its many historians; in the case of some of 
them, e.g.^ Oxford or Bologna, the mere list of books pro- 
fessing to tell their story, in whole or in part, swells to a 
treatise. But it was patriotism and not criticism which in- 
spired these studies ; few chapters in the history of literature 
contain more reckless assertions or even more unblushing 



Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 57 

forgeries, than the works of the University annalists. This 
was due to several causes, which it may be well to illustrate. 
In the first place, the Mediaeval University attached such im- 
portance to authority and prescription that absolute forgery 
was employed to supply documents, which had all the author- 
ity of the * littera scripta/ and the authenticity of which no 
one thought of examining. So, probably as early as the 
beginning of the thirteenth century, a charter was produced 
at Bologna, which purported to derive the foundation of that 
University from Theodosius II. in 433. Unfortunately * the 
zeal of the forgers somewhat over-shot the mark, and dis- 
credited itself by producing two distinct charters, each pro- 
fessing to be issued by the same Emperor in the same year.' 
At Oxford the forgeries were as unblushing, but they concerned 
rather individual foundations like University College than the 
University as a whole ; Cambridge, however, was not outdone 
in audacity even by Bologna. As soon as it began to rise into 
prominence as an European, and not merely a provincial 
school, it proceeded to furnish itself with an antiquity com- 
mensurate with its new importance, by producing a bull of 
privileges, purporting to be granted by Pope Honorius I. in 
624, in which the Pontiff says that he himself had been a 
student of Cambridge. This reckless forgery, with other 
documents equally valuable, was made the base of the legatine 
judgment, given at Barnwell in 1432, in favour of the eccles- 
iastical independence of the University. Such stories as these 
are only interesting in the combination of reverence for 
authority and of lack of criticism, which is characteristic of 
the Mediaeval mind, and which had such an important influence 
on the faith of Europe in the ready acceptance it secured for 
the Forged Decretals of Isidore. 

But it was not only by actual forgeries that the University 
annalists swelled their histories. Mere assertion went for 
much, without any trouble being taken to substantiate it. 
Thus Charlemagne had a prescriptive right to be called the 
founder of the great University of Paris, and its historian Du 
Boulay (* perhaps the stupidest man that ever wrote a valu- 
able book ' as Mr. Bashdall quaintly calls him), fills 2 folios of 



58 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

his colossal work with the history of the University during 400 
years of non-existence. Alfred the Great has been so often 
asserted to be the founder of Oxford that the * tale still has a 
kind of underground existence in University calendars, in 
second-rate guide-books, and in popular histories of England.' 
And this brings us naturally to the third cause for the vast 
amount of fiction which has grown up round University his- 
tory ; the popular imagination, especially the imagination of 
an uncritical period, demands a personal agent; it cannot 
conceive of a great institution, whether constitutional or edu- 
cational, without a definite founder. Hence what was really 
the result of the slow process of time, is attributed to a definite 
year and a definite person; thus the English Parliament is 
still put down in historical handbooks as the creation of Earl 
Simon de Moutfort, though scholars have shown clearly that 
it was the gradual outcome of the union between a centralized 
government and the local institutions of the English people. 
This tendency to ascribe the origin of Universities to the 
definite action of an individual was stimulaf^d by the fact that 
this really was the origin of later Universities ; the generations 
that saw these institutions being founded by Popes and Kings 
and Emperors, could not understand that the model had been 
given by the united work of generations of forgotten scholars. 
The critical history of Universities is the work of our own 
century. Savigny led the way, and his ideas have been de- 
veloped and illustrated by the labours of generations of schol- 
ars, prominent among whom is Denifle, the under-Archivist of 
the Holy See, whose great work on The Universities of the 
Middle Ages to 1400, is still incomplete. Mr. Kashdall's 
attention was turned to the history of Universities as long 
ago as 1883, by its being chosen as the subject for the 
Chancellor's Prize at Oxford; his essay, which was then 
successful, has appeared after twelve years of steady work in 
the two splendid volumes which are before ua He modestly 
disclaims much originality except in regard to the English 
Universities, where Father Denifle is for once incomplete (it 
is curious that, in University history as elsewhere, the giants 
of Continental scholarship are so incomplete as to things Eng- 



Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 59 

lieh) ; but it is a real service to the history of education and 
of the intellectual movement of the Middle Ages, to have the 
whole evidence as to them critically considered, and the re- 
sults set forth with a clearness which leaves little to be desired, 
and a vigour and humour which enliven the dullest constitu- 
tional points. 

It is to be hoped that this book of Mr. Rashdall's has, once 
for all, settled for Engh'shmen the question of the real meaning 
of the word * University ; ' the old superstition that it had 
something to do with the universal range of the studies pur- 
sued, dies hard ; even Mr. Gladstone, in his Romanes lecture 
at Oxford in 1892, seemed still to favour it, although he also 
gave the real origin of the word. The mistake is natural, for 
the idea that all knowledge is the province of a University is a 
noble one, but it is a mistake all the same ; in the mediaeval 
Universities there was no pretence at aiming at universality 
of study, and * universitas ' simply denotes a corporation or 
organized body ; originally ' scholarium ' or * magistrorum ' 
was always added as a defining term, and the word is used as 
much for the guilds of traders as it is for those of students. 
Among the instances which Mr. Rashdall quotes of the use of 
the word ' universitas,' there is a most curious one which illus- 
trates admirably its wide application. In the year 1284, the 
Pisans were defeated by the Genoese, and a large number of 
captives were taken, who were kept in prison for eighteen 
years ; they assumed the right of using a common seal with 
the legend ' Sigillum universitatis carceratorum Januae deten- 
torum.' * Universitas ' then is originally a word of wide use, 
which has become specialized just as * college,' * convent,' 
* corps,' and many others have done. 

The causes which led to the formation of these unions were 
various, and, as will be seen later, the form which they took 
was various also, but they were one part of the revival of civi- 
lization and learning, which begins with the eleventh century. 
As Mr. Rashdall points out, there is no evidence for the widely 
spread theory which connects the new birth of Europe with 
the passing of the paillennial year and the relief from the terror 
of an immediate Apocalypse. The causes were much more 





60 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

mundanei more widespread and slow working ; they were the 
growth of civio life, the cessation or the checking of the raids 
of Northmen and Saracens, the general restoration of order in 
Europe, and the increased intercourse with the East : above 
all the two great institutions of mediadval Europe, the Empire 
and the Church, had been reformed, and were once more 
realities ; the emperors of the Saxon house had restored the 
power of the Holy Roman Empire, and had revived the sanctity 
of the Holy See. 

It was Italy which led the way in this Renaissance of the 
twelfth century, and among the Universities of Italy, Bologna 
was certainly the first The medical school of Salerno, it is 
true, was, from the end of the eleventh to the middle of the 
thirteenth century, as indisputably the head of European 
medicine as Bologna was of the study of Law, or Paris of the 
Scholastic Philosophy ; to it patients came to be cured from 
all parts of Europe, and some of the current medical maxims 
of our own day may still be traced to its ^ Flos MedicinaB,' 
which was dedicated to Robert Duke of Normandy, as ^ King 
of the English,' when he stayed there to be cured of his wound 
after the First Crusade. This venerable source is responsible 
for the dictum ^ post coenam stabis aut passus mille meabis,' 
and for the limitation of a man's proper amount of sleep to six 
hours (the popular version, however, di£Fers in its further details 
from that quoted by Mr. Rashdall.) 

But Salerno remained exclusively medical, and it seems to 
have exercised no influence on the formation of other schools. 
Bologna on the other hand was the great model of the student- 
universities everywhere ; from it (though probably indirectly 
through Orleans) the Scotch Universities derive the popular 
election of the Rector, which remains in them alone, among 
modern seats of learning, as an interesting survival of the free- 
dom of the medisBval student Bologna has, in oiu: own day, 
chosen the year 1088 for commemoration of its octocentenary, 
and the magnificent pageants on that occasion, in which 
scholars firom all parts of Europe and finom the New World 
took part, were a striking evidence of the revived interest in 
universities and their history ; but it is impossible to consider 



Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 61 

that the University as an organised body dates from that date, 
even though its great scholar, Irnerius, was lecturing there 
then or shortly after. For it is not only the presence of one 
or of many scholars which mates a University ; we must be 
able to trace in it an organised corporate life and definite 
privileges of self-government Of these we have the first evi- 
dence in the famous decree of the Emperor Frederic I., the 
'Authentic Habita,' given at the Diet of Roncaglia in 1158. 
By this scholars are taken under the special protection of the 
Emperor, and the privilege is given to a scholar, in case of 
legal proceedings against him, of being cited ^before his own 
master or before the bishop of the city.* It is true these privi- 
leges are granted not to Bologna alone, but to the students of 
all Lombardy. The Doctors of Bologna, however, had played 
a prominent part in the Diet, and we may fairly assume that 
already there was some sort of organisation, by which a re- 
cognised course of study was demanded of those who would 
be teachers or doctors, and that they were required, before at- 
taining this rank, to obtain the approval of those who were al- 
ready teaching. Of such a body we have no evidence in Bologna 
before 1215, but probably it is mere accident that there is no 
earlier evidence, and the corporation of teachers had some 
existence very soon after the middle of the preceding century, 
if not before. It was one of the fundamental ideas of the 
Roman law that those engaged in any lawful occupation 
might form themselves into a * college' or body for the ad- 
vancement of their common interests, and that admission to 
this body should be determined by the consent of those who 
were already members, and should be conditional on proved 
fitness for the discharge of the duties. 

Here then we have the root idea out of which university 
degrees grew up. The most important element in them always 
was, whatever other conditions were imposed, that the candi- 
date should have approved himself to those who were masters 
before him, or to their representatives, and should after this 
be admitted to be his own master. The degrees of the most 
modern Universities are still conferred in a solemn convocation, 
in the presence of those who have already graduated ; even 



62 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

Oxford, where unfortunately the frequency of degree cere- 
monies has robbed them as a rule of dignity, and sometimes 
almost of decency, the form is kept up that no degree can be 
given unless there are at least nine M.A.S present to sanction 
its conferment 

It was not this organization of teachers, however, which 
was the real University of Bologaa. As has been said, that 
was of the student type. Its origin must be sought in the 
crowd of students whom the lectui'es of Irnerius and his suc- 
cessors had 'drawn to Bologna. These were often men of 
mature age, clerics who wished to improve their knowledge 
of church law, or laymen in important positions ; and many of 
them too came from foreign countries, especially from Germany. 
They fouud themselves in an Italian town without the rights 
of citizenship, for in the free republics of mediaeval Italy as in 
Greece, these depended on birth, and were not lightly given 
to the alien ; hence it was natural for the students to organize 
themselves into a union of their own, or into a universitas. 

The * universities ' of the students then, like any other 
mediaeval guild, grew up from voluntary association. Its head 
received the afterwards honourable title of ' Rector,' because 
that was the usual Latin title of the time for the chief magis- 
trate of a town (the Podesta) or for the head of a guild. When 
this association of students came into existence we cannot say 
definitely, but the first reference to it is just at the close of the 
twelfth century when one of the law professors at Bologna 
(Bassianus) disputes the right of the scholars to elect a Rector. 
Once formed, however, it rapidly grew into a great power ; for 
on the presence of the students depended alike the prosperity 
of the town and of the professors. Any obnoxious tradesman or 
teacher could be * boycotted,' and so brought to reason. And 
here we must notice how the origin of the guilds among the 
foreign students led to a very curious result, t.«., that the pro- 
fessors had no share in them. These (as a rule) were from 
the first, citizens of Bologna, and in the end all the 
* ordinary ' chairs were reserved for natives ; hence they already 
enjoyed that protection by law which the students sought by 
association. But this separation between professor and 



Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 63 

student, which began thus accidentally, resulted in a position 
of dependence for the professors, which to modern eyes seems 
anomalous in the extreme. 

We can trace something of the organization of these early 
student universities from the statutes of the German nation, 
which have come down to us, and from the accounts of the 
year 1292, which have been also preserved. The statutes 
define the object of the guild as * fraternal charity, mutual 
association and amity, the consolation of the sick and the 
support of the needy, the conduct of funerals, the attendance 
and escort of those taking degrees, and the spiritual advan- 
tage of students.' From the accounts we get a livelier picture; 
the payments are chiefly devoted to convivial purposes, and 
sometimes the items are very suggestive in their juxtaposition, 
e.g,y when an expenditure of £3 for * malmsey wine ' is immedi- 
ately followed by an entry ' for broken windows.' 

The associations with their common rector and his counsel- 
lors came in time to rule the professors with a rod of iron. 
We may quote some illustrations of this from Mr. Rashdall 
(I., p. 197, seq.) 

A professor who wished for a holiday, had to get leave from 
his own students, and from the rector and consiliarii. By the 
city regulations he was counted as absent (and therefore fined), 
unless he had an audience of at least five for an ordinary, and 
three for an extraordinary lecture. He was bound to begin 
punctually when the bell of St. Peter's began to ring for mass, 
under pain of a fine of twenty solidi, and he must not continue 
one minute after the bell has begun to ring for tierce. To 
prevent him spending a disproportionate amount of time over 
the early parts of his book, the law texts were divided into 
' puncta ; ' he was required to have reached each of these at 
a specified date, and he had to deposit ten Bolognese pounds 
with a banker, and forfeit a certain part of this for every day 
that he was late. 

It seems at first sight as if the position of the professors 
must have been almost intolerable : we must remember, how- 
ever, that a student always depended on these oppressed 
teachers for his degree, and that the statutes represent only 



64 Uuivernties of Europe im the Middle Ages. 

the student's view of the duties of profeesora. If we recon* 
stmcted the behaviour of the modem student from the 
statutory limitations imposed on him bj his superiors, we 
should arrive at a conclusion which hardly corresponds with 
the reality; perhaps the mediaeval professors were equally 
able to evade the statutes against them. 

The injunctions for the students' own discipline are much 
less elaborate. They are to wear their g^wns of ' statutable 
or black stuff' under a penalty of three pounds, and there are 
strict regulations against gaming. Among these the most curious 
is that which forbids men to play at all, even in their own 
houses, for three months before going down. Was this to 
secure those still up and to prevent bad debts ? Or was it 
from reg^d to the departing student ? 

The struggles of the University of Bologna against the city, 
and the gradual growth of its privileges, cannot be entered on 
here, but it is important to notice how materially it differed 
from the northern universities, of which Paris was the model, 
not only in organization but also in the character of its studies 
and its studenta The Bolognese professor or scholar was by 
no means necessarily a * clerk,' although the Rector was bound 
to be at least in minor orders, as otherwise he could not have 
exercised jurisdiction over clerical students, and the prevailing 
studies of Bologna were always legal or medical. Before the 
14th century, theology was left to the regular clergy, especi- 
ally the Mendicant Friars, and it was only in 1352 that a 
theological faculty was founded. This distinction between 
Bologna and Paris was due to the contrast between Italy and 
the North of Europe. In the former the life of the old Roman 
civilisation had never died out ; the Roman law had always 
played an important part in the actual administration of the 
cities, and the culture of the Old World still survived both for 
good and for evil Mr. Rashdall quotes the striking saying of 
Ozanam that ^ the night which intervened between the intel- 
lectual daylight of antiquity and the dawn of the Renaissance 
was but " une de ces nuits lumineuses oii les demiferes clart^s 
du soir se prolongent jusqu'aux premieres blancheurs du 
matin." ' 



Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 65 

Before proceeding to speak of the development of the other 
great archetypal university, that of Paris, it may be well to 
consider how the conception of a ' university ' was developed 
in imitation of the schools of Paris and Bologna. Originally, 
as has been seen, the term ' universitas ' had nothing to do 
with teaching; so far as there was any title in the Middle 
Ages corresponding to the modern use of the word * univer- 
sity,' it was * Studium Generale.' This does not become 
common till the beginning of the 13th century, and at first 
was purely vague in its signification, just as in England at the 
present day the title of * public school ' is used in the most 
various senses ; but * Studium Generale ' may be taken to 
imply three things : 1. That the school attracted, or tried to 
attract, scholars from all parts, and not from one country 
only ; 2. That it provided teaching not simply in Arts, but 
also in one at least of the higher faculties, i.e., Theology, Law, 
and Medicine; 3. That the subjects were taught by a con- 
siderable number of masters. Two causes tended to make 
this vague use more precise. Of these, the first was the 
growth in the honorary value of degrees; originally the 
teaching had been sought for its own sake, or at any rate to 
enable the learner to become a teacher in his turn, but as the 
number of those obtaining the qualification increased, there 
grew up a large class who had no intention of devoting them- 
selves to study in any sense, but who were proud to display 
the much valued title of Doctor or Master. The feeling soon 
grew up that the degrees of some places were of more value 
than those of others, and hence by taking to itself the title of 
a * Studium Generale,' a new place of learning did its best to 
convey to the world its claim that its teaching and its exami- 
nations were on a level with those of Paris or Bologna. There 
was a second and a more material reason ; by the bull of Pope 
Honorius III. in 1219, clerks might receive in absence the 
fruits of their benefices so long as they were teaching theo- 
lo2:y, aiid students might have the same privilege for a period 
of five years, but this right soon came to be limited to those 
who were studying at * Studia Generalia.' Hence, in order 
that students might enjoy their revenues, universities became 
xxviii. 5 




66 Univernties of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

very anxious to have their right to this honourable title recog- 
nized. 

And now a new element came in. In 1224 the Emperor 
Frederic II. founded a Studium Generate at Naples, and in 
1229 Gregory IX. did the same at Toulouse. The idea rapidly 
grew that Pope and Emperor could confer the coveted title, 
and before the end of the 13th century (1292) both Paris and 
Bologna stooped to have what was theirs, by time-honoured 
custom, confirmed by grant of the Pope Nicholas IV. Of the 
older studia, Oxford and Padua never seem to have received 
this papal recognition, and based their undisputed title to be 
world-wide seats of learning merely on prescriptive right; but 
Oxford tried, though without success, to get her position 6on- 
firmed by the Pope. This papal recognition in theory carried 
with it the * jus ubique docendi ' — 1.«., the graduates of these 
recognised universities could claim admission to the same 
privileges in all other universities — but in practice this right 
was very sparingly enjoyed. Paris refused to recognize 
Oxford degrees without fresh examinations, and Oxford repaid 
the compliment, in spite of the privileges granted to Paris by 
the Papal Bull. 

It is not necessary here to enter into the question whether 
this Papal or Imperial brief was necessary for the creation of 
a legitimate Studium Generale, or whether the sovereign of 
any country had the power of founding one. Mr. Rashdall in- 
clines to side with Denifle in choosing the former alternative, 
but he is impartial enough to reject the authority of the great 
German scholar, when he denies the right of Cambridge to 
the coveted title, before she received the bull of Pope John 
XXII. in 1318. However, though he makes it fairly clear 
that Cambridge was a recognised school for nearly a century 
before this date, he makes it also clear that mediaeval Cam- 
bridge was quite an unimportant university, and that it only 
rises into prominence when Oxford fell under well-deserved 
suspicion for heresy, at the end of the fourteenth century, by 
her vigorous championship of the doctrines of Wycliffe. 

We must now turn to the Universities north of the Alps, 
which, as has been said, were diflferent from those of Italy in 



Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 67 

character and in organisation, and among which Paris is indis- 
putably the first, both in date and in importance. The base- 
less attribution of its schools to Charlemagne has been already 
mentioned. His sole connection with it lies in the fact that 
the organisation of education, which was not the least im- 
portant part of his many-sided work, established and confirmed 
the already existing connection between the Church and edu- 
cation. It is not until the end of the eleventh centurv, how- 
ever, that Paris has, in William of Champeaux, a teacher of 
first-rate importance, and it was his fame which brought to 
the schools of Paris the famous Abelard, who in his turn drew 
by his lectures multitudes of students to hear him, and whose 
fame definitely confirmed the intellectual supremacy of Paris. 
Not that there was any organised university in the time of 
the famous opponent of St. Bernard, but we can trace in his 
career the ideas which were later to be the basis of the organi- 
sation. Abelard oflFended his contemporaries by his daring 
attempt to carry reason into the domain of theology ; but he 
also ofiended them because he ventured to set at nought the 
educational traditions of his day, and to come forward as a 
teacher without having been admitted to the work by those 
who were teachers before him. Abelard had but scant respect 
for authority, educational or otherwise. His dialectic reduced 
his first master, William of Champeaux, to silence, and he irre- 
verently compared his teacher in theology, Anselm of Laon, 
to the ' barren fig-tree ' of the Gospel. But his successes were 
short-lived, and his independence brought him under the ban 
of the Church. His eloquence, however, and the force of his 
intellect had ensured the triumph of the Scholastic Theology 
aaiAil^gic, which henceforth reigned supreme in Paris. The 
teacher t^^'^^^d in disgrace at Clugny, while his pupil, Peter 
Lomhsird, i ^obq to be Archbishop of Paris, and by the applica- 
tjon of hiB j^^^^ster's method in his famous ' Sentences,' deter- 
mined fie ciara< '^^^^ ^^ ^^^ studies of the next three centuries. 
To us, Wifcii oil ^* ^ wider culture and our numerous objects of 
interest, the old^ ^ enthusiasm for logical and metaphysical 
specuiatfon seeini ^^ strange. We can hardly now imagine an 
audience, even oF ^^' scholars, roused to fury by the question of 

J 



I 

) 



68 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

^Universals and Particulars,' and breaking each others heads, 
because one side maintained that there was somewhere an 
ideal table of which all tables seen on earth were only shadows, 
while the other side upheld as stoutly the position that the 
only realities were the individual tables which men saw with 
their eyes. But so it was. The words of Porphyry in his 
Isagoge have, as Mr. Bashdall says, roused more controversy 
probably than any other uninspired words. * Now concerning 
genera and species, the question indeed whether they have a 
substantial existence, or whether they consist in bare intellec- 
tual concepts only, 1 shall forbear to determine.' But this 
question the Middle Age Students were always trying to 
determine, and a thorny question it proved. What made it 
worse was that it was found to have a theological bearing. A 
man who believed only in the reality of universals was in 
danger of being reproached for uncrthodoxy because his doc- 
trine might be pressed into the view that all genera were in- 
cluded in one summum genus, or, in its theolop;ical aspect, 
into Pantheism. A man on the other hand who denied reality 
to universals, and admitted it only for particulars, was in great 
danger of turning the doctrine of the Trinity into the belief 
in three separate Gods. Each then of the great philosophical 
schools had its theological pitfalls. 

Out of the multitude of students attracted to Paris by the 
charms of the scholastic philosophy grew up the organised 
university. Its ecclesiastical character, however, brought into 
prominence an element which was unimportant at Bologna. 
The teachers in Paris formed themselves into a ' universitas ' 
or guild, as those of Bologna had done ; but they had a for- 
midable foe to their independence in the Chancellor of the 
Cathedral at Notre Dame, who had the supervision of the 
schools connected with the cathedral church, and whose 
license was necessary for a man's entering on the career of a 
teacher. Round the giving of this license raged the battle for 
the independence of the University. The Chancellor claimed 
that he could refuse the license to teach oij give it to whom 
he pleased. The guild of masters on the cither hand claimed 
that they alone were the judges of a man'js fitness to be ad- 

\ 






Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 69 

mitted to their ranks, and that the Chancellor must license 
those whom they approved. He was in authority, but they 
had on their side the formidable weapon of being able to 
' boycott ' the lectures of all who were not members of their 
body, or who submitted to the Chancellor, and in the end the 
organised guild of teachers triumphed, largely through the 
assistance of the Holy See, which saw, with its accustomed 
wisdom, the assistance for its own claims which was to be 
found in the new educational body. 

The ceremonies by which a man was admitted to the 
fellowship of teachers may very probably go back to classical 
times, while survivals of them are found more or less in all 
universities at the present day. The conferring of the cap 
(' birettatio ') was the sign that the student was henceforth his 
own master, just as the Roman slave had received his cap as 
the sign of his freedom. In the Scotch universities, graduates 
are still ' capped ' on receiving their degrees, and at the Ameri- 
can * commencements,' the graduates receive their caps from 
the president. In the more ceremonial South, the further cere- 
monies of the investiture with the ring and the kiss of peace 
are preserved. And everywhere the presents to already ex- 
isting masters, and the banquet and other festivities with 
which the new master had to celebrate his success, (in some of 
the Spanish universities this characteristically took the form of 
a bull fight provided for the amusement of the University), are 
represented by the payment of fees, which forms an invariable 
part of all university graduations. The feeling that a new 
member must pay his footing was as common in these societies 
of teachers as in other less dignified bodies. It is to be re- 
gretted that in Oxford a large part of the degree ceremonies 
have disappeared; the new M.A. receives a license to 
* Incept,' but he is then dispensed (without his knowledge) 
from performing this, the most important part, of his gradua- 
tion. 

The guild of masters at Paris can be traced as existing as 
early as 1170, when we read of an abbot of St Albans being 
admitted to the ^ fellowship of the elect masters,' and in 1208, 
in the course of the struggle mentioned above, the University 



70 DnivertiHeB of Europe in the Middle Ages, 

(for we may nov atiictly call it so) obtained its first written 
statutes. Tbeseareof the BimpleBt kind, and require only three 
things, the wearing of the academical dress, the observance of 
the proper order in lectures aud io disputations, and the due 
attendance at tbe funerals of deceased masters. If this last 
point shows the origin of the guild of masters as a private 
society, the second was soon to lead to a change of the 
greatest importance, i.e., the fixing of a definite course of 
academical study. This was soon developed in the statutes 
of the Papal Legate, Robert de Courtjon, in 1215, which may 
be said to mark an epoch in the history of universitiea In 
the previous century, a student had worked much as he 
pleased ; so we find John of Salisbury, the friend of Backet, 
passing from lectures on Logic to a study of the Classics 
which almost seems to anticipate the 15th century Renaissance : 
henceforth a student who wished for a degree had a fixed 
course before him to pursue, and this limitation of freedom has 
been a feature of university studies ever since. 

It was in this struggle with the Chancellor that the Univer- 
sity developed its constitution, with its Rector at its head, 
and its Faculty of Arts divided into four Nations, while the 
superior faculties form independent corporations. The or- 
ganizatiou of Paris was largely copied in Oxford, and Mr, 
fiasbdall has put forth a most ingenious theory that the very 
existence of the great English University, as an organized 
body, ia to be traced to a migration of Parisian students be- 
tween 1165 and 1167. We know at any rate that at that 
period Henry II., in the course of his quarrel with Archbishop 
Thomas, issued an ordinance that all beneficed English clerks 
who might be studying abroad, were to return to England 
within three months as ' they loved their revenues.' That 
such a threat would bring home most of the English students 
from Paris would be probable in itself; we have also evidence 
that at this time there was a compulsory retirement of ' alien 
scholars ' from France. It is most natural to suppose that this 
body of homeless students would settle somewhere in England, 
and if so, Oxford would have been the natural place for them 
'se ; at any rate there is no doubt that the evidenoe for 



. Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 71 

a large number of students in Oxford begins to become clear 
very soon after 1170, and almost immediately traces of organi- 
zation are found among them, which it is most natural to 
assume were copied direct from Paris. 

But in several respects the growth of Oxford privileges has 
a character of its own ; the most important of these is the 
position of the Chancellor. Oxford was not a cathedral city, 
but its bishop was more than a hundred miles away at Lincoln ; 
hence there was no great ecclesiastical Chancellor, as at Paris, 
to attempt to crush the privileges of the university. When 
the Chancellor appears — as he does in a decision of the Papal 
Legate, Nicholas of Tusculum, in 1214 — he is appointed 
specially for the university ; and though at first the Bishop of 
Lincoln had the right of nominating him, yet very early the 
masters of arts seem to have secured the privilege of electing 
the man who was to be presented to the Bishop for nomina- 
tion, and by the middle of the 14th century the confirmation 
of the election seems to have become a mere form. Hence 
the Chancellor at Oxford is not the would-be oppressor of the 
University ; he is its representative and champion, and Oxford 
grew up far more free from episcopal interference than did its 
mother-university under the shadow of the great cathedral of 
Notre Dame. 

Another point in which the circumstances of English life led 
to an important departure from the Parisian model, is in the 
comparative unimportance of the division into * nations.' 
There are traces that the fourfold division may have once ex- 
isted in Oxford, but England was far too much one nation to 
require such a division ; the four nations became two, the 
Southerners and the Northerners, and their representatives, 
the Proctors, exist to the present day as the executive of the 
university, but the term * nation * soon ceases to be used, and 
the Faculty of Arts votes as a single body. 

It would be most interesting to gather from Mr. RashdalPs 
book a sketch of the development of the privileges of Oxford, 
and still more to describe the part it played, especially in the 
development of the Scholastic philosophy at the end of the 
13th. and in the 14th century, and still more in the Wy<5)iffite 



72 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

movement. But it is necessary to turn to some of the more 
general features affecting all universities. With regard to the 
numbers of the mediasval students, Mr. Rashdall shows clearly 
that they have been enormously exaggerated, e,g,y the famous 
Archbishop of Armagh, Fitz Ralph, in a speech before the 
Papal Court in 1354, estimates the number of students in 
Oxford * in his own day ' at 30,000, though they had fallen to 
6000 — Mr. Rashdall, by the way, hardly gives the full strength 
of the Archbishop's words when he writes there * had once been 
30,000 students — but all the evidence that we have as to 
numbers of those 'determining,' and as to the size of the 
mediaeval city at Oxford, makes it impossible for us to put the 
academic population of 14th century Oxford higher than 3000, 
which is the estimate Wycliffe gives. At Paris, which had far 
more of an international character, Mr. Rashdall thinks there 
may have been at one time as many as 6000 or 7000 students. 
As to the life of these students, we shall not be far wrong 
in concluding that it was a very stormy one ; the history of 
all universities is one long battle against encroachments on 
the part of the towns where they were situated, or of the 
bishop in whose diocese they were, and when the scholars 
were not fighting against a common oppressor, they fought 
each other. At Oxford each advance in privileges is won at 
the cost of some outrage on the part of the town, a process 
which culminated in the great riot of St. Scholastica's day in 
1354, when two days' pitched battle culminated in the com- 
plete defeat of the students, the slaughter of numerous 
** clerks," and then, through the usual interference of Church 
and Crown on behalf of the University, in the complete humi- 
liation of the city — a humiliation which has only come to an 
end in our own century. It is curious to note that these 
Town and Gown rows, which form so prominent a feature at 
Oxford, are almost equally important everywhere ; the clerk 
and the townsman considered each other sworn foes, though 
they depended for their existence, or at any rate their pro- 
sperity, on each other. The immortal Bailie Nicol Jarvie, in 
the 18th century, complains of the same insolence on the part 
of the Glasgow students which had vexed the soul of the 



Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 73 

mayors of mediseval Oxford. The conduct of both sides is so 
full of faults that it is hard to decide between them, but as the 
Universities triumphed, their historians can afford to be gener- 
ous, especially now when it may be hoped that the old 
hostility is a thing of the past. One point, however, must 
always be borne in mind ; the struggle for University privi- 
leges, and especially for exemption from the ordinary jurisdic- 
tions, was only part of the great mediaeval struggle for the 
rights of the clergy against lay interference. 

The usual success of the universities in these struggles 
brings us to another point, f.«., that the students' strength was 
largely due to their poverty. When any trouble arose the 
University at once suspended its lectures, and if the trouble 
was serious, the whole body of students was prepared at once 
to migrate. This was easy, for they had no buildings of their 
own to lose, and the work of the University could be carried 
on successfully wherever houses or rooms could be hired for 
the dwelling-places or the lectures of the students, and 
churches borrowed for the more solemn functions, such as 
admissions to degrees. It is a curious feature in the history, 
especially of the Italian Universities, to read the negotiations 
between discontented students and towns anxious to attract 
them to reside, while the universities of established reputation, 
like Bologna, tried to bind their professors by oaths not to 
desert and carry their students with them. By the end of the 
13th century, the foundation of colleges in Oxford begins to 
give the students a permanent stake in the city, but Walter 
de Merton, to whose thought and munificence England owes 
its college system, definitely contemplated that his foundation 
might move elsewhere, and he had secured for it, in * Pytha- 
goras ' Hall, a local habitation in Cambridge. 

It is not till the fifteenth century that the age of university 
buildings proper as distinguished from those of colleges, be- 
gins ; as the mediaeval educational system was losing its real 
life, so it became rich and increased in goods. Oxford acquires 
her Schools, her present magnificent Divinity School, and the 
Library over it at this period, when her freedom and vigour 
had been crushed out of her. 



74 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 

Colleges have become so characteristic a part of the English 
Uoiyersities, that it will be a revelation to many Englishmen 
that such foandations were common in all the medisdval 
universities ; at Bologna, for example, there was the Spanish 
College, which was founded in 1367, and which is still used by 
the Government of Spain to train graduates for the diplomatic 
service, but it was Paris which was the origin of the collegi- 
ate system, and Mr. Rashdall gives a list of some seventy 
which were founded there between 1180 and 1480. They 
were originally only endowed hospicia for the students, and 
were not in Paris allowed such complete powers of self- 
government as were given to the English colleges. In Paris 
these foundations gradually decayed, and perished finally in 
the crash of the Revolution, while Oxford has not lost one of 
the foundations for the learning of the secular clergy which 
the piety of the Middle Ages gave her. 

The history of the Colleges in the Scotch Universities is dif- 
ferent. Here, after the German model,, they were intended 
rather to be endowments for the teaching faculty of the Univer- 
sity than for independent bodies of students; hence as they 
had a purpose independent of the common life of their mem- 
bers, this could disappear while the college continued to exist. 
It ivas about 1820 that the ' common tables ' of St. Andrews 
and Aberdeen was at last given up. 

But though the Scotch Universities have in this respect de- 
parted from their original arrangements, yet it may safely be 
said that in several respects they preserve more faithfully the 
features of the Mediaeval University than do the apparently more 
venerable, but in many respects more altered constitutions of 
Oxford and Cambridge. In the first place the ordinary student 
at Glasgow or Aberdeen is very much younger than in most 
modern universities, and about the same age as the scholars of 
Mediaeval Oxford or Paris. In spite of this he has kept, as has 
been said, the now unique privilege of electing his Rector, and 
the old organization of the Nations is, in Glasgow at least, still 
used in the election. What is more important, though not more 
interesting, is that the Scotch degree course is still modelled on 
the old Trivium and Quadriviumof the mediaeval student; hence 



Universities of Europe in ilie Middle Ages. lb 

the prominence of Logic and Metaphysics in the studies of the 
northern students, a prominence to which Europe owes the ds- 
velopment of an important school of philosophy. As Mr. Rash- 
dall says, ^between the time of Hutcheson and that of J. S.Mill, 
a majority of the philosophers, who wrote in the English lang- 
uage^ were professors or at least alumni, of the Scotch Universi- 
ties. 

As to the value of the mediaeval degree course as an in- 
tellectual training, very various estimates have been formed. 
Roger Bacon's view of it, at its most flourishing period in the 
tenth century, is most unfavourable. He complains that the 
clergy neglect their proper studies for that of Law, which is 
the sure avenue to preferment, that in theology, the Bible is 
neglected for the Sentences, that boys begin to study it before 
they could read their Psalter or had mastered their Latin 
grammar, and that mathematics is neglected, although in this 
respect, Oxford was not quite so bad as Paris. But his opinion 
must not be valued too highly ; he was before his time, and 
even in our own day, the researcher who is the glory of his 
university, is not the best judge of the value of its ordinary 
work. The mediaeval degree course can at all events claim 
that in it were trained the acutest intellects and the highest 
characters of the Middle Ages ; to take Oxford alone, a course 
could not have been despicable which produced in one cen- 
tury Edmund Rich, Robert Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, and 
Roger Bacon himself. And we have the best of evidence that 
it was valued by contemporaries, in the endowments which 
were given to enable poor students to enjoy it. 

A striking feature in it, especially in the early periods, is 
the attractive influence exercised by great teachers. The lec- 
ture room had something of the charm of the tournament, and 
the teacher held himself prepared, like the knights in the lists, 
to dispute against all comers ; ambitious scholars even went 
from place to place, seeking foemen worthy of their dialectic. 

It was this feeling which made the degree ceremonies so 
important ; a candidate who chose some daring thesis to 
maintain, might hope to attract attention and open the way 
for his subsequent career. So much is this the case that we 



' v.,.—. 



76 Univertitiea of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

even have statutes in Oxford and Paris, to prevent a dis- 
putant's friends using force to secure him an audience, and 
dragging in the passers-by to hear bim. When books were 
rare and costly, the influence of the spoken word, always 
great, must have been ten times greater ; and dry and schol- 
astic as the mediaeval studies appear to us, yet a great man 
like St. Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus could make them of 
vivid interest. 

The character of the mediaeval examinations is a subject of 
considerable difficulty. On the one hand there are such re- 
markable facts as that in Oxford at any rate there is no clear 
proof of examinations in the modern sense of the word at all, 
that at Greifswald, where we have the lists of candidates and 
of those who actually passed from 1456 to 1478, no candidate 
failed to satisfy the examiners, and that at Paris in 1426, a 
candidate who achieved the unusual distinction of a ^ pluck ' 
brought an action against his examiners, that they had re- 
jected him from odium theologicum. On the other hand there 
seems no doubt that the examinations at Paris were at first a 
formidable ceremony ; we have a remarkable sermon of 
Robert, the founder of the Sorbonne, which draws an elabor- 
ate comparison between the examination before the Chancellor 
and the Last Judgment ; of course its point is the greater 
severity of the latter, but the comparison would have been 
impossible had the university examination been a mere farce. 
So too we have elaborate accounts of the examination cere- 
mony at Bologna, where at this * rigorous and tremendous ' 
ceremony, as it is called, the examiner was required to treat 
the examinee as his own son. Even more significant are the 
repeated statutes against bribing examiners and the fact that 
comparatively but a small proportion of those matriculating 
ever proceeded to their M. A., or even ' determined ' as B. As. 
Even when the actual examination had become a farce, or did 
not exist at all, there still was a standard of minimum attain- 
ment for the degree ; it always implied residence and the 
hearing of the proper lectures during a long period; the 
course for the D.D. at Oxford for example extended over 20 
years. 



Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 77 

The personal influence of the lecturer, the importance of the 
spoken word, is connected with another remarkable feature of 
the mediaeval universitiea Though they were clerical in 
character, it is a great mistake to imagine them as homes of 
theological bigotry or narrowness ; on the contrary they are 
associated, in their best days, with liberty of thought in 
matters religious. It was the Universities which insisted on 
studying the newly discovered works of Aristotle in the 
Renaissance of the thirteenth century; his logical trea- 
tises, or parts of them, had always been known, but the 
Church at first looked with grave, and not undeserved sus- 
picion, on his scientific and ethical works ; the free spirit 
of the Universities, however, triumphed, and the genius of 
the great schoolmen succeeded in bringing about a recon- 
ciliation of faith and reason. This was especially the work 
of the great Dominicans of Paris, Albert the Great (1193-1280) 
and his pupil, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). On this occasion 
the regular clergy were on the side of liberty ; as a rule, how- 
ever, it was the secular clergy who ventured to handle theologi- 
cal questions, and whose lectures were the inspiring cause of so 
many of the reform movements before the Reformation. In the 
boldness of their theological teaching and in their popular char- 
acter, the mediaeval universities are specially represented by those 
of Scotland in our own day ; they were essentially the universi- 
ties of the people, as well as of the classes, and success in the 
university schools was an avenue by which the low born peasant 
could rise to position and authority in the Church, just as in Scot- 
land the Presbyterian ministry has drawn to itself, through the 
Universities, so large a share of the best intellect of the people. 

One more point may be noticed as illustrated repeatedly by 
Mr. Rashdall's book, i.e. the constant connection between the 
educational and the religious movements of the Middle Ages. 
The great revival of Aristotelian study in the 13th century 
coincides with, and was profoundly influenced by, the teaching of 
the Friars, while in the fourteenth century the WyclifSte move- 
ment of Oxford and its successor, the Hussite movement at 
Prague, were especially connected with university privileges and 
studies.. So close is this connection that, as Mr. Rashdall points 



78 The Aiiatict in America. 

out, scholasticism maintained itself in tlie schools of Italy after 
it had been driven ont of those north of the Alps, and only gave 
way when the Catholic reaction of the sixteenth century pro- 
duced in its turn a body of teachers, uniting religious fervour 
with new educational methods. 

The number of points of interest in these volumes is endless ; 
the philosophic movements of the middle ages and the life of the 
students generally we have hardly had time even to refer to, but 
they are abundantly illustrated ; the effect of endowments and 
the character of the original college foundations and their de- 
velopments too we have had almost entirely to pass over. We 
can only hope that in these days of University Reform and 
Extension, the encouragements and the warnings of the experi- 
ence of their predecessors may become familiar to the students of 
the present day, and often it will be found that the true path of 
reform is that indicated by the old motto 

' Antiqimm exquirite matretn.' 

J. Wells. 



Art. IV.— the ASIATICS IN AMERICA 

THE question of the origin of the native American races, 
and of the civilisations discovered by the Spaniards in 
Mexico and Peru, is one of great interest in connection with 
the general history of the diffusion of the human race. Many- 
theories have been propounded, according to which the abori- 
ginal Americans were autochthonous, or created in America — 
an immense antiquity being ascribed to the original traces of 
— while some have supposed the Peruvians to 
)ple, reaching the Pacific coast from Europe, 
lemselves thought that St. Thomae from India 
led Mexico and Peru, and thus accounted for 
)f the Cross in America, and for other similari- 
ites and customs. 

sr, we study the racial types, the languages, 
biouB of America, we must conclude that aa 



The Asiatics in America. 79 

Asiatic origin, and a cooDectioD with MoDgolic races, is far 
more probable, eBpecially as the distance to be traversed by 
sea is eo much shorter. But in treatiog this subject two dis- 
tinct questions must be distinguished : the first being the quefr- 
tion of the aboriginal population which was everywhere fouad 
by Europeans living iu a semi-savage state; and the second, 
the question of the origin of the two distinct civilisations 
which existed, in the sixteenth century ia Mexico and Peru, 
while the remainder of the two continents was still barbarous. 
As regards the origin of man iu America, the existence of a 
very ancient race, whence the American Indians of both North 
and South America have descended, is generally admitted. 
Palaeolithic arrow heads, belonging to the Quaternary strata, 
show a widely diffused but savage race, and rude implements 
are even asserted to occur in Colorado iu Miocene and Pliocene 
strata ; but the evidence requires still to be very cautiously 
accepted. The earliest American type was long-headed, and 
approaches nearest to the Turanian or MongoHc, but not to 
the Chinese or Mongol proper, being rather comparable to the 
Ugro-Altaic and Buimese, and to that of the early Dravidiau 
races of ludia. Humboldt was struck, evea in South America, 
with the Mongolic type of the natives; and the main charac- 
teristics are the same in both the American continenta The 
hairless faces, high cheiik-bones, prognathous jaws, and even 
the large curved nose (common among the Kirghiz Tartars, 
and shewn on the old historic bas reliefs which represent 
Hittites and Akkadians) are MongoHc features, Ou the Pacific 
shores the original type is modified by an infusion of blood of 
some short-headed race, probably representing later elements 
of population. In Peru the lower class of natives had long 
beads, but the Incas had short heads. The Azteks had the 
custom of artificially elongating the head, which is common 
iu America and found in other parts of the world. The longest 
heads are found among Patagonians and Esquimaux, '^''" 
prognathic jaw is not fouad commonly among Thibeta 
Mongols, but it occurs among the Chinese, The W: 
tribes are thought to belong to the Tunguse family, and 
elements of population may have come from the Ak 



80 The AaiatKB in America. 

iBlands, or by Behring Straits, from the north-eeiBt comer of 
Asia. Short beads are found in the Ohio mounda, and the 
later iofusioD of Malay, and possibly of Chinese and of Japaaesd 
stocks, appears probable. 

The American languages are numerons, and vary in char- 
acter, bnt they are in no cases inflected lite Aryan or Semitic 
langnages, and their etructnre is only comparable to that of 
the Mongolic or Turanian languages of Asia. Comparative 
study is rendered difficult by the rapid changes, which affect 
all languages where there is no literature to preserve the 
vocabulary. Thus in Africa, and in America, the problem is 
more difficult than that of Asiatic languages. But grammatical 
structure is always a safer guide than vocabulary, and the 
Amfrican languages resemble rather the agglutinative speech 
of Central Asia, with its long words, due to the incorporation of 
pronouns and particles, its absence of gender and of inflection, 
its vowel harmonies, its rednplications representing plurals, 
and its distinctive syntax, thau they do when compared 
with the more advanced Aryan and Semitic tongues. Classifi- 
cation is still very imperfect, but comparative study has 
already shewn that the classes are fewer and less distinct than 
used to be supposed. In North and Central America Bancroft 
recognised three classes, the Tinneh family on the North-West, 
the Aztek in Mexico, and the Maya. The Otomi language is 
said to differ from others in being more clearly monosyllabic, 
and comparable in many features of grammar to the Chinese. 
The Aztek, though perhaps the most perfect of American 
tongues, does not distinguish the letters b df r g g, and has no 
gender or inflexions. All these features also mark the Mongolic 
languages. The Pima in California is said to present fifteen 
per cent, of Malay words, but none that are Chinese or Japan- 
ese. The Quichuan, which is the classic tongue of South 
AmanVo nrnaonta the Same agglutinative features, and the 

longolic connection is therefore strong. 

vocabularies published by Mr. R. P. Greg* 



jy of the Old and New WorUh, by R. P. Greg. 



The Asiatics in America, 



81 



are of great interest in this study. A list may here be given 
of about an hundred words generally common to North, 
Central, and South American languages, with comparisons 
with Mongolic words taken from his pages. In dealing with 
modem languages there is no doubt a danger that loan words 
may have travelled far from one people to another, but the 
words which compare are as a rule those denoting the simplest 
objects and acts, and they shew us a savage people living in 
the condition of hunters or pastoral herdsmen. The com- 
parisons do not indicate a Chinese origin, but are generally 
closest to the dialects of Central Asia and of Siberia, though 
some words are so widely diffused that they occur also in the 
Indo-Chinese languages, in Thibetan, and in the Dravidian 
dialects of India. 

Among the words here given we find several to denote 
house, boat, axe, knife, bow, arrow, stone, and fire ; but the 
only metal which has a common name is gold (N. American 
ccaaij Central American chuqui^ South American ccaxi)^ and 
this seems to be a later native word. Among animals the bear 
is specially to be noted, with various names for the dog. The 
original Americans appear to have recognised family relations, 
and had several words for God or Spirit. Their languages 
had advanced to the use of pronouns, but their general con- 
dition was that of hunters, sowing a little corn, and fishing 
in boats. They knew of cold and snow, and may have come 
in their skiffs from Asia, but used probably only stone weapons 
and bowa They were in fact in that condition of progress in 
which they were found still living, in North America, by the 
first colonists. 

COMPARATIVE VOCABULARY. 





North American. 


Central American. 


South American. 


Mongolic 


House, 


Ko Uca 


Ku Oigii 


KuUca 


Keui 


i> 


In Ank 


Ngu 


In Ngu 


Ion 


>> 


Hi Ho 


HuU 


Hi I 


Hu Ui 




Dum Dimi 
Kotai 




Dum Tan 
Hit 


Tami 
Kat 




Goti 


Stone, 


Tak 


Tek 


Tika 


Tash 


>y 


Kuk 


Kak 


Kak 


Koch 


XXVIII. 


6 







82 



The Asiatic* in AtMriea. 




Stone, 
Mountain^ 


Sileh 
Tipi 


Tepe 


» 


KuKaak 


Kauah 


Great^ 


Muck 


Noh 

Pacha 

Kagg 


99 

Tree, 


Kagg 


ItnAt 


Kayak 




JJiJvkVy 




Axe, 


Tuk 


Tek 


Knife, 


Akyek 


Haaha 


f9 


Kiai 


Quai 


Bow, 

t9 


Nama 
Siia 




Za 


Arrow, 


Sua 


Tzuh 


Dark,, 


Kaak 


Akakka 


Bad, 


Kaka 


Ukku 


Fifih 


TCATin 




X 4DU, 

Dog. 


Achu Shue 


Ochu 


J> 


Puka 


Pek 


ii 


Keikue . 


Chiki 


Bird, 


Kuku 


Kukai 


Kg, 


Ouchi Ak 


Ak 


Deer, 


Tsick 


Kweh 


TIaai* 


Matto Mavar 
Sigi 




Corn, 


Saxi 


Salt 


$*iTiii1mnYi 




Snow, Ice, 


Tek Toosha 


Istek 


Foot, 


Ooch 


Uoc 


Hand, 


Paco 


Maco 


Finger, 


Ka 


Ga 


Nose, 


Uk 


Gu 


Ear, 


Gyu 






Tongue, 


Del 






Hair, 


Oahu 


Si 


>> 


Shuka 


Soz 


>j 


Thaesh 


Tusu 


Head, 


Ca 


Que 


99 


Pflh Biza 


Paco 


>> 


Iku 


Akang 


Tooth, 


Ttza 


Tzi 


»» 


Tong 


ToUau 


Mouth, 


Ku 

Sana 

Abu 


Ku 


99 

Eye, 


Siki 


1> 


Na 


Nik 


Man, 


Er 





Silla 


Zeis 




Tepe 




Kakka 


Kai, Kgi 


Hakh 


Magh 


Pacha 


Paka 


Khoka 


Aghagh 


Kao 


Kaiyik 


Taqui 


Taka 


Choki 


Chucki 


Kiai 


Kao 


Mumute 


Numu 


Za 


Zaa 


Suu 


Sawa 


Coca 


Gigi 


Akaka 


Haica 


Kanu 


Kan 


Hu chute 


Ku Schey 


Puku 


Betka 


Kukui 


Kaik 


Huku 


Kush 


Kuch 


Gachi 


Guaca 


Kayik 


Mari 


Medve Mar 


Zaxi 


Suk 


Sachi 


Saksi 




Tek Toah 


Kayu 


Ayak 


Paco 


Baeg 


Ka 


Ki 


Cana 


Ang 


Huchu 


Kuo 


Del 


Dil 


Zye 


Uaha 


Socco 


Shag 




Thaah 


Gue 


X 1X00 XX 

Go 


Pacu 


Bash 


Yakae 


Yok 


Dza 


Tez 


Tnllu 


Tang 




Kn 


Sane 


SXXf 

Sun 


Zu 


Sei 


Na 


Na 


Urre 


Ere 



The Asiatics in America. 



83 



Man, 



» 



if 

Son, 



»} 



Father, 



»> 



>> 



Mother^ 
Woman, 
God, 






Daylight, 



9} 
>9 

99 



Sky, 
Sun, 



j> 



>> 



Star, 
Moon, 



»> 



Fire, 

9> 
99 

Water, 

99 

To cut, 
To give, 



I, 



99 



99 

Thon, 

He, 

ThiB, 



Cane 

Ka 

Hama 

Saka 

Coi 

Cin 

It. Obo 

Tata 

Aya 

Appa 

Ma Anna 

Sun Tan 

Ata 

Ogha 

Hun 

U Yeh 

Niou 

Tina 

Caan 

Sua 

Ara 

Ene 

Tak Teshe 

Kegek 

Kon 

Sohn 

Suus 

Kese 

Tsohol 

Aguei 

Nosi 

Ari Bari 

Koh Iche 

Tetsch Tah 

Teik 

DzuDu 

laUi 

Kut 

Da 

Kia Chu 

Noka 

SiDi 

ZuTa 

Na 

Huen 



Akun 

Ea 

Huema 

Chichi 

Goa 

Akun 

Aitze 

Tatle 

Aba 

Maa 

Dome 

Teo 

Ogha 

Ku 

Tani 

Chaan 

Tse 

Andi 
Tes 
Quik 
Kin 



Cha 

Sillo 

Chic 

Masa 

Bari ^ 

Cha 

Tata 

Tschuko 

Du 

A Aya 

Kuta 

Da 

Caa 

Nek 

De 

Ti 

Nunu 

Quin 



Canai 

Che 

Huema 

C^echu 

Ciu 

Cana 

Aha 

Tayta 

Aya 

Pai 

Meme Ana 

Zumo 

Ati (Chinese) 



Ken 

Huai 

Ano 

Kin 

Sua 

Ara Uru 

Ano Inti 

Tagg 

Kecai 

Kin 

Suna 

Suus 

Cachi 

SiUa Tysel 

Yace 

Masa 

Ari 

lakai 

Tesha 

Taika 

DzuDu 

AahUi 

Kut 



Ku 

Noka 

Su 

Ni 
Kim 



Kena 

Aika 

Him 

Chuken 

Cha 

Ken 

Atyalsa 

Tato 

Aya 

Ab 

Ema Ana 

Zin 

Ti 

Agha 

Jin 

Yo Yaha 

InNa 

Tan 

Kun 

Si 

Or 

In 

Tawash 

Kueuk 

Khon 

Shun 

Susi 

Kaisa 

Tysil 

Ike 

Mah 

Ira 

Kuy 

Tuz Tet 

Togo 

ZuTo 

Ai Wa 

Ket Kes 

Da 

Ka 

Ngai 

Si 

SuTi 

Na 

Kan 



84 



The Asiatics in America. 



With respect to this list it should be noted that a large pro- 
portion of the words are very ancient, and occur in the oldest 
known Mongolic language — the Akkadian of Mesopotamia,* 
yet the American tribes were apparently offshoots, not directly 
of that civilized race, but of the rude tribes of Siberia, which 
had either never learned the arts of the Akkadians, or had lost 
them as they migrated to wilder lands, remote from the origi- 
nal home of the Mongolic races near the Caspian. 

When we continue the enquiry, in the case of words which 
are not common to the whole range of American languages, 
we still find that comparisons of vocabulary are more common 
when the Ugro Altaic, or North Mongolic languages, are used 
as a basis ; and the Aryan languages furnish no comparisons ; 
the Chinese in some cases comes however nearest to the Ameri- 
can. The following important words widely spread in North 
America are very closely like those used by Altaic Turanians 
in Asia. 





North American. 


Ugro Altaic. 


Land, 


mah amet 


ma modu 


>j 


ti tu 


da 


Tree, 


kan 


kona, kanu 


99 


tsa 


sa 


>> 


pichu 


pOBU 


Knife, 


pesh 


beechak 


» 


seepa 


sapa 


Axe, 


sknm 


Buka 


Arrow, 


skui 


sogau 


Fish, 


gat 


kata 


Snake, 


osheista 


eshdissa 


I>og, 


cannu 


kon 


>* 


meda 


meda 


Bird, 


mon 


motun 


Sheep, 


una 


unet 


Deer, 


addik 


teke 


Hare, 


yo 


(Chinese) yu 



* Compare for instance the Akkadian words for ^ house ' tm, kif tami : 
' stone ' tdk : ' great ' makh : * dark * gig (also * bad * * ill ') : ' fish ' Icha 
Tchan : * bird ' hiis : * head ' ca ; * mouth * gu: * eye ^ si: * man ' eri, gan, 
gum : * son ' sak : ' father ' ai, ah : * mother ' ene : * God * An : * day ' tan : 

* sky ' gug : ' sun ' shun : * moon ' agu : ' water ' o : ' give * de: * I ' anga : 

* thou ' zi: ' he ' na : * this ' gan. 



The Aiiaties in America. 



85 



Bear, 


xriatto 


medve 


3f 


moan 


maina 


9> 


BUS 


saks 


Fox, 


chula 


koU 


Seed, 


sum 


BO 


Milk, 


chychtya 


shiut 


Egg, 


manig 


manu 


Ice, 


ak 


yig 


Snow, 


kais 


kaisa 


»> 


speu 


buss 


Foot, 


kolo 


kol 


99 


looga 


llagyl 


Mouth, 


an iiii . 


an ama 


God, 


man 


man 


99 


u yet 


ye 


Silver, 


shuney 


(Chinese) shen 


Clothes, 


togai 


tug 


War, 


gawi 


cooha 



In numerals the North American languages diflfer much, but 
the commonest words for numbers seem also to indicate an 
Ugro Altaic connection. 



Number. 


North American. 


Ugro Altaic. 


1 


ak, ikj 


, cau 


aku 


2 


ako 




iki 


3 


taugh 
katsa 




( touga 
) kudem 


t^ 




4 


tseto 




thett 


5 


tawit, 


etsha 


vit 


6 


sih 




hat 


7 


siete^ i 


butsheos 


sat seitiSa 



Up to No. 5 the resemblances are striking, but the numerals 
for 8, 9, 10, do not shew any remarkable resemblance. The 
Azteks, as will appear later, had words for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 
formed the rest by compound words denoting additions. 

Not only was the common word for boat in America of 
Mongolic origin, but the words for the sea in North America 
shew the same connection. The commonest word for sea 
among the Aryans and West Asiatics is mar, which perhaps 
means ' great water,' (Sanskrit mira^ Latin mare, Slav moray, 
Celtic maraj Teutonic meer^ Finnic mar^ Altaic meri and mora^ 
Lapp mar, perhaps the same as the Mongol nor), but this word 



86 



The Aiiatiet in Amerie<u 



does not apparently occur in America. The Malay, Polynesian, 
and Australian languages are connected together by another 
word for sea (Malay atui, Polynesian tot, Australian ton), and 
the languages of Polynesia and Australia generally compare 
closely with the Malay. In North America there are many 
words which as a rule only mean * waters,' or * great water ' ; 
but some are more distinctive, such as to ' sea,' which is the 
same as the Corean ta ; and vaat * sea,' which compares with 
the Ugro Altaic vat or vut for * water ' * sea.' In South America 
on the other hand we find the word atun for the sea appar- 
ently of Malay origin. 

The indications afforded by such words point to the deriva- 
tion of the North American Indians from the nearest part of 
North-east Asia. The tribes which crossed over the narrow 
straits were in the primitive condition of pastoral hunters. 
They knew the sheep among domestic animals, but were pro- 
bably unable to bring cattle with them. They were perhaps 
acquainted with corn, as well as milk, and they knew the 
bear, and came from a region where ice and snow were found. 
The word for silver compares with the Chinese, and is pro- 
bably of later origin. The numerals, also, though they com- 
pare only with the Ugro Altaic, do not seem to have been 
named beyond * five.' The words compared for numerals do 
not in any case recall the vocabulary of any Aryan race. 

In South and Central America there are indications, already 
noticed, that the same northern race penetrated to the extreme 
end of the continent, but there are also indications of later 
arrivals from the Malay peninsula. Numerals are the most 
valuable words for comparison, because the most distinctive 
of various classes of language. The Otomi numerals, in Cen- 
tral America, seem to show a connection with Mongolic 
systems, both Ugro-Altaic and Indo-Chinese, though in most 
cases these are not very close. The Otomi No. 1 is, however, 
nearest to the Dravidian onruj * one.' 



No. 1 
2 
3 
4 



Otomi. 

nura 

zooko 

hui 

gooho 



Ugro Altaic. 



kok 
uitse 

ngy 



Indo Chinese, 
kiohi 



hichi 



The Asiatics in America. 87 



5 


gyU 


wit 


ngat 


6 


rahti 


hat 


re 


7 


yotho 


yedi 


tsit 


8 


hyate 


dsghat 


thata 


9 


gythe 


gessu 


acu 



Dissimilar as these may appear, they are closer than any other 
comparisons with existing numeral systems. 

The Aztek system in Mexico included only numerals to 
'five,' and these compare with other widely-spread Ugro 
Altaic words for numbers as far as * four.' 





Aztek. 


Ugro Altaic. 


No. 1 


ce 


aku 


2 


ume 


unem 


3 


ye 


uitse 


4 


nahui 


negy 


6 


chicu 





In South America the Quichuan being the most important 
language, it is interesting to find, in some cases, similar Mon- 
golic comparisons, especially pointing to the northern branch. 

Quichuan. Ugro Altaic. 

No. 1 huk huca aku 

2 yskuy yike 

3 kunsa kudem 

4 tahua thett 

5 picka besh 

6 Bokta kaht 

7 kancis seitsi 

8 pussak sekis 

9 yskun wexum 
10 cunka kamen 

These must be taken for what they are worth, but it is con- 
ceivable that the two systems may have a common origin, 
and neither bears any resemblance to the Aryan system com- 
mon to all European languages of that class. 

Before considering the later civilisations of America it is 
necessary to glance at the early civilisation of Eastern Asia, 
in order to appreciate the conditions which existed when first 
the historic races can be supposed to have come into com- 
munication with the New World. The oldest civilisation of 
Asia was that of the Akkadians, whose language (including 
the numerals) is most closely represented by the Turkish 



^h 



88 The Asiatics in America. 

dialects of the region north of the Oxn& The Akkadians had 
a complete system of syllabic writing, originating in picture 
emblems, and they possessed the lunar calendar of twelve 
months, which was adopted by the Babylonians and the 
Greeks. It is now very generally recognised that the earlier 
tribes of India — preceding the Aryans — were akin to these 
Mesopotamian Mongols, but no known remains of their civili- 
sation have been recognised. The Turko-Mongol tribes, how- 
ever, who were certainly akin to the Akkadians, spread into 
Central Asia, where the Ehitai were established in the time of 
the geographer Ptolemy. These latter invaded China, and 
brought with them a considerable civilisation including a 
system of writing. The distinctive Chinese system, which is 
traced back to about 800 B.G., presents many comparisons with 
other Asiatic systems, but these are only pictorial, and there 
is so much that is distinctive in the Chinese hieroglyhic writing 
that a direct derivation from the Akkadian becomes untenable. 
Only a very remote original connection can at most be sup- 
posed. 

On the extreme north the Siberian tribes appear never to 
have been civilised, and in China itself the population was, 
from an early period, extremely mixed, many barbarous tribes 
being gradually conquered by the Kbitai and the Mongols, 
while other elements of population entered China from the 
west through Thibet, and from the south through Burmah 
and the Malay peninsula. The Malays were a great sea-going 
race ; and the communication between China and Arabia, in 
the Roman ages, may in great measure have been due to the 
boldness of the Malay sailors, who also appear to have popu- 
lated the Polynesian islands, and to have found their way to 
Australia, as is very distinctly shewn by the comparison of 
numerals and of vocabulary as a whole. 

But the civilisation of India and of the Malay peninsula was 
not of Mongol origin. It commenced with the establishment 
of the Greeks in India and in Bactria. It was fostered by the 
early Buddhists, from the third century B.O. onwards. It was 
also partly dependent on the Arabs of Yemen, who, even 
earlier than the Greek period, seem to have been in communi- 



The Asiatics in America. 89 

cation with Ceylon and India. The astronomy, and especially 
the calendar, of India was of Greek origin, and Indian archi- 
tecture is in the same manner based originally on Greek art. 

About the sixth century A.D. the Nestorians began to push 
their way from Persia into Central Asia and Mongolia, pene- 
trating at last even into China. They found the Mongols 
mainly pagan, but a debased form of Buddhism had also begun 
to spread among them from India. The Mongol alphabet is 
of Nestorian origin, and in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
turies Central Asia was full of European traders. The great 
Mongol period was that of the successors Genghiz Khan, 
whose wide empire extended from India to Siberia, and from 
the borders of Persia to China. The accounts left to us by 
Rubruquis, Marco Polo, and other travellers, attest the states- 
manship and energy of the Mongols, and their mixed civilisa- 
tion of Buddhist and Christian derivation. The whole empire 
was bound together by a postal system, which brought news 
from its furthest provinces to the distant capital at Karakorum, 
north of China ; and the wealth and magnificence of the 
Khan's Court were astonishing. The tolerance of this great 
ruler, and of his splendid grandson Mangu Khan, was equally 
remarkable, and it was not till the later age of Timur that the 
savage cruelties, which marked the Mongol devastation of 
Western Asia, led to the revolt of subject peoples, and to the 
decay of the Tartar power. 

Meanwhile in Thibet the corrupt Buddhism of the later 
Indian schools had already penetrated into the mountain 
plateau about 640 A.D. The Indian origin is clearly traceable, 
but it is not impossible that some of the strange similarities to 
Christian ritual — ^the use of robes including the mitre, of 
incense, rosaries, bells, crosses, and holy water, may have been 
due to the Nestorian influence. Missionaries from the Roman 
empire penetrated to these regions in 635 A.D., and the Edict 
of Si-ngan-fu, by the Chinese Emperor Tetsung, which has 
been found near the east border of Thibet dates from about 
780 A.D.* Abu Zeid el Hasan, in the ninth century A.D., speaks 

* See Buddhism of Tibet, L. A. Waddell. 1895, p. 422. Yule's Marco 
Polo, II., p. 23. 




90 The Asiaiiei in Ameriea. 

of thooMtids of diristiaos maflBacred in Quna — ^the soath-wefit 
prorioces — and Marco Polo in the thirteen centnry foond 
Neatoriana north of Ynnnan. There were then 30,000 Alans 
in the Mongol Empire who were Christiana, and the Bnddhist 
lamas were familiar with Christian rites and emblems from the 
aerentb centnry onwards. In Thibet while propagating the 
later Indian Taotric Buddhism, and even preserving mnch of 
the original ethics and philosophy of Buddha, thej also per- 
mitted the survival of the older savage demonolatiy of the 
country, and added to it much that, in India, was derived 
from the older Non-Aryan systems. They divided the cycle 
of existence into six states including heaven, the paradise of 
the inferior gods, the animal creation, hell, the Hades of 
starving ghosts, and the human life. Through these six states 
the soul passed successively in an eternal progress, unless 
attaining to Nirvana. Their religious system included estab- 
lishments of monks, hermits, and nuna They drew terrible 
pictures of demon guardians on the outer walls of their 
temples, and recognised all the fabulous beings of India, 
Nagas, Takshas, Ghandarvas, Asuras, Garudas, etc., with 
Indra, Yama, Varuna, Kuvera, and Agni. Their astronomy 
was that derived from Greece by India, but they possessed the 
Tartar cycles of 12 and 60 years, and intercalated 7 months in 
19 lunar years. They practised both cremation and burial, 
and burned a lay figure of the deceased on the 49th day, at 
the close of the funeral ceremonies. Among their emblems 
the * wheel of the law,* or Swastika, was one of great antiquity, 
and found in all parts of the world. Their festivals were 
remarkable for the masquerades, in which actors assumed the 
appearance of demons with enormous heads and grinning 
mouths. Human sacrifice and cannibalism existed in Thibet 
in the seventh century, A.D., but as Buddhism spread a figure 
of dough was substituted for the human victim. The morsels 
of this figure, torn in pieces by masks representing bull-headed 
and deer-headed fiends, were distributed among the crowd. 
All these customs still survive on the borders of India. 

The Tantric Buddhism so described existed not only in 
Thibet but in China and Mongolia, in Burmah, and the Malay 



The Asiatics in America. 91 

peniDsula, and ielaDda The reasons for thne deeciibing the 
civilisation of India and Mongolia, and the character of the 
religion which spread over Eastern Asia to the Pacific shores, 
will appear when the Azteks and Incas are considered im- 
mediately. The history of hieroglyphic systems in China is 
also important in the same connection, for there is no trace of 
any hieroglyphic character in India, or in the Indo-Chinese 
peninsula, where alphabets of western origin were adopted. 
The florid ornamentation of Malay temples, hnilt in Java and 
on the main land, and the etructnre of the topes there found, 
all point to the Indian origin of this civilisatioD ; but as 
Buddhism advanced to China the character of its rites and art 
became further degraded, by the extravagances of Cbinese 
heathenism and pictorial style ; and while little survived of 
the philosophy and humane scepticism of the original religion, 
little also was left to mark the remote classic origin of archi- 
tecture and sculptare. The only direct communication of 
America with any Asiatic civilisation must have been with the 
deformed Buddhism of the Eastern shorea 

We may therefore pass on to consider the earliest knovm 
discovery of America by Buddhist travellers * : for there ap- 
pears to be no reason to suspect the truth of the account given 
by Hwui-Shan, who came back to China in 499 A.D., under the 
Tey dynasty, having sailed a distance of 32,000 li east, to the 
Fii-sang country. He first describes the Aleutian Islands, 
north-east of Japan, and then apparently the Alaska tribes. 
The distances to Fu Sang point approximately to the position 
of Mexico. The country was named from the Fu Sang trees, 
like bamboos, noticed with a red fruit like a pear : the fibre 
■was used for cloth. The agave seems to be intended, which 
has sprouts not nnlike the bamboo. The red pear-lJke fruit 
may be that of the cactus in Mexico. The agave has a fibre 
from which cloth is spun. The houses in Fu Sang were of 
wood and no citadel or walled tower existed. The peo 
a written character, and used paper made from the 
which recalls the agave papyrus of Mexico. They w 

* S«e ^n /rufioriout Cohiminu. E. P. Vining. 1885. 



92 The Asiatict in America. 

warlike people and had no weapons. la the north was a 
prisoa for minor offenders, in the south one for more import- 
ant criminals. This also points to the Mexican polity. When 
a Qoble wae oondemned to punishment he was. shut up in a 
hollow tomb and surrounded with ashea In Mexico the 
criminal left to die at the stake was, in like manner, surrounded 
with ashes. Crimea were visited on descendants to the third 
and seventh generation in Fu Sang. In Mexico the children 
of traitors were enslaved to the 9tb generation. In Fu Sang 
nobles were called Tuilu, and the second order of nobles ' the 
little Tuilu.' In Mexico the title of the nobles is variously 
given as Tecleh-tli and Teule-tli, and a lesser order were called 
' Little Chiefs.' The Fu Sang king went ia procession pre- 
ceded and followed by horns and drums. In Mexico the 
chiefs were accompanied by boms and drums, and large sea 
shells were blown. The Fu Sang monarch, in the first and 
second years of the cycle of ten years, wore blue or green, in 
the third and fourth he wore red, in the fifth and sixth yellow, 
in the seventh and eighth white, in the ninth and tenth black. 
In Mexico these five colonrs in like manner distiognished the 
years. Large cattle horns are noticed in Fu Sang, and in 
Mexico the buffalo horns were used for drinking vessels. The 
pilgrim speaks of carts drawn by horses, cattle, and deer. The 
Mexicans had no horses or cows, but they had deer ; and, as 
Hwui Shan says, that the Fu Sang people raised deer as 
cattle were bred in China, he seems to recognise this, and to 
refer to the tame deer and large deer forests of the Mexican 
noblea The inhabitants had no iron, but plenty of copper in 
Fu Sang, and did not value gold or silver. The Mexicans also 
bad no iron, but much copper. They had a great quantity of 
?er, but did not use either for money. Among the 
be Fu Sang people the pilgrim notes that a lover 
a hut outside the girl's home, and sweep and 
ground for a year. The girl could dismiss him 
f unwilling. The marriage ceremonies resembled 
aa. Among the Apache Indians ^milar courtship 
the newly wedded pair live in a cabin before the 
ae for the first year. It is also to be noted that 



The Asiatics in America. 93 

Bimilar customs existed among the early Chinese tribes. The 
Fu Sang people mourned during stated times for various rela- 
tions, as did also the Mexicans. They set up an image of the 
deceased, and poured libations before it noon and eve. This 
was also a Mongolic custom in Thibet and China, and in 
Yucatan wooden statues of parents were placed in oratories, 
while the statue of a Mexican king was adorned with offerings 
of clothes, food, and jewels. Hwui Shan concludes his account 
by stating that these people had been ignorant until visited 
by five Buddhist Bikshus in 458 A.D., who are said to have 
come from Kipin or Cabul, in Afghanistan. He also speaks of 
a country, 1000 li east of Fu Sang, called the * Country of 
Women,' where a fair, long-haired race lived, who fled from 
strangers. He may refer to Clhuatlany * the place of women,' 
on the Pacific coast ten days journey from Mexico. 

This interesting account, as explained by Mr. Vining, would 
thus appear to give a faithful picture of Mexican life about 
500 A.D., and contains indications, not only of the Buddhist 
origin of Mexican civilisation half a century earlier, but also of 
the Mongolic customs of the people so civilised. When we 
compare this account with the existing remains of Yucatan,* 
and with Spanish accounts of the Azteks in the sixteenth 
century A.D., we find further reasons for believing the truth of 
Hwui Shan's account. 

As regards existing remains, the temples of Central America, 
rising in steps to a building above, bear a striking resemblance 
to the Buddhist topes, especially to those of Java and the 
Malay peninsula ; and the florid art of the statues is equally 
like that of the same Asiatic region. The hieroglyphic char- 
acter does not recall any of the syllabaries of Western Asia. 
It is clearly ideographic, and few symbols are repeated, except 
certain strokes and dots added to the left of the emblems, 
which appear to denote terminations of words. The inscrip- 
tions of Palenque are in the same character used in Aztek 
MSS. The writing may have been in horizontal lines, but in 
some cases it is vertical. There is no system known which, 

* Central America. J. L. Stephens. 1841. 



94 The Anatiea in America. 

in general oharaoter, bears as close a relation to the Aztek as 
does the Chinese; and if the inscriptions ever come to be read 
(the language being known) it will probably be bj aid of the 
oldest Chinese faieroglyphics — the seal character. The evi- 
dence of Hwni Shan would point to this having been intro- 
duced from Mongolia, or Central Asia, into Mexico bj Budd- 
hists in the fifth century A.D. 

At Copan, on the borders of Honduras, one of the pyramid 
temples is adorned with a row of sculptured skulls, and this 
symbol of sacrifice and death was derived originally from the 
terrible symbolism of India by the Eastern Asiatics. At 
Palenque the kings, standing on slaves, are represented with 
long pig-tails, like the Mongols, who introduced this custom 
into China. Terrible masks, like those noticed in Thibet, are 
represented. The winged sun is also a Mexican emblem, and 
one widely spread in Asia. The use of stucco for these bas- 
reliefs also recalls the Buddhist art of Eastern Asia. The 
^ lion throne ' on which Buddha sat is represented at Palenque 
on the east border of Mexico, and a figure carrying a child 
recalls perhaps the mother goddess of Eastern Asia. The cross 
is represented as an object of worship ; but the cross was an 
Indian and a Buddhist emblem. The figures are beardless 
and of Mongolic type ; and Herera speaks of the Azteks as a 
beardless people, who wore their hair long and coiled up, with 
a pig-tail hanging behind. 

Humboldt, who was struck with the Mongolic type of the 
American Indians, collected many important indications of 
their Asiatic connection. He pointed to the monastic institu- 
tions, symbols, etc., but especially to the Mexican zodiac, as 
compared with that of Thibet and the Manchu Tartars: 

Tartar Signs. Mexican Signs. 

Rat, ... ,,, Water. 

Ox, ... ... Sea monster. 

Tiger, ... ... Tiger (ocelot). 

Hare, ... ... Hare. 

Dragon, ... ... Serpent. 

Serpent, ... ... Reed. 

Horse, ... ... Flint knife. 

Goat, ... ... Sun's path. 



The Asiatics in America. 95 

Monkey, ... ... Monkey. 

Bird, ... ... Bird. 

Dog, ... ... Dog. 

Hog, ••• ... Hoiue. 

The variations are equally remarkable with the coincidences. 
The Mexicans had no oxen or horses, and probably no hogs or 
goat& The signs were therefore changed in these cases, pro- 
bably by the teachers who introduced the Tartar calendar. 

Mr. Yining has given a useful resumS of the customs and 
other details which connect Mexican civilisation with that of 
China, Japan and Mongolia. Among their religious ideas were 
the transmigration of souls, monastic life, penances, ablutions, 
alms, the use of household gods, the festivals, the knowledge 
of astronomy or astrology, the cloistered virgins, the dragon 
standard, and a kind of heraldry as among the Japanese. They 
also used incense, charms, amulets, and chants, like the Budd- 
hists, and burned the dead, preserving the ashes in vasea 
The clothes of bride and bridegroom were tied together, but 
they lived apart for the first four days. Both these customs 
are found among the Hindus. 

Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico* gives other 
indications of this connection. The four cycles of Mexico, in 
which the earth is successively destroyed by each of the four 
elements, answer to the Indian Ealpas, carried to Thibet and 
East Asia by the Tantric Buddhists. The dead were buried 
in a sitting posture, which is also an Indian custom. The 
mitre-like crown of an Aztek monarch recalls the Buddhist 
mitres — perhaps borrowed from the Nestorians ; and the 
armour of quilted cotton is equally suggestive of that worn by 
the Mongols in the Middle Ages. The helmets made to re- 
semble the heads of wild animals recall Chinese and Japanese 
helmets, intended to terrify the enemy. Baptism, confession, 
and absolution were customs common to Azteks and Budd- 
hists; and, like Mongols, they believed in * one god by whom 
we live,' — an expression used also by Mangu Khan in the thir- 
teenth century in speaking to Rubruquis. But, as among 
Mongols, this . belief in a supreme god, who knew all things 



Ckmquest of Mexico, W. H. Prescott. New edition, 1878. 



96 The AdaticB in America, 

and gave all gifts, incorporeal and invisible, perfect in good- 
ness and purity, < under whose wings is a sure defence,' was 
accompanied bj the worship of inferior deities, chief of whom, 
among Azteks, ranked the terrible war god, to whom human 
victims were offered in hecatombs. They also believed in 
three future states — hell, hades, and heaven, answering to 
three of the six conditions of existence among Tantric Budd- 
hists. Paper charms were strewn on the corpse, as in China 
they are burned at a funeral. The soul was conceived to make 
a long journey to the North, and to pass between mountains 
which, moving together, crush the suffering shade ; this was a 
feature also of the Lama's helL Every year the ghost returned 
to the family, recalling the Buddhist yearly feast of the dead. 
A green stone was buried with the corpse, as jade is buried 
with the dead in China. The children sacrificed for rain were 
eaten by Aztek worshippers, but such sacrifices were unknown 
to the milder Toltecs who preceded them. They possessed 
also a custom of * eating god,' in the form of a dough image, 
which recalls that already noticed in Thibet. They spoke of 
this world's wealth as an * illusory shadow,' in the language of 
original Buddhism ; and mendicant pilgrims came to visit the 
shrine where first the foreign teacher of Aztek tradition had 
taught religion and arts, just as Buddhists visited the sacred 
land of their faith in Northern India. 

Mexican traditions spoke of more than one such teacher. 
Quetzalcoatl entered Mexico from the east. He wore a long 
sleeved robe with crosses on it, and a mitre like that of the 
lamas of Thibet. He taught various penances and ascetic 
customs, and is said to have introduced the calendar. In his 
time various artizans disembarked in the north at Panuco, in- 
cluding jewellers, smiths, architects, painters, and sculptors, 
with agriculturists. His assistants could cast metals, and 
engrave gems. Cukulcan, another teacher, came to Yucatan 
from the west, with nineteen companions, who were bearded 
and long-robed. They introduced a written character, and 
forbade human sacrifice. They taught the duty of confession, 
and finally disappeared and were deified. After them the 
rulers who followed made roads, palaces, temples, schools. 



The Atiatics in America. 97 

almshoases, retreats for widowB and orphaos, inDs, baths, and 
pODds. The Chilan Balam, or Sacred Book of Yucatan, 
reckoned back to the eecoDd century A.D., or accordiDg to 
another calculation to 583 A.D. 

The civilisation so introduced among the peaceable Toltees 
was, in time, developed by the Azteks, though the religion of 
the country decayed, and human sacrifice was reestablished. 
The Azteks are reported by the Spanish writers to have been 
able to east metals, and to have understood the art of enamel- 
ling and of lacquer, they used jade and glazed terra cotta, as 
in Japan and China, and had tesselated paTement& Their 
lake dwellings on piles resembled those of Eastern Asia, and 
they had regular posting houses on the high roads like the 
Mongols. The American legends included that of the Deluge 
whence Coxcox and his wife escaped in a boat to a mountain, 
sending out a dove, as shewn on ancient paintinga The Flood 
story is also found in the high plateau of the Andes, where 
Tezpi is said to have sent forth a vulture and a humming bird 
from his boat, in which he preserved many animals. The 
humming bird brought back a twig in its beak. An Aztek 
picture represented a single tree in a garden, round which was 
coiled a human-headed snake. At Cholula giants are said to 
have begun a tower which the gods destroyed by fire. These 
legends are traceable to Mesopotamia, but they were known 
also to Indians, Mongols, and the Chinese, The Flood story 
is preserved in an Indian Purana, and in Chinese tradition, as 
well as in Persia ; and the Persians, Indians, and Chinese all 
possessed legends of a paradise garden. 

Among other points of comparison may be mentioned the 
Azteks, resembling those of India 
g was also called the child of the 
ea. The Aztek calendar consisted 
3, with four weeks of 5 days, and 
ays. In every cycle of 52 years 
This calendar was reformed in 
year, with months of 13 days, is 
ar which, in a sothic cycle of 1491 
ig poiut. These ancient systems, 



98 The Asiatiet in America. 

originating in Chaldea, spread esstwarde in Asia, aad appear 
to have been introduced bj Buddhist ascetics into America. 
The pantomimic dances of tbe Azteks, with their masks, like 
heads of birds and beasts, also recall those of Tantric Buddhism 
already noticed The Toltecs came into Mexico from tha 
north probably about 650 A.D., and spread abroad daring tbe 
four following centuries, till dispersed by famine. The Azteks 
followed about 1196 A.D., entering Tula north of the Mexican 
■valley ; and in 1325 A.D. they settled south-west of the Lake 
of Mexico, Dialects resembhng the Aztek language have 
been found in New Spain, a thousand miles north of Mexico, 
and a similar architecture is here said to be traceable. The 
existing skulls of the more civilised race are said to resemble 
those of the eastern Tartars. 

The numerals of the Aztek language have been mentioned. 
The language was not a Chinese dialect though it possessed 
no letter r, which occurs in Mongolian and Japanese, but not 
in Chinese. The general character of the grammar is more 
akin to that of eastern Tartar dialecte. Its greatest peculiarity 
was the affix tl to nouns. The numerals are nearest to the 
Ugro Altaic or North Turanian. A few words may be com- 
pared with MougoHc words, as examples of possible compara- 
tive study. 



Teo • god,' 


Chineae ti. 


To 'mother,' - 


DrBTidUn tay. 


Calli ' house,' . 


Altaic hdU. 


Ou ' lord,' 


Chioese cha. 


Ma ' moon,' - 


- Malay man. 


CaiuM ' boat,' - 


„ chuma. 



these seem to point to a later condition of lan- 
item Asia, and to a more southerly origin thaa 
iginal American race. 

1 result of these comparisons tends to show that 
races were of East Asiatic origin, bat that the 
troduced in the 5th century was foreign, and due 
of the Tantric Buddhist missionaries, at a time 
im had spread very widely in Eastern Asia, and 
and navigation were boldly proeeoated. It 



The Asiatics in America. 99 

remains to consider the civilisation of Peru under the Incas, 
which, though presenting many similarities to that of the 
Azteks, was in other respects distinct, and superior to Mexican 
conditions. 

The Incas traced to a mythical pair representing the Sun 
and Moon — a married brother and sister who drove a gold 
wedge into the earth in Peru.* The story of the gold wedge 
occurs in the Persian legend of Yima, and Mongol kings traced 
their origin to a similar divine pair. Only thirteen Incas ruled 
before the Spanish Conquest in 1524 A.D., and the period is 
variously estimated at 200 or 550 years. The word Inca 
itself suggests the Tartar un or unky ' Lord/ and their conquest 
must have occurred between 1000 and 1300 A.D., the period of 
Mongol Empire in Eastern Asia. Among their customs and 
institutions many recall those of Eastern Asia. They had a 
ceremony, when youths assumed the * girdle,' which recalls the 
sacred thread of Parsees and Brahmins. They used litters in 
travelling, and had regular stations, called tamhos^ o^ the high 
roads. The palace was fitted with silver pipes to the baths, 
and had gold and silver carved objects in the gardens, just as 
Mangu Khan's palace at Karakorum was fitted by his French 
goldsmith in the 13th century. The bodies of the Incas were 
mummified, and seated in gold chairs. The laws were strict, 
and the land was held by village tenure as in India. Care 
was taken of the sick and aged, widows and orphans. The 
Peruvians knew how to spin and weave wool, and wore cotton 
dresses. Their country is full of the ruins of temples, palaces, 
forts, aqueducts, and roads. The latter were paved, and 
bitumen cement was used. Milestones were erected about a 
league apart, and suspension bridges were carried over the 
rivers. In the tombs of the Incas are found vessels of fine 
clay, gold and silver vases, bracelets, collars, utensils of copper, 
mirrors of silver or of hard, polished stone, and earrings in the 
form of wheels. Post-runners carried news along the roads 
between the tambos — ten or twelve miles apart — where military 
stations were established. These runners — mentioned by 

* The Conquest of Peru. W. H. Prescott. New edition, 1888. 



100 The Anatica in A 

Herodotus in the Pereian Empire — were also a feature of 
Mongol organisatioQ io the 13tb century A.D. By their meana 
fieh, ganae, and .fruit were brought 150 miles in a day to the 
looa'a palace. The arms in use — bowB, lances, darts, sworda, 
battle-azes, slings, etc. — were of copper, or tipped with bone, 
iron not being used. The guilted cotton armour, noticed 
among the Azteks, was also used in Peru, and was, as already 
stated, common among Mongols. 

The Peruviana had not only the Deluge story but, accord- 
ing to Father Chaxlevoix, s legend also of Virgin birth. It 
must not however be forgotten that the Mongol monarchs 
claimed descent from a Virgin mother, and the same birth was 
attributed to the Buddha, and to Zoroaster in Persia, The 
Peruvian religion recognised an immortal soul, a resurrection, 
and a bell in the centre of the earth, as well as a Heaven 
beyond the clouds. The sun was the Inca's father — as in 
Mexico — and worshipped by sacrifices on altara Pilgrimages 
to sacred shrines, human sacrifices of children — but not, as in 
Mexico, accompanied by cannibal feasting — the institution of 
vestals, or nuns, who fed the sacred fire, and became brides of 
the Incas, feasta with dancing and drinking, and distribution 
of bread and wine, were among the religious customa As 
among Mongols, there were registers of property, births, 
marriages, and deaths. Plays were acted, and poets composed 
songs. Diviners and astrologers had small repute, but augury 
by entrails was practised, as in Asia generally. The Peru- 
vians had cycles of years, like the Azteks, and used gnomon 
stones to correct the calendar. They lamented (like Indians 
and Chinese) the occurrence of eclipses, and watched the 
planet Venus. They had a calendar ot twelve mouths, and 
divided the month into weeks. This calendar is remarkable 
as being almost identical with the old Asiatic zodiac, which, 
as alreadv stated, reached India from Greece, 



Pern. 


Greek. 


lamb, 


ram. 


ram, 


bull. 


two Btars, 


twins. 


crab. 


crab. 


tiger, 


lion. 



The Asiatics in America. 101 



September, 


mother goddess. 


Yirgin. 


October, 


crossing, 


scales. 


November, 


pleiades, 


scorpion. 


December, 


unknotcn, 


archer. 


January, 


buck. 


Capricorn 


February, 


rain. 


aquarius. 


March, 


unknown, 


fishes. 



The custom of inaugurating the ploughing season, by use 
of a gold plough driven by the Inca, was also a Mongol cus- 
tom. The Peruvians had silver balances, and were in this 
respect apparently in advance of the Azteks. They had idols, 
some of which, still extant, resemble those of Eastern Asia. 
They used the indigenous transport by llamas and vicunas, 
instead of camels, and the wool of the alpaca, cattle being 
unknown. 

It is thought that the Incas had no literary character, using 
only the Quipu^ which consisted of coloured threads with 
knots — a system chiefly applicable to registers and short 
messages, white signifying * silver' or * peace,' red ' war,' and 
yellow * gold ; ' but in the museum at Cusco * a sixteenth 
century MS. appears to indicate the native system of writing 
used before the Conquest. The Aztek character, as already 
noticed, was ideographic and not syllabic, and in its general 
appearance — especially the square and equal forms of the 
emblems — approaches most closely to the Chinese ; but the 
Peruvian character seems to have been a syllabary of about 
100 signs, often repeated and quite different to the Aztek. 
Among these emblems is found the cross — as in Central 
America ; and on Peruvian pottery, as well as among the 
Lengua tribes of North America, and in the mounds of Yucatan, 
the Swastika or ' croix cramponee ' occurs. This ancient em- 
blem was much used by Buddhists, to represent the * wheel of 
the Law,' and wherever the Bikshus travelled they carried 
with them this remarkable symbol, which however does not 
occur on the MS. in question in Peru. The grinning mask of 
the Tantric Buddhists, mentioned in Mexico, is also found in 
Peru. Among the Peruvian hieroglyphics one of the most 

* Wiener. Peru et Bolivie, p. 776. 



102 The Asiatics in America, 

distiDctive is a kind of tree ; and the legend of the sacred tree, 
by which heaven was reached, is found in Paraguay as well 
as in India and China, in Persia, and even among the Maoris. 

These indications point to a separate civilisation in South 
America, which may have been introduced as late as the 
thirteenth century A.D. The skulls of the Incas are said to 
resemble those of Burmans rather than of Mongols; and Malay 
enterprise may have carried the conquerors over the Pacific. 
In New Grenada, close to the equator, a legend referred to 
the arrival from the East of a stranger called Bochica, (pro- 
bably Pachcheko or * Saint ') who taught chastity and abstin- 
ence. He, too, may have been a Buddhist missionary, reach- 
ing the plateau of the Andes perhaps from the Toltec settle- 
ment, but by an eastern route, and bringing no doubt with 
him the Swastika found in Peru. The fact that the lion is re- 
placed by the tiger in the Peruvian Calendar seems to point 
to Indian origin, unless it be due to the absence of Uons in 
America. The ram takes the place of the bull because cattle 
were unknown. The Pleiades, which replace the Scorpion, 
were generally observed by Eastern Asiatics, and the legend 
of the lost Pleiad was carried by the Malays to Polynesia. 

It was not surprising that the Spaniards should suppose 
that certain features of religion, in Mexico and in Peru, were 
only explicable on the theory that Christian missionaries had 
visited America. The Cross, the flood story, the images with 
rayed glories, the traditions of virgin-birth and of paradise, 
the use of incense, the existence of monks with shaven crowns, 
and of nuns, the practice of confession and penance, all re- 
called Christian ideas. But the Spaniards knew nothing of 
the history of Buddhist systems, or of the early contact of 
Buddhism with the Christianity of Central Asia. The civilisa- 
tion of Mexico was distinct from that of Peru, but both shew 
more points of contact with that of Eastern Asia, and with the 
strange degraded Buddhism of Mongol peoples, than with any 
western ideas ; just as the languages of America, by grammar 
even more distinctly than by vocabulary, are related to Mon- 
golic speech, and have no connection with Aryan languages ; 
or as the racial types are Tartar and Malay, and not Euro- 



Scotland under the Roundheads. 103 

pean. America was so much «nearer to Eastern Asia than to 
Europe that it is natural to suppose that it was discovered by 
Mongols, and by the hardy Malay sailors, long before the 
Atlantic was crossed with such difficulty by Columbus, and 
even before the Norsemen found Vineland in the far North- 
Easi 

The evidence here collected seems to shew that, at some 
early period, the Siberian tribes crossed over the straits, and 
spread gradually south even to Patagonia. That by the fifth 
century A.D., Buddhists from the Corea, or from China, reached 
Mexico, and perhaps travelled on to Peru ; and that in the 
eleventh or twelfth century a Malay or Burmese Conquest 
civilised the Empire of the Incas. The study of Aztek 
and Peruvian hieroglyphics can thus best be prosecuted by 
aid of the old graphic systems of Eastern Asia, which were at 
most very remotely connected with the yet older hieroglyphs 
of Egypt, Chaldea, and Syria. 

C. R. CONDBR. 



Art. v.— SCOTLAND UNDER THE ROUNDHEADS. 

IN the last issue of the Scottish History Society's publications 
is included a volume of much and varied interest — Scotland 
under the Commonwealth, 1651-3. If a statue to the Lord- 
General should again become a question of the hour, even to 
the imminent peril of an English ministry, this volume ought 
to recommend the tardy honour, for it goes far to justify 
the favourable judgment on his usurpation of Scotland as 
* tolerant, wise, and just.' It entirely wants the commanding 
personality of Cromwell himself, who finally turned his back on 
the Kirk and her cantankerous leaders in the early autumn of 
1 551, to close with Leslie and the Royalists at Worcester. But 
it deals with questions of considerable moment at the time, and 
of constitutional interest now, such as the incorporating Union 
of the two kingdoms, the reduction of the Highlands, and the 
settlement of difficult ecclesiastical, judicial, and economic pro- 





104 Scotland under tlie RoundAeads, 

blems. The sources of the narmtive are the Oxford M5S. uf 
William Clarke in Scotland, acting as secretary to Cromwell, and 
thereafter to bis right-band man, Monk. That office he continued 
to hold, till the Restoration, ander the officers that succeeded 
Monk. The lacunae in Clarke's Journal have been supplied 
from the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian, consisting of letters to 
the Speaker, supplemented hj news-letters of the day and inter- 
cepted Royalist correspondence. 

The narrative opens with Monk's march through Fife to the 
reduction of Stirling Castle. He crossed the Forth, not by the 
bridge but at the Ford of Frew, a few miles farther up, where 
in the '45 Prince Charlie's men passed southward. William 
Ounningbam, anciente of the Castle, jjave in after a week's feeble 
pounding at the rampaita from the kirk steeple. The mortars 
proved too much for the nerves of his Highlandraen, among 
whom they produced a panic and mutiny. These would appear 
to have been the most advanced type of ordnance, worked only 
by Mr. Joachim Hane, the Butch Engineer, of whom, on a later 
occasion, Lilburne says, writing to Cromwell, ' we have an ex- 
ceeding great want. Should we have any occasion to use a 
morter peece without him, there is nobody to undertake that 
business that is fitt for itt." Among the spoils we find, 
'4 leather guns, 2 coaches and a sedan, the Earl of Murris 
coronet and Parliament roabes.' Monk lived in the interesting 
old Stirling mansion, Mar's Wark, from which the Countess of 
Arg)!! had to retire during the siege, being sik, and there terms 
of capitulation were signed. The siege of Dundee, which Monk 
reached from Stirling by Perth, has made a profounder mark in 
history, for it proved a Scottish sack of Drogheda, for which the 
rianoral (Tofa (iff tiQuch more lightly in history than his master over 
Either most of the portable wealth of the coun- 
sported. With two wide firths between it and 
?as deemed safe. The townspeople were very 
>ering their success in beating off Montrose, but 
ilaid again with his morter peece, the troopers 
tie breaches on the east and west, * divers of the 
to the church and steeple, and among the rest 
whoe was kild with between fonre and five 



Scotland under the Roundheads, 105 

hundred souldyers and townsmen. The s6uldyers had the 
plunder of the town for all that day and night, and had very 
large prize, many inhabitantes of Edinburgh and other places 
having sent their ware and geere thither. Captain Eely led on 
the Pioneers, whoe made way for the horse, and the Lt.-Generall 
went in person. Our word was, God with us, and the signe a 
white cloath or shirt hanging out behind.' The minister of the 
town was among the slain. Such is the brief contemporary 
narrative of a massacre which great historians, like Burton and 
Gardiner, have disbelieved. Two days before had been enacted 
the Crowning Mercy of Worcester, of which Monk heard ' the 
happy news' here, September 9. Shortly before this (August 27) 
Colonel Alured accomplished his smart feat, the Raid of Alyth, and 
curtly tells in due course, 'From my Tent at the Leagure before 
Dundee,' how * It hath pleased the Lord to give a great mercy to 
us,' no less indeed than the capture of the whole committee of the 
Scots Estates, barring two. He rode with his dragoons * on a 
darke rainey night in rough and tedious way to a Towne called 
EUit,' where lay the Scots Parliament, at the foot of the Sid- 
laws, in full security of its Highland supports. The Earls of 
Leven (General Leslie) and Marischal were among the batch of 
captives that Monk shipped off to a long captivity in the Tower, 
from which the old Captain of the Covenant was ultimately 
liberated to die in peace at his beautiful Fifeshire retreat of 
Balgonie. Another of the caged Scots was the notorious 
Lauderdale, and him we can fancy having a crack over the 
adventure, after the Restoration, with his companion renegade, 
the now glorified Duke of Albemarle, Thus was the curtain 
rung down on that Covenanted Republic, Carlyle's ' theocracy 
without the inspiration,' which Jenny Geddes and Duns Law 
had brought into being. 

Scotland was now left to the tender mercies of that ' very 
precious instrument,' General Monk, unfortunately seized with 
a very desperate sickness after the fall of Dundee. Clarke gives 
him a high character in writing to Speaker Lenthal — * the most 
properly fitted for the management of affairs here. His temper 
every way fits him and none could order the Scots so handsomely 
as himself, he carries things with such a grace and 7*igid gentle- 



106 Scotland under the Roundheads. 

neeee^ The Secretary writes a pretty style it mast be admitted. 
Monk certainly lost no time in getting his men well in hand 
again after the sack, proclamations following, on the next day, 
to 'forbeare farther plundering or rifling of the hoases in 
Dundee.' Court martials severely punished offenders who had 
been scouring the district for plunder. For robbing two country- 
men a brace of dragoons are led with ropes about their necks to 
the gallows, tied up, flogged with thirty stripes a piece ; then on 
their knees they have to beg forgiveness of their victims, and 
restore the plunder four-fold. Others have to ride the tree 
mare for similar offences — ' so severe,' says Clarke, ' is the Lt.- 
General and officers against injuring the countrey, to whom we 
endeavour to show as much favour as may be (especially to the 
poorer sort) to convince thera of the slavery they have been 
under and freedom they may now enjoy under the English.' 

Monk followed up his success with the reduction of the coast 
towns and the establishment of small garrisons. A good footing 
was gained as far north as Aberdeen, * one of the richest and 
chiefest cities,' where the officers were handsomely entertained. 
No doubt both parties were anxious as to the attitude of that 
great scourge of the north, the Marquis of Huntly, but he 
proved powerless both in health and purse to interfere in the 
struggle. Before the renewal of active operations in the spring 
of 1652 Monk's weak health compelled him to retire to Bath for 
the waters, and Deane assumed command for a few months, but 
the really active officer was Lilburne. To him fell the hardest 
task of all, to reduce the Highlands and keep the active royalists 
at bay. The situation reached its acute stage in the summer of 
1653, when the Koundhead government was put to the severest 
strain. The Dutch War absorbed its whole energies and Lil- 
burne was in despair for men and means. One cannot but sym- 
pathise with his efforts to be honest and faithful. In a letter to 
Cromwell he speaks his mind — * Our want of money seemes to 
be an incouragemeut to our enimies, who conceives we are not 
able to subsist long at the vast charge the Comrnonwealth is at ; 
the foote eate biskett and cheese on Pentland hills, and hath 
not money to buy them other refreshments, being now 2 months 
and above in arreare and our fortifications readie to stand still. 



Scotland under the Roundheads, 107 

nor do I know where to gett 1001. in the treasury ; this hath 
hene often represented above and hinted to your Excellencie.' 
In the early days of the occupation the troopers had lived at free 
quarters on a rough system of local billeting, but latterly about 
£8000 a month had been uniformly levied, which sum, however, 
had to be largely supplemented from England. The assessments 
for the different shires and burghs are detailed in this volume and 
give a valuable indication of the economic situation. Fife and 
Perth head the list of the shires by a long way, then follow Aber- 
deen, Ayr, Midlothian and Lanark. Of the burghs, Edinburgh 
pays more than five times Dundee, the second on the list, closely 
followed by Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Perth. Eutherglen has to 
contribute £3 less than Rothesay, and only half the cess from 
the ancient burgh of Culross. From Argyle-shire Lilburne had 
to accept the cess in kind, cows at 26s. — 28s. if fat, and trees at 
4s. each if from 20 — 24 feet long and a foot square. Here 
he had an eye to the substantial forts he was constructing 
as at Ayr — sconces (Ger. schanze), these were called after 
the Dutch masters in gunnery. The term is still used in 
South African warfare, and is heard, in paodified form, in 
ensconced. This volume corroborates the tradition that the 
Cromwellian rule pressed hard on the few native woods as 
well as the historic churches. Thus I>ilburne tells Cromwell 
that the broken men under Glencairn and Kenmure had come 
down from the hills as far as Falkland and secured four or 
five men in charge of the timber in the park at Falkland, de- 
signed for the citadel at Perth. The meat supply was an even 
greater difficulty, the country was so poor. The ships had to go 
often to Newcastle and Hull for beef and pork ; hay and meal 
the country provided, but in the hills the men had to subsist on 
the biscuits and cheese thev carried with them. In the Low- 
lands trade flowed on in the usual channels. Thus we find Lil- 
burne telling Cromwell that it ' was strange that the Treasurer 
should hinder the return of money and put the State and the 
soldiers to the trouble of bringing it out from London and York 
in waggons when it might be almost every groat received here 
upon bills.' 

The untiring energy displayed gives one a high idea of the 



108 Scotland under the Soundhead*. 

splendid stuff developed by the array of the New Model. lo all 

directions there is the greatest activity. The mosstroopera of 

the Border were dragooned into decent dalesmen. The coast 

towns were made ready to meet the Datchmen. Arbroath Abbey, 

for example, was tnmed into what was deemed a very tenable fort ; 

while the Scots navy, taken in Dundee — sisty sail of 10, 6, and 

4 guns — along with one that had escaped to Aberdeen, having 

' 6 peeces, and stoare of wiues and other good comodityes,* were 

pressed into the service. To checkmate the Dntch, who set the 

greatest store upon the Orkneys and Shetland for the Great 

Fishing, Overton fortified Kirkwall, making tenable the Cathedral 

Kirk of St. Maans (Magnus) and the Earl of Morton's house, where 

a regiment can lodge. Lilburne, writing to Cromwell, tells how the 

Dutch have especially an eye upon Shetland. ' There have bin 

sometimes 1800 saile in and about Birssie (Bressay) Sound,' the 

narrowest part of which he proposes to secure with a strong fort. 

For a time the Lewes had been thought well worth securing, and 

here Cobbett worked hard at making a strength at Stornoway. It 

was found, however, that the course of trade did not at all lie in 

that direction. Montrose's destrnctive raid had taught the lesson 

that there was a real danger from Ireland through the West 

Highlands, where another Colkttto might any day appear; and 

so Ayr and Brodick, Dunstaffnage and DunoUy were strongly 

held. Inverness was relied upon as the chief defence for the 

central Highlands, and in an interesting letter we read the story 

of the building of a citadel and particularly of the great feat of 

dragging a forty ton pinnace across six miles of dry land for 

service on Loch Ness, ' to the admiration of the spectators. The 

three cables, seven inches about, with bawling of her 

he west end of the Lough is near unto the Irish Sea, 

not above six mile of ground to be cut to make the 

h of it an entire island of itself.' Inverlochy, at the 

le of the Great Glen, was held strongly to keep down 

he main-stay of the Royalists, the cattle-lifting caterans 

ic, the Macdonalds and the Camerons. The attitude of 

I great leader of the Covenant and the rival of Montrose, 

tant source of anxiety. With a caution characteristic of 

Imes, when the head of the clan remained in one camp 



Scotland under the Soundheads. 109 

while a bod or brother stuck by ita rival, the Marquis had fre- 
quent friendly correspondences with the Roundheads, doing them 
valuable service, while his son. Lorn, was a, leading spirit among 
the Royalists. In consequence Argyllshire required constant 
watchfulness, and was often the scene of really plucky marchings 
and counter-marchinga It would be something even in these 
days to take, as Colouel Read did, 700 horse, dragoons and foot, 
from Tarbert to DunstafFnage 'after four hard dayes march,' 
find no provisions there nor in Dunolly, and after a stay of two 
nights, ' be forced to act the King of France's part,' to face about 
* and by a nearer cut return to bis base.' A still more toilsome 
undertaking was the marching and the dragging of guns from 
Athole over the stiffest part of the Highlands to Inverlochy in 
liocbaber. Nor again was that a small feat of which we read in 
a Letter from Paisley, August, 1652. Here we can follow the 
handful of surly Roundheads as they marched from Inveraray 
across ' an impregnable Passe, called Glen Crow (Oroe), wheie 
onely one could but file over,' for not till a century later did 
Lascelles' regiment make the present road. The jagged cliffs 
that frown upon the gloomy tarn at Rest and be Thankful, were 
dotted over with crowds of excited clansmen, * to know if the E. 
of Argvle were our prisoner ; yet Giod, who restr^ns the fury of 
the most savage beasts, doth also muzzle the mouthes of bloody- 
minded men. Wee drew up our men under their noses until our 
rear-guard was got over. I doubt whether these things are in 
order, to war with these base and beggerly wild beasts, a thing 
to be avoided for many reasons, especially their poverty and un- 
accessiblenesse of every passe and place, where each hill is no 
less than an invincible garrison,' 

Worcester had proved a heavy blow to the Royalists. For 
some time the exiles suffered the greatest straits. But the Dutch 
War revived their hopes, absorbing as it did all Cromwell's 
energies and resources. The difficulty, however, was to find 
money for an expedition. Late in 1652 we have the King, 
young Charles, or the lad of the Roundhead letters, writing from 
Paris to Middleton, *I have scarce received 200 pist 
you went.' By the spring of 1653 everything seemed fi 
for action, all the more urgent that the fall of Dunn 



110 Scotland under the Roundheads. 

last of the Covenanting strengths to succumb, was imminent. 
Here were stored the royal plenishing and the regalia, the pre- 
servation of which forms a well-known romantic incident of the 
time.* Agents scoured the Baltic provinces to raise money from 
the Scotch merchants there. One letter from a General Douglas 
at Stockholm breathes the most touching loyalty. In answer to 
His Sacred Majesty's own letter he says that all he can do ^ must 
be in a private way ; however, your goodness will not reject the 
harte affections of your subjects abroad, quhairoff a few with 
my selfe have maide boulde to send your Majeste a somme of 
5200 rixdollars' through William Davidson, merchant in Am- 
sterdam. The King himself writes, asking a loan of £300 from 
the Earls of Southesk and Panmure. Hyde entreats Middleton, 
appointed General in Scotland, * not to be angry at the sum * he 
sends, ' being but £100, God knowes the King had rather give 
you £1000.' Middleton, originally a Fifeshire trooper in Hep- 
burn's regiment, rose to be the King's Viceroy in Scotland with 
an evil reputation for rough measures and manners and drunken 
habits. The cruel agents of the Secret Council during the 
Killing Times all occur in this correspondence as working for 
the King — Strachan, Turner, Ballantyne, and that truculent 
trooper, Dalzel. Great efforts were made to secure the co-opera- 
tion of the Dutch, the Royalists offering them fishing stations in 
the isles 'to be possessed by them forever.' All this activity 
resulted in the Glencairn Rising of 1653, which we can now 
study here in most interesting detail. There were high hopes 
of the Highland chiefs, with Glengarry at their head. Charles 
took great pains to reduce the friction of jealousy by giving the 
chief command to Middleton, but with little success. Lorn and 
Glengarry one day drew their claymores on each another. Glen- 
cairn, one of the most active leaders, was a Cunningham, an 
Ayrshire laird, and his henchman, that energetic raider, Kenmore, 
was the head of the Galloway Gordons, who took to the hills 
with but a hundred followers. Scott's Lochinvar and that 
Stirring Jacobite March of The Fifteen, Kenmures on and awal 
'^^1 forever preserve the memory of the lords of the grim 
f orN^ice at the head of Loch Ken. There was no Montrose now 
amon^ these leaders, and, if there had been, the Roundhead 




. • 



Scotland under the Roundheads, 111 

troopers would have made his tactics impracticable. The King 
cheered on his followers with the sham hope of joining them, but 
he secretly had no wish to be up a tree again. Nothing more 
serious than horse-stealing was done. A slight skirmish at 
Aberfovle, a Boundhead raid into Athole in which the Laird of 
Macnab got killed, Kenmore's futile landing in Gantire and 
attack on Campbeltown, then known only as Lochhead — these 
summed up the exploits of the Boyalists ; and, when Cromwell 
assumed the Protectorate and dismissed the Long Parliament, 
his officers in the north could assure him of the support of Scot- 
land. 

Lilbume's reports prove him an admirable administrator. 
The backbone of the rising he rightly conceives to be the bank- 
rupt position of the gentry, impoverished by civil war and a 
vicious land system. To Cromwell he more than once strongly 
represents the situation. The creditors of the lairds were using 
the increased strictness and despatch of the reformed Court of 
Session to harass their debtors, and again and again we find 
Lilburne pressing them to leniency, their action driving many 
to the hills. To this the scarcity of money contributed. All 
this bears out the gloomy picture of the economic situation 
drawn by Baillie in his Letters^ ' Our nobility weel near all are 
wracked,' and accounts for the exaggerated strain of Glencairn's 
appeal to the United Provinces, how ' the cry of our blood hath 
reached to Heaven, soe we doe not at all doubt but the extremi^- 
ties of the Earth are acquainted with the horrid actings of those 
men of blood,' the Roundheads. Lilburne tells Cromwell that 
there are (December, 1653) ' 35,000 captions (arrest-warrants for 
debt) out against men. Huntly being one of that number, sent 
this day to me for protection.' About the same date Lord Card- 
ross was writing to the Stirling bailies to allow the Earl of Mar 
to come south without fear of arrest, the revenue of the town's 
hospital depending upon monies that had been lent to him. Lil- 
burne also strongly urged the policy which President Forbes and 
Argyll pressed upon the Hanoverian Government after the 
Fifteen. This was, * That libertie may bee given to any Scotch- 
man to transport regiments to Forraine princes in amity with 
us.' Forbes's plan contemplated service under the British flag, 



-*^ — - - * 



lis Scotland under ike Roundhead*. 

I 
and this was left to Chat^nam to carry out Had it been adopted 
flarlier, we should probably never have heard of the Forty-five. 

Cromwell, finding tb« country at his feet, lost no time in pro- 
moting an Incorporating Union. A commission of eight, on 
which sat such famous Roundhead officers as Vane, Lambert, 
Monk, and St. John,' arrived in Scotland early in 1652 to confer 
with the local leaders with a view to union. Argyll held out in 
the hope of resuscitating the old Scots Estates, and even sum- 
moned them to a futile meeting at Finlarig, on Loch Tay, but 
after a conference with Monk at Dumbarton he gave in, and 
rendered valuable assistance in reducing the Highlands. Crom- 
well evidently looked upon Scotland as won by his sword, and 
was disposed towards annexation pure and simple. Convinced 
that the advantages of union were all on the side of the poor 
Scots, he and his officers were astonished that they were so little 
grateful for the boon. It offered a mild form of Home Rule in 
place of a military occupation. Parliamentary representation by 
thirty members, most of them drawn from the officers of the 
English, and three peers, among them Argyll and Johnston of 
Wurristoun. This was the outcome of the instrument of 
Government, or declaration for Union, ' proclaymed with much 
solemnity att the Markett Crosse in Edinburgh by beate of 
drum and sound of trumpett, and the Crosse adorned with 
hangings,' all which can be read in this volume in a letter from 
Leith, April, 1652. There was a great concourse of people, and 
after the reading the soldiers shouted their approbation witli the 
* free conferring of liberty upon a conquered people, but soe 
sencelesse are this generation of theire owne goods, that scarce a 
man of them shew'd any signe of rejoycing.' The citizens 
evidently thought this a poor substitute for the riding of the 
" " ' the glories of which made Miss Daraahoy wax so 

her neighbour, Peter Plumdammas. 
>r moment than this abortive Union, on which the 
ws but little light, was the creation of a new bench 
place of the corrupt Goart of Session. They were 
imber, four English and three Scots — James X>al- 
er known as Viscount Stair, Johnston of Warri^ 
Kkhart of Lee. They were no longer paper lordtj 



Scotland under the Roundheads. 113 

but designated Judge Smith and the like, in colonial fashion. 
Henceforth, too, all legal documents were to be in English. 
This Southron justice proved popular, for it was pure and expe- 
ditious. A laudator temporis acti of a later date, who admired 
the old style of ' tholing an assize with a formidable tail of sup- 
porters,' disposed of them sneeringly with a ' Deil thank them I 
a wheen kinless loons.' They appear to have valued their salaries, 
regularly paid them, better than the gifts and favour of kins- 
men. NicoU, the diarist, an Edinburgh writer who acted as 
agent for the city of Glasgow at this time, laments that the old 
legal officials dare not show themselves for fear of the English. 
To his disgust people had to seek justice from the English 
governors and officers. There was no magistrate or Council for 
Edinburgh, and petitioners had to go to the Castle and Leith, 
* whose officers (to speak truly) proceeded more equitably and 
conscientiously nor our own magistrates.' The Commissioners 
sat at Dalkeith, in what had been the castle of the Regent 
Morton in Queen Mary's time, and thither had many a deputa- 
tion from the burghs to trudge and make a poor face over 
the paying of the cess and the quartering of soldiers, or take 
their commands as to the ordering of burghal affairs. They 
contrived, however, to thole their troubles. In the burgh 
accounts of Stirling at this date appear the items — ' Spent with 
Tammas Bruce the nicht befor going to Dalkeith, on wine, 
succar, tabacco, and other necessaris ; on return with Tammas, in 
John Cahouns, 9 muchkins (quarts) canary, tobacco, and pypes; 
mair, when Tammas gaed to his awn hoose, 1 muchkin canary.' 
Nor did these hard-driven bailies deny themselves the compensa- 
tions of the deid chack, as witness the item (1651) — * Spent wi' 
the auld provist and bailyeis in Jas. Swordis efter the execution 
of the man quha murderit his chyld, on wyn, aill, and tibac, 
£3 lis. 6d.' 

The wars for Covenant and Crown had proved the ruin of 
Scottish feudalism and prepared the way for that degradation of 
public spirit and character among the governing classes which 
made the Restoration period the most scandalous in our annals. 
Robert Baillie pithily sketches the condition of the peers — 

* Hamilton execute and the estates forf ault, one part gifted to 
xxviii. 8 



114 Scotland under the Roundheads. 

English sojoars, rest not fit to pay the debt, Argyll amost 
drowned in debt, Douglas and his son Angus qujet men of no 
respect, Loudoun ane outlaw about Athole, Balmerino suddenly 
deid and his son for captions (warrants) keips not the causey, 
Eglinton and Olencaim on the brink of bankruptcy.' Lilburne's 
letters amply corroborate Baillie. He shows how this state of 
matters was feeding the flames of disaffection, ^many broken 
men of desperate fortunes running to the Hills daily, and from 
thence fall downein parties in the night time into the Lowlands, 
and steal horses/ thus putting the garrisons to much trouble 
and expense. Of course one cannot expect sympathy with 
broken barons from such militant republicans, whose leanings 
were all towards the poore commonis. The news-letters seem to 
delight in showing these royalist barons at a disadvantage. Thus 
the Mercurius Politicus, of October 1653, tells, with a chuckle, 
how Kenmore * marches with a rundlet (keg) of strong waters 
before him which they call Kenmore's Drum.' On the other 
hand the peasantry are cordially supported as the victims of 
their feudal masters, whose ruin proved in fact to them a 
genuine relief from rent and harassing exactions. The raising 
of the royal standard at Killin, July 1653, was virtually a No 
Rent manifesto. The burghers were more to be pitied, for 
they had to contribute heavily to support the military occupa- 
tion in spite of disorganised trade and great scarcity of money. 
There are frequent petitions for abatements. Lilburne, ever 
considerate, presses the Committee for the Army to be lenient 
and not charge any more than £8,500 a month, with abatements 
to depopulate places. Perth, Dundee^ Glasgow, and other great 
burghs, he adds, pay little or nothing, Argyle and most of the 
Highlands nothing at all. Especially sad was the case of Glas- 
gow, ' fair and beautiful, the flower of Scotland/ of which the 
fourth part was burnt down in 1652. It took forty-eight hours 
to quench the fire in spite of the help of the garrison. ^ Yester- 
day, when we went to view it, it drew tears from my eyes, and 
not mine alone, but many,' says a contemporary letter. The 
burghers wofuUy petition that ' the poore widowis and orphaunts 
wha hes no scheildis to creipe in may be timeously supportet.' 
The times had wrought sad reverses among even the well to do 

\ 
\ 

\ 



Scotland under the Roundheads, 115 

burgess class. Sir William Dick, who had been a great merchant 
in the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh and architect of his own for- 
tune, died a pauper in Westminster, December, 1655, and with- 
out a decent funeral, yet his advances in hard cash, the sacks of 
dollars that Davie Deans describes, really gained the victory of 
Duns Law and turned the tide of history. Lilburne, in Novem- 
ber 1653, pleads with the judges to grant a suspension to his sons 
from personal execution, ' being very sensible of the sufferings of 
the old gentleman, their father, at London agitating for some 
public satisfaction for his great sacrifices.' 

The povrerty of the country, unable as it was to bear the mili- 
tary burdens, and the disaffection of the chiefs, formed not the 
only rocks on which Cromwellian rule split. The real rock was 
the clergy. The divisions among them were more political, and 
more bitter than those among the Sectaries whom they detested. 
There were a few Malignants, professed Royalists with no great 
love for Presbytery. They pretended to be most ready to submit 
to Cromwell, but, in reality, merely from hostility to the Kirk. A 
letter from Hyde to Middleton in this yolume is a curious com- 
mentary on Church politics and royalist tactics. For some years 
after 1660 he ruled Scotland, and, himself a cavalier toper, pre- 
sided over that Drunken Parliament at Glasgow, 1662, which 
sent so many of the westland clergy to the moors and the moss- 
hags. Hyde tells him, ^ I fear you are not Fresbiterian enough^ 
for I do not find any of that trybe who are ther (in Scotland^ 
have any confidence in you.' At the other extreme were the 
Remonstrants, the true-blues of the west, who protested against 
certain resolutions of recent assemblies in favour of the King, 
passed by a party that they dubbed in consequence Resolutioners. 
These Resolutioners were the Moderates of the time, who clung 
to their simulacrum of a Covenant and hoped to purge and 
plant the church and bring in their ^covenanted king. Chief 
of these were Robert Baillie, and ' that very worthy, pious, wise, 
and diligent young man, James Sharp.' Cromwell upon the 
whole preferred the Remonstrants as more thorough-going Puri- 
tans. In truth the Moderates had an intense hatred of that 
Brownism or Independency which had neutralised the victory 
of Presbyterianism in the Westminster Assembly. The Round- 



116 Scotland under the Roundheads. 

head officers were diligent apostles and exemplars of Brownism, 
trying their hest among the common people with a fervour 
worthy of rivals such as that John Menzies who used to change 
his shirt always after preaching, and to wet two or three 
napkins with his tears every sermon. Under their example 
the devotional aspect of the old service of Knox and Melville 
deteriorated. The Brownists made great ado about their hats 
during sermon, sitting covered during the preaching. A Oross- 
michael minister objected to this among his own people. * I see 
a man,' he said from the pulpit one day, * aneath that laf t wi' a 
hat on. Tm sure ye're clear o' the sooch o' the door. Keep aff 
your bannet, Tammas, and if your bare pow be cauld ye maun 
just get a grey worsit wig like mysel.' Lilburne believed that 
* there is an increase of good people who daily some way or other 
are sweetened towards us, only there wants some meanes to lead 
many into a clearer light that are waiting for it' He expects 
some favourable movement among * the people in the west, who 
have bin always accounted most precise.' There were a few 
gathered churches or meetings of converts to Brownism here and 
there. Lilburne soon comes to see, however, that even the Re- 
monstrants detested the Oromwellian subordination of the 
Church to the State and its lax toleration of Anabaptists, 
Quakers, Papists, and even Atheists. That dour Precisian, 
Andrew Cant, who was watching so sedulously over Aber- 
deen for the Covenant, rejected the advances of Colonel 
Overton when apologising for some incivilities offered by his 
men to one * who he heard was a friend to us ; to which 
Mr. Cant replied in plain Scottish that he was a lying knave 
who told him so, for he neither respected him nor his party/ 
At Cupar there was a conference between the Puritan 
and the Presbyterian preachers, where were discussed, with 
much cry and little wool, such kittle pints as Adam's sin, 
infant baptism, and universalism. Among the benighted High- 
landers progress was made, it was believed, ^ some having 
heard our preaching with great attention and groanings. They 
are very simple, and ignorant in the things of God, and some 
live even as brutish as the heathen.' In 1651 Lambert had re- 
ceived overtures from Warristoun, Rutherford, and others of the 



Scotland under the Roundheads. 117 

rigid sect 'in name of those who would be called the godly 
party,' but he sees their drift, which is to * exalt their govern- 
ment in the Kirk/ By the summer of 1653 Lilburne has become 
convinced that the disaffected clergy are secretly encouraging 
the rebel Malignants in the Highlands, and on his own responsi- 
bility orders Colonel Cotterell to treat that popular and godly 
Parliament, the General Assembly, to his master's stern Get thee 
gone I He ' besett the church (St. Giles) with some rattes of 
musketers and a troop of horse/ marched the members ignomin- 
iously out at the West Port and so on to the quarry holes on 
Bruntsfield Links, and there at the foot of the thieves' gallows 
set them about their business. The two prelatic Stuart kings 
had never dared to do so much. 

The divided state of public opinion on church matters showed 
what a loss the country sustained in the death of a real states- 
man like Alexander Henderson. King-made Prelacy and drum- 
head Independency had both been tried and Scotland would 
have none of them. The position of parties made compromise 
impossible, and so a great opportunity was lost. And while the 
Kirk learned little or nothing of ' sweet reasonableness ' from 
the piety of the Independents, their example destroyed much of 
that ' beauty of holiness ' in ritual which Knox and Melville had 
left untouched. 

By vehement harangues in sermon and prayer the clergy 
sought to show forth the power of grace, resulting only in an 
incongruous blend of secular and sacred. Thus, in Edinburgh, 
there was a daily service in the kirks every afternoon at four, in 
which the officers were wont to play the part of the church mili- 
tant. X^icoll sarcastically extracts good out of the practice, 
* which benefited soul and body, the soul being edified and fed 
by the Word, the body withhalden from unnecessar bibing^ whilk 
at that hour of the door was in use and custom ' — an early 
authority for that time-honoured institution, the meridian. The 
diarist tells us that in its social aspects the Usurpation was still 
more aggressive. The Independents * proclamit the day called 
Christmas to cease, demolished the King's seat in the High 
Church, pulled down the King's arms and dang down the uni- 
corn, hanging up the crown on the gallows,' which stood at 



118 Scotland under the Roundheade. 

the cross on the High Street. They struck too at the Eark's 
police control over public morals, for the dragoons took out and 
burned the repentance stool wherever they went, making fun of 
it as a Popish relic of penance. No doubt the Church had 
shown the absurdity of giving legislative importance to trifles. 
They had found the most scandalous offenders among self- 
accused demented creatures. In this volume we are told how the 
English judges sat for three days (October 1652) on a long list 
of arrears, cases under the seventh commandment, all more or 
less shocking. Above sixty offenders were libelled, most for 
deeds done years before, the chief proof being found to be their 
own confession. With all this the Sectaries had little sympathy, 
though in a practical way they studied public decency. The 
garrison at Leith was made the nucleus of a sort of model com- 
munity, and here the governor tried (January 1652) to put down 
immorality with a strong hand, forbidding the employment of 
women and maid-servants as tapsters and the marriage of any 
soldier with a Scots woman without official sanction. Military 
discipline was admirably maintained, and there are here many 
proclamations against the breaking into ^ orchards, gardens, 
yards, to plunder fruits, cabbage, roots, also green pease or 
beanes in fields, or killing rabbits belonging to warrens, and 
house-pigeons,' the object being to conciliate the people. * Free 
the poor commoners, and make as little use as can be either of 
the great men or clergy,' sums up well the policy of the Usurpa- 
tion. 

Cromwell's officers followed on the lines of the old Privy 
Council in interfering, for a social good, with the liberty of the 
subject. They fixed the price of hay and stabling charges, re- 
strained the extortions of the boatmen and ferrymen of Burnt- 
island and Leith, inspected and regulated the quality and price 
of bread. Bakers must expose their bread for sale only on 
Fridays and Tuesdays at the Brig-end of Leith, and not run 
from house to house with it. Moderns will have more sympathy 
with the efforts to improve the comforts of the capital. The 
order that householders must hang out lanterns and candles at 
their doors and windows — 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. — almost turned, 
according to a contemporary, night into day. The provost, too, 



Scotland under the Roundheads. 119 

was to give present order to clean wynds and closes, and that 
none throw water from their windows, or be fined 4s. Scots, half 
to the informer, half to the poor. Not till 1731 did the Edin- 
burgh Corporation make any real headway in repressing the 
throwin ovyre practices. In Cromwell's time the thrifty magis- 
trates complained of the enormous expense of the enforced 
scavenging (£50 Scots a week), landing the city, as it did, in 
debt. 

Scotland suffered badly from the witch mania that disgraced 
so many countries and centuries. These poor creatures had 
reason to bless the Roundhead officers, under whom they enjoyed 
something of a respite. Thus Clarke, in reporting to Lenthall 
the doings of the judges on that notable three days' assize in 
1652, mentions a witch case of several years' standing. On 
their own confession, the unhappy wretches had been turned over 
to the civil magistrate, and this is how they had been proved 
witches — ' By tying their thumbs behind them and then hanging 
them up by them when they were whipped, after which lighted 
candles were set to the soles of their feet and between their toes, 
then they burnt them by putting candles into their mouths.' Of 
the six so treated, four died of the torture. The judges 
appointed the sheriffs, ministers, and tormentors to be found out, 
and to give an account of the ground of the cruelty. Another 
suspect was * kept on bread and water twenty days, stript naked 
and laid upon a cold stone, with only a hair- cloth over her. 
Others had hair-shirts dipt in vinegar put on them to fetch off 
their skin. Here is enough for reasonable men to comment 
upon.' The humanity of Puritanism was never more conspicu- 
ous than at this time. 

The editorial introduction to this curious volume is ex- 
cellent, but the annotation of the text, and especially the 
indexing, leave much to be desired. As the material of the 
volume has been deciphered and pieced together with great 
difficulty, often from rough notes and jottings in shorthand, 
we ought to be thankful that it has been made so intelligible. 
The numerous topographical references on every page, a matter 
of very great and lasting interest, have been but perfunctorily 
handled. This may be one of the disadvantages accruing to 



120 Scotland under the Roundheads. 

Scottish history made or edited in England. Many of the 
place-names are almost hopelessly disguised. As the index offers 
no help here ingenuity might be directed to snch as Bohanty, 

* the best of the three ways out of the Highlands," Bonny wher, 

* neere Ruthven Castle ' in Badenoch, Ganygeles, * Huntly's 
house,' Carversa Castle, ' 20 miles from Inveraray ' (?) Tarbert, 
Gillogaer somewhere on the northern bounds of Athole. These 
are only a few of the unexplained. They include such very 
obvious ores as Dagettee in Fife, Finlarge at the west-end of 
Loch Tay, Logyerate, Envernes, Rowborough, and Bigtoune, 
indexed as Biscoptoune (Bishop ton). The editor queries *Knap- 
drale betweene Swin Castle and Rosse/ suggesting Knapdale, 
and leaving the other tempting bits of topography unexplained. 
And yet the ordnance maps are not difficult of access. Baginoth 
is Badenoch in the index, but Badinoth in Ruthven and Baggon 
are never mentioned though obviously the same place. When Ken- 
more went from Busse to the head of Loch Long to meet Colonel 
Macnaughten, we are left to conjecture that Luss on Loch Lomond 
is meant. Another passage surely calling for explanation is, 'The 
Marquess of Huntley died last week at his house at Bogy-geith.' 
This place is not even indexed, so it may be well to say it is on 
p. 289. It is the famous Bog o' Gight, that gives its name to 
Strathbogie. Slezer in his Theatrum Scotice blunders strangely 
over this name. He gives a view of Heriot's Hospital, which he 
labels Boghen-gieght. Now and again the Roundhead officers 
preserve the local pronunciation very correctly as in * our new 
garrisons att Buhannon and Cardrus,* and again in ^ KirkmichilV 
(near Blair Athol). The index affords no help, though we have 
obviously here Buchanan Castle, Cardross, and Kirkmichael. 
One would never guess, again, from text or index, where Loch- 
heid is. In this connection falls to be noted the strangest bit of 
editorial obscurity. * For the Major General who went by sea 
from Inverary to Ayre, came to us by boat (to Peasly i,e. Pais- 
ley), and wee heard by him of the surprizall of our garrisons of 
Lough, Kincairn, and Turbet.' The comma after Lough is in 
the text. Kincairn stands in the index with a reference only.. 
Now we have here Kenmore's famous dash at Kintyre and a very 
pretty bit of topographical lore. The fort on the beautiful loch 



Scotland under the Roundheads. 121 

at Campbeltown had the honour of first appearing in history as 
Dalruadhain, the capital of Fergus King of Scotia. When 
Kiaran, the black-visaged, settled here in his cell as an Irish 
saint, the spot became the holy Kil-cerran and in Gaelic to this 
day Ceann locha chille Chiaran, head of the loch of Kiaran, or, 
in this Roundhead officer's letter, Lough Kincairn. During the 
early Protectorate Argyll induced many westland Whigs to settle 
here from Ayrshire, and th6y Saxonised the spot as Loch-head. 
On the site of the old castle that Kenmore stormed, at the head 
of Main Street of Campbeltown, a church was built in 1780. In 
the Expedition of Argyll^ 1661, the town is called Cean Loch 
or Loch-heid, and in a church register of 1671 it appears for 
the first time as Campbeltown in honour of the Argyll family. 
After these faults of omission it is venial to find the editor telling 
in his preface that Monk's soldiers learned at Dundee, Aug, 9^A, 
of the victory at Worcester at the beginning of September. 

The personal names in the text offer most tempting bits of 
family history. Not to speak of the crowd of Macs, disguised 
by outrageous spelling, we have such members of noted histori- 
cal families as Hope of Craighall, Sir John Chiesly, Sir James 
Stewart, Lord Dundas of Arniston. Most of the King's agents in 
the Persecution (1662-87) are here — Middleton, Turner, Ballan- 
tyne, Dalzel — all active in stirring up opposition among the 
Tories, as Lilbume calls his Highland enemies, * people who speak 
Irish, and go only with plaids about their middle, both men and 
women.' It may be observed here that all through our literature 
Scottish Gaelic generally appears as Erse or Irish^ and this even 
so late as the poetry of Burns, a fact not always recognised by 
his editors. Of the clergy Lilburne was much pleased with Mr. 
Galeaspe, honest Robert Baillie's bUe noir^ Patrick Gillespie, 
whom Cromwell made Principal of Glasgow University, paying 
also Charles I.'s subscription to the building fund, to which the 
King had signed his name. Lilburne's name for him is that which 
Milton thought as inharmonious as his own Tetrachordon. Here, 
too, is Master Robert Leighton, as yet minister of Newbattle, and 
going to London to help the poor clergy whom Captain Alured 
had captured in the Raid of Alyth. But the most curious per- 
sonal name occurs in a letter of Hyde to Middleton, who had 



122 Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 

wished * the King should write to Mr. Junius of Amsterdam in 
Latine/ probably that he might be another Salmasius and catch 
the ear of academic Europe for the woes of royalty in exile. 
Junius was among the first to draw attention to Old English, 
publishing Gaedmon's Paraphrasej and the Moeso-Gothic Gospels 
of Wulfila, two of the most notable finds in the whole range of 
English philology. 

James Colville. 



Art. VL— CHRISTINA, QUEEN OF SWEDEN. 

1. Christina, Queen of Sweden. By T. W. Bain (Fellow of All 

Souls College, Oxford). London: W. H. Allen & Co. 
1890. 

2. Memoirs concemant Christiney reine de Suede, Par Jean 

Arokenholtz (cons et bibl du Landgrave de Hesse 
Cassel). Amsterdam. 1751-60. 

3. Memoirs of Christina, Queen of Sweden. By Henry Wood- 

HEAD. London, 1863. 

Many other works and pamphlets. 

I. 

AN enigma on the page of history ! A queen descending 
from her throne— the heiress daughter of a famous Pro- 
testant warrior voluntarily placing herself under obedience to 
the Holy See — the virgin representative of a Scandinavian 
crown choosing of her own free will to reside in the sunny 
palaces of intriguing Rome 1 

Such acts and deeds are suited to the pages of romance, or 
to the heroic age of the world's history, but seem to be out of 
place in the dull monotony and exhausted energy of the seven- 
teenth century. The battle of the Reformation had been 
fought out. The awful brightness of the fires that had been 
kindled in the previous century had died away. Only here 
and there a bright spark remained of that fiery flame, which 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 123 

had driven nations into fiercest conflict, and well nigh con- 
sumed the noblest souls of earth. An ordinary mortal in the 
latter half of the seventeenth century lived in the great re- 
action from intensity of belief to the indifference of satire, in 
matters civil and ecclesiastical. All too strange, therefore, for 
the comprehension of her age and her surroundings, were the 
life and doings of Christina, Queen of Sweden. 

In truth, the Queen possessed many heroic qualities, and yet 
withal was deeply embued with that same spirit of the age. 
Whether the fulsome flattery of Roman authors, or the fierce 
scorn of Protestant detractors be most objectionable and most 
absolutely removed from the truth, it were hard to determine. 
Certain it is that Christina's contemporaries all agreed to esti- 
mate the value of her life by that one act which they 
deemed the best and only test of human merit — her transla- 
tion from the Church of her fathers to the Church of Rome. 
Such a test is hardly conclusive. Motives, though often diffi- 
cult enough to trace, and often appearing contradictory, are 
yet for moral purposes the true test whereby the value of 
actions must be estimated ; and further, in judging of the very 
life itself, not one event, however great or however important, 
must be seized on to the total exclusion of the remainder, but 
all the events in due order of merit must be allowed their 
appropriate share of weight in preparing the final verdict. 

The life of Christina falls into several very strongly marked 
periods. There is, in the first place, the period of her youth, 
during which her great powers were being rapidly matured, 
while her days were for the most part spent in isolation. 
Then the ten years follow during which she was a real Queen, 
surrounded with nobles and men of letters and courtiers ready 
to do her bidding, but from nearly all of whom she was separ- 
ated by that great gulf which lies between a sovereign and 
her subjects. It was during this period that she had to cope 
seriously, and with but little external aid, with the more 
solemn matters that distract the human mind, politics, religion, 
and marriage. 

Finally comes the period during which she lived in Rome 
and frequented the Papal Court. It was in reality more than 



124 Christinoj Queen of Sweden. 

half her life. The earlier portion of this residence in the States 
of the Church was frequently broken by expeditions into 
various parts of Europe, but the latter portion was seldom in- 
terrupted by any ventures of this kind. A certain concealed 
regret seems to hang over these closing years, subdued alike 
by literary interests and the dignity of true self-respect, and 
softened by the consolatory exercises of religion. 

The earlier days of Christina's life were passed in circum- 
stances of great peculiarity. If it were needful to characterise 
her position by one emphatic word, that word must needs be 
Isolation. The only child of a mighty warrior, cut oflF in the 
prime of life, Christina was early left with but two near rela- 
tions in the world — her mother Maria Leonora, and her aunt 
Catharine. 

Gustavus Adolphus, her father, loved her passionately while 
he lived, but her mother, the records say, shewed less affec- 
tion. She had hoped that her child might have been a boy, 
who might have become a worthy heir of the great champion 
of the Protestant cause, in the Council and the battle-field. 
Once, it is said, just as the northern hero was starting for his 
last descent on the German Empire, so utterly paralysed by 
internal feebleness and want of organisation, his little daughter, 
no more than four years old, ran towards him and wished him 
prosperity in his arduous undertaking. The King was at the 
moment giving some important orders, and did not notice her 
approach: but, she, refusing to be ignored, pulled with all her 
tiny might at his sword belt, and so drew him towards her. 
In a moment, by means of this military appeal, Gustavus' 
whole thought became suddenly fixed upon his darling child. 
The simple anecdote is characteristic of both the persons con- 
cerned in it. Both were impetuous, eager, passionate. And 
the general interest of the story is heightened by another fact. 
For neither at the time knew that they would never meet 
again on earth. 

Gustavus, on the eve of his journey southwards, appointed 
John MatthiaB to be Christina's tutor. The appointment was 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 125 

well made. Matthiae was one of those gentle and devotional 
spirits, who long above all things for the religious union of 
Christendom. And it is undoubtedly true that this noble 
desire, however chimerical, must always possess a peculiar 
charm to the most liberal and enthusiastic minda Still, at a 
later time, this pure and simple ecclesiastic was destined to be 
deprived of his Bishopric on a somewhat vindictive charge of 
heresy. Nevertheless, he fared better at the hands of the 
State than of the Church, and in after years his children were 
ennobled. One lesson at the least Christina learnt from this 
excellent man, which never faded from her memory through- 
out all the vicissitudes of her later life; and that lesson was 
Love of Toleration. 

Before his final departure, Gustavus made such arrange- 
ments as would be necessary in case of his own death. He 
appointed his beloved Chancellor Oxenstiern the guardian of 
his youthful daughter during her minority, and the appoint- 
ment took effect much sooner than might have been expected, 
owing to Gustavus' sudden overthrow at the important battle 
of Lutzen. When the kingdom of Sweden had recovered its 
consternation at the sad news, Christina was proclaimed Queen, 
and of the five regents then appointed Oxenstiern was the 
chief. Hence this skilful and adroit statesman became pos- 
sessed of the larger share of authority in the entire government 
of Sweden. His political position was further strengthened 
by the fact that two of his near relatives held the offices of 
Constable and Treasurer. The complete control which he 
exercised on the young Queen's education was calculated to 
extinguish all feminine qualities, although he was careful to 
provide the best instruction in art, science, and literature. 
The Grand Council of the nation consisted in Sweden of five 
colleges or ministerial departments, comprising altogether 
twenty-five persons. The heads of these departments formed 
the executive Government. When Oxenstiern and his col- 
leagues assumed office, they found the affairs of the nation in 
great confusion. The expenses of the war in Germany were 
ruinous to the royal exchequer, yet all attempts to equalise 
taxation by withdrawing the privileges of the nobles or clergy 



126 ChrisHnoj Queen of Sweden, 

were distinct failures. Within the Empire, the baffled hopes 
of Ferdinand's troops revived after the memorable fight at 
Lutzen. In fact, the position of the Swedes seemed becoming 
untenable. The upright Chancellor, however, disdainfully 
scorned to notice the bribes which the Austrians with foolish 
cunning offered. He only wrote home to the Council at 
Stockholm, * a dog who growls and shows his teeth, can make 
better terms than one who puts his tail between his legs and 
runs away.' 

Yet when Bernard of Weimar was overthrown in the battle 
of Nordlingen, in the month of August 1634, it was necessary 
to commence negotiations for peace : and the truce which 
Axel Oxenstiern was obliged to sign with Poland cost him 
many sighs. Any admission, even indirectly, of Uladislaus' 
false claim to the crown of Sweden seemed to his patriotic 
soul utterly intolerable. He returned to his own land in the 
month of July 1636. 

Meantime, while weighty affairs were being discussed 
abroad, internal strife divided the royal family at home. 
Christina, it has been already hinted, never loved her mother, 
Maria Leonora. In fact they disagreed about the merest 
trifles as well as matters of greater moment. Moreover, Maria 
Leonora was unpopular with the Council and the people. 
Her jealousy was aroused by the large incomes appropriated 
by the regents, and the small allowances paid over to her own 
privy purse, and in an evil moment for her own best interests, 
she entered into communications with Christian of Denmark. 
Subsequently she fled to that country, and remained above 
eight years on the continent. 

Maria Leonora's deserved unpopularity induced the Council 
to place their future ruler under the official care of her aunt, 
the Princess Catharine, who was the only surviving child of 
Charles IX. Her influence, while it lasted, was most beneficial, 
but unfortunately she died towards the close of the year 1638. 
This event was a turning point in Christina's life. 

Bereft at the early age of thirteen of the only relative, in 
whom she placed any confidence, the young Queen was forced 
to rely entirely on her own resources. She pursued with in- 







Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 127 

creased vigour her studies in all branches of literature, giving 
especial prominence to history and theology, but she became 
hard and unsympathetic, and, ignoring her own sex,* sought 
only the companionship of the learned. The records concern- 
ing Elizabeth of England afforded her peculiar delight, and 
most likely presented models for imitation. Her interest in 
politics was early awakened, and on hearing of the likelihood 
of Bauer's death after an exhausting and difficult campaign 
she wrote to the Prince Palatine, * I cannot conceal the bad 
news that has just arrived. Baner is dangerously ill, and not 
likely to recover . . . such men are not met with every 
day, and if he dies, our affairs will not go on well.' 

The first debate which the young Queen of Sweden heard 
at her Council Board concerned the much disputed question 
of the Sound Dues. A certain coldness had arisen between 
Sweden and Denmark, due partly to Maria Leonora's strange 
conduct, and partly to King Christian's subservience to the 
Emperor. Hence the majority of th(^ Council were in favour 
of war, and even the Chancellor maintained that the expenses 
of fighting would be less burdensome than the excessive tolls. 
The dispute arose in this way. Sweden, by her treaties with 
Denmark, was exempt from this tax. and she made use of the 
privilege to cover with her flag the goods of foreign mer- 
chants. The Danes retaliated by seizing three Swedish 
vessels. The Swedes determined on invasion, and Torstenson 
was intrusted with the guidance of their operations. The 
attack was conducted with skill and secrecy, but in no very 
honourable fashion, and, although Denmark was overrun, was 
not decisive. 

It was one of Christina's first cares on her complete assump- 
tion of government to negotiate a peace with Christian of 
Denmark. It was arranged that the Sound should be free, 
and that certain concessions in the shape of territory should 



* * It is almost impossible that a woman should perform the duty re- 
quired on the throne. The ignorance of women, tjieir feebleness of mind, 
body, and understanding makes them incapable of reigning.* — Vie par 
eUe-mime, ch. ix. 



128 Chriatinaf Queen of Sweden, 

be made in favour of Sweden. Oxenstiem's services on this 
occasion were rewarded with the title of Count 

While the war with Denmark continued to disturb the peace 
of Sweden, Christina reached her eighteenth year. Sovereigns 
usually come of age earlier than the rest of mankind, and, as 
in the case of our own Queen, eighteen was fixed by lawful 
authority as the appropriate time for Christina's majority. 
Henceforth she must enter on a wider and more brilliant field 
of action, and, escaping from the trammels of the regency, 
must become mistress of a regal Court. 

As soon as Christina had attained her majority, she was 
proclaimed, in deference to her own wish and the desires of 
the people. King of Sweden in the month of December, 1644. 
The masculine gender was adopted in preference to the 
feminine to avoid running counter to an old tradition. 

Her first measure after her complete establishment on the 
throne was to grant an Indemnity to the Regents, who for 
above ten years had directed the executive Government 
This she was bound to do, not only to conciliate the nobles 
but as an act of simple justice. She was bound to start fair if 
she was ever to rule her country with success. Nevertheless, 
the Act of Indemnity gratified the aristocracy alone. The 
fact was that Sweden, for the last decade of years, had been 
entirely in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy, who, amongst 
other things, had freely alienated Crown lands for the benefit 
of their own Order. The other Estates of the realm, therefore, 
had looked for some partial resumption of these alienations 
previous to the grant of the Indemnity. But it would have 
been impossible for Christina, even if she had been inclined, to 
commence her reign by serious disagreement with the friendly 
and all-powerful Chancellor. She felt that at first she must 
learn from Oxenstiern what he had learnt from her father, and 
not strive to direct him with the ignorance of pride. The Chan- 
cellor was aJone intimately acquainted with all the minute 
intricacies of ^jome and foreign aiffairs, and was the only man 
capable of conducting the Government of Sweden. Moreover, 



\ 



Christina f Queen of Sweden, 129 

from long experience, every one trusted his judgment and 
admired his integrity. 

Who should be the favoured possessor of this northern 
heiress' hand was a question mooted alike amongst the noble 
houses of Sweden and the royal courts of Europe. The 
following princes have been enumerated among her suitors — 
Ulrick and then Frederick of Denmark, Philip IV. of Spain, 
the Archduke Leopold of Austria, Charles Louis Elector Pala- 
tine; Ferdinand, King of Hungary, and the three sons of 
Sigismund of Poland. Besides these more distinguished 
persons, there were numerous inferior aspirants, but there were 
never more than two who had any chance of success — Magnus 
de la Gardie, a Swedish nobleman, and Charles Gustavus. 
The former of these was really in love with Maria Euphrosyne, 
Christina's cousin, whom he finally married. The latter 
became Christina's successor on the throne, but not her hus- 
band. Once or twice it seemed as if they might have married, 
but the Queen could never quite make up her mind. Like our 
own Elizabeth, she became so enamoured of the sweets of 
absolute power that she was unwilling to share her authority 
with another, and she was not sure of the purity of Charles' 
motives. Did he seek her or her power? The Queen herself 
declared that heiresses proverbially remained single, and that 
the Court was a hot-bed of intrigue. Neither the beauty, 
elegance, and courtly manners of Magnus de la Gardie, nor 
the high rank and near relationship of Charles Gustavus, could 
win Christina's heart. 

The retirement of Torstenson from the command of the 
troops belonging to the Swedish Crown within the Empire 
was regretted by the whole country. He was one of the 
ablest of Gustavus' generals, and was much beloved by the 
soldiery, whom he had generally led to victory. Meantime 
the successes of the French, who were allies of Sweden, were 
very brilliant in the north of Germany, and Christina took 
opportunity to congratulate Cond6 by letter. She soon saw, 
however, that the war had become chronic, and determined, 
against the wishes of her own nobility, to support with the 
utmost of her ability the proposed negotiations for a lasting 

XXVIII. Q 



130 Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 

peace. * What I desire most/ she wrote privately to her re- 
presentative Salvius, * and esteem above everything else, is the 
power of restoring peace to Christendom.' The colleague of 
the clever plebeian Salvius was the proud patrician John Oxen- 
stiern, and it was indeed needful that the Queen should give 
clear and distinct orders to prevent these ill-matched envoys 
from openly quarrelling. 

Intricate and brimful of diplomatic subtlety were the debates 
that preceded the final settlement of peace. Some of the 
Great Powers sent ambassadors to the Congresses, more out of 
deference to public opinion, than from any desire of seriously 
arranging preliminaries. Their representatives talked of the 
interests of religion, but, while they squabbled about prece- 
dence, they thought only of the best means of obtaining power 
and influence. Once it is said the Papal Nuncio enquired of 
Cardinal Richelieu whether he was not greatly embarrassed 
by the war. The great minister of France only observed that 
he had obtained, when he became Secretary of State, a dis- 
pensation from his Holiness which he deemed wide enough 
even to include giving aid to heretics. 

The terms which Sweden finally obtained at the Peace of 
Westphalia, though satisfactory for the purposes of a general 
pacification, were unworthy of the amount of blood that had 
been shed. Western Pom crania, certain cities and islands, and 
two secularised Bishoprics' were ceded to her as hereditary 
fiefs. 

All northern Europe breathed freely again at the happy 
Restoration of Peace after thirty years of miserable warfare. 
Each nation found time to investigate the condition of its in- 
ternal politics. The peasantry of Sweden declared that they 
had many grievances. The nobility strenuously opposed all 
efforts for reform. The people demanded the resumption, the 
aristocracy sought the further alienation, of the royal domain. 
Christina found herself unable to satisfy these contradictory 
demands, and the Lutheran Church, which was at first neutral 
in regard to this dispute, soon sided with the people owing to 
the overbearing arrogance of the nobility. Matthiae's attempts 
to quell the rising outbursts of party spirit were fruitless. 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden, 131 

About the year 1650, the antagonism between the two 
parties had reached the highest pitch. Christina, with the 
truest moderation, held the balance between them. She could 
not reconcile the opposing parties, but she gave way to neither 
the one nor the other. At the same time, by occasional conces- 
sions, she succeeded in averting the outbreak of civil war. 
She found herself placed in a position of the greatest diflS- 
culty,* with but few trusted advisers, and it seems likely that 
the extreme anxiety of this troublesome period of her reign 
first suggested the idea of abdication. At any rate she 
made up her mind to propose Charles G^stavus as her 
successor to the Estates of Sweden : and after some opposi- 
tion, headed by the Chancellor, the proposal was adopted. By 
this step she facilitated her own abdication : she also crushed 
the aspirations of that section of the nobility that longed for 
an aristocratic republic, and escaped for the future the irritat- 
ing importunity with which proposals for marriage had been 
thrust upon her in the past. Her general health too was in- 
different, and at times the doctors became thoroughly alarmed. 

In many ways the youthful Queen of Sweden's reputation 
stood high among the princes of Europe. It was admitted on 
all sides that she had shewn considerable skill in the conduct 
of public affairs in times of unparalleled difficulty ; but above 
all she was renowned throughout the world on account of her 
extensive patronage of the savants distinguished in various 
branches of learning. Grotius, the well known writer on 
International law — a study then in its infancy — was for a short 
time her representative at the Court of Versailles. His death 
occurred before any intimacy could arise. The famous philo- 
sopher, Descartes, visited Stockholm in the spring of 1649, 
and was royally received. He had corresponded with Christina 
on various subjects of interest previous to his journey north- 
wards. Descartes always maintained that he was a good 
Catholic, holding that the study of philosophy and theology 
should always be kept separate. Our own Lord Bacon held 

* About this time a lunatic attempted to take the Queen's life without 
success. 



\ 



132 Christina^ Queeti of Sweden. 

the same opinion* The philosopher's health suffered much 
from the coldness of the northern climate, and his constitution, 
already impaired by excessive study, entirely gave way at the 
early age of fifty-three. He died in the month of February, 
1650. The Queen received the sad news with floods of tears. 
The rude but clever Salmasius, who delighted in abuse under 
the title of criticism, and the learned Vossius, who died a Canon » 
of Windsor by a curious freak of fortune, were received with 
great favour at the Court of Sweden. Other persons of less 
general distinction, who likewise obtained royal favour, were 
Buroeus, Manasseh Ben Israel, Stiernhielm, John Paulinus, 
Rudbeck, Bishop of Westeras and his son Olaus, Franoenius, j 

Stiernberg, and Sigfried Foraius. 

Milton and Gassendi wrote eulogistic lettere, and Manage, 
Benserade, Scarron, and Claude Sarrau addressed adulatory 
epistles, and Scuderie dedicated a poem to the distinguished 
Queen of the North. Bochart of Caen, and his friend Huet, 
afterwards Bishop of Arvanches, visited Christina in her own 
country. It was a favourite plan with Huet to overthrow the 
principles of philosophy by suggesting doubts as to their 
reality ; and it seems likely that he, all unconsciously, com- 
menced paving the way which afterwards led Christina to the 
Roman Church. 

It is no wonder, under the circumstances above recorded, 
that the Queen of Sweden's reputation for learning continued 
to steadily increase throughout Europe. The Court of Sweden 
was free from that cold formality and endless amount of 
etiquette, which formed an essential part of the popular esti- 
mation of royalty in the seventeenth century. Individual 
genius had fair play. Each courtier could prove his title to 
excel. Hardly any bound was set to the license of repartee, 
or any limit prescribed to brilliant sarcasm. Unlike the formal 
and tedious ceremonial, so popular in autocratic Spain, at 
Stockholm entire freedom of action was the rule. The gay 

* '* Both religion and philosophy have received and may receive extreme 
prejudice by being commixed together, thereby making a heretical religion, 
and an imaginary and fabulous philosophy." Advancement of Learning. 

ch. n. 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden, 133 

scene consisted of a perpetual round of mental and bodily 
enjoyment. Day followed day in quick succession, and the 
happy players had no thought beyond the present season of 
pleasure. Sometimes a single courtier obtained undue in- 
fluence. This was especially the case with Bourdelot, the 
royal physician. Christina considered that he had saved her 
life, and was therefore naturally well disposed towards him. 
Bourdelot's character has been variously represented, but 
never in a very favourable light. It is certain that his know- 
ledge of medicine far excelled his notions of morality, and his 
general influence on the Queen and her Court was, we think, 
injurious. After a time, he lost favour, and was forced to 
retire to France, where some preferment was procured for 
him. Magnus de la Gardie was also disgraced about the same 
time. The insolence of his conduct had become unbearable, 
when he ventured to accuse the Queen's friends before her 
face, and he was advised to retire into the country. No com- 
plete reconciliation ever took place : and in after years when 
Christina visited the country in the capacity of a private per- 
son, Magnus spoke against any prolonged stay, lest there 
should be a disturbance amongst the peasantry. 

The sovereigns of Sweden from time immemorial had been 
crowned at the old capital Upsala, just as the kings of Scotland 
were for centuries crowned at Scone. A tradition of such 
ancient authority ought to be upheld. But when it was found 
that Upsala was incapable of providing sufficient accommoda- 
tion, and was altogether too small for the requirements of the 
public, it was resolved to set aside the authority of tradition, 
and allow the coronation to take place in the new capital, 
Stockholm, — a town furnished with all the most modern im- 
provements. The usual round of festivities preceded and 
followed the solemn event. Fountains of red and white wine 
played for the entertainment of spectators. Fireworks, masks, 
balls, royal salutes, and masquerades representing the muses, 
and other goddesses of heathen mythology, were given. Gifts 
and pensions were freely distributed. While the restless 
Christina was thus enjoying herself to the full, she tired of 
pleasure. Even in the midst of these gaieties, the thought of 



134 Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 

abdication was sometimes present. She longed for honourable 
ease and learned leisure. She desired to travel in foreign 
lands, and to see the treasures preserved in the Vatican. She 
felt unable to reconcile the differences between class and class, 
between peasant and noble that distracted her own land. She 
could not resuscitate the well-nigh bankrupt treasury. She 
could not, as she was, join the Roman faith. 

It was impossible to devise any matured plan for abdication 
without much forethought. Chanut, the French ambassador, 
was the first person to whom the Queen definitely confided her 
intentions. He at once did all in his power to dissuade her 
from so strange a course. When Charles Gustavus first heard 
of this idea he doubted the Queen's sincerity. He thought the 
whole theory of the abdication was only a clever plot to 
ascertain the state of his own private feelings. He dared not 
show how keenly he longed to succeed to the throne, and he 
wrote a cautious letter, recommending Christina to retain her 
crown. When the whole affair became known to the public, 
the nobility and people were equally opposed to the Queen's 
abdication. The Chancellor, Oxenstiern, was particularly 
annoyed, and declared that the constitutional obstacles to 
such a course of conduct would prove insurmountable. 

Just at this time the pulse of Europe was quivering under 
the pressure of democratic influences. Signs of conspiracy 
against the throne made their appearance in Sweden, which 
ended in the execution of the two Messenii. The revolution- 
ary changes in England caused Whitelocke to be appointed 
ambassador to the Court of Sweden on behalf of the English 
commonwealth. His lengthy journal conveys a favourable 
impression of the northern capital. So stern a Puritan was 
content to describe Christina's * entertainments as ' genteel.' 
The ring which she gave Pimentelli, the Spanish ambassador, 
he calls *a memorial of her favour.' Her enemies call it a 
love-token. His conversations on the Sound dues led to no 
results. When he heard of the proposed abdication, he 



*Iii these days Christina fancifully instituted the knightly Order of 
Amaranta. 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden, 135 

repeated a quaint parable, which by interpretation meant that 
repentance after the event would be too late for amendment. 

Both the Puritan, Whitelocke, and the Catholic, Pimentelli, 
left Sweden in high favour. The jealousy of the French 
ambassador was aroused at the favour shown to the Spaniard, 
and Christina's efforts to terminate the war, then raging 
between France and Spain, were rendered unavailing. The 
arrival of the Portuguese ambassador, Pareira, with two 
Jesuits in his suite, exercised a marked influence on the religi- 
ous sentiments of the Queen of Sweden. For a long time she 
had silently weighed in her mind the contradictory arguments 
of the Protestant and Roman Churches. She had never loved 
the cold severity of the Lutheran formularies. Her philoso- 
phical studies had taught her to doubt their absolute truth. 
She was just in the right frame of mind to readily accept 
dogmas claiming infallible truth. Macedo, the Jesuit inter- 
preter of the Portuguese ambassador, was determined not 
to lose his opportunities. With the connivance of the Queen, 
his interpretations of the political remarks of his master were 
really dissertations on Papal theology. The innocent ambas- 
sador was frequently surprised and delighted at the evidently 
favourable reception of his observations. After a while, 
Macedo, at the royal request, secretly escaped from Sweden 
with a message to the General of the Jesuit Order, who at 
once despatched to the north Francesco Malines, Professor of 
Theology at Turin, and Paolo Casati, Professor of Mathematics 
at Rome. These distinguished personages reached Stockholm 
in disguise in the month of March, 1652. Christina was the 
first to detect their real character. When she privately 
questioned them on the origin of evil, and the nature of the 
contrast between faith and reason, they not only asserted the 
sufficiency of the Papal authority to decide such points, but 
also used the argument from analogy — those parts of religion 
which were beyond the reach of reason were no wise opposed 
to reason. 

How deeply the Queen was at the time impressed is shown 
by her inquiry whether the Papal authority (if so vast as they 
declared) was not able to grant a dispensation for the recep- 



136 Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 

tion of the Sacrament once a year according to the Lntheran 
rites. On the receipt of a negative reply, the resolution to 
abdicate became firmly fixed. Yet the distraction of her mind 
18 well illustrated by the fact that on the eve of her own 
change of creed, she addressed an epistle to Prince Frederick 
of Hesse urgently pressing him to remain on the Protestant 
side. 

Christina was not so singular, as at first appears, in her 
strange desire to join the Church of Roma Many learned 
men, whom perhaps the Queen treated with excessive respect, 
took a similar step in the seventeenth century. All the cour- 
tiers tried to retain her, as a good Lutheran, on the throne of 
her fathers without success. Her answer to Chanut's letter of 
expostulation was vehement and haughty. * You know this 
whim has lasted a long time ... I allow every one to 
judge me according to their capacity, and although it is true 
I cannot hinder them, yet I would not do so if I had the 
power. ... I have possessed power without pride, and I 
relinquish it without regret. Do not fear for me, my wealth 
is beyond the power of fortune. I am happy whatever may 
chance.' Surely the concluding sentence is the climax of 
proud humility. Though the people of Sweden knew it not, 
the abdication and the change of creed went hand in hand. 
One could not have happened without the other. Other 
motives, besides the theological, had their share in prompting 
the abdication. That accomplished, the adoption of the Papal 
creed was the natural sequence. 

In the month of February, 1654, the intended abdication 
was formally announced to the assembled Estates of the realm. 
The Senate demurred, but the Queen remained resolute : and 
so the discussion of details was commenced. It was settled 
that Charles Gustavus should be King in her room. The pay- 
ment of a fixed pension, slightly below the original demand, 
was charged upon the Swedish Pomerania, and certain islands 
in the Baltic. The retention of the sovereignty of these dis- 
tricts, and a future right to interfere in the regulation of the 
succession, was denied. The members of the Third Estate 
manifested their grief openly, and a deputy of the peasantry 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden, 137 

shouted out of genuine sympathy • Continue in your gears, 
good madam, and be the fore-horse as long as you live, and 
we will help you the best we can to bear your burden.' 

At the close of the month of May Christina made her final 
address, and on the sixth of June the Act of Abdication was 
duly performed in the presence of the assembled Diet. The 
Queen was clad in white, Charles Gustavus in black. She 
spoke of the blessings of peace which then prevailed, and her 
father's glorious victories, and then surrendered the sword, the 
sceptre, and the other emblems of royalty, which were de- 
livered in due form to Charles Gustavua The same afternoon 
he was crowned in Upsala Cathedral. 

A reign of ten years was thus brought to a sudden termina- 
tion. They were the happiest years of Christina's life. Peace 
had been restored to Europe. Internal dissension had been 
for the time allayed. A fresh impetus had been given to the 
study of literature and the fine arts. Though darkened by 
some disappointments, clouded by some failures, and distracted 
by agitating thoughts on politics and religion, these days that 
had slipped rapidly by, were bright and happy and gay. The 
sunshine of life felt warm. 

Unlike the Emperor Charles V., who deserted the Imperial 
throne, weary and worn by anxiety and trouble, Christina re- 
tired from public life at the early age of eight and twenty. 
There was something of knight-errantry in the manner in 
which she started from her northern home to seek her fortune 
in the sunny south. A medal was struck, representing Olympus 
with Pegasus on the summit adorned with the motto, * Sedes 
haec solio potior.' There was something of sadness in the 
vehemence with which she afterwards asserted her increased 
happiness. Not quite what she expected was the treatment 
she received from the flattering but deceptive world, when 
stripped of the realities of power. She stilled her disappoint- 
ment by the intensity of her study. For she soon discovered 
by stern experience that a Queen surrounded by a brilliant 
court and all the externals of royalty was in a very different 
position to a Queen without a throne. 



138 Christina f Queen of Sweden, 

XV. 

Immediately after the Act of Abdication Christina started 
for the mainland of Germany. The news of her resignation of J 

the Crown had created so great a stir that the details of her 
journey from Sweden to Rome were industriously circulated 
throughout Europe, and soon assumed an absurd prominence 
in the pamphleteering literature of the day.* The attempt to 
preserve secrecy only increased the popular curiosity. After 
the circulation of a report that she would visit Spa, she 
travelled in male disguise through Denmark under the name 
of Count Dohna. She scandalized the orthodox citizens of 
Hamburg by openly lodging for three weeks with a Jewish 
banker, and leaving the town suddenly in the middle of the 
night At Antwerp she formally received the Archduke Leo- 
pold, and the other dignitaries who happened to be in that 
city. She travelled thence in state to Brussels, where she 
privately abjured the Lutheran doctrines. Advices from 
Sweden brought a gentle rebuke from Matthise, and a keen 
reminder of the need of union throughout Christendom, as well 
as the solemn tidings of the death of Oxenstiern and Maria 
Leonora. It seems needless to pursue further the nurtierous 
but unimportant details of her journey. 

In the ancient city of Innsbruck, nestling beside the Tyro- 
lese Alps, consecrated as the last resting-place of those proud 
champions of the Roman creed, the princes of the House of 
Hapsburg,t Christina appropriately made the public Confession 
of her new faith in the presence of Holsteinius, papal legate 
on behalf of Alexander VII. Clothed in black silk, kneeling 
before the high altar, she distinctly read the required declara- 
tion, t asserting her thorough belief in every doctrine of the 

* Of above sixty books and tracts relating to Christina preserved in the 
British Museum, there are four copies of the Vera Relazione del viaggio 
fattosi, and two copies of a pamphlet concerning her entrance into 
Florence. 

t The tomb of Maximilian I. occupies a considerable part of the nave of 
the cathedral, and is ornamented with statues of his ancestors and other 
princes. 

X The confession is found thus stated. * Ego Christina firma fide credo 
et profiteer omnia et singula qusB continentur Symbolo fidei, quo Sancta 
Romana Ecclesia utitur.' Vera Belazione, n., p. 37. 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden, 139 

Roman Church, and listened to a clever Jesuit's sermon on the 
suggestive text, * Hearken, daughter, and consider, incline 
thine ear; Forget also thine own people, and thy father's 
house.' 

From Innsbruck she wrote to inform Charles Gustavus of 
her change of religious belief. The devout conduct of his new 
convert greatly pleased the Pope, and Christina's entrance 
into Rome became one long triumph. Fireworks and illumi- 
nations, processions and triumphal arches honoured her ap- 
proach. After a regal reception in the Vatican, Alexander 
VII. conferred the rite of confirmation with his own hands at 
the High Altar of S. Peter's, and bestowed upon Christina the 
additional name of Alessandra. 

The name of Rome has always possessed a strange fascina- 
tion. First as the capital of the heathen world, and then as 
the seat of the chief Bishopric in Christendom, the wealth of 
the nations flowed into it. Christina, fired by no ordinary 
enthusiasm, visited in turn the museums, and the picture- 
galleries, and shared in the fStes and solemn feasts of the 
eternal city. In turn, each form of amusement palled upon 
the taste. Soon tired by the monotony of the Italian festivals, 
she determined to test the world-wide reputation of the 
elegant and brilliant entertainments provided by the Court of 
France. 

The States of the Church were the home of throneless princes 
and princesses. In other countries de jure without de facto * 
title is little worth. Though treated with every mark of ex- 
ternal respect, Christina soon discovered that she could exercise 
no real influence among the fickle Parisian courtiers of Louis 
XIV. Her ordinary disregard of detailed etiquette became 
the subject of ridicule. Her extensive knowledge of the 
picture-galleries of Paris was considered remarkable but 
peculiar. Her intimate acquaintance with the intrigues of the 
Court was deemed ofiensive. On one occasion she quietly 
advised the young King to marry Mademoiselle Mancini, 
Cardinal Mazarin's niece, if he were so inclined. Henceforward 
ceaseless efforts were made to facilitate her return to Italy. 
Yet Christina soon recrossed the Alps with the object of 



140 ChrUtina^ Queen of Sweden, 

again visiting the gay capital of France. To postpone ber 
arrival the Palace of Fontainebleau was assig^ned as her official 
residence by the Court of Versaillea Within the walls of this 
Palace the fatal tragedy was enacted, which was doubtless 
the most serious blot on the otherwise honourable character 
of the Queen of Sweden. Irritated by the delay, enraged at 
the discovery of treachery amongst her own servants, over 
whom she conceived that she still held the power of life and 
death, she insisted with the wild haste of excitement on the 
immediate execution of the Marquis Monaldeschi. The plead- 
ings of Father le Bel, the appeals of Sentinelli, the Marquis's 
own earnest entreaties, were of no avail. Nothing could 
revoke the unalterable decision. In the Gallery of the Stags, 
among the hunting trophies of the Kings of France, Monal- 
deschi was stabbed to death. 

The deed in itself cannot be justified. It was the work of 
passion. The forms of justice were neglected. Nevertheless, 
it appears Monaldeschi deserved his fate. It seems likely* he 
had revealed in a traitorous manner a political intrigue with 
the Pope which was intended to bring the Crown of Naples to 
his royal mistresa Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Bain endeavoure 
to represent the conduct of the Queen in a more favourable 
light than critics have been accustomed to do in the past, and 
certainly seems to sum up the intricate facts connected with 
this painful incident in a more impartial vein than the majority 
of previous writers. 

Louis of France was furious when the news of the execution 
reached him. He altogether resented Christina's conduct in 
this affair. He maintained that the execution of any person, 
especially within the precincts of a royal Palace, without the 
sanction of the reigning sovereign was a direct insult to the 
Majesty of the Crown. It was no judicial punishment for 
proved treachery. It was little else than murder. 

Modem authorities on International Law have confirmed 
Louis' view. Reason and common sense do the same. 



* Evelyn-Diary, II., 149. The vulgar story as to a love affair is repeated 
in the Diary of the Shaky p. 200. 



Christina J Queen of Sweden. 141 

Nevertheless it is certain that, when she resigned the crown of 
Sweden, Christina honestly believed that she retained absolute 
power over her own suite. So p:reat an authority as Leibnitz 
has been found ready to support her opinion. 

There is some analogy to this painful and curious case in 
the treacherous conduct of Manning, whom Lord Clarendon 
calls * a proper young gentleman, bred a Roman Catholic in 
the family of the Marquis of Worcester.' Charles II., while an 
exile, had passed in disguise from Cologne to Zealand in the 
year of grace 1655, and it was discovered that this fact, as 
well as some other actions of the Royalists, had been commu- 
nicated by Manning, under the pseudonym of And. Butler, to 
Oliver Cromwell. On discovery a confession of guilt was at 
once made, and an excuse offered to the effect that the 
treacherous letters were, in fact, untrue, except the relation of 
the journey to Zealand, and their object was the extortion of 
money from the Government now carried on in England in 
the name of the Commonwealth. 

Lord Clarendon omits to mention the manner of Manning's 
death, but he was quietly shot after his detection in a wood 
near Cologne, in the month of December, 1655, by Sir James 
Hamilton and Major Armourer. For the space of three years 
he had been in the receipt of £1200 per annum from the Lord 
Protector. 

While Christina was thus passing her time, partly in the en- 
joyment of Italian society, and partly in wandering over the 
face of Europe, Charles Gustavus was King in Sweden. His 
reign of five years duration was one perpetual campaign. He 
commenced his military operations by overrunning Poland, 
and then attacked Brandenburg. He next crushed an insur- 
rection of the Poles at the battle of Warsaw, after which John 
Casimir resigned his crown. Then turning northwards, he 
made a successful inroad against the Danes, whose country 
was only saved from annexation by the opportune mediation 
of England, France, and Holland.- Angry at thus losing the 
fruits of his last campaign, he perfidiously attacked Copen- 
hagen after the peace was signed. The Danes with the 
assistance of the Dutch made a desperate resistance, and 



142 Chrittinoy Queen of Sweden, 

totally defeating Charles were able to enforce their own terms. 
The King of Sweden's pride was cmelly wonnded, and his 
coostitation undermined by the hardship of the war. He died 
suddenly in the month of February 1660 with the words on his 
lips : — * The loss of Fyen kills me/ The war in Pomerania 
impoverished Christina. Many of the towns allotted to provide 
her pension were sacked by the violence of the soldiery. Her 
own attempts to introduce an higher culture among the 
Swedes were nullified. She was herself forced to become a 
pensionary of the Pope, and Cardinal Azzolini was appointed 
to manage her household. His administrative ability in> 
troduced tolerable eflSciency and economy into the Queen's 
domestic affairs. Enough money was still forthcoming to 
supply the requirements of literary and scientific tastes, and 
considerable sums were annually spent oq chemistry and 
alchemy without much practical result. Christina was thus 
forced to become more subservient to the Papal Court, and 
undertook to persuade some of her retinue to adopt the Roman 
Catholic faith, but she declined altogether to resign her free- 
dom of action, and disputes not unfrequently arose with his 
Holiness in regard to the discipline of the Swedish servants, 
and the political condition of Southern Europe. 

After the sudden death of Charles Gustavus, the payments 
from Pomerania became more irregular, and Christina deter- 
mined to visit Sweden, not now as Queen, but for the purpose 
of effectually securing her income, and asserting her own claims 
in case of the death of Gustavus' infant heir, Charles XL She 
was hardly received with respect, much less affection. 

As the wandering ghost of the quaint old laird, who has long 
rested beneath the grassy sod, is sometimes said at dead of night 
to revisit the favourite haunts of long forgotten days, and scarce 
to recognise the stiff Elizabethan garden or the cool secluded 
bower owing to the silent ravages of time ; so the Queen, bereft 
of her throne, revisited her former capital, and scarce recognised 
its altered aspect, and transformed features. A few brief years 
had changed all things. New courtiers were stationed round the 
throne. New faces filled the Diet. New interests swayed the 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 143 

minds of the deputies. A few nobles who remembered Christina 
in her wealth, avoided her in her poverty. 

While yet in Hamburg, she ascertained that Magnus de la 
Gardie, Brahe, and the rest of the dignitaries of Stockholm, w^ere 
anxious to delay her approach. Brahe even suggested she should 
be ' sent to Aland, in charge of an honourable and determined 
man.' On her arrival in Sweden, powerful resistance was offered 
to the just demand for the confirmation of her revenue. The 
celebration of mass in the royal chapel was forbidden. The 
claim on the succession under certain contingencies was rudely 
rejected. A second act of renunciation was arranged, and signed. 

Christina now thought it best to retire to Norkoping. After 
obtaining some promises as to the payment of her revenue, she 
left for the continent. During a year's stay in Hamburg, she 
became acquainted with Borri, a well known student of alchemy, 
and Lambecius, afterwards distinguished as librarian to the Em- 
peror. 

In the autumn of the year 1666, Christina planned a second 
visit to Sweden ; but she met with such an unfavourable recep- 
tion at Norkoping, that she immediately returned to Hamburg, 
where she heard from Algernon Sydney that her imprisonment 
had been positively proposed in the Council at Stockholm. The 
foolish illumination of her hotel in honour of the election of 
Clement IX. to the Papal throne caused a tumult in the streets 
of this Protestant city in which several lives were lost. Soon 
after this unfortunate display of enthusiasm, she left Hamburg 
for the south. 

During the intervals between these various journeys, Christina 
resided chiefly in Rome. She took the keenest interest in the 
different questions that were agitated in the University and 
among the members of the Sacred College, and became absorbed 
in literary pursuits. The Archbishop Angelo della Noce, Palla- 
vicini, Menzini, Guidi, Filicaja, Cassini, and other men renowned 
for their acquaintance with the arts and sciences, frequented her 
palace. She founded a learned Academy, and thus exercised a 
decidedly beneficial influence on the development of Italian 
literature, by checking the tendency to prefer style to substance 
in composition. She never allowed her Italian courtiers to 



144 Chrittima^ Qmnem of SwedoL, 

indoloe in penrxial flatterr. In fact, there ««s nothing she 
more thoroogU r des^Hsed. * I think,* she wroce on one ooeanon, 
' that flmtteiy, which is the poisan of princ^es. mi^ht be their best 
medicine if thej knew how to ase it properlj/ And again, * If 
all comparisons are aiiona» what most a o mronson be between 
me and Alexander the Great ? * Christina was tno derer and 
manT-«ided to care for flittenr, a:.d she always saw through it. 
A remarkable proof of the general respect with which she was 
regarded bv distinguished men is aff.^ied br Bernini on his 
death*bed bequeathing; to her his fao^^oos statae of Christ.* 

Christina*s time pas>ed happilr in the cipital of Christendom, 
vet her livelv restlessaess. thouvih dlminUhln^ with advancing 
years» nnied her to seek varietj in distant travr!« ani the stndy 
of the political intri^es carried on in the priacip^ Eoiopean 
courts. Once she failed in her efforts to mediate between Louis 
XIV. and the Pope, who was justly invii^ant at the insolent 
behaviour of the French AmbASsaior. His H^-I:ness was most 
nnfairlv forced to tfive wav, when the French kin^r. without 
attempting to argue the matter, to^^k the decided step of occupy- 
ing Avigiion, which had been handed down amor.^r^t the posses- 
sions of the Pa)vil See ever since the days of tne Great Schism. 

Christina must ha\-e ipre^tlv delighted in the superiority of 
southern manners and customs over the n>a^her habits of the 
Sweiles, though she was herself no lover of false delicacy. 
Swearing and other vulgarities were cv^mmvxi amc^ng the un- 
educated nobles at Stivkhohn, whereas external decorum and 
politeness wvre always the rule in Rome. Nevertheless, intellec- 
tual refinement and extreme attention to the formalities of 
etiquette* frtHpiently ciMuvalevl v*^ *t the Court of France) the 
shameless character of many a vicivHis lite. In fact, nothing 
could be more t\nnplote than the entire contrast between the 
external asjnvt and gtnuM^al habits of the iK»rthem and southern 
Courts — the tvne gxmuine* nn^i^K rude: the other intriguing, 
pixlisheil^ refined* The happy ohann of Italian society cast its 
subtle spell around Christina's life, and fastened her soul vrith 
^Iken chains to the l\ipal Court* in c\>njunction with the earnest 



• o 



Sho lH\iu«ath«d it h> the Pope, 






Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 145 

desire for the golden coin which opened the door to the celestial 
regions, spoken of by a contemporary poet, named Bassus : — 

*■ Bomuleam Christina gradus contendit ad uirbem, 
Olli ut luce fluat candidiore Polud ; 
Regia Virgo lares patrios Regnumque relinquit, 

Coelestein Drachmam sedula ut inveniat. 
Pectore magnanimo juvat Hanc expendere Regaum, 
Quo redimat gemmam, quad pretiosa beat. ' 

It has been already mentioned that the Cardinal, John 
Oasimir, in disgust and grief, resigned his crown. After trial 
by experience, he discovered that the dignity of prince of the 
Roman Church was far preferable to the regal cares annexed to 
the troublesome Crown of Poland. He obtained a French 
abbacy from Louis XIV., determined that no barren dignity, 
but quiet peace, should embrace his declining years. The world 
beheld the curious spectacle of the two last representatives of 
separate branches of the house of Vasa wandering over the face 
of Europe voluntarily stripped of their crowns. 

Christina, tired of that privacy which the Cardinal sought, 
sent her chaplain, Father Hacki, on a political mission to War- 
saw. Her candidature, however, was not acceptable to the 
Poles, who elected one of their own nobles to the vacant throne. 
It was well that Christina, after resigning the Crown of Sweden, 
was thus prevented from being involved in the hopeless difficul- 
ties and endless feuds connected with the administration of 
unhappy Poland. It was too late to begin life afresh with a 
new kingdom. It was better to be content to remain among the 
palaces of Home, in the midst of ecclesiastical pomp and intellec- 
tual refinement, rather than to risk the chance of easy failure in 
regions yet untried. 

V. 

In the autumn of the year 1668, Christina was welcomed, on 
her return to Rome, with a magnificent reception from the 
recently elected Pope Clement IX., which bore some comparison 
to her happier entry within the walls of the Eternal City in all 
the ardour and enthusiasm of a new convert. From this date to 
the time of her death in 1689, she seldom journeyed beyond the 

XXVIII. 10 



146 Clinstina^ Queen of Sweden, 

limits of the states of the Church. These last twenty years 
were, in comparison with the earlier days, yeara of quiet and rest. 
Christina now dropped that active interference in European 
politics with which she had previously loved to occupy her mind, 
and gave her whole time to study and meditations on the strange 
vicissitudes of human life, though in public she always main- 
tained her usual vivacitv. 

After being an actor in the gay pageant, she came to regard 
the scene from the point of view of a spectator. With the 
majority of persons who take part in the public business of the 
world, the reverse is the case. In youth they watch the progress 
of the world's history ; in manhood and old age they are per- 
mitted to direct the course of events. Christina, in later life, 
probably felt that the transition from sovereignty to privacy was 
really unnatural, and in many respects placed her in an impossi- 
ble position. There is no doubt that the resignation of the 
crown of Sweden was the great mistake of her life, but it was 
an honourable mistake, a royal error. The hope of freedom 
from the control of mechanical ceremonial and the cares of 
royalty, and the honest striving after religious truth, prompted, 
while still young, the complete abandonment of the highest 
honours that the world can bestow — honours which some men 
have sacrificed integrity and honesty of purpose to obtain. Her 
genius, tempered and properly directed, would have conferred 
lasting benefits on mankind, instead of simply dazzling and 
astonishing her own generation. 

The Queen of Sweden was thoroughly kind-hearted. When- 
ever she had the power, she loved to help others. Her conduct 
towards Count Wasenau was a signal instance of her general 
kindliness. This Prince was a natural son of Uladislaus, King 
of Poland, and on the resignation of John Casimir, he wisely 
retired to Rome. Christina strongly advised liim to seek refuge 
for the remainder of his days in some retired monastery. When 
she found that this advica was not followed, she induced Cardinal 
Albani to procure him an office in the Papal Court. Her letter 
of advice is expressed in terms of great freedom, and in an earnest 
spirit : — 



Christina^ Queen of Sioeden. 147 

* It seems to me that your best course would be to retire either to 
Monte-Casino, or to Vail' Ombrosa. . . . There is nothing for you nor 
for me to hope for, and one is happiest when one does not expect or hope 
for anything in this world. Man is made for something greater, and the 
world has nothing which can satisfy him. If you could become a monarch, 
and be surrounded with glory and pleasure, you would not be more satis- 
fied than you are at present. . . . Give bravely the little that you 
have to God, and do not fear to lose by it. . . . What glory and pleasure 
to serve so good a master, and how happy am I to have given up so much 
for Him ! This satisfaction is worth more than the empire of the world.' 

At one time a report without any foundation was circulated 
in Sweden to the effect that Christina was dead. She at once 
wrote to Olivecranz, the governor of her domains, a character- 
istic epistle ' — 

' Regarding the report of my death I am not surprised at it : there are 
many people who desire it. It is natural they should indulge in flattering 
illusions. . . . Above all let me assure you that neither fear nor interest 
will kill me. If there were no other cause of death than these, I should 
be immortal.' 

The Council at Stockholm, to whom the executive functions 
of government were entrusted during the minority of Charles 
XI., was composed of the leaders of the nobility. This aristo- 
cratic rule bore no good fruit. A series of long and intricate 
intrigues and a declaration of war against Brandenburg was 
really the outcome of French bribes adroitly distributed amongst 
the more venal councillors. Dishonest policy proved vacillating. 
Frederick William, active and determined in council and the 
field, drove the Swedes out of Brandenburg, and pursued them 
into Pomerania. The payment of Christina's revenue was thus 
temporarily suspended. Just when the fortunes of Sweden 
appeared desperate, Charles XI. won the battle of Lund, and 
saved the Swedish possessions on the mainland. At the Diet of 
1680 he threw off the aristocratic voke that had hitherto en- 
thralled him, and became in reality King. The nobles were 
forced to refund public money, and even to permit the resump- 
tion of crown lands. Thus Christina curiously enough lived to 
see the Swedish noblesse obtain almost unlimited power, and then 
submit to a complete overthrow. One of her own greatest 
troubles in the administration of government had been the con- 



148 Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 

tinaal effort she was forced to make to hold the balance between 
the contending interests of the Three Estates of the realm. 
During her own reign, she had successfully achieved this difficult 
object. 

Though no longer taking part in the world's politics, Christina 
watched the course of events with keen interest She had fre- 
quently declared her apprehensions in political circles as to the 
total insecurity of the Hungarian frontier on the side of Turkey. 
When she heard of Sobieski's macrnificent defeat of the immense 
invading host with very inferior forces, she could not refrain 
from writing to congratulate tlie King of Poland on these heroic 
victories. * Your Majesty has displayed to the world a great and 
noble spectacle by the deliverance of Vienna, and the memory of 
it should be immortalized in the annals of Christianity.' 

Moreover Christina did not lose her love of toleration even in 
the atmosphere of suppression so prevalent at the Papal Court. 
Although a convert, she heartily hated religious persecution in 
all its forms. She rescued at least two fortunate persons from 
the terrible tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, and she was not 
afraid to express her absolute disapproval of the Dragonades, 
somewhat to the annoyance of the French Court. She was. 
entirely free from that fanatic spirit which the adherents of a 
fresh creed are so often given to exhibit. 

Though truly religious after her own fashion, her mind was 
not cast in a theological mould. There was nothing ascetic in 
her view of life. She considered that the good things of this 
world were given for man's enjoyment, and she had no scruple 
as to her full right to as much innocent pleasure as came in her 
way, nor was she careful to contradict the calumniations and 
depreciatory reports spread abroad by her enemies. As might 
be expected, the wildest stories were current in various parts of 
Europe. She once came across a book purporting to be a history 
of her own change of religious belief, and wrote on the fly leaf, 
'he who knows nothing has written, he who knew has not 
written.' She was a faithful daughter, but no slave to the Pope. 
She even ventured to maintain her exclusive jurisdiction over 
her own household (a. sore point with her) in spite of the resolute 

^osition of Innocent XL, and consequently lost her papal 



Christina^ Queen of Sweden. 149 

pension of 12,000 dollars. For this deprivation she haughtily 
thanked his Holiness : — ' The pension which the Pope gave me 
was the one blot of my life, and I received it from God as the 
greatest humiliation to which He could put my pride. . . . 
I beg you to convey my thanks to the Cardinal Cibo, and the 
Pope, for relieving me from this obligation.' 

On principle, it seems clear the Pope was in the right. It 
was a most obnoxious and injurious privilege to allow the houses 
of foreign ambassadors to be sanctuaries, and so to free their 
retinue from the ordinary civil jurisdiction of the Papal Courts. 
As a matter of fact, the embassy became an asylum for all sorts 
of criminals; the retinue became embroiled in every tumult. 
Only recently has international Law laid much practical restric- 
tion on such privileged abuses, and therefore the Papal action in 
this respect deserves the more credit. As soon as this conflict 
with the Pope became known over Europe, the Elector of Bran- 
denburg invited Christina to visit his dominions. His invitation 
was wisely refused. Sometime she had rested in Rome, and the 
day was past for seeking another home. Soon she would require 
but a few feet of earth for her resting place. 

In the evening of her days Christina retainjed her accustomed 
liveliness and vivacity, combined with the full use of her mental 
faculties. She announced that in her opinion Sweden ought to 
remain neutral in the European crisis of 1688, and foretold the 
wonderful success of the Prince of Oi'ange together with its 
poliiical effect on the nations — * England and Holland united 
will make all Europe tremble, and will impose laws both by sea 
and land.' When the time of fulfilment came, she entreated 
William III. to be kindly to his Roman Catholic subjects. 

It seems probable that grief at the sudden death of a favourite 
servant, the Marquis del Monte, whose real character is very 
variously depicted, hastened on her own end. * I am inconsol- 
able,' she writes to the Marquis' son, * at the loss we have sus- 
tained in your father, wlio as I trust surely is now in eternal 
glory.' Early in the year 1689, she bad a sharp attack of ery- 
sipelas from which she recovered contrary to her own expecta- 
tions. A second attack in the month of April of the same year 
proved fatal. She died in full communion with the Roman 



J 



150 Chriatinoy Queeti of Swedetu 

Church, and after the reception of the Papal absolution passed 
away so peacefully that it was hard to mark the moment of de- 
parture. She framed her own simple epitaph : ' Vixit Christina 
annos sexaginta tres.' 

Pope Innocent gave her a public funeral of great magnifi- 
cence, and his successor Clement erected a monument to her in 
the Church of S. Peter. Her own desire had been to find a 
quiet resting place iu the Rotunda. After making suitable pro- 
vision for the payment of her debts, and for the majority of the 
servants in her suite, Christina bequeathed the mass of her pro- 
perty to Cardinal Azzolini. No mention was made of Charles 
XI. in her will. At the hour of death the separation from 
Sweden was complete. Ultimately, the larger portion of her 
excellent library found its way into the Vatican Palace, that vast 
treasure house of literary spoil. Among the host of sepulchral 
monuments in the great Basilica of S. Peter — amongst the 
stately memorials erected to the honour of fallen royalty and 
the memory of impossible causes, a fit place was found for 
Christina's tomb. 

VI. 

An attempt has been made in the foregoing rapid sketch of 
the chief points in Chiistina's life to illustrate the real character 
of this remarkable woman, freed alike from the extravagant 
praise of Roman Catholic writers, and the unfair insinuations of 
Protestant criticism. Modern historians have been too much in 
the habit of dismissing this most interesting Queen of the North 
in a satirical strain, which has dealt out but scanty justice.* 

Christina had doubtless many faults, but she possessed also 
brilliant virtues. The very acuteness and versatility, the very 
strangeness and manysidedness of her life and character, the 
wide experience of the world, combined with the different capaci- 
ties in which she mixed with that world, all tend to enhance the 
general interest, and add to her special peculiarities. It would 
not be possible to state her striking characteristics in one terse 
sentence, yet if it be admissible from a certain point of view to 

* e.g., Russel's Modern Europe, III., 384-8. ed. 1822. 



Christtna, Queen of Sweden, l5l 

speak of the first Napoleon as an epitome of the French idea of 
gloiy, then Christina might be described as an epitome of the 
literary tendencies of her age. 

Just as Christina's sense of satire was so keen, and her appre- 
ciation of irony so vivid, so her humility was combined with 
much pride. The forced humility with which she endeavoured 
to crush her insulted pride after she had deserted her throne 
occasionally burst forth in its true colours. The fulness of her 
submission to the Roman Church is now and then limited 
by strange assertions of individual freedom and individual 
authority in the region of theology or the domain of politics. 
Her absolute devotion to the pursuit of truth in the wide, and 
then unexplored, field of natural science, is sometimes marred by 
superstitious yearnings after the forbidden secrets of alchemy 
and astrology. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that Christina 
Alessandra was in a peculiar manner open to all the better im- 
pressions that came across her path, and was possessed of many 
earnest cravings and true aspiration;; far in advance of her own 
age and country. Amid all her restless playfulness and curious 
elasticity, and at times what we should now call indelicacy, she 
sought knowledge for its own sake, and she was content to believe 
in her better moments that the Christian religion was the highest 
good. 

Perhaps it was not so much that her own genius was very 
extraordinary, but that she knew how to collect around her all 
the greatest wits and most distinguished philosophers of her own 
day, and quick as lightning to catch their more brilliant and 
salient points. Her Reflections on Alexander and Ccsaar never 
obtained wide circulation. In fact, her own compositions show 
intense subtlety of intellect, and a keen knowledge of human 
nature, but are often wanting in moral grandeur. Id the excel- 
lent portrait which has been preserved, the features are strongly 
marked, and appear capable of great variety of expr""""'"" 
The nose is large, the mouth powerful, and the eye 
Some light has been thrown on Christina's character b 
has gone before. Yet the real character of so subtle and 
a woman must ever be difficult to unravel. One thing : 
is certain. She was a perfect lover of paradox — at one n 



l52 Christina, Queen of Sweden. 

loving puwer, at another despising all iu pomp and ceremuiiy ; 
at one moment conceiving of religion as the only good, at another 
half doubting whether there were any religion at all. At one time 
she would be totally immersed in political affairs, at another she 
would regard the arts of diplomacy as little better than a childish 
game of chance. One day she was the keen votary of satire, on 
the next she became the stern devotee of philosophical abstrac- 
tion. ' The sea,' she once said, ' resembles great souls : however 
agitated the surface may be, the depth is always calm.' And 
agaiu ; ' the good and evil of this world is like those perspectives 
which only amuse or deceive at a distance/ 

K. S. Mylns, 



(153) 



SUMMARIES OF FOREIGN REVIEWS. 



Theologische Studien und Kritiken (No. 3, 1896). — 
Dr. Liuk, Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Konigsberg 
discusses here at considerable length, under the title, *Die Dol- 
metscher des Petrus/ the question as to whether the Apostle 
Peter had or had not a sufficient knowledge of, and a suiKcient 
facility in the use of, the Greek tongue to enable him to 
address in the course of his missionary journeys, Greek speak- 
ing audiences, and to write in that language. The discussion 
as to this has arisen from what Eusebius reports as taken from 
Papias, viz., that the presbyter John spoke of Mark as the 
hermeneutes of Peter. The same office is assigned, by Clement 
of Alexandria, to one Glaucias. But what function does the 
terra indicate? Dr. Link briefly refers to the controversy on 
this point, and discusses the usage of the word in Greek 
writings, chiefly at the times of the Caesars. He shows that 
its best equivalent is simply our dragoman, one who translates 
the utterances of a person addressing an audience, or a person, 
whose language he cannot himself speak, into their or his 
native tongue. It did not mean a secretary, an amanuensis, a 
help to a busy man, but one who rendered the speech or 
writing of one man into the language of those for whom it 
was intended. The necessary inference is that Peter was 
unable to address his hearers in certain districts in their own 
tongue. But then what tongue was that? Bleek maintained 
that it was and could only be Latin, which Mark had mastered 
when in Rome with Paul. This idea has found little favour, 
the consensus of opinion being that it was into Greek that 
Mark rendered the Aramaean ot Peter. Dr. Link regards this 
as certain, and refers for one of the proofs of it to the fact that 
Peter was pre-eminently the apostle to the Circumcision, even 
in Rome, and that Greek was the language familiar to the 
Jews there, and the language in which their intercourse with 
their brethren in all provinces to the East was carried on. 
Further, he shows that the language of Papias indicates that 
Mark was Peter's hermeneutes^ not iu Rome only, but constantly 
in his missionary journeys. Dr. Link defends the same sense, 
against Zahn and Neander, of the term hermeneutes as applied 
to Glaucias by Clement of Alexandria in relation to Peter. 
His conclusion is, therefore, that Peter was not skilled in the 
use of the Greek tongue, and that the epistles and addresses 

XXVIII. II 



154 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

that have come down to us as his were not penned or spoken 
by him in the form in which they have come down to us. — 
The second article is by Professor Fredrick Blass, Professor of 
Classical Philology, at the University of Halle. It is titled, 
•Neue Texteszeugeu liir die Apostelgeschichte.' The new 
witnesses are chiefly three ; a Latin text from the early part 
of the thirteenth century and now in the Bibliotheque Nation- 
ale of Paris, No. 321 ; another, which is in the Royal Library 
at Wemigerode; and next a Provencal translation, datin^r from 
the thirteenth century. All vary in some important particulars 
from the Vulgate, and Professor Blass gives us, so far as the 
Acts of the Apostles is concerned, a list of these variants, as 
likely to aid in getting at a correct text of the original work. 
— Dr. Carl Clemen, Privat-Docent at Halle, follows with an 
elaborate and extremely interesting paper on *Der Be^riff 
'* Religion " und seine verschiedenen Auffassungen.' He gives 
a series of the definitions of religion given by the most dis- 
tinguished German writers, who have adventured such, group- 
ing them according as they have regarded religion from the 
intellectual, aesthetic, or practical point of view. He then 
discusses the most important of them, and points out their 
merits and defects respectively. — Dr. Otto Kirn, Professor of 
Theology at Basel, treats of the significance of Law, and the 
Mosaic Law as a special form of it, for, or in. Christian ethics. 
His article bears the title *Das Gesetz in der christlichen 
Ethik' — The only other article here is by Herr Pfarrer Paul 
Durselen of Berlin, ' Uber eine Darstellung des christlichen 
Glaubens vom Gnadenstande aus.' — Professor Beer of Halle 
reviews Dillmann's *Handbuch der alttestamentlichen Theo- 
logic,' a posthumous work of the celebrated Oriental scholar. 

MUSSIA. 

VopROSi Philosophii I PsYCHOLOQii (January, 1896). — 
The first number of the present year opens with extracts or 
brief selections from the far-faraed Indian writings, the Upani- 
shads. The selections appear to have been made by a lady, 
who signs herself Vera Johnston. They are fitly opened by a 
brief motto from Schopenhauer, who says that * Deep, indepen- 
dent, high thoughts meet one on every page of the Upanishads. 
This very rich and very high subject is a teaching for the 
world. It was a comfort in life and will be a comfort in death.* 
The translator has undertaken no easy task. As a medium of 
expression Russian is not at all to be compared with Sanscrit. 
As compared with Sanscrit it is as a language but of yester- 
day. Moreover it is so poor in expressions for abstract concep- 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews, 155 

tions, that even when translating from a tongue so near to itself, 
in comparison with the Sanscrit, as the German, the translator 
has to occupy himself more and more with the selection and 
composition of such expressions as things in themselves or with 
world-conception in order to translate such terms as Das Ding an 
sich and Weltanschauung. Difficulties of this kind are the more 
hard to overcome when we have to do with translations from 
the Sanscrit tongue, which for fulness, of colouring and richness 
of expression is superior to any old or new European language. — 
The second article is on the autonomy of man and its various 
stadia or halting places, by L. E. Obolenskie. — The third article 
is by Prince Serge N. Trubetskoi, who takes for his subject 
the ' Foundation of Idealism.' — The last article but one in the 
general part of the journal is by the Russian thinker, Vladimir 
Solovieff, ' On the Reality of the Moral Order.' This article is 
immediately connected with a former, which appeared in No. 
30 of the ' Voprosi,' November, 1895. The author sets out 
from the logical development of the religious sensation, the 
unconditional moral element, which is the source of the ful- 
ness of good, containing in itself the obligatory relation of all 
to all. This again realises itself as a complete moral order, 
otherwise a kingdom of God. But how pure moral good 
ought to be experienced, though admitted by every preacher 
of the Categorical Imperative, is according to the author a 
position which is not so easy to make out. He then enters 
upon a discussion of the validity of the Ought — Das Sollen, as 
formulated by Kant, conditioned by the unconditional obliga- 
tory. — The concluding article is on the ' Development of the 
Idea of Imperial Necessity and Social Right in Italy,' as shown 
especially by the writings of Botero and Campanella. — On this 
follows an article on * Temperament,' and the usual critical 
notices and bibliography. 

ITALY. 

NUOVA Antologia (April 1). — P. Molmento describes the 
encyclopedic art of the Middle Ages. — G. Boglietti faithfully 
notes the progress which socialism has made in England, but 
asks what grounds William Morris and Belfort Bax have for 
their opinion that ' the advent of socialism is as inexorable and 
inevitable as the daily risins: of the sun ? ' — P. Lioy writes on 
* The Suggestions of the Unknown.' — G. Ricca Salerno dis- 
cusses the progressive tax in England and France, giving a 
brief account of taxes in general. — The serial story* The Sin 
of an Honest Woman,' by E. Castelnuovo, is continued ; and 
also the 'Origins of Poetry in Rome,' by E. Cocchia. — The 



156 Summariei of Foreign Rtvieat. 

bibliographioal bulletin praises General Booth's Life and 
Ixtbour of the People in London. — (April, 15th). — A portion of 
this number is devoted to a chapter irotn a book hy Senator 
Fitiali, just published, eutitled Le Marche nel I860,' in which 
Finali pitiuts out that hitherto an error has been committed by 
historiaus in attributing the victory of the battle of Castelfi- 
dardo to General Cialdini. That General was not in the battle, 
and knew nothing of it, only arriving when all was finished. 
Itut he bad so far contributed to succeas, in that he bad, by 
an able manoeuvre, prevented General Lamoriciere from rein- 
forcing the troops under General De Courten at Ancona, which 
fact greatly retarded the advance (if the r<>yal army into the 
kingdom of Naples. The greatest brunt of the battle, how- 
ever, was borne by the Regiua brigade, which had been led 
to victory by General Cialdiui the year previous at Sesia. — 
G. F. Ferraris contributes a translation of part of Marx's Kritik 
der Politiicken Oekonomie. — G. Goiian writes on military re- 
form, — E. Montecorboli has a long and appreciative article od 
Paul Verlaine. — The remaining numbers are continuations. — 
{May, 1st). — R. de Cesare points out the beginning of a new 
phase in the ecclesiastical policy of the Italian government, 
and that its new directiou has already pacified the Vatican. 
Only a united action responding to the moral and political 
necessities of the State can exercise a beneficial influence and 
be productive of good. — F. Torraca writes about Sicilian 
Bchools, and 'Historical Materialism' by Signor Ferrari, and 
Casteluuovo's romance are coutlnued.^G. Cimbali explains 
the political wisdom of Giovanni Botero. — E. Mancini des- 
cribes the progress made by and the future of electric hghting. 
— (May 16th). — E. Pinchia gives an interesting account of the 
family Debormida, the last hero of which lost his life at the 
battle of Adowah. — A. 8alandra writes a statistical paper 
entitled * Two Years of Finance,' and D. Carraroli a long 
article on the Hungarian Milennium. — 'Africa in the Green 
Books,' by E. Arbib, clears up a great deal that was obscure 
in the Italian campaign. — -(June, Ist) — ('. Ricci contributes a 
careful study on the paintings of Tiepolo, who was neglected 
during the period following his own, but has now received 
the acknowledgment of which he was worthy. — E. Catellaui, 
r describing events in the Soudan, advisee 
ould she be called to co-operate in the 
ml equilibrium has succeeded or is rapidly 
an equilibrium, and just as, in commerce, 
the most distant countries near, so ia 
i-orld exists now as a whole, the parts of 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews, 157 

which are the organs, and that in less than half a century to 
come, that EuropeaQ State which has no colonies and interests 
in all quarters of the world, will be simply wiped out from the 
list of great powers. — A. Luzio and R. Renier commence a 
series of papers on the luxury of Isabella of Este, describing 
her wardrobe, the customs of the Renasence, the influence on 
Italy of foreign countries, the inefiicacy of sumptuary laws, 
and the setting of the 'fashion' by Isabella. — P. Lioy writes 
an interesting article on rustic literature. — 0. Grande begins 
a novel ' The Cloud.' — D. Cortese writes on the * New Spirit,' 
which he says is as old as the world. — E. G. Boner discusses 
the Finnish *Kalewala.' — (June, 19th). — Besides continuations 
of previous papers, F. d*Ovidio writes on the sonnet addressed 
to Dante by Cavalcanti ; and I. Guidi on * Ancient Abyssinia.' 
— C Segrfe criticises Thomas flardy's Jude the Obscure in an 
unfavourable manner. He calls the book * the strongest ex- 
ample of the modem spirit ever seen.' *If Thackeray or 
Dickens could rise from the grave and hear the applause 
bestowed on this book, they would think modern men had 
been seized with a fit of madness.' ' The author,' the critic 
goes on to say, ' tries to prove that man is the mere victim 
and tool of his social surroundings. Love is the theme of the 
book, but the reader who looks for the old tenderness and 
calm in that passion will be cruelly disappointed. It is a 
saddening thing that a book like Jude the Obscure should have 
been conceived and found admirers in a country like England, 
where usually there prevails a simple and strict sense of jus- 
tice. The evil has penetrated deep, and it is time to rise 
and oppose the poisonous current, which will otherwise gain 
ground. With Carducci, the whole field of art should cry out 
"We must return to the traditions of our grand masters 1 " ' — 
G. Fraisan writes on money circulation in Italy. — 0. Z. Bianco 
reports the latest researches in ' Uranos ' and ' Neptune.' 

La Rassbgna Nazionale (April 1). — G. Zaccagni contri- 
butes an article on the late Signer Bonghi. — G. Villa concludes 
his paper on ' The Naturalist Romance,' in which he criticises 
the modern French, Russian, and German psychological 
writers, and comes to the couclusion that art should not be 
monopolized by any one school, for a really good work of art 
is neither classic, romantic, realistic nor socialistic ; neither 
idealistic nor psychological in its tone. Who would think of 
classifying as belonging to a special school the ' Don Quixote ' 
or the * Promessi Sposi ? ' When a work of art arouses discus- 
sion, it is a proof that it may have all qualities but the 
supreme one of being a masterpiece of art. No one dreams of 



158 'Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

discussing the artistic value of Shakspeare's dramas, while 
those of Victor Hugo stir up tempests of argument ; and, to 
come lower down in the scale, no one thinks of discussing 
Daudet's romances, while every one fights about Zola's. Ibsen 
is violently discussed, but not Sundermann. Art is derived 
from intuition of life, and no eesthetic or philosophical theory 
can give that intuition when it is wanting. — J. Isola writes a 
* Memoir of Cesere Cantu,' in commemoration of the first anni- 
versary of the historian's death. — * Regulus ' briefiy relates the 
story of the rule of the Dervishes from the rise of the Mahdi 
till now. He alludes to the struggle of the English, Abyssinians, 
and Italians with the dervishes, and insists on the necessity of 
exterminating their barbarous race. If the Italians and 
Abyssinians had allied themselves against the common enemy, 
and the English had not waited for the battle of Adowah 
before moving on Dongola, the power of the Dervishes would 
have been already broken. The present expedition of the 
English will perhaps have greater consequences than is now 
foreseen. It is to be hoped that a blow will be struck against 
the dervishes from Kassala and Dongola from which they will 
never recover, and that the fanaticism which has devastated, 
some fifteen years, the region which Europe believed she had 
reclaimed for civilization, will cease. — P. Stoppani writes on 
Lourdes, a paper which gives the Catholic point of view. — 
(April 16). — G. Grabinski, writing on the new Vie de Saint 
Francois d^ Assise, by Paul Sabatier, says that while rendering 
due homage to the literary and paleographic value of this 
work, he is constrained to conclude that Sabatier has not 
given the world a page of objective history, but a treatise too 
much imbued with Protestant prejudice and the rationalistic 
spirit of negation. Sabatier is no doubt sincere, but his book 
is, in times like the present, a danger. Grabinski then sub- 
jects the book to strict criticism, and concludes by hoping that 
some literary man of value will take upon himself the easy 
task of writing a history of the Saint worthy to rival that of 
Sabatier, while combating the errors in the latter. — ^P. Rossi 
furnishes a statistical article on the industries of the province 
of Verona. — (May 1st). — In an article called 'Abandoned In- 
fancy ' C. Bassi cites the example set in England by the 
'National Society for the prevention of cruelty to Children,' 
describing what it has done. He says that Italy has 30 
millions of inhabitants, and if only a fourth of that num- 
ber would subscribe the trifling sum of one soldo a day for 
such an institution much could be done. At least 55,000 
«^«indoned children could be cared for and educated.— 



.Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 159 

E. Artoum describes the financial syndicates of England. 
— The dialogues on the Temporal Power are continued, 
and T. Regulus writes on Sicily. — (May 16th) — A. von Scwarz 
describee the ancient divination by fire, traces of which 
superstition may still be traced in some parts of Italy. — N. 
Bardelli reviews M. Sigogue's 'L'Artde parler.' — R Mazzei 
contributes a paper on ' God iu Art,' — Then follows the 
pastoral letter addressed to his people by the Bishop of 
Cremona on emigration, full of good advice to struggling 
Italians. — G. Grabinski contributes a memoir of the late 
Cardinal Galimberti. — (June 1st) — I. Petroni discusses the 
philosophy of law in the light of critical idealism. — There is a 
review by A. Ghigusni of a recent volume of remarkable 
poems by G. Bertacbe.- — The proceedings of the trial of 
General Baratieri are fully published. — (June 16th) — G. 
Marcotti writes a long interesting article on 'Unknown France' 
describing caverns, valleys, the various churches and abbeys, 
ancient ruins, etc. — T, Lnxow has much to say on the bestowal 
of prizes on art productions. — P. S. writes on social legislation. 
— Regulus on the recent deplorable events in Crete, and V. 
Recci on decentralization. 

La Vita Italiana (May) — ' To the Marquis of Rudini.' — 
'Africa iu legend and history,' by Prof. De Gubernatis. — 
' Tarquinia Cometo.' — ' Baroness Corti.' — ' Enrique Serra.' — 
' The Cock's Tower at Florenca' — ' A glance at the sky.' — 
'Venetian charity.' — 'Paolina Leopardi.' — ' Tbe Valley of 
Pompei.' — ' Constantinople.' — ' Veronese dialectic poets.' 

Il Pensiero Itax,ian-o (May). — ' A raorphologic problem 
regarding the superior vertebrates,'—' Vittorio Alfieri.' — ' The 
genesis of moral sense in relation to the organic sexual 
differences of the human race.' — *A musical drama,' by 
Metaotaeis. — ' The perils of Vaticanism iu the Italian State.' — 
' Positivism and the problem of liberty.' 

Napoli Nobilissima (May). — Contains : ' The Bass-relief 
at Porto and the legend of Nicole Pesee,' by Benedetto Croce, 
in which are noticed recent studies on the curious legend 
above mentioned, and a very rare Spanish romance of the 
beginning of the 17th century is described. — 'The Church of 
S. Teresa agli Studi,' by G. Ceci. — Doc '■'■ --■'-- -■— 

Emporium (May). — 'Adolf Menzel.'- 
servers,' by F. Porro. — ' Elizabeth Bar 
House of the Vettii at Pompei.' — ' A Pr 
the 17th century.' — ' The ScientiGo B 
Italy,' eta 



160 Summaries of Foreign Beviewe. 

GiOBNALE DEOLi EoONOMiSTA (May) contains: <The Spread 
of the Americana' — * The Agronomic Base of the theory of 
Rents.'—* The Reform of Local Taxea'— * The Banks in the 
Province of Reggio Emilia.' — * Providence,' etc. 

Natura ED Arte (April 1) — contains : * The Resurrection 
of Italian Art^' — *The Poets of the Country — Giovanni 
Guidiccioni.' — (April 15). — * Women and J e wels.' — * The 
Descendants of the Queen of Sheba.' — * The Evangelists of 
Francesco Podesti.' — * Giannino Baglioni,' pretender to France, 
which is a curious and little known story of a pretender to the 
throne of France. A certain Guccio Baglioni, who lived in 
Siena at the end of the 13th century, went to establish himself 
in Paris, and there secretly married a noble lady, Marie di 
Carey, by whom he had a son, who was named Giannino. 
The marriage being discovered, the father was obliged to fly, 
but, nine years later, was able to return to France, where he 
went to fetch Giannino, with whom he returned to Siena- 
But, so the story runs, it was not his son whom he had fetched 
but the Dauphin of France I During the ceremony of baptism 
this son of King Louis had been exchanged with the son of 
Baglioni, in order to save the former from the intrigues of 
Prince Philip, who aspired to the throne. The real son of 
Baglioni died in infancy. The exchange of children was 
revealed by Marie di Carey to her confessor on her deathbed, 
twenty years later. The confessor went to Rome, and told all 
to Cola di Rienzi, then a tribune, who sent for the supposed 
Giannino Baglioni, who was still living at Siena, and revealed 
to him his real personality, proving it by documents and the 
testimony of Marie di Carey s confessor. Cola di Rienzi urged 
the young man to claim his rights, promising to give him his 
support. Soon after Rienzi died. The pretender returned to 
Siena and compiled a memorandum begging the sovereigns of 
Europe for their protection, and forwarded six copies in Italy 
and six abroad. He received no reply whatever, and went to 
Venice to induce that Republic to take his part, but without 
effect. He then made another attempt with the King of Hun- 
gary, but failed, and thereupon returned to Siena, where a 
rich Jew furnished him with money on the promise that if he 
attained to the throne he would not a,llow the Jews to be per- 
secuted. In 1360 Giannino went to Avignon, where the Pope 
refused to receive him. He then gathered together a troop of 
adventurers and marched on Lyons, but he was betrayed, 
arrested by order of the Pope, and imprisoned in the castle of 
Marseilles. Thence he was sent to Naples, and kept in the 
"^astle deir Voo, where he died in 1363. There exists a docu- 



Summariet of Foreign Reviewt. 161 

ment in the parish of Saint Dnmenic io Siena, a book contaiu- 
infi^ the lists of death, wherein is registered the death of 
Giannino Baglioni, with the note that on his corpse was found 
•the cross which it was the custom to impress on the shoulder 
of a dauphin of France 'and all dependents of the Royal 
House of France,' The author of the article, Siguor 
Am'ghi, suggests that the foreign archives should be 
examiued io order to ascertain whether any of them 
contain a document relating to the subject of this story. 
— 'On the Julian Alps.' — 'Submarine Telegraphs.' — 'Pic- 
tures in tempora and alfresco' — 'Marat as a Journalist' — An 
inedited letter written in Italian by Alexander Dumas /iU. — 
(April 15) — In this number is published, contributed by a lady 
residing in Reggio, a letter in broken Italian, by Alexander 
Dumas _^^s, which, translated, runs thus: — 'Sir, only to-day 
have I returned from a little journey into the interior of 
France; I found your book, for which I thank you a thousand 
timea My first moment shall be employed in reading it, and I 
shall be honoured and fortunate in finding myself at once your 
admirer and political friend. Pardon ray bad Italian ; I shall 
be more learned when I have read your book. Believe 
me, your devoted, A. Dumas. Rue St. Lazare, 40.' — The May 
numbers contain: 'Prizes at the Rome Exhibition of Fine 
Arts.'— 'Melan's Hermitage at Little S. Bernard and Aosta.' — 
' Scraps of Medical Science.' — ' Marco Mingheltd as a Soldier.' 
— 'Ostende and Scbeveningro.' — 'The Springtime of Italian 
Painting.' — ' G. Rouvetta and his First Historic Drama.' — * The 
15th May, 18+8, at Naples.'— 'A French Doctor, Friend of 
Italy, Peter de Nolhac' — ' The Commensalisra of Animals.' — 
' The Olympic Games,' etc. 

FRANCE. 
RBVDE de L'HiSTomE DES RELIGIONS (No. 2, 1896). — M. J. 
Philippe continues and concludes bis series of studies on 
' Lucretius in Christian Theology from the first to the thir- 
teenth century, and specially in Sie Carlovingian Schoola' In 
this, the third of the series, he shows from the writings of the 
distinguished theologians of the eighth century, and after, 
that Lucretius continued to be read and studied by them, and 
that his influence was very widely felt in the whole Western 
Church, and afi'ected the exegesis, the physics, and 
physics of the schools. Though branded as a heret 
atheist of the deepest dye, and volumes were devo 
refutation of his opinions, yet copies of his works " 
fully treasured in abbeys and monasteries, and thi 



162 Summaries of Foreign Bevtetoe. 

bis teaching is seen in the writings t»f many who scropnionslj 
avoid mentioning his name. M. Philippe establishes all his 
points by numerous quotations, and often places the lines of 
Lucretius in footnotes so that the value of his assertions may 
be tested by his readers for themselves. — There follows the 
second part of M. Frederic Macler's article on * The Apocryphal 
Apocalypses of Daniel' In accordance with the promise given 
in the last section, he gives us here a translation of the Coptic 
version. It is only the first part of the translation which is 
given in this number ; the rest will follow in order. It is here 
preceded by a brief introduction, describing the persecutions 
which the Copts suflFered at the hands of the various powers 
that ruled over Egypt. It was these persecutions which fur- 
nished the cause of the rise and development of this kind of 
literature in the Christian communities there, as elsewhere. 
The persecution under Diocletian, and those instituted by the 
Byzantine emperors, were followed by even more terrible 
measures taken against the Copts by the Arabs, whom the 
former had invited to come to their help. Driven to despair by 
their severe and prolonged sufferings, the Christians in Egypt 
sought refuge in the hope of the future, — ^in the foretold 
coming of the Messiah a second time to gather together his 
redeemed and deliver them from all their enemies, introducing 
then a glorious era of peace and fehcity. Mr. Macler, in his 
introduction, gives us also a short summary of the contents of 
this apocalypse, while in a series of footnotes, which accompany 
the translation, he shows how closely the writer, or writers, of 
it adhered to the historical setting and form of the canonical 
Daniel. After the introduction to the apocalypse, which, like 
that of Daniel itself, is in appearance historical, the prophet 
depicts a vision concerning the kingdom of the children of 
Ishmael. During the reign of the nineteenth and last king of 
that race over Egypt, his enemy, Pitourgos, will come against 
him, and put him to flight and to death. Next will come the 
king of the Romana Gog and Magog will after that convulse 
the earth; then will appear the antichrist; and finally the 
Ancient of Days, who will destroy the antichrist, and then 
reign for ever. At the close of the apocalypse Daniel receives 
from God the command to seal up all these things unto the 
time of their accomplishment. — M. L. Marillier next continue^, 
and here concludes, his exhaustive review of. Dr. Edward 
Caird's Gifford Lectures on the ' Evolution of Religion.' It is 
nearly a year and a half since the first part of this review 
appeared, and we had begun to f6ar that surely the sequel of 
it had miscarried. The first part gave a summary of the con- 



— I 



f 

Simmaries of Foreign Reviews. 163 

tents of the work, and paid a warm tribute to the lucidity and 
charm of the author's style, and to the philosophical value of 
the work ; the reviewer then promising to subject the volumes 
to a careful scrutiny later on. That promise is fully fulfilled here. 
M. Marillier's criticisms, however, are given with a kindly hand. 
Of course the title of the work, read in the light of its con- 
tents, is found fault with, as by almost all its critics on this 
side of the channel. The limits within which Dr. Caird con- 
fined himself in treating his subject, M. M. thinks, as many 
others have done, have necessarily prevented him from giving 
anything like an adequate account of the evolution of religion. 
It is the evolution of Christianity only that he has traced, and 
sought to trace, in his lectures. His conclusions, therefore, as 
to the evolution of religion may be correct, but it is impossible 
for him, excluding, as he has done, so many religions from 
account, to demonstrate their accuracy. Another fault found 
with Dr. Caird^s treatment of his subject is, that he constantly 
looks at religion from the intellectual side, regards it, that is, 
as a system of opinions, as the product of human reason, or 
reasoning, and so fails to take, or to take suflScient, note of the 
complex parentage of it, — the emotions, sentiments, fears, and 
fancies, that all play their part in the genesis and development 
of religion. Dr. Caird is here throughout the metaphysician, 
and has forgotten that to carry out his self-imposed task it 
was necessary for him to lay aside for the time being that 
character, and to become the historian pure and simple. M. 
Marillier's article here is not only a masterly review of Dr. 
Caird's lectures, but forms in itself a valuable contribution to 
religious science. 

Kevue des Religions (No. 2, 1896.) — M. the Abbe de Moor 
continues here his essay on 'The origin of the Egyptian people 
and its civilization, according to Egyptian legend and the 
Bible.' It will be remembered from previous summaries that 
the learned Abb6 thinks he has discovered the secret of, or the 
key to the right interpretation of, the Osirian legend, which 
has hitherto puzzled Egyptologists, folklorists, and others. He 
has found the key, he thinks, in the Genesis narratives, which 
bear on the origin and early history of the race, and in the 
references, elsewhere made, chiefly in the apocalyptic litera- 
ture, Jewish and Christian, to the revolt ot the angels and 
their consequent expulsion from heaven. All these things, the 
learned Abb^ takes, of course, to be historical facts, and, taking 
them as such, he here endeavours to show in detail how the 
Opirian legend, when read in the light of these facts, becomes 
intelligible, and is seen to be in harmony with the Biblical 



J 



164 Summariaa of foreign Reviewt. 

recorcl. The Osiriaa legend, he regards, as a miicb corrupted 
and diefigared version of the story of the revolt of the angels 
under Satan, of the history of the Cainitea, the Abelites, and 
the Sethites, and of the corruption of the race through ein, and 
its subsequent destnictioD by the flood. In these facts we 
have, M. de Moor tells us, the real foundations of the Egyptian 
legend ; and with these facta before us, we are now able lo 
spell out its true Hguificaoce. They enable us to strip off 
the accretions due to generations of fanciful conteurs, who en- 
deavoured to make up for their pardonable ignorance, or 
faulty memories, by the liveliness of their poetic imaginatioo. 
M, de Moor carries forward here his self-imposed task of un- 
ravelling this tangled skein of fact and fancy. The details, 
of course, are very numerous, and the success of his effort can 
only be judged by those who carefully read the learned Abba's 
paper throughout The revolt of the dhildreu of Ra against 
him, in the Egyptian legend is, it seems, a distorted reminis- 
cence of the Satanic revolt The Isis of the legend is the 
Satan of the Biblical tradition. The punishment ordered to 
be inflicted by Ra, is also but a distorted version of the des- 
truction of the race as given in the Biblical story of the flood. 
In fact we have but to read the Egyptian legend in the light 
of the early chapters of Genesis, making liberal allowance for 
forgetfuluess of details inevitable in the course of time, and 
the process of identiflcation becomes comparatively easy. — 
M, Castonnet des Fosses continues next his paper on ' Japan 
from the religious point of view.' He gives us here an his- 
torical outline of the planting and growth of Buddhism in 
Japan. The ancient Shinto faith, be tells us, is professed to- 
day by about a third only of the people of Japan. The various 
>t coutinue to exist up to now are described, so far as 
ding tenets are concerned; the number of their temples 
'ely and of their priests is roughly given; and the 
in which their adherents stand to the seota differing 
3m, or the members thereof, is indicated. It is an 
of contemptuous, rather than of benevolent, neutrality, 
Bourdais follows with a study in Egyptian hierology. 
the title ' La production dee ^tres par la Divinit^,' 
^er seeks in his article to show from several Egyptian 
lat the idea that everything was created, (all beings 
), not by God, the Supreme Being, but by one who 
name of the Word, and the Truth, la Parole, la Verite, 
iliar to the Egyptians from the most remote times, 
ludes, therefore, that we have here a reminiscence of 
eval fact, preserved to as in the Bible in its purity, 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 165 

that all things were created by the Logos, the second person 
of the Trinity. — M. the Abb6 Loisy furnishes a short study on 
the last fragment of the book of Jashar, *Le dernier fragment 
du Jasar.' The last quotation from that lost work is not, as 
M. Renan, and others with him, have thought, David's lament 
over Saul's and Jonathan's death. There is a still later quo- 
tation from it, one which belongs to the time of Solomon. It 
appears in the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the 
temple. It occurs in 1 Kings, viii. 13. It is awanting in that 
place in the Ixx. version, but appears later on in the prayer, 
viz., at the end of it, and is there accompanied by a valuable 
note, ' Behold, is not this written in the Book of the Song? ' 
The translator from the Hebrew has, however, M. Loisy thinks, 
slightly misread his text here, in fact confounded the final resh 
of the word before him with daleth, and so read 'Song' instead 
of * Jasar.' The study is of considerable interest, and merits 
the attention of Biblical students. — The ' Chroniqne ' here, as 
usual, is of a somewhat cosmopolitan character; and the 
appreciations of the literature of the two months cannot but 
be helpful to all the readers of the Revue, 

Revue Des Etudes Juives (No. 4, 1895). — M. Theodore 
Reinach has the first place here with an article headed 
* L'Empereur Claude et les antisemites alexandrines d'apres un 
nouveau papyrus.' The new papyrus has a somewhat curious 
history. Part of it, but in a very mutilated condition, was 
discovered lately in the Berlin Museum, and was published, 
translated, and commented on, in Hermes, xxx. 485ff., by Herr 
Wilcken. But another fragment of it has since been dis- 
covered in the Museum at Gizeh by M. Pierre Jouguet, and 
was reported by him in his annual Memoire to the Academic 
des Inscriptions of Paris. M. Reinach saw at once that it 
formed part of the document lately pubhshed by Herr 
Wilcken, and, acquainting M. Jouguet with the fact, was 
promptly furnished by him with a copy of the Gizeh papyrus. 
M. Reinach, taking advantage of this kindness, and with M. 
Jouguet's permission, publishes here both fragments, and 
details the legal process of which it gives an account. It tells 
of a trial which took place before the Emperor Claudius at 
Rome in presence of an august assemblage of notables, one of 
whom was the Empress. The accused was King Agrippa 
(Wilcken identifies him with Agrippa II., but M. Reinach dis- 
poses of that idea very summarily, and shows that it must have 
been Herod Agrippa I.). The accusation was evidently 
brought against Agrippa by certain bitter opponents of the 
Jews in Alexandria in Egypt, who had been enraged at the 




166 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

pomp displayed by Agrippa when passing through that city 
on his way from Rome in 38 A.D. to take possession of his 
Tetrarchy, as also, doubtless, by the many favours he had then 
and afterwards shown to the Jewish colony there whenever 
occasion offered. It was he, too, who secured for the Jews in 
Egypt an edict from Claudius, when he came to the throne, 
securing to them the enjoyment of all their former privileges. 
To those in Alexandria who hated the Jews, and they were 
seemingly not few, this was an unpardonable offence. Frag- 
mentary as the papyrus still is, it enables M. Reiuach to follow 
so far the course of the trial, and to show that Claudius was 
favourable to the accused. If M. Reinach is correct in this, 
then the trial took place in the year 41. — The second article 
is by M. Ludwig Blau. It is on the * Origine et Histoire, 
de la lecture du Schema et des formules de benediction qui 
Taccompagnent.' M. Blau acknowledges that it is now 
impossible to say with any certainty when the use of it was 
first introduced into Jewish services. He thinks, however, 
that what forms the first part of it, viz., Deut. vi. 4-9, came 
very probably to be repeated early in the Persian period by 
the officiating priests in the temple, just before the offering of 
the morning sacrifice, and this as a testimony that the sacrifice 
was offered to Jahveh, the true and only God, and not to the 
Persian deity, the god of light. The history of the additions 
that were made to the first formula in the course of time is 
also involved in considerable obscurity, although it may be 
traced with more certain results in regard to many points. 
The references to the reading or repetition of Shema are very 
numerous in the Talmudic writers, and M. Blau here adduces 
a large number of them to establish the time and place he 
assigns to the additions made to it up to its receiving its 
present form. He discusses the whole question with great 
learning and quite scholarly patience. — M. Israel Levi next 
devotes a few pages to refuting the claims so long and so often 
made by Jewish writers in regard to Hillel that he was of 
Davidic origin. He examines the documents on whose testi- 
mony the claim has been based, and shows very clearly how 
little value can be placed on them. He brings forward also a 
formidable array of very strong objections against the validity 
of the claim. — There are several noteworthy articles in addi- 
tion to these in this number, though they do not extend to 
such dimensions. M. Martin Schreiner furnishes interesting 
* Contributions k Thistoire des Juifs en Egypte.' — M. D. Kaut- 
mann two short studies, viz., (1) * Les 24 martyrs d'Ancone,*^ 
and (2) * Deux lettres nouvelles des Marranes aux Levantins 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews, 167 

touchant rinterruptions des aflfaires aveo Ancone/ — M. Kohut 
discourses oa * Le Had Gadya et les chansons similaires/ — M. 
Bloch concludes his paper, ' Une expulsion de Juifs en Alsace 
au XVI. piecle.' — M. Weill writes on 'Les Juifs et le Saint 
Simonism.' — The * Notes et Melanges' are also very numerous, 
and embrace a rich variety of exegetic, grammatical, and 
historical matters. — The ' Bibliographie ' is contributed by M. 
Mayer Lambert and M. W. Bacher. It contains critical appre- 
ciations of recent works by Landau, H. L. Strack, and Samuel 
Poznanftki. 

Revue Philosophique (May, 1896). — A. FouilliSe's 'Necessity 
for a Psychological and Sociological Interpretation of the 
World' discusses the various theories of the universe, and 
concludes that the psychological can explain the physical but 
not vice versa — * how can we explain this reality [which lies 
behind sensible appearances] except after the type of the sole 
reality known to us immediately and in itself, I mean our 
conscious existence ? ' In the same way the author lays stress 
on the idea of organism in the universe as well as in human 
society. — The first portion of a paper by F. Le Dantec on 
* The Chemical Evolution of Species ' considers the effect of 
surrounding fluids in destroying or altering low forms of life. — 
George Fonsegrieve concludes his 'Generalisation and Induc- 
tion.' He denies that there is au^ht in induction which con- 
stitutes a special form of reasoning, an original discursus of 
the mind. — A note on experiments on perception of coloured 
objects by L. Duprat. — (June, 1896). — ' Experimental Re- 
searches on Joy and Sorrow,' by G. Dumas. The present 
instalment deals with joy in its physical aspect^. *The 
primitive and essential condition of joy is cerebral vaso-dilation, 
accompanied by acceleration of the pulse and respiration, and 
by excessive mental activity.' Several observations of caaes 
of insanity from the Sainte-Anne Hospital are given, from 
which M. Dumas shows that those madmen who imagine 
themselves kings, millionaires, etc., owe their delusions to their 
physical condition. ' In the case of general paralysis, vaso- 
dilation is anterior to any intellectual condition.' In short the 
mental and physical phenomena of joy act and react on one 
another. — In * The Involution and Relative order of Ideas as 
revealed by Language ' M. de la Grasserie draws attention to 
the importance of language as an index of mental habits. — 
M. Ch. F6re in 'The Hand, Prehension, and Touch' has a 
variety of interesting information to oflfer. He concludes that 
^ like all other organs of sense and motion the hand offers con- 
siderable individual varieties. A considerable number of de- 




168 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

fects are iticapable of being corrected by exercise. Just as 
deaf and colour-blind persons should be debarred from certcdn 
studies, so should those furnished with imperfect hands. Just 
as in some individuals the eye or the ear can convey only 
incomplete or false notions to the mind, so the hand in others. 
The hand is at once the agent and the interpreter of mental 
development, and deserves more attention on the part of 
physiologists and psychologists, who have somewhat necrlected 
if — A note on the idea of the Social Organism. — Reviews of 
Books. — Summaries of Russian (May) and German (June) 
philosophical journals. — (July, 1896). — M. L. Dauriac continues 
his ' Study in the Psychology of the Musician,' and seeks to 
investigate the nature of the pleasure produced by music. — 
Dr. Dumas' 'Experimental Researches on Joy and Grief 
(second part) deals with the physical phenomena of grief. — 
An interesting paper on * The Logic of the Infant' by Dr. 
Bernard Mudz, translated by A. Keller. — The * General Review 
of Peychophysics ' analyses the articles on the subject which 
have appeared in German periodicals from April 1895 to April 
of this year. — Reviews of Books. — Summaries of American 
and English psychological magazines. 

Revue Semitique d'Epigraphie et d'Histoire Anciennb 
(No. 2, 1896).— M. J. Hal6vy's * Recherches Bibliques ' in this 
No., continue his critical examination of the text of Genesis, 
and his notes for the interpretation of the Psalma The Genesis 
section embraces chap, xxviii. 10, on to the end of chap, xxxi., 
that is, the history of Jacob from his flight from Beersheba to 
his return from Haran as far as Mount Gilead, where he finally 
parted from Laban. The order followed by M. Halevy is the 
same as in the former sections. A brief summary is given of 
the contents of the section ; the Hebrew text is then minutely 
examined, emendations, where thought necessary, are sug- 
gested, and explanatory notes are given of words or phrases, 
which the fuller and more accurate knowledge, of Hebrew as 
a language, and of Semitic customs, in these days, enables a 
scholar like M. Halevy to give ; and finally, there is a section 
devoted to showing the unity of the text throughout, in 
opposition to the dismemberment and partitioning of the 
text to this and that writer, as is done by the so-called modern 
critical school. M. Halevy's explanatory notes are often very 
ingenious, if not always convincing, while his emendations of 
the text are invariably such as are, at least, justifiable, and 
render the meaning clearer and more consistent with the con- 
text. As in the margin of the Revised Version, so here, M. 
Halevy in Gen. xxviii. 13, renders the proposition as 'beside,' 



"e — 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 169 

not as * above,' as in our Authorised Version. Jahve stood 
beside Jacob, when he spoke to him, and not at the top of the 
ladder. As instances of M. Hal6vy's explanatory and illus- 
trative notes, both of their strength and of their weakness, we 
might select the following. Jacob's astonishment was not, we 
are told, caused by the theophany itself ; it arose from his own 
ignorance of the sanctity of the place, seeing that it had been 
a consecrated place since at least the days of Abraham. Again 
we are told, Leah received but one servant on the occasion of 
her marriage, because Jacob brought no dowry ; while Re- 
becca was sent away with a numerous retinue of servants 
because her parents received, through the negotiating messen- 
ger, numerous and costly gifts. Ap:ain, the reason why Rachel 
stole her father's teraphim, M. Hal^vy tells us, was merely to 
prevent her father from divining by means of them the route 
the fugitives had taken, a somewhat foolish precaution, surely, 
when we think of the number of retainers that accompanied 
Jacob, and the numerous flocks and herds he owned. The 
chief interest of these Genesis studies, however, lies in their 
vindication of the substantial unity of the text. In regard to 
the section before him here, he has chiefly Dillmann in his 
mind ; and it is in opposition to his arguments that he here 
defends the consecutiveness of the narrative, and its perfect 
harmony with all that precedes it. The section devoted to 
the Psalms embraces Psalms xlvi. to Ivii. inclusive. Here again 
the text is subjected to a minute and scholarly analysis, its 
errors, arising probably from the mistakes of copyists, are 
noted, and corrections suggested; explanatory notes are given 
where thought to be needed, and reasons are offered tor 
assigning, where possible, the date of composition and origi- 
nating occasion for each. A lengthy inscription from a cunei- 
form text follows, here transcribed and translated by M. 
Hal^vy also. — M. Alfred Boissier furnishes, in the same way, 
two fragmentary texts relating to Shamash-shum-ukin. They 
are accompanied with explanatory notes. — An interesting 
article follows, again by M. J. Halevy, on the influence of the 
Pentateuch on the Avesta. The similarity between these 
works in their account of the creation of the world and of the 
human race through a single pair ; in their account of the 
introduction of sin into the world, and of the destruction of 
the race that followed ; their descriptions of the intimate re- 
lations existing between the Deity and the pre-eminently just 
man ; these points of similarity have been long observed, and 
have frequently provoked the question, which of the two 
works is the older and has been utilised by the other. At 

XXVIII. 12 




MnM ef 



... ...„i .1,. priori.., to ".e^isl:^^:^^^ 

«.l.l> n.ii.n wi)(ljly reiUKiim for rtill boUiiu' ^i^?^ 

' "'■:""■■>' '••.■hlj'ii M. J. Pem-c™ c^,S^S-1S 

1 , 1j I , 7 " ., ""* '""npooo of B«--tti,»k «J 

li .'',,,.,«, il",l J™'" k'°<'™<i "o Uioee to wUcii di^ £,„ 

\ hi! Z\ 'vihl''^'" /'""■ "l""!"' 189«>--Tho Mo.i ia a,i 
XI . »...! Mll,(;,.,,.u„»,. Stu.l,i„ Socid PTcbolo-T-bT 

1/ ' .' "i 1 " '.'''.''■"'", """"•'"»■'-' PhoqihAte. of iSi. bV 
li. I i.l.i.'liii.(. I^Bttur Ji-om rortogal,' bv E. Oeiaho—'Pre^ 
I... .....I.. ► , ,i..|„,.i,„., . , ,|i|,l,t sketch by Mxiinio Foniuh.- 

I "" i"" . "."i' ,'!" '™.»>«t.o«> of Horace's odo. to Tirrf 
|'l''^'/||;j^'l'"'. ''."'■"""".•l-<).«.Z"giie.-ChironiqiieTbc«,Jo|y 

AVM IN. 

U K IMA wMnmUMA (April, 1896.)-J„an Valer. criticise. . 
"I'.l. "I. III.. .l.Kuil«, mi.i.tlj. iisued anonjuiouilv, and dealilur 
»l I. Ih.* driiMU I,, ,ii|,,.i„„- Imiiiility and acm.I pride. IS 

II I..il.i" t" ivvii.w flu. position of the Jesuits with know- 

''"''"'. "" '"' .'""" »i'b « »'•". ".Ill seeks to show that the anonv- 

','""■ ".""'"' .'.;"" '! llii"<li.-e. He acknowledges at the same 

Mi.i'i, lli.ll Mill .ri'siiit- iif tlio present day display a limitation and 
liili.iiMps lit .liiii iiptuiHeit t<i their original aspirations. 'They 
■mil I Mi.il 111,, lull,,, kill, smi 111,, ,|,irit vivifies, and forget wha't 
.1' "|.l. I ..I l.'iilli nill ,l„ 1,1 glorify all truth before the eyes of 
111.... ..Iiii l„ll,„ It,. A eriliVisni of the . Sample Tales of Cer- 

..iiilii", ,.i» N,.v,'l,is |i.t,.nipliiivs, notes that the aothor claims 

'l '"' '" I"' "I,"] '" ..|.|..'.V' in Spanishi to which the Marqnis 

. 11,11 I, irii. ,i,I,In ..,r,,i, ,11 any language.' — Echeearay con- 
II..11.. 111. 11,11,1 iil.iv,,,,,,,, ,n„| tli...„i arc followed by -The Ad- 
..'llllii.i, mill Mi.i„|v„nl,iiv« of an old Soldier,' which continue to 
I ... ,1 ..inliiit. li„lnl,f Into tlu. ordinary life of the country dur- 
II 111. ....iiliiiv, Mm mi,.,',l,itoN aiv not always such as could be 

I",", ','"" l'.i.»lll>lu«.ri...li.-all The tradition that literature 

ijl" I'li'iilniw has not yet lieon dissipated in Spain 'The 

l.«..f 111., .luni™ ot Moulijo' continue to afford interest 
inium.niTOl In the liistorian and society reader.— A. de Val- ' 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 171 

buenna tells a curious tale of the condition of Spanish official 
maps, which may help to explain the state of ignorance of Cuban 
geography amongst the military. — *The Literary Chronicle' deals 
with Scandinavian literature, and the orthographic reform in 
Chili. The writer appeals against the democratisation of the 
spelling, by the elimination of what is historic and erudite. 

* The International Chronicle' explains clearly and well the situ- 
ation in Egypt, and shows how the French blundered in retiring 
from the dual control there.' ' The International Press ' handles 
Tolstoi's Parables ; Wolf's Spanish and Portuguese Literature 
is continued, and Book Notices are full. — (May, 1896) — * The 
Salons of the Countess of Montijo ' ends in this number, with 
the notice of the private theatricals that inaugurated the pro- 
clamation of Alfonso XII. as King of Spain. — * The Adventures 
of an old Soldier' show how utterly ignorant the common soldiers 
were of the cause they died for, or why or for whom they fought. 
' The people who rob and kill are not the people but the mob,' or 
the roughs as we might say, is given in a popular distich. The 
old soldier sums up with the assurance that * everything political 
is evil,' and in better managed lands than in Spain this is becom- 
ing an accepted axiom. It is clear also from his account that 
Spain does not treat her veterans any better say — than England ! 
' Reminiscences,' the chatty recollections of Echegaray, continue. 

* Recollections of Bequer,' by Miguel S. Oliver, is written with 
appreciative sympathy. Emilio Pardo Bazan completes her smart 
novel of * Adam and Eve,' the memoirs of a Highlander. — * The 
International. Press ' translates a clever article from the French 
Review of Reviews^ on the Russian Nobles, showing how they 
have nothing in common w^ith Western aristocracy at any period 
of the growth of the latter. In commenting on an article in 
' Social Science ' of Barcelona, on * The Intellectual Youth of 
Spain,' by Sr. Unamuno, a frank admission is made — * One may 
say that intellectual progress follows the wealth and power of 
nations. Our culture corresponds, in this respect, to our present 
historic situation * ; and he acknowledges that after a century of 
struggle, internal and otherwise, Spain is exhausted and asleep. 
A valuable paper on an interesting subject, Bibliography and 

* Castilian and Portuguese Literature,' close a good number. — 
(June, 1896) — ' The Sociological novel,' of which Looking Back- 
ward is a type, is the theme of a good paper by A. Builla y 
Alegre. — * The Adventures of an old Soldier ' continues full of 
short anecdotes, mainly of the civil wars in Spain. In this con- 
nection he justly remarks, that especially in civil wars should it 
be the case that the combatants fight to conquer and not to slay. 
— The 'New Biography of the Abbe Manchena,' by Menendez 



172 

J Pcbjo, b a scan edhSon for scb^lin. For Ike reriewer ex- 
pbhM, Uiat uis DotaLje f€<>9a7u:i2it cf tae irreSgioosphikncyphj 
of the 18th cjc utuir, and fcremoBt rrr^TixioaBt of that age in 
Spam» &vls DO ioteliectaal sj cpathv, hot the lererae, in him, 
hts blo'^rapher. His life was full of interert and actiritT, and it 
is well for it to be within the reach of students of history and 
haman progrem, — '' The Erolntion of Political Parties in Spain/ 
is a critical stndr of the growth of th«^ present political divisions 
in that coootrr, br Bafaei Sa2:!!as. — * The International Chroni- 
cle ' treats of the dangers in Europe and Aaa, and sees great 
cante fcM* anxietr in the C(.»i:dnct and position of Prince Ferdin- 
and of Bulgaria. — '' The Spanish Cnminal ' is a stndy, philolo- 
gical, psychological, and sociological, by Sr. Salillas. — ^A clever 
work from Bichter commences in the * International Press,' en- 
titled * After the Vici«T <rf Socialism — ^The Feast of Victory.' 
It commences : * The red fla^, symbol of international democ- 
racy, flutters in the royal palace and in all the public buildings 
of Berlin/ etc., etc. * Castillian and Portuguese Ldterature,' 
Biblic^aphy, and new works published, make up a full and use- 
ful numben 

HOLLAND. 

De Gids (May.) — This number begins with a story by Cyriel 
Buysse, *Mr. Oogeoa's Vexation,' a story which is a clever 
delineation of lower middle class life but the denouement — 
the fioding of a tape worm inside one of the characters is in- 
expressibly disgusting.—* A theory of Smell,' by Dr. H. 
Zwaardemaker, is a scientific article of much interest, and 
uaanm to open the way to a more succinct and simpler explica- 
tion of the difficult and delicate problems which this sense 
proposes to investigators. — Professor Kalff concludes his article 
begun in April on ^Vondel's Life,' an extremely interesting 
paper, as Vondel shared fully in the rich and varied life of his 
time, religiouB, political and scientific, always keeping a high 
ideal before him. — * Adventures of a Dutch ship on the return 
voyage from the East in 1665,' gives a vivid picture of sea-life 
of old days and of encounters with English ships of war. — 
* The Origin of the name of the Island Celebes,' is a curious 
iiooount of how a name arose from a concatenation of errors 
unequalled in the history of geography. — Dr. van Bemmelen 
(JontnbuttJH ' A Visit to the Natural History Museum, London.' 
(^)rnparing the arrangements there with those in similar 
Ynu»<(nimH in Holland, he remarks that anyone wishing to see a 
(liiloront state of matters and thin^ as they should be ought 
to vimt the Loudon Museum. — A. L. W. Seyffardt reviews at 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 173 

great length (June, July,) the views of De Roo van Alder- 
werldt on the actual war strength of Holland, and how to 
make the best of it. Though that great authority is now 
somewhat antiquated there is still much to be learned from 
him, especially in regard to the training of militia and on the 
subject of compulsory service. — Van Deventer (June, July,) 

;ive8 an exhaustive study of Balzac and his works. — ^Mr. W. 

[. de Beaufort continues his ' Thirty Years of our History, 
1863-1893,' a valuable but not very interesting chronicle of 
party strifes and the eflfects on Holland of more widely-felt 
events of that period, — * Ape or Man/ is a discussion of Dubois* 
find in Java of the bones of Pithecanthropus erectus, supposed 
to be the missing link. This is extremely doubtful seeing that 
bones of so many other animals were found in the same spot, 
but it is possible the skeleton in question may be correctly 
arranged and may even be that of a progenitor of man, but it 
settles nothing. — An obituary article by Professor van Hamel 
is devoted to Allard Pierson, the well known theologian and a 
frequent contributor to the Gidsj who died in May of this year. 
He was specially devoted to the subject of ethics and in the 
end gave up the orthodox theology for a sort of agnosticism, 
but he preserved still as his ideal the love of all that is noble 
and pure and believed in love as the solution of all ethical 
problema — ' The Father,* by George Sylvius, is a story of 
Scotch West Hiirhland life, only entertaining as a Dutch view 
of what is possible in Scotland. — * Clericalism in the Italian 
State,' by C. E. de Vries Robb^, who writes from Rome, is a 
brightly written paper in which the growing influence of 
clericalism in school and social life, and generally everywhere 
in Italy, is noted, and the causes of the successes of the clerical 
party are pointed out. 

DUNMABK. 

Year-book for Northern Archeology and History (VoL 

X., Part 4, 1895). A valuable contribution to the study of the 
oldest Scandinavian poetry is made by Dr. Finnur J6nsson in 
au article on * The Oldest Skalds and their Poems/ This is an 
answer to Prof. Bugge's recent attempt to discredit the anti- 
quity of the poems ascribed to Bragi and Thi6d61f, the date 
commonly assigned to these being too early to suit his theories 
on Scandinavian mythology. It is a case of *so much the 
worse for the theories,' Dr. Finnur evidently thinks. He brings 
out in the clearest fashion the striking want of actual proof in 
Prof. Bugge's arguments, which is, to a great extent, disguised 
by the professor's eloquence and wealth of illustration. By a 



174 SummarieB of Foreign Reviews, 

searching analysis of the poems themselves he shows that 
whether historically^ philologically, or metrically, there is 
nothing whatever in them to cast any doubt on the traditional 
accounts of their authors and dates. Bugge and Zimmer, 
from different points, have tried to establish an early literary 
connection between the Celts of Ireland and the Scandinavian 
peoples ; Dr. Finnur is convinced that so far as there is foreign 
matter in Old Norse literature it has come from the south 
rather than from the west. Bugge's theories have been taken 
so seriously by many scholars that this criticism of them is of 
the greatest value for students of northern literature. — ^Chr. 
Blinkenberg contributes a notice of an Etruscan bronze vase 
with a wheeled stand, found in a mound near Skallerup in the 
south of Sjsdlland : it had been used as a funeral uru. The 
whole find belongs to the early bronze period, c. 800 B.C. The 
vase is the first of the kind found in Denmark, though two 
others have been got in South Sweden and North Germany. 
In the south of Europe specimens are not uncommon, and they 
probably reached the north in the way of trade, even at that 
early day. — (Vol. XL, Part 1.) The same writer gives an 
account of Pre-Mycenean antiquities, illustrated by the speci- 
mens in the possession of the National Museum at Copenhagen. 
He enters at some length into the general bearings of the 
question, and dissents in various points from the views of other 
archaeologists as to the age and significance of the finds. The 
most interesting section is perhaps that which deals with toilet 
articles, and the practices of tattooing and shaving. He is not 
inclined to accept the theory that the finds belong to a Carian 
population, and points out that it rests on a very slender foun- 
dation. A topographical list of the finds shows their distribu- 
tion throughout the Greek islands. — Prof. Petersen details the 
results of excavations begun on the site of Vitskol church in 
Jutland. This was founded as a Cistercian erection in 1158 
by Valdemar L, in gratitude for his escape from, and victory 
over, his enemiea It was once famous as * the finest church in 
the North ; ' now it is covered with earth and vegetation. 
From the excavations it may be inferred that its reputation 
was due to its brick-work and the width of its nave and 
transepts, but the building is of much later date than the 
twelfth century. 

QBEECE, 

Athena (Vol. VIII., pt. 2, 1896).— G. N. Hatzidaki deals 
with a variety of subjects in his * Koskylmatia,' the formation 
of Greek proper names, the Athenian pronunciation of ypsilou, 
modem verbs in-6no, hybrid words, two Cretan inscriptions, 



Sumrnd'nea of Foreign ReviewK 175 

and his paper on the Macedoniand ia the previous number. — 
The fourth part of his paper on ' The Language Question ' is 
occupied with a translation of the section on ' Common Dia- 
lect ' in Hermann Paul's ' General Principles of Linguistic' — 
M. I. PantazSs, * The Spuriousness of Plato's Laws ' — J. N. 
Hatzidaki on ' Divergent Integrals.' 

SWITZERLAND. 

Theologisohe Zeitschrift aus der Sohweiz (First quar- 
terly part, 1896). — Pfarrer Nabholz discusses the means of 
promoting the Church's welfare, especially in Zurich associa- 
tions. — * Johann Peter Romang as a Religious Philosopher,' by 
Professor Bloesch of Bern. — * The Influence of Syrian Litera- 
ture on the West,' by V. Ryssell, gives a short but very full 
account of the advance made in our knowledge of Syrian 
writings. The latter part of the paper deals with the Seven 
Sleepers, the Finding of the Cross, and the Sylvester Legend, 
which, according to recent investigations, are Syrian in their 
origin. Examination of the various versions current in mediae- 
val European literature proves that these Syrian versions must 
have been widely known. A curious piece of evidence occurs 
so far west as Ireland. In the Leabhar Breac's account of the 
finding of the cross, Satan, in anger at the discovery, is made to 
say, ' I will find a plan against you,' which is meaningless, but 
on turning to the Syrian text we find that what he really said 
was, * I will raise up a king against you,' viz., Julian the 
Apostate, and the inference is that the Irish writer mistook 
' malka ' king, for ' melka ' plan. He must have been 
acquainted with the original, as this error is found in no other 
extant version. 

AMERICA. 

The American Historical Review (April, 1896). — The 
contents of this number are varied and attractive. The first 
place is given to an article by Mr. C. F. Adams on the Battle 
of Bunker Hill, who maintains that the battle was won by 
the Americans not in consequence of any great skill or ca- 
pacity on the part of their leaders but in consequence of the 
superior capacity for blundering on the part of the British 
commanders. — In 'The Bohun Wills' Mr. M. M. Bigelow 
examines several of the wills of the Bohuns, Earls of Here- 
ford, for the purpose of ascertaining how people lived and 
fared in their day. The study may be commended for its 
minute details and for the vivid way in which it sets the life 
of periods dealt with before us. — Another extremely inter- 
esting paper, which bears the signature of Wilbur H. Siebert, 



176 Summaries of Foreign Beviews. 

has for its title * Light on the Underground Railroad.' It ier 
accompanied by a map showing a multitude of roads by which 
the slaves fled and the houses in which they were sheltered. — 
Mr. Justin Winsor contributes ' Virginia and the Quebec Bill/ 
and Mr. W. P. Trent * The Case of Josiah Philips.'— Mr. J. F. 
Rhodes writes on * The First Six Weeks of MHJlellan's Penin- 
sula Campaign/ treating the campaign as * a chapter of blun- 
ders/ and as showing how * decisive events fail of accomplish- 
ment for the lack of a great general' — Mr. U. Morse Stephens 
contributes an article on ' Recent Memoirs of the French 
Directory.' — Hitherto unpublished documents are represented 
by * A Memorial of Lord Burghley on Peace with Spain, 1588/ 
and a continuation of Richard Smith's * Diary.' — Among the 
Books reviewed are Mr. Rashdall's Universities of the Middle 
AgeSf Lord Astou's Lecture on the Study of History^ and Gros- 
venor's Constantinople, 



(177) 



CONTEMPOKAEY LITERATURE. 



History of Chistian Doctrine. By Georgb Paek FiSHER, D.D., 
LL.I). Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale Uni- 
vemty (IntematioDal Theological Library). Edinburgh, 
T. & T. Clark. 1896. 

In this closely printed volume Dr. Fisher has managed to give a very 
fair account of the history of Christian Theological opinions. The history 
of Christian dogmatics is, of course, treated, but the comparatively narrow 
limits of Christian dogma are overpassed, and the theological opinions of 
a great number of writers, more especially of recent times, are discussed. 
The work, though not without its merits, is not altogether such an one aft 
might be desired, either as to arrangement or style. The style, while 
usually clear, is here and there a Httle tautological, and not always 
sufficiently explicit, as in the introductory chapter. In a work like this 
the free use of the paragraph with head lines in a type different from that 
of the text cannot be too strongly commended. Dr. Fisher divides his 
history into three parts, viz., Ancient Theology, Mediaeval Theology, and 
Modem Theology, the first bringing the history down to a.d. 600 ; the 
second to the time of Luther ; and the third ending with the Agnosticism 
of Mr. Huxley. These, so far as they go, are good ; but the subject is 
susceptible of sub-divisions. Dr. Fisher attempts something of that kind 
by the arrangement of his chapters ; but the contents of these are deter- 
mined in a number of instances not so much by the development of any 
specific doctrine as by the history or locality of the writer or writers. 
What one desires to see in a work of this kind is a clear statement of the 
stages through which a doctrine or dogma has passed, and the attempts 
which have been made to modify or counteract its development during a 
definite period in its history. The later chapters in the volume assume 
the shape of sketches of recent religious opinion in different countries. 
Dr. Fisher's citations are numerous, as are also his references, but it is a 
question whether his volume would not have been more useful to the 
student if the exact words of the authors had been given, even at the ex- 
pense of cutting down the text. Of course they may, for the most part, be 
found in German Handbooks and Histories of Dogmatics, but to those for 
whom this International Theological Library has been projected these are not 
always accessible. One misses the elaborate introduction which a German 
author would have written for such a volume, defining his subject, terms, 
sources, etc., etc. Dr. Fisher's introductory chapter, which runs to over 
twenty pages, and stands for it, seems to us less satisfactory than other 
parts of his volume . However, in dealing with the question : Is theology 
possible 1 he says some very useful and true things against the Agnostic 
position. On the other hand, he is not so successful in dealing with 
Clement's doctrine of the relation between faith and knowledge. It is 
doubtful, too, whether he has caught the meaning of the Apostle when he 
says : * But faith, we are taught by the Apostle, merges at last, not in 
science, but in sight.' Science, we should say, is knowledge, and ' sight ' 
can scarcely imply more. Nor does the sentence refute, as it is intended, 
Clement's position that knowledge is more than faith. The remark 'Faith 
*' abides " until beyond the veil it ia resolved into vision,' is scarcely a 




178 Contemporary Idterature, 

sufficient exegesiB of the words, ' Now abideth faith ; * nor does it tell 
against Clement any more than Dr. Fisher's arguments tell against the 
position of St. Thomas Aquinas ' that as fast as science advances faith is 
displaced.' With a somewhat strange inconsistency Dr. Fisher says, 
* Faith, to be sure, includes a perception of truth ; * and, again, he defines 
faith as ' a practical experience.' There is a sense, of course, in which 
these statements are true, but in writings of this kind more precision is 
expected. When we come to the body of the work, and to the statement 
of the opinions he has to cite and discuss. Dr. Fisher, in the chapters we 
have taken to test his work, is always fair and impartial. When dealing 
with the opinions of St. Augustine, as for instance, as to faith, he is a little 
perplexed, as writing from his strictly orthodox Presbyterian point of view 
he might almost be expected to be. The chronology of the concluding 
chapters is somewhat mixed, and the presentation of opinions, as, for 
instance, those of F. D. Maurice, is somewhat sketchy. There is no attemot 
to show, or rather to sum up, tiie gains of theological thought during the 
long course of its history ; nor is there to show the influence which science 
has had upon it, or the way in which its contents have been enriched by 
scientific discoveries. Assuming with Dr. Fisher that ' phenomena are 
revelations of reality,' and with Spencer that there is an 'Ultimate Reality 
which all things are continually making manifest,' a doctrine, we suspect, 
which Dr. Fisher does not deny, one would have thought that in a book 
on the History of Christian Doctrine, and abounding so much in obiter 
dicta as Dr. Fisher's does, a chapter on this subject would have found a 
place. Still, though scarcely reaching up to the high standard set by Dr. 
Driver's work for the series, Dr. Fisher's volume fills a place hitherto 
vacant in English theological literature, and will doubtless prove accept- 
able to that large class of readers for whom it has been specially prepared. 

The Apostolic Gospel with a Critical Reconstruction of the Text. 
By J. Fulton Blair, B.D. London : Smith, Elder & Co. 
1896. 

This volume divides itself into three parts, viz., an Introduction, a 
translation of what the author conceives to have been the text of the 
Apostolic Grospel, and lastly, an elaborate commentary, consisting for the 
most part of proofs and arguments in support of the reconstructed text. 
It will thus be seen that the volume is one of considerable importance, and 
that it is devoted to the solution of one of the most controverted theologi- 
cal problems of the day. Mr. Blair is not in entire agreement with the 
foremost critics in Germany. He is in agreement with Weiss and Wendt ^ 
as to the existence of an Apostolic Gospel, but at variance with them as to ' 
its contents and the way in which it has been used in the compilation or 
construction of the first and third Gospels and as to its relations to the 
fourth Gospel, as also on other points. Like them he accepts the second 
Gospel as forming the framework of the first and third, and admits that if 
we had no more than the second and third Gospels any reconstruction of 
the text of the Apostolic source would be impossible, and the question he 
seeks to answer is, * Can we with the help of the parallel incidents and logia 
in Matthew and in the fourth Gospel, or from a comparison of the data 
given in the whole of the Gospels, construct the text of the Apostolic 
source ? ' His argument is not without considerable ingenuity. First of 
all he calls in the aid of the scientific imagination and asks : If Luke had 
in his hands besides Mark's Gospel, a Gospel of high authority which he 
wished to combine with Mark's ; if this Gospel consisted not merely of 
^ogia with a few selected events, but of all the facts which were known to 



Contemporary Literature. 179 

the writer from the beginning of the ministry to the Cross ; if these facts 
were narrated in their chronolof>ical order, and in many cases were parallel 
to Mark's facts ; and finally, if for reasons which are capable of definition, 
this Gospel had been largely superseded by Mark, which was richer in 
incidents but contained much less of the teaching, so that Mark had be- 
come the standard of history before the third Gospel was written, what 
would be the probable characteristics of the combination thus proposed 
and effected ? Mr. Blair's answer is — * It is quite conceivable, on the one 
hand, that the editor, with such documents before him, would supplement 
Mark's narratives seriatim by material derived from the other authority, 
and would gather into long discourses the teaching which permitted such 
treatment. Or, on the other hand, he might, while not altogether neglect- 
ing this method, insert in Mark's framework, at appropriate places, 
accumulations of loose material derived from the other source ; and in 
such a case the following phenomena might be confidently predicted. 
First, the incidents taken from Mark, and already recorded in the history, 
would not be repeated by the editor, although contained in the other 
source, if such incidents were recognised as identical. Secondly, a few 
incidents in their different versions would not be recognised as clearly 
identical, and therefore duplication would arise. Thirdly, Mark being 
accepted and followed as the standard^ the original arrangement of the 
other source would be entirely upset by combination ; the bones would be 
removed from the body, and thus a new editorial arrangement, especially 
of the teaching, would be permitted, and indeed would be inevitable.* 
Assuming the existence of the ' Apostolic Source ' all this is of course quite 
conceivable. It is quite as conceivable also that an editor may have 
adopted another course. So too is it that the editors of the first and third 
Gospels may have used what were practically independent sources in order 
to fill out the framework supplied by the second Gospel. At the same 
time it cannot be denied that on the assumption of the existence of the 
Apostolic source, what Mr. Blair here says furnishes what may at least be 
called a working hypothesis, and is borne out by the contents and diflfer- 
ences of the Gospels Matthew and Luke. For, as he points out, the 
characteristics of the combination, in the case of the first Gospel, agree 
precisely with the first of the imagined alternatives, while the method 
adopted in the third Gospel, on the other hand, is in agreement with the 
second, even to the extent of exhibiting the phenomena which might be 
expected in the case supposed. This fact, which has hitherto been over- 
looked by critics, is of supreme importance for Mr. Blair's theory. Ac- 
cordingly in the passages occurring in the third Gospel and not occurring 
in the second, and in those occurring in the first Gospel and not in the 
second and third he finds traces of the Apostolic source ; but not all the 
Gospels contain. * We possess additional data,' he says, * which enable us 
to advance to much larger results.' Some of these additional data are in 
the passages where the first and third evangelists differ both from St. 
Mark and from each other ; others are supplied by textual evidence and a 
comparison of Luke's digressions with Mark, a process which brings to 
light the fact thcit Luke's omissions are much more numerous than they 
are usually supposed to be. So far Mr. Blair has dealt with the evangelical 
narrative from the Sermon on the Mount to the discourse on the Coming 
of the Kingdom, and he now proceeds to argue backwards and forwards, 
maintaining that the narrative preceding the Sermon on the Mount pre- 
supposes an earlier history, and that the discourse on the Coming of the 
Kingdom in like manner presupposes a subsequent history bringing the 
narrative down to the Passion. He is prepared to go further and to main- 
tain that the critic who proceeds to the work of reconstruction and is 



180 Contemporary Literature. 

faithful to the data observed cannot stop short until ' he stands beside the 
empty tomb with a dear conception of the ministry, a new comprehension 
of the teaching, and a firm appreciation of that great personality which 
has gained the homage of men. Want of space prevents us from dwelling 
upon any of the many points which Mr. Blair's argument raises, as weU 
as from entering more minutely into it. What we have said, however, is 
sufficient to show the line of argument he follows, and to exhibit his 
theory. The further and larger question which his hypothesis raises Mr. 
Blair does not argue. As might be expected he is prepared to join issue 
with those who uphold the generally received opinion as to the origin of 
the synoptic Gospels, and the relation in which their sources stand to each 
other, and to the fourth Gospel. *He does not believe,' he says, 'that 
the two sources are really independent. On the contrary, he is prepared 
to prove — by arguing, of course, from probabilities — that the second Gos- 
pel is not a recollection of the preaching of St. Peter. He believes that 
the Apostolic source, which existed at first as an oral tradition, was com- 
mitted to writing, at different places by different men, to meet the 
requirements of the Christian society, and that Mark is a combination of 
the versions. He is also prepared to prove that the fourth Gospel is a 
primitive commentary, or in other words an elaborated version of the 
Apostolic source, with the incidents adapted to the evangelist's purpose, 
and the logia partly reproduced and partly displaced by reflections which 
the original suggested. He does not accept the common assumption that 
the synoptic problem is altogether distinct from the Johannine. He 
maintains that the two coalesce, and that in solving the one the critic will 
solve also the other. He believes, in short, that the four Gospels are 
simultaneous equations, that the unknown quantity is the Apostolic source, 
and that the value of x can be discovered.' This belief has certainly the 
merit of simplicity. It has that also of reasonableness. Whether it can 
be vindicated is a question on which we cannot enter. We can only com- 
mend Mr. Blair's scholarly volume to the careful attention of students, 
and leave them to form their own opinion as to the theory it so ably 
maintains. 

A Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek after the Westcott and 
Hort Text By the Rev. Arthur Wright, M. A. London 
and New York : Macmillan & Co. 1896. 

This scholarly piece of work on the part of one of the members of the 
new School of Cambridge theologians will attract attention both on account 
of its comparative novelty, and because of the skill and thoroughness with 
which it has been done. It is an attempt to analysis the Gospels, and to 
exhibit their primitive sources. Mr. Wright has brought much painstak- 
ing labour to his task, and whether his results be wholly accepted or not, 
what he has done will considerably facilitate the work of the student in 
arriving at something like definite conceptions as to the sources whence the 
Gospels were derived, and the way in which they have been brought into 
their present shape. The truth of the oral hypothesis is assumed, and in 
a carefully written preface Mr. Wright exhibits the principles by which he 
has been governed in the construction of his synopsis. Accepting the theory, 
the truth of which is now generally but not everywhere admitted, that there 
were at least two main sources from which the materials for the synoptic 
Gospels were obtained, and that these sources correspond to what Papias 
calls ' St. Peter's Memoft*s of Our Lord/ and the ' Logia,' or ' Utterances of 
St. Matthew,' and that the former consisted chiefly of narrative, and the 
latter of discourses or isolated apophthegms, Mr. Wright inclines to the 



Contemporary Literature, 181 

opinion of those who hold that on the whole the second Gospel corresponds 
to St. Peter's Memoirs, and that the author of the said Gospel was unac- 
quainted with the Logia. That this and not the Logia is the oldest source is 
shown, he argues, by its wide diffusion, its contents, and its frequent mixture 
with the other sources. Hence in his first Division he places the Gospel of 
St. Mark, and side by side with it the identical or equivalent passages from 
SS. Matthew and Luke, together with the parallels from St. John and 
other sacred writers. In his second Division he places thirty-six discourses 
from St. Matthew's Gospel with the identical or equivalent passages from 
St. Luke, and parallels from St. Mark and other sacred writers. The 
third Division contains nineteen discourses, parables, and stories from St. 
Luke, chiefly in the central third, ix. 51 — xviii. 14, five of which find 
parallels in the first and second Gospels, two in the first only, and one in 
the fourth. In the fourth Division, we have no fewer than a hundred and 
thirty-four fragments, some of which are common to SS. Matthew and 
Luke, others of which are peculiar to the first Gospel, and others to the 
third ; but none of which are to be found in the second Gospel. The fifth 
Division contains a group of sixteen historical narratives peculiar to St. 
Luke. In the sixth Division we have a number of Editorial notes contri- 
buted by the writers themselves, and not by their authorities. The analy- 
sis is made still more exhaustive by the use in many places of brackets and 
different kinds of type. To appraise a work of this kind, or to enter into 
anything like an examination of it in the space here assigned to us, is of 
course impossible. We must content ourselves with biit one or two re- 
marks. That an oral Gospel or Gospels preceded the written Gospels 
must be assumed. But whether there were originally but two written 
Gospels from which the present Synoptic Gospels were derived is an open 
question. If Mr. Wright's Analysis be correct, there were more ; at any 
rate the solution of the problem is made much more difficult. By Mr. 
Wright the Logia is reduced to a minimum. It is quite possible that many 
of the fragments included in his fourth Division are derived from this 
source. Any how, it will be exceedingly difficult to prove that they were 
not. That no principle of selection was adopted by the authors of the 
primitive written sources, and that any one who undertook to write a life 
of Christ would endeavour to put into it all that he knew, or all that was 
accepted in the Church to which he belonged, or all that he could collect 
from trustworthy witnesses, are positions which seem to us to be too con- 
fidently assumed. It is reasonable to suppose that a modern author 
would do something of this sort, but whether the authors of the primitive 
Gospels or of the Synoptics did this is another and different question. 
Altogether, while we cannot but admire the skill and scholarship, and 
patient industry which Mr. Wright has brought to bear upon the problem 
he has sought to solve, it seems to us that its final solution is not yet in 
sight. Perhaps it never will be so long as our knowledge of the written 
sources remains what it is. All the same, such work as Mr. Wright has 
here done can not fail to incite to a more detailed study of the evangelical 
narratives, and to prove of great assistance to the student. 

The Bible for Home Reading. Edited with Comments and 
Reflections for the use of Jewish Parents and Children by 
C. G. MoNTEFiORE. First Part. London and New York : 
Macmillan & Co. 1896. 

This volume of Bible readings, the first of twa, has been compiled, as 
the title-page bears, for the use of Jewish parents and children. The 
period covered by the readings is from Abraham to the second visit of 



182 Contemporary TMerature. 

Nehemiah to JeruBalem. The first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis 
are represented by a series of extracts given at the end of the volume, in 
which are the stories of Creation, Paradise, etc. The chapters from which 
these extracts are taken, are, in the opinion of the author, Hoo full of grave 
moral and religious difficulties to form a suitable beginning.' The text 
used in the extracts is virtually that of the Authorised Version, though 
here and there Mr. Montefiore has adopted readings which seem to him to 
be better. Besides selecting the passages and editing them, Mr. Monte- 
fiore has contributed to each of them an introduction with comments, 
sometimes explanatory^ sometimes historical, and sometimes of a homiletio 
nature, which are all remarkable for the frankness and freeness of their 
criticism, as well as for the spirit of devout appreciation of the Scriptures 
by which they are pervaded. More remarkable than the notes, how- 
ever, is the general introduction to the volume. Here Mr. Montefiore 
treats of the origin and character of the Bible, and touches upon 
many points of the greatest interest. His critical standpoint is that 
almost of the most advanced school of Biblical criticism ; but though 
one may not be always able to agree with him in his critical opinions, 
when he comes to speak of the moral teaching uf the Old Testament 
one's sympathies go entirely wth him. He emphasises the fact that 
it exhibits different stages of morality among men ; but his main 
point is its intrinsic value and wherein this value consists. ' The Bible,' 
he says, ' tells us about God and Goodness ; this is what gives it its 
unity. This is what gives it its unique value. No other book has told 
men so well and so truly of goodness and God as the Bible. All that it 
says about God, and all that it says about goodness, is not indeed of equal 
value, of equal truth ; there are degrees of excellence and of worth. But, 
taken as a whole, no book has spoken and still speaks of God and goodness 
as this book, the Bible. And this is what has made the Bible precious and 
beloved through so many ages, and to so many different peoples. For 
God and goodness never grow old. Men and women always want to know 
about them, and in this respect one age is the same as another.' In this 
passage we have the key to most of his comments, and an indication of the 
spirit in which the volume has been compiled. Mr. Montefiore's aim is 
edification, and his volume may be read with profit by the old as well as 
the young, whether Jews or Christians. A second volume is promised to 
complete the work. 

Documents Illustrative of English Church History. Compiled 
from Original Sources by Henry Gee, B.D., F.S.A., and 
William John Hardy, F.S.A. London and New York : 
Macmillan & Co. 1896. 

This volume will serve a very useful purpose, and help to lighten the 
labours of the student of English Church History. All the documents 
illustrative of English Church History it does not contain, nor does it pro- 
fess to contain them ; but in its pages will be found many of the more 
important, and especially those to which reference is most frequently made. 
Sixteenth and seventeenth century documents are fairly well represented, 
but for a number, as for instance some of those belonging to the reigns of 
Elizabeth and James I., the student will require to consult other collections, 
such as the volume prepared for the Clarendon Press by Professor Pro thero. 
The selection from pre-Norman documents is admittedly meagre. Origi- 
nally it was not intended that the collection should contain any, but, 
acting on the suggestion of Dr. Bright, twelve of the more important, be- 
ginning with the British signatories at the Council of Aries, 314, and end- 



Contemporary Literature, 183 

ing with selections from the Constitutions of Odd, 943, are given. Still, 
taken as a whole, and remembering the limitations of space with which the 
Editors have had to contend, the selection has been made with tact, and is 
thoroughly representative. The Editors' notes are always to the point. 
If any fault can be found with them it is that they are too brief. The 
Latin and Norman-French documents have been translated, and the flpel- 
ling of the rest, the latest of which is dated 1700, has been modernised. 
The Editors, in short, have done their work so well as to encourage the 
hope that a new edition will be called for, and that they will then avail 
themselves of the opportunity of making their collection more complete 
by including the more important of those they have been obliged to omit, 
making use if necessary, as in all probability it will be, of an additional 
volume. 

The Union of England and Scotland : A Study of International 
History. By James Mackinxoi^, Ph.D. London, New 
York, and Bombay : Longmans, Green, & Co. 1896. 

An impartial narrative of the events which led up to the union between 
England and Scotland, of the various stages through which the negotiations 
passed, and of the terms on which the union was finally agreed to, has for 
some time been wanting. Recent publications of official and hitherto in- 
accessible documents have made the task comparatively easy, and it is 
perhaps fortunate that at a time when the subject has been pushed forward 
into public controversy that it has been taken in hand by one who has 
proved himself so competent to deal with it as Dr. Mackinnon. At any 
rate he has not only made himself thoroughly conversant with all the 
published sources of information connected with his subject ; here and 
there his pages bear evidence of independent research and of the use of 
papers and documents which have not seen the light in print. And what is 
of more importance he has threaded his way with a firm hand through the 
tangled web of negotiations he has had to contend with, and written his 
narrative in a spirit of judicial impartiality which is to say the least com- 
mendable. At the time both public and private feeling ran high. Each 
party was jealous of the other, many were opposed to the union, obstacles 
were thrown in the way of the negotiations, and many things were done to 
provoke ill-feeling, but all through Dr. Mackinnon is eminently fair and 
never allows himself to be led astray by the storm of feeling in which he 
has to work. Over the earliest attempts at union between the two coun- 
tries he passes lightly, pointing out that they were of two kinds, attempts 
by force and attempts through marriage. Henry VIII. *s scheme of a 
matrimonial and political alliance, which he had arranged with Arran, was 
wrecked, he shows, by the opposition of Cardinal Beaton and his con- 
servative following. The scheme devised by Somerset after the battle of 
Pinkie, he speaks of as 'his memorable offer of a liberal treaty of union.' 
Scotland, however, he adds, was not prepared for amalgamation of interests 
and policy, but preferred the old French alliance, a preference which in 
the end may be said to have hastened on the union which subsequently 
took place. Among attempts at union of a forceful kind those of James 
VI. and Cromwell are rightly placed. Croin well's scheme simply meant 
the complete absorption of Scotland by England and the suppression of 
every national institution. The only generous thing about it was the 
offer of free trade ; but this, on the other hand, while, as Dr. Mackinnon 
observes, it * served to open the eyes of the Scots to the material advan- 
tages connected with a closer union with a more powerful and wealthy 
neighbour,' awakened the spirit of opposition to the union in England, 



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'"1*^9 Contemporary Literature. 135 

• ' *^»j The learned Sheriff of Fife and Kinross has made no attempt^ as he tells 
* vr»:^ps^ to write an ezhaastive and complete history of these counties ; his en- 
• . >j,-4ieav<)nr has been * to catch the spirit rather than to follow the letter of the 
i i- ^^ history. ' His work, therefore, is cast on lines quite different from those 
■ . ..^jjOn which Mr. A. H. Millar wrote the two volumes of his History of Fife 
-. . .' which was noticed in these pages some time ago. But though not exactly a 
. ..g". history in the usual meaning of that term, Mr. Mackay's volume contains a 
■«• »r>i ^©ligb^^ul account of the most important matters connected with what was 
^ * / formerly known, and indeed is still known, as the kingdom of Fife. In the 
J. t preparation of it he has made large use of the * Sketch ' of the history of the 
two counties which he published in 1890. The present volume may be 
said in fact to be a second and enlarged edition of the *■ Sketch.' No one, 
however, will be disposed to quarrel with it on that score. The additions 
are all in the right direction and enhance the interest and value of the 
work. As a popular history of a county it is probably without a rival and 
is a model which may be followed in the rest of the series with advantage. 
That it contains everything one would like a history of Fife to contain can- 
not of course bef said, but it contains sufficient to furnish a clear idea of 
the course which history has run in the ancient kingdom and of the 
relation in which it stood to the general history of the country. One 
omission we notice. There is no reference to the Session of Parliament 
held at St. Andrews, November 20th, 1645, an incident sufficiently impor- 
tant and singular, we should say, to be recorded in any history of Fife. 
Two excellent maps are given — one is a facsimile of Blaeu's two quaint 
maps on the county, and the other is a reproduction of the Ordnance 
Survey Map. It was a mistake, however, to print the first of these on 
brittle paper. Both of them would have been better on cloth and in a 
pocket. A very commendable feature of the work is the long list of books 
and publications on the county. The volume presents a handsome appear- 
ance and altogether promises exceedingly well for the series which it in- 
augurates. 

The Life and Works of Robert Bums. Edited by Robert 
Chambers, revised bv William Wallace. 4 vols. Edin- 
bnrgh and London : W. & R. Chambers. 1896. 

Various attempts have been made to commemorate the centenary of the 
death of Robert Burns by publishing special editions of his works and 
biographical sketches of the poet. Editors and biographers, with diverse 
degrees of fitness for the task^ have arisen in unsuspected quarters ; and 
1896 is likely to be memorable in the publishing trade for the variety of 
editions of Burns that have been issued or are in progress of preparation. 
One might have thought that a poet who had been biographised vol- 
uminously for ninety-six years would long ere this have been exhausted 
as a subject ; but every year has been adding fresh material to Bumsiana, 
until the topic has assumed gigantic dimensions. The very embarrassment 
of the riches at his command might terrify the conscientious biographer 
from the task of writing a new life of Bums, or giving a complete edition 
of his poems. For Bums shares with Shakespeare and Mary, Queen of 
Scots, the doubtful honour of having been a favourite subject of debate 
amongst literary critics. Amongst the heterogeneous volumes written 
about Burns only two works stand out with prominence, — those, namely; 
which owe their origin to Dr. Currie and to Robert Chambers. Dr. Currie, 
who was a native of Dumfriesshire, had encountered the poet accidentally 
during the clouded years of his later life, and had become deeply inter- 
ested by his personality. After the poet's death, Dr. Currie, with com- 

XXVIII. 13 



186 Contemporary Literature. 

mendable devotion, strove to excite compassion for the bereaved widow 
and children of Bams amongst the literary circles of Liverpool, and at 
length he undertook to edit an edition of the poems, with a biographical 
introduction, to provide a fund for the hapless family of the poet. Though 
one of the most benevolent of men, Dr. Currie was not a model biocrapher, 
and he allowed discreditable stories to appear in this sketch, possibly with 
the notion that these would increase commiseration for Mrs. Bums and 
her children. He was a fluent writer, and his graceful periods were so 
easUy copied that for many years his biography was prefixed to numerous 
editions, without alteration or question. Attempts were at length made 
by J. Gibson Lockhart and Allan Cunningham to give true versions of the 
life of Burns ; but these were only partially successful. It was not until 
Robert Chambers took up the subject, and devoted himself to collecting 
materials for his notable edition of Burns that a reasonable effort was 
made to give an accurate account of the poet's life, and a critical edition 
of his works from which spurious pieces were excluded. Chambers was a 
boolc-worm with a wide knowledge of literature, a sleuth-hound in tracking 
items of evidence, and an intelligent and impartial antiquary, and was 
thus admirably fitted to carry the task he had undertaken to a suecessful 
issue. There have been countless biographies since his edition was pub- 
lished in 1851 ; but those which did not imitate Chambers, or crib from 
his pages, have been deservedly forgotten. During his investigations Dr. 
Chambers unearthed much material which, for various reasons, could not 
be published at the time when his edition was issued. It is likely that he 
contemplated a second edition ; at all events he was too acute au antiquary 
to destroy the evidence he had collected at vast personal trouble and ex- 
pense. Other projects occupied the later years of his life, and his second 
edition did not appear. It was a happy thought which led the members 
of the publishing firm which he had founded to bring out, in this present 
memorable year, an edition which should not only include what had 
formerly been excluded, but also contain the results of inquiries made 
by other investigators since Chambers's time. And it was also a for- 
tunate circumstance that the firm was able to secure so competent an 
editor as William Wallace to carry out this new edition. Since 1851 a 
new literature of Burns, of the most scrappy and incoherent character, has 
accumulated ; and the new editor who seeks to be abreast of the times 
must be able to select from this miscellaneous heap, whatsoever is of good 
report. Judging from the two volumes which have already been issued, 
Mr. Wallace has succeeded in his onerous task beyond expectation. Kecent 
discoveries have made it necessary for him to re- write great portions of 
the original work, and though he has carefully followed the lines laid 
down by Dr. Chambers, Mr. Wallace has practically produced a new 
edition of the life and works of Burns which will certainly hold its own 
against all rivals for many a day to come. In bringing out a new edition 
of such a work the editor may either give fresh matter in footnotes (always 
a disturbing method for the reader), or he may incorporate additional 
material with the text, thus making the book continuous. The latter 
course has been wisely adopted by Mr. Wallace, though the result is that 
only those acquainted familiarly with the original will be able duly to ap- 
preciate the labour of the new editor. By doing so, however, Mr. Wallace 
has thoroughly effaced himself, his aim being apparently to produce a 
satisfactory edition, whether he receives full credit for his own work or 
not. Possibly there are few editors who would be willing in these days to 
pass a ' self-denying ordinance * of this kind, and still fewer who would 
carry it out so thoroughly as Mr. Wallace has done. For his additions are 
not only numerous but also important. For instance, be prints the whole 



Contemporary L{tera':ure, 187 

of the famous autobiographical letter written by Bums to Dr. Moore, 
which has formed the well-spring from which all biographers have drawn 
their accounts of the poet's early career. Again, Mr. Wallace has examined 
the various contradictory versions of Bums's genealogy which are afloat, 
with much discrimination, and has drawn up from this puzzlin£: maze 
what seems to be a credible account of the Burnes family. Another point 
on which Mr. Wallace has thrown much light is that of the theological 
attitude of Bums. It is too readily assumed that Bums was either an 
active scoffer at religion or an indifferent Gallio who ' cared for none of 
these things.' When Dr. Chambers wrote it would not have been prudent 
for him to have cast himself wilfully into a theological controversy, and 
he left the question of Bums's religious convictions rather indefinitely ex- 
plained. Professor Wilson (Christopher North), when preparing the letter- 
press for The Land of Bums, was greatly exercised on this point, and 
wrote a letter to Mr. Aird asking if it would be possible to discover 
whether Burns regularly had family worship in his house ; but Aird could 
not find the desired information. However, Wilson was decidedly inclined 
to the notion that Burns was a religious man, despite his severe satires on 
some of the ministers of his time. Mr. Wallace very lucidly explains 
Bums's attitude to the formalism of his time, and points out that while 
he resented dogmatism. Bums was thoroughly imbued with a belief in an 
all-pervading Creator to whom every creature owed the deepest devotion 
and reverence. He was not a sceptic as Voltaire was sceptical ; his 
quarrel was rather with humanly-devised creeds than with religion. 
Much foolish nonsense has lately been ventilated regarding Highland 
Mary, and she has been traduced by recent writers as the equal of some 
of the frailer women with whom Burns's name was associated. Into this 
matter Mr. Wallace has made elaborate and intelligent research, and has 
succeeded in triumphantly vindicating Mary Campbell from the slanders 
of ill-advised traducers. The peculiar episode of Bums's dispute with the 
Armour family is placed in a clearer light than ever it has been by Mr. 
Wallace's lucid recital of the circumstances connected with the quarreL 
While he does not excuse Burns for contemplating the desertion of Jean 
Armour^ he shows that the attitude taken up by Jean's father was calcu- 
lated to irritate a sensitive nature like that of the poet's, and to drive him 
to extremities which he would afterwards bitterly regret. Mr. Wallace 
has also brought out new matter regarding Burns's relations with Eliza- 
beth Paton, and the evidence tends to obviate the charge of heartlessness 
sometimes brought against Burns with reference to this incident. The 
second volume carries on the story of Burns's life from November, 17*%, 
till December, 1788, and deals with the first visit to Edinburgh, the tour 
through the Highlands, the Clarinda episode, and the marriage of Burns 
and Jean Armour. This was the most stirring period of the poet's life^ 
and the relation of the varied incidents demands care on the part of the 
narrator and accurate knowledge of the characters introduced and their 
relations to each other. On comparing this volume with the corresponding 
volume of the first edition it will be seen that Mr. Wallace has almost en- 
tirely re- written the text^ so numerous are his additions. He has printed 
the whole of the correspondence of Clarinda and Sylvander, thus making 
it easy to follow the development of this romantic episode. When dealing 
with the brilliant period of Bums's visit to Edinburgh and the production 
of the first Edinburgh edition of the poems, Mr. Wallace vindicates the 
poet from the charge of having been spoiled by his literary success. He 
shows that amid all the temptations to overestimate the patronage accorded 
to him, Burns kept a cool head, and valued the applause bestowed at its 
true worth. The later passages in the poet's life will occupy the third 



188 Contemporary Literature. 

▼olnme, and Mr. Wallace purposes giving an estimate of the poet's work 
in the concluding volame. The illnstrations to this edition are wcNrthy of 
high praise. 

lAfe and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort^ D.D.y D.C.L.^ 
LL.D,^ etc. By his son, Arthur Fenton Hort. 2 vol& 
LondoD and New York, Macmillan & Co. 1896. 

As the author of this memoir remarks, the subject of it was little known 
outside the world of scholars. In that world, however, he was both well 
and widely known and highly appreciated. Outside of it his influence ia 
likely to be much greater than his fame, though that also, we should say, 
is destined to grow. The New Testament is not likely to lose its hold 
upon men, and wherever it is read as a subject of serious study few men 
will be regarded with greater respect than that remarkable triumvirate of 
whom the present Bishop of Durham is the only survivor. Each, in his 
own way, has done much for its elucidation, and Dr. Hort not less than the 
others in theirs. A scholar's life is, as a rule, barren of incident, and Dr. 
Hort's was no exception. He was bom in Dublin, April 23, 1828, and 
though of English extraction, could count among his ancestors an Irish 
Archbishop, who married into the Butler family, and an Irish baronet. 
The third son of the baronet was the father of F. J. A. Hort. On his 
mother's side Hort could claim to be descended from the celebrated Dean 
Colet. His father settled at Cheltenham when he was nine years old. He 
was at Rugby under Arnold, and subsequently under Tait, where he was 
distinguished for his scholarship rather than for athletics. From Rugby 
he went to Cambridge in 1846, and entered at Trinity, his father's College. 
Here he became a member of the mysterious company of the ' Apostles,' 
graduated, obtained the Hulsean Prize in 1850 for an essay on ' The Bene- 
ficial Influence of the Christian Clergy on European Progress in the first 
Ten Centuries,' and was one of the founders of the Journal of Classical and 
Sacred FhH^logy, In 1854 he was ordained by Dr. Wilberforce, then 
Bishop of Oxford. Two years after he married, and was appointed the same 
year, and shortly before his marriage, to the College living of St. Ippolyts- 
cum-Great Wymondley, near Hitchin. Here he remained till 1872, 
when he returned to Cambridge as Theological Lecturer at Emmanuel's, 
having been defeated four years before in his candidature for the Knights- 
bridge Professorship of Moral Philosophy by F. D. Maurice. Six years 
later he was appointed Hulsean Professor of Divinity, and in October, 
1887, was unanimously elected to the Lady Margaret Readership in 
Divinity, which had become vacant through the death of Dr. Swainson, 
the Master of Christ's College. This was his last piece of preferment. He 
died November 30, 1892. A man of more ambition with Dr. Hort's 
abilities might have attained to a yet more distinguished position ; but of 
ambition he had little. His interests were numerous and his activities many- 
sided, but he always preferred to remain in the back-ground. His great work, 
the preparation of the Greek Text of the New Testament in collaboration 
with Dr. Westcott, which for thirty years was always before his mind, 
originated in a suggestion made in 1854 by the late Mr. Daniel Macmillan 
that he should take a part in a New Testament scheme which was then 
afoot. According to this * Hort,' we are told, ' was to edit the text in con- 
junction with Mr. Westcott ; the latter was to be responsible for a com- 
mentary, and Lightfoot was to contribute a New Testament Grammar 
and Lexicon.' Subsequently the idea was modified. The preparation of 
the Text was to go on as before arranged ; Lightfoot was to write the 
Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, and Westcott that on the writings of 



Contemporary Literature, 189 

St John, while Hort was to undertake that on the Synoptic Gospels and 
Catholic Epistles. But for these and many other literary projects which 
were before Hort's mind, as well as for the reasons why so many of them 
fell through, we must refer the reader to the letters contained in the two 
volumes before us. These are wonderfully varied in their contents, and, 
unless we are mistaken, will pleasantly surprise those who have known Dr. 
Hort only through his published writings, or were not his intimate friends. 
Here he throws aside the hesitancy and caution which always served to 
hedge him in, and unbosoms his mind with a freedom quite unexpected. 
Mr. Arthur Fenton Hort has done his work well, and has succeeded in 
producing what, to say the least, is one of the most charming biographies 
we have met with for some time. 

Memoir of John Nichol^ Professor of English Literature in the 
University of Glasgow. By PROFESSOR Knight, St. 
Andrews. Glasgow, James MacLehose & Sons. 1896. 

The father of the late Professor of English Literature in the University 
of Glasgow was himself a Professor in the University of Glasgow, where 
he filled the chair of Astronomy with great acceptance, and was the friend 
and correspondent of such men as the two Mills, Herschel and Airy, Long- 
fellow, Wordsworth, and De Quincey. No memoir of him has ever been 
written, much, apparently, to the regret of Professor Knight, whose first 
intention was to write a biography of the father as well as of the son, but 
who, in deference to the advice of the family, ' that it would be inexpedient 
to combine a sketch of both men in a volume especially devoted to the son,' 
has, fortunately or unfortunately, given up his original plan, and, with 
the exception of a couple of pages in which a brief sketch is given of the 
Professor of Astronomy, confined his labours to the life of the Pro- 
fessor of English Literature. The result is a volume of moderate size 
which, thanks to the publisher, is admirably printed and light in the hand. 
It divides itself into two parts, unequal alike in their length and quality. 
The first is from the pen of the late Professor of English Literature him- 
self ; the second has been written and compiled by Professor Knight. Pro- 
fessor Nicholas part takes the shape of a series of autobiographical letters 
written to his wife shortly after their marriage, and bringing the story of his 
life down to the death of his mother in 1851, when he was about eighteen 
years of age, still resident at the Observatory in Glasgow, and a student at 
the University there. They were written in 1861, and though printed at 
the time, under the title Leaves from My Life, they were not written for 
publication. It is fortunate, hoveever, that they have been preserved. 
They form by far the most attractive feature of the volume, and are re- 
markable for their simplicity and eloquence. The glamour of poetry is 
everywhere upon them, and here and there are passages of singular beauty. 
Here is one in which Mr. Nichol speaks of his father and mother, to the 
latter of whom he appears to have been devotedly attached. ' More wise 
than clever,' he says, * she gave me more sage advice than I have ever 
seen in books, and all I have seen of life has only served to confirm its 
excellence. One of the best and greatest of those who have ever, in storm 
and sunshine, toiled through the earth, she ever seemed less than she was. 
My father spoke at times scornfully of the world ; but in his happier days 
it *'came out a perfect round," and hope made it seem rich in glorious 
promises. She saw it just as it was, rather a cloudy land ; but her 
anchorage was firm beyond it. It seemed to me as if my father had 
power to see all the stars, but my mother alone could hear the music they 
made. Her speech was melodious, like silver, but her silence was like 



190 Contemporary Literature. 

gold, and when ahe spoke, her noble words were clenched with noble 
aeeds. She said to me, '' Be faithful,'* and lived like an emblem of faith ; 
'* Be loving,*' and her love was deep as the sea ; '^ Be true," and she was 
trne as the eternal stars.' Referring to her death he says, ' X have had 
many trials since but never one which made me desolate like that, when I 
moved about calm and cold and shed no tears.' Very little of Professor 
Nichol's correspondence has been preserved. This is to be regretted^ and 
probably accounts, in a large measure, for the somewhat scrappy character 
of the rest of the volume, which may be said to consist of letters from 
Professor NichoFs friends, estimates of his character by pupils and others, 
and Professor Knight's notes and comments. Much the best and most 
important of the letters written to Nichol are tliose from the late Master 
of Balliol. Dr. Jowett seems to have understood Nicholas failings quite as 
well as his merits, and touches them with a kindly, sjrmpathetic hand. 
His wide knowledge of men and affairs comes out in every letter, as well 
as his anxiety lest Nichol should give way to disappointment, or overtax 
his powers. Dr. Donald Macleod contributes some reminiscences of his 
classmate, which are as discriminating as they are generous. Professor 
Knight is not exactly an ideal biographer. Here, however, he seems to 
have worked under difficulties. His materials were scant, and now and 
again one has the feeling that he is in too great a hurry. Ooe things he 
seems tu have to learn yet, notwithstanding his practice in biographical 
writing, and that is that what nine out of every ten readers of biography 
desire to see is not the opinions of the biographer but the deeds and 
words of the individual whose life he is narrating. It is to be regretted 
that more of Professor Nichol's unpublished verses have not been printed. 
The present volume contains several of great beauty. From a remark 
in the introduction it would appear that a chapter of the biography has 
been by some chance left out. Reference is made to Chapter XI., but no 
Chapter XI. can be found. 

Henry Callaway^ M.D,^ D.D. First Bishop of Kaffrariai His 
Life-History and Work. A Memoir by Marian S. Benham. 
Edited by the Rev. Canon Benham. London and New- 
York: Macraillan & Co. 1896. 

Bishop Callaway has left behind him a very considerable name both on 
account of his devoted labours as a missionary in South Africa and because 
of the many and valuable contributions he made to the literature of 
anthropology. Miss Benham in the memoir which she has written of him 
dwells to some extent upon the scientific side of his labours^ but makes no 
attempt to appreciate it. A more complete account of his studies in con- 
nection with the Zulus, their language, customs and folk-lore she has 
apparently left for other and probably more capable hands. To the re- 
ligious side of his life she does ample justice. Her narrative is brief, but 
graphic. Few memoirs are so replete with interest, and whatever partiality 
the editor may have for the work, as having been written by his daughter, 
it is well deserved. The son of an exciseman, Bishop Callaway was born 
in January, 1817. He became a teacher, and coming under the influence 
of Mr. Dymond, in whose school he acted as an assistant at Heavitree, he 
was drawn towards the Society of Friends, a body which he afterwards 
joined^ and in which for some time he acted as a minister. Abandoning 
teaching, he studied medicine, and began practice in London, but his 
health failing, and having joined the Church of England, to which his 
parents belonged^ he, in 1853, offered his services as a missionary to Bishop 



rJ r 



Contemporary Literature. 191 

Oolenso, who had just been appointed to the See of Natal. The letter in 
which he made the offer missed the Bishop, who had set ont for Natal, 
but he was accepted by the Board of the Society for the Propagation of 
the Gospel, when it was arranged that he should be ordained at home 
and in the following summer accompany Bishop Colenso on his return 
to Natal. Accordingly, in the August of the following year, along with 
Mrs. Callaway, he left England, and landed at Durban on the 
5th of December, when he at once began work. While the earlier 
pages of Miss Benham's narrative show the religious doubts and 
difficulties with which Dr. Callaway was troubled in his own mind, 
the remainder are a record of calm, earnest, and strenuous work. Though 
always delicate in health Dr. Callaway's capacity for work was extraordi- 
nary. Few men have been more devoted or unselfish. From the fierce 
controversy which broke out in the South African Church in consequence 
of the publications of his Bishop's criticisms on the Pentateuch, he en- 
deavoured as far as possible, though holding views entirely at variance 
with those of Dr. Colenso, to keep himself aloof. What he desired was 
above all things peace, with freedom to carry on his work. But for the 
slight part he took in it, as also for the difficulties he had to contend with, 
and his remarkable success as a missionary, and for much else that is 
interesting we must refer the reader to Miss Benham's attractively written 
and instructive volume. 

Richelieu. By RiOHARD LoDGE, M.A., Professor of History ia 
the University of Glasgow. Philip Augustus. By WiLLlAM 
HOLDEN HUTTON, B.D. (* Foreign Statesmen ' Series). 
London and New York : Macmillan & Co. 1896. 

The series to which these two volumes belong promises to be a very fit- 
ting sequel to the series whose publication is almost completed under the 
general title of * Twelve English Statesmen.' The excellence of the mono- 
graps forming that series is generally admitted, and taking the two vol- 
umes before us as samples of those which are to follow them, there is 
every apparent probability that this new series will at least equal, if not 
excel, in interest its predecessor. The general editor is Mr. J. B. 
Bury, than whom no more scholarly and capable editor could have been 
found. With considerable propriety, the initial volume of the series is 
devoted to Richelieu, whose character has been so variously represented, 
but who is fairly entitled to be called ' the greatest political genius ' France 
*has ever produced.* In sketching his life and character, Mr. Lodgj has 
necessarily to travel over a wide space. His private and domestic char- 
acter he for the most part leaves aside, and is occupied with him chiefly 
as a politician, and as ' the chief founder, not only of France before the 
Revolution, but of much that is most characteristic of France at the pre- 
sent day.' The sketch is admirably done. There is not an uninteresting 
page in the volume. Both sides of Richelieu's character as a statesman 
are brought out. While laying stress on his industry, skill, sagacity, 
decision and breadth of view, Mr. Lodge does not seek to exonerate him 
from the charge of cruelty and vindictiveness. All the same, he is of 
opinion that he was neither capricious nor unjust, and that ^his methods, 
though often arbitrary and contrary to legal custom and tradition, were 
always fearless and above-board.' If Mr. Hutton's volume is scarcely so 
attractive as Mr. Lodge's, it is not by any means due to any defect in his 
treatment of his subject, but rather to the fact that Philip Augustus is less 
known than the brilliant minister of Louis, and lived at a more remote 



192 Contemporary Literature, 

period. In his time, however, he played a scarcely leas conspicuous part. 
The conqnerer of Bouvines and the successful opponent of Henry II. of 
England^ he laid the foundations of the French Monarchy sure and strong, 
and restored it from the ruins into which it had fallen under the Capets. 
English history does not forget his intrigues against Richard I. , as little 
does it forget John's subserviency, and the way in which he allowed Philip 
to strip him of his French possessions. The worst stain of Philip's char- 
acter was his treatment of his wife Ingeborgis, whom he renounced on the 
very day of her coronation. The conflict which arose in consequence 
between him and Innocent III. is graphically described by Mr. Hutton^ 
as well as the measures he took for the defence of the Church against the 
rapacity of the feudal lords. Altogether, he has produced a very readable 
volume, interesting in many ways, and bearing evident marks of careful 
study and preparation. 

Studies in Judaism, By S. SOHECHTER, M.A. London : Adam 
& Charles Black. 1896. 

Mr. Schechter, the accomplished Reader in Talmudic in the University 
of Cambridge, has here put together a number of essays on topics con- 
nected with Judaism both ancient and modern, which, though they have 
already appeared in the pages of the Jewish Qtuirterly and the Jewish 
Times, are of sufScient value to justify their publication in a per- 
manent form. Dealing ^ith the topics they do, and written with a 
vivacious, if not brilliant pen, they will commend themselves to the reader 
both as bringing to his notice various phases of life and thought, about 
which to the general public very little is known, and as presenting him 
with a large amount of information, which, while singularly interesting in 
itself, is set before him in a most charming way. Some of the papers are 
biographical, others of them theological, one or two of them are biblio- 
graphical, and the rest of them are of a somewhat lighter texture and 
might almost be called gossipy ; only the gossip is always that of a scholar 
with a memory overrunning with all manner of information about Jewish 
history and literature and the ways of the Jews. The essays are in all 
fourteen. The first of them is on the Chassidim, or the Pious, a dissenting 
sect among the Jews in Eastern Europe, originated by Israel Baalshem, a 
native of Ukop, in Bukovina, who was bom about the year 1700. Mr. 
Schechter has both loved and hated the Chassidim, and 'even now,' he 
says, ' I am not able to suppress these feelings.' But he adds, * I have 
rather tried to guide my feelings in such a way as to love in Chassidim 
what was ideal and noble, and to hate in it what turned out bad and per- 
nicious for Judaism.' The life of Baalshem was not without its elements 
of romance, and his followers have added to it many things which are 
purely legendary. In its origin Chassidim was a revolt against the ex- 
cessive causistry of the contemporary Rabbis. * It was in fact,' says Mr. 
Schechter, ' one more manifestation of the yearning of the human heart 
towards the Divine idea, and of its ceaseless craving for direct communion 
with God. It was the protest of an emotional but uneducated people 
against a one-sided expression of Judaism, presented in cold and over- 
subtle disquisitions which not only did they not understand, but which 
shut out the play of the feelings and the affections, so that religion was 
made impossible to them.' Baalshem had no Rabbi for his master ; his 
teaching, the key-note of which was the Immanence of God, he worked 
out for himself and communicated to his disciples for the most part orally. 
On the study of the Law or the observance of its precepts iu themselves^ 
he laid little stress ; he regarded them as means to an end, and the end, 



Contemporary Literature* 193 

he taught, is union with God. Ont of this mysticism was developed the 
doctrine of the Intermediary which gave rise to the Zaddikim, a class of 
men who were supposed to form a connecting bond between God and His 
creatures^ and soon became the distinguishing feature of Chassidism. In 
other words, Chassidism soon gave way to Zaddikism, and before long 
dwindled away to little short of man worship. The sect was early rent by 
divisions ; it was persecuted by the orthodox and by the Government ; but 
it still remains. ' Amid much that is bad,' Mr. Schechter remarks, ' the 
Chassidim have preserved through the whole movement a warm heart, and 
an ardent, sincere faith.' The three essays which follow, while biographical, 
are largely expository, and have for their subjects R. Nachman Krochmal 
(1785-1840), R. Elijah Wilna, Gaon (1720-1797), and R. Moses ben Nach- 
man, or Nachmanides, as he is now commonly called, of Gerona (1195- 
1270), all of whom were great teachers, and have had a marked influence 
on the course of Jewish thought. The fifth essay contains a brief sketch 
of a Jewish Boswell, R. Solomon of St. Goar, who took down the sayings 
of R. Jacob, who filled the office of Chief Rabbi in Mayence and Worms, 
some three hundred years before the Laird of Auchinleck did the same for 
Johnson. The next four essays are theological. Two of them deal with 
doctrine, and amply refute the saying of Maimonides, that Judaism has no 
dogmas. Mr. Schechter shows that while Judaism has no definitely elabo- 
rated creed or symbol similar to the symbols of the Christian Church, it has 
nevertheless a fairly numerous set of well defined doctrines, which he 
illustrates with a variety of quotations from the Talmud and other writings. 
An essay having for its title *' The History of Jewish Tradition,' may be 
said to be a short treatise on the history of the interpretation cf Scripture 
among the Jews. Two delightful essays bear the titles respectively of 

* The Child in Jewish Literature * and * Woman in Temple and Synagogue.' 

* The Earliest Jewish Community in Europe ' approves of the removal of 
the Ghetto in Rome, and contains much interesting reading about the 
Jews in the Eternal City. 'Titles of Jewish Books' notes the curious 
titles Jewish authors were in the habit of giving to their books. Among 
others mentioned are * Principal Spices,' * Meat Ofiferings Mingled or Dry,' 

* Two Young Pigeons,' Forests of Honey,' * The Offering of the Poor,* 

* One Kid No Israel,' * Meat or Coals.' * Choice Pearls,' however, is more 
attractive than the prosaic ' Collection of Proverbs and Sayings,' which is 
what the book contains. ' The Lips of those who Sleep ' recommends 
itself, Mr. Schechter remarks, ' as a very suggestive title for a catalogue, 
especially when one thinks of the Agadic explanation given to Cant. vii. ]0, 
according to which the study of the book of a departed author makes the 
lips of the dead man speak. R. Jacob Emden named one of his pamphlets 
'Rod for the Fool's Back,' while for a mathematical book R. Joseph 
Tsarphathi devised the title City of Sihon, alluding to Numbers, xxi. 27, 
for Hesbon (reckoning) is the City of Sihon. In his essay on the Collection 
of Hebrew books in the British Museum Mr. Schechter laments the little 
interest which is taken in that magnificent collection, and enumerates a num- 
ber of the most valuable of its MSS. and volumes. The fame of the collec- 
tion has penetrated, it would appear, into some of the most obscure places in 
Poland, where legends circulate about the 'millions ' of books which be- 
long to the Queen of England, and a certain autograph copy of the Book 
of Proverbs, presented to the Queen of Sheba on the occasion of her visit 
to Jerusalem, and brought by the English troops as a trophy from 
Abyssinia. We have said sufficient, however, to show the character and 
contents of Mr. Schechter's Studies, Since the publication of Dr. Deutsch's 
volume nothing equal to it has appeared. 



194 Contemporary Literature* 

Tlie Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Edited by 
WiLUAM Knight. Vola I — V. London & New York : 
Macmillan & Co. 1896. 

The students to whom this edition of Wordsworth is dedicated are 
•already under a heavy debt of gratitude to Professor Knight, and this 
•debt promises to be largely increased rather than diminished by the work 
he has now begun. Whatever may be thought of his work as an editor, 
there can be no doubt that Professor Knight possesses information, and is 
in a position to give to the world an edition of Wordsworth such as no one 
else at present can, and such an one as might well be counted ' final.' His 
edition of 1882-6, notwithstanding its numerous mistakes, and the Life of 
1889, notwithstanding its errors, marked a distinct advance, and placed 
him easily amongst the foremost, if not at the head, of editors of Words- 
worth. The present edition, we are glad to say, is not a reprint, nor even 
an amended edition of that of 1882-6. It retains some of its features, but 
has others which entitle it to be regarded as new and more complete. 
The editing in fact has been recast, and as it seems to us, with advantage, 
the alterations made being, as we venture to think, without exception, 
improvements. Whether other improvements might not have been added 
with advantage is perhaps an open question. As for the features of the 
1882-6 edition which have been retained the following may be mentioned : 
(1), The poems are printed in the chronological order of their composition, 
not in the order of their publication, nor as they were arranged by Words- 
worth. (2), The changes made in the text by Wordsworth in successive 
editions are given at the foot of the pages and duly dated. (3), Other 
changes suggested by Wordsworth but not printed are also given in the 
footnotes. (4), The Fenwick notes are printed in full. In addition to 
these there are the topographical notes, the poems and verses not included 
by Wordsworth in any of the editions he brought out of his works, the 
bibliography and the Life. Among the changes, it may be noted that the 
heavy and clumsy volume of the 1882-6 edition has been discarded for the 
more convenient size of the ' Eversley Series.* The poems are to occupy 
eight volumes, and along with Wordsworth's poems are to be printed those 
of his sister Dorothy, and others which the poet published among his own. 
The notes to the poems are re-arranged, distinguished and dated. xVll 
Wordsworth's prose works are to be given in full and are to occupy 
volumes nine and ten. Dorothy Wordsworth's journals are to be printed, 
though, for reasons to be explained, not all of them in full. We are also 
promised the letters of the poet and his sister Dorothy, with many that 
have not hitherto seen the light, besides a new bibliography and several 
other items of great interest. The Life is to be re-written and shortened 
«o as to occupy only a single volume. Whether this new edition of the 
Poet will be final it is much too soon to say. For our own part we are not 
particularly enamoured of the chronological arrangement of the poems. 
Professor Knight defends it on the ground that it exhibits best the de- 
velopment of the poet's genius. We are not so sure that it does. A poet's 
mind does not work like a machine, nor can it be said to work evenly. 
There are tides iii the inspiration of genius as there are in intellectual 
vigour. It is subject to ebb and flow. More perhaps than any one else 
the poet is a creature of circumstance, and during what may be called his 
best periods, he may produce, as he often does, work which is much below 
the level of what he is capable of doing. Besides, in the case of Words- 
worth, we have the fact that in regard to some of his poems it is difficult 
to fix their date either of inception or completion as well as the other, that 
the poet himself refused to adopt the chronological order and was at great 




Contemporary Literature. 195 

pains to classify his poems on a different principle. Professor Knight, 
however, admits that * the chronological method of arrangement has its 
limits/ and in several instances, as he explains, departs from it. Still one 
feels disposed to say, even with this admission : If a principle is worth 
anything it is worth sticking to. The errata in the 1882-6 edition were 
striking ; here they hold out the promise of being numerous ; but leaving 
these for others who have more space at their command, to point out, 
we may observe that the word * gill * is not as Wordsworth believed CVol. 
I., p. 10, Note), and as his editor seems to assume, 'confined to this 
country,' i.e.. the Lake District. It often occurs in Scotland, as, for in- 
stance, in the name of Normangill, etc., and may be found pretty liberally 
annotated in Jamieson. On page 253 of the same volume the singular 
misprint occurs, * of went years/ for * twenty years.' Four pages further 
on Professor Knight's correspondent is not quite accurate as to his trans- 
lation, nor has the Professor himself laid hold on the right passage from 
St, Bernard of Clairvaux. It occurs in Ep. 106, and runs as follows : 
Experto crede : aliquid amplius invenies in silvis quam in libris. Ligna 
et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis. The table 
of contents to the first volume exhibits the singular omission of all mention 
of the Preface which runs out to over sixty pages and deserves better 
treatment. Each volume, we should add, is provided with a beautifully 
executed portrait and vignette. 

Catvlli Veronensis Liber. Edited by ARTHUR PALMER, Litt.D., 
LL.D., D.C.L. Loudon and New York: Macmillan & Co. 
1896. 

Professor Palmer has here edited for Messrs. Macmillan's * Parnassus 
Library,' the poems of Catullus, for whom he claims the high honour of 
being * the most passionate and brilliant, if not the greatest of the Roman 
poets.' That he was *the most passionate and brilliant,' will probably be 
admitted by most ; that he was the greatest is probably more than many 
will admit. In some respects, however, Catullus stands out before any 
other of the Roman poets either of the Republic or the Empire. In his 
sincerity, his love of beauty, his rich pictorial power, the startling vivid- 
ness of his language and imagery, and his mastery over the art of expres- 
sion, he is often unrivalled. There is no knowing what he might have 
done had his life been spared, but judged by the works which have sur- 
vived, though entitled to a high place among the Roman poets, he can 
scarcely claim to be placed first. Even as a lyrical poet he cannot, 
as Sellar observed, be placed on the same level with Horace. It 
is with the text, however, that Professor Palmer has mostly to do. Here 
he has for the most part followed Professor Robinson Ellis, though not 
always. The plan of the series does not admit of notes, but to justify 
his text. Professor Palmer has supplied a list of various readings and 
added a couple of excursus. An all too brief introduction sketches the 
life of Catullus and deals with the metres^ MSS. , and other matters. Like 
the other volumes in this series the work is handsomely printed and bound,- 
and of a handy size. The elaborate index with which Professor Palmer's 
volume concludes is an excellent indication of the admirable manner in 
which he has discharged his duties as editor throughout. 

!/ he English Dialect Dictionary, Edited by JOSEPH Wright, 
M.A., Ph.D. Part I. A to Ballot. London and Oxford : 
Henry Frowde. New York: Putnam's Sons. 



196 Contemporary Literature. 

This is the first instalment of a great and important work which has not 
been begun too soon. It has been long in preparation. Dr. Wright, its 
accomplished Editor^ has had, and still has^ many helpers whose joint 
efforts, it is to be hoped, will meet with the handsome recognition they 
deserve. The aim of the dictionary is to include as far as possible the 
vocabulary of aU English dialect words which are still in use, or have been 
in use, during the last two hundred years in England, Scotland, Ireland, 
and Wales, and any American and Colonial dialect words which are 
still in use in Great Britain and Ireland, or have been found in early 
printed dialect books and glossaries. The difficulty of compiling such a 
work is obvious. To ensure success, readers and contributors must be 
found in every district, and they must work promptly, we should say, as 
the tendency of things in the present eeems to be to assimilate the lan- 
guage all over the country, except in the most remote parts, or where the 
modern means of locomotion have not yet penetrated. After a careful 
examination of the Part before us, we have no hesitation in saying that it 
is scarcely possible to speak too highly of the exhaustive and scholarly way 
in which the work has been done. Over two thousand simple and com- 
pound words, and five hundred phrases, have been treated, and these have 
been illustrated by 8536 quotations, without counting those which have 
been cited at the end of each article from early writers. A careful search 
for omissions has not resulted in the discovery of more than a dozen, and 
some of these may be at least excused. Under adder the Scotch form 
nadder has not been given. Agate, a word used in the north for ajar, a 
little open, is omitted, il^o^ sometimes has the sense of 'amazement.' 
Alane is given under alone, but it should have been registered separately ; 
so also should ance, ' once.' Awiie is not given, though awny is. Baik- 
water as a verb, though common enough, is omitted. Bajffing, making 
rough sport, though other senses of the word are given, is also omitted. 
Baffing-spooTh, the name given to a club used in golf, is wanting, though t9 
haff is rightly defined. The cross entries are numerous, yet a few more 
might have been given ; acM, to own, for instance. Perfection in a work 
of this kind is, we should say, impossible, and Dr. Wright may be con- 
gratulated upon reaching the very high standard he has. 

A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Field — 
Fish. By Henry Bradley, M.A. Diffluent — Disburden. 
By Dr. James A. H. Murray. Oxford : at the Clarendon 
Press. 1896. 

The first of these quarterly issues of Dr. Murray's great Dictionary has 
been prepared under the editorship of his able coadjutor, Mr. Bradley. The 
number of pages in it is the same as in the other quarterly sections, but the 
number of main words which are dealt with in it is smaller than in any pre- 
vious section. The reason is that to a greater extent than in any other por- 
tion, the words which are here treated of are among the oldest and most 
frequently used in the language, and that on this account many of them, in 
consequence of the multiplicity of their senses and applications, have re- 
quired to be illustrated at much more than the average length. The total 
number of words recorded is, on the other hand, much larger owing to the 
extraordinary abundance of combinations of certain important substan- 
tives. The combinations of * field,' for instance, occupy a couple of pages, 
and those of * fire,' six. While between ^ Field and Fish,' Johnson records 
168 words, the number here recorded is 1985. Johnson's illustrative 
quotations number only 556, Mr. Bradley gives no fewer than 8526. These 
numbers speak for themselves and show with what extraordinary care and 



Contemporary Literature^ 197 

elaboration the work of this monumental Dictionary is being 6arried on. 
Novelties in the way of derivation are in this section rare, but the develop- 
ment of meaning is, in a number of words, such for instance as 'file,' 'line,' 

* field,' ' fight,' and * fire,' interesting. The section edited by Dr. Murray, 
though appearing later than the section just noticed, deals with an earlier 
part of the alphabet. A great number of the words explained are fur- 
nished with the prefix ctw- or its variants. Here, as in the rest of the 
Dictionary, the words registered are much more numerous than those 
given in any of the larger dictionaries, while in the matter of illustrative 
quotations no comparison can be made. In short, the more carefully each 
part is examined, the more is one struck with its extraordinary value of 
the work to which they belong, and its marked superiority over all other 
works of its kind. 

Introduction to Political Science : Two Series of Lectures, By 
Sir J. R. Seeley, K.C.M.G., LittD. London and New 
York : Macmillan & Co. 1896. 

The two series of lectures contained in this volume of the ' Eversley 
Series,' were delivered by the late Sir J. R. Seeley as Professor of Modem 
History at Cambridge, mainly during the Michaelmas and Lent terms of 
the academic year 1885-86. They have been prepared for the press by 
Professor Sidgwick, than whom no more skilful or sympathetic editor 
could have been found. Written for oral delivery, they do not form a 
manual of political science ; still less do they aim at the communication of 
a complete system. Their aim is rather to communicate a method and to 
excite the reader to an independent exercise of thought in applying it. 
During his occupancy of the Modern History Chair it was the author's 
custom to give instruction in history and in political science, the former 
by means of formal public lectures and the latter by means of a conversa- 
tion class. Of this latter many of Professor Seeley's old students have 
grateful recollections, and some time ago Mr. J. R. Tanner described the 
way in which the class was conducted. * The subject,' he says, * was poli- 
tical science studied by way of discussion, and discussion under the rever- 
ential conditions that prevailed, resolved itself into question and answer — 
Socrates exposing the folly of the Athenians. It was mainly an exercise 
in the definition and scientific use of terms. What is liberty ? Various 
definitions of the term would be elicited from the class and subjected to 
analysis. The authors of them would be lured by subtle cross-examina- 
tion into themselves exposing their inconsistencies. Then the Professor 
would take up his parable. He would first discuss the different senses in 
which the term had already been used in literature. . . . From an 
-examination of inconsistent accounts the Professor would proceed to the 
business of building up by a gradual process, and with the help of the 
elass itself, a definition of his own.' At times the Professor would vary 
his method and treat political philosophy in formal lectures as well as in 
his conversation class. To the objections that his proper function was to 
teach history and not political science, he was ready to reply that to lecture 
on political science was in his opinion to lecture on history. The two, he 
used to maintain, are not distinct but inseparable. To call political science 

* a part of history,' he says in his first lecture, might do some violence 
to the usage of language, but T may venture to say that history without 
political science is a study incomplete, truncated, as on the other hand, 
political science without history is hollow and baseless, or in one word : 

' History without political science has no fruit. 
Political science without history has no root/ 



198 Contemporary Literature, 

Hence the chief aim of the lectures before as is to enforce and illustrate 
the two-sided doctrine that the right method of studying political science 
is an essentially historical method, and that the right method of studying 
political history Ib to study it as material for political science. The fruit- 
fulness of this doctrine is obvious. Its treatment has afforded Professor 
Seeley the opportunity of dealing with many current opinions and of ex- 
posing numerous modem political fallacies. The second of the two seriea 
of lectures will, in all probability, prove itself the more attractive to the 
majority of readers as it is here that different forms of government, a num- 
ber of points in English constitutional history and the practice of Parlia- 
ment, and such terms as ' aristocracy ' are trenchantly discussed. 

A Handbook of Greek Sculpture. By ERNEST ARTHUR 
Gardner, M.A. London and Nf^w York : Macmillan & 
Co. 1896. 

Both as to subject and author, Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have been ex- 
ceedingly fortunate for the initial volume of their new series of ' Hand- 
books of Archaeology and Antiquities.' In any such series, Greek Sculp- 
ture, on account of its intrinsic importance, deserves the first place, and 
the task of treating it could scarcely have fallen into more capable hands 
than those of Professor Gardner, who for some years discharged the dutiea 
of Director of the Britiah School of Archaeology at Athens. The present 
volume is only an instalment and does not bring the history of the 
subject down to a later date than the year 400 b.g. In a subsequent 
volume it is proposed to continue the narrative down to the date of the 
foundation of Constantinople in 324 a.d., Byzantine Art being entirely 
beyond the scope of the work, but reserved, we may hope, for separate 
treatment. The plan adopted by Mr. Gardner is simple, and such as will 
commend itself to those who are acquainted with what is required in a 
handbook by those for whom handbooks are written. In an introductory 
chapter of considerable length, Mr Gardner deals with the sources, literary 
and other, for the history of Greek Sculpture ; then with the materials 
used by the sculptor, the uses to which he put them, and the technical 
processes he employed in working them. There is also a useful section on 
the application of colour to sculpture, and another on the use of pointing 
from a finished model, and one on decorative sculpture. In the first of 
the two and a half chapters which follow, Mr. Gardner endeavours to ap- 
preciate the influence which Egyptian, Assyrian, and Phoenician Art had 
upon the Greeks and indicates the way in which the rise of Greek Art was 
conditioned and fostered by the great national games and festivals. From 
600 to 480 B.C. is taken by Mr. Gardner as the period during which the Greek 
sculptor ceased to be an apt imitator of foreign masters and Greek art began 
to show signs of that development * which was to lead to the works of 
Phidias and Praxiteles, and when their chief interest' is 'in their promise 
for the future.' Here the Schools of Samos, Chios, and Crete, as also of 
Athens, Argos, and Sicyon are treated, and the monuments of the different 
schools of the period are classified according to their various localities and 
described. The first half of the third chapter which is here given is de- 
voted to the fifth century B.C. After pointing out the immense influence 
which the Persian Wars had upon the development of Greek Art, Mr. 
Gardner proceeds to deal with the Olympian Sculptures and the works of 
Calamis, Myron, Pythagoras, and Phidias. Everywhere Mr. Gardner 
"^'- himself, as far as possible, of the assistance afforded by Greek 
In many cases the evidence he has to work upon is slight, but 
vs careful in the case of controverted points to put the varioua 



r 



Contemporary Literature. 199 

opinions which have been held, and to write as undogmatically as possible, 
believing it better that the student should be left in doubt than that he 
should take up with views which he may afterwards require to unlearn. 

Darwin^ and After Darwin : An Exposition of the Darwinian 
Theory , and a Discussion of Post" Darwinian Questions. By 

George John Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. Vol II. 

London ; Longmans, Green, & Co. 1895. 

In this, the second and posthumous volume of his discussions, the late 
Mr. Romanes carries on his exposition of the doctrine of Darwin and hia 
defence of Darwin against some of his folio vtrers. Of the ten chapters it 
contains, the first is introductory and treats of the general theory of 
descent as held by Darwin and as it is now held by the several divergent 
schools of thought which have arisen since Darwin's death. The next five 
chapters are devoted to a discussion of the theory of heredity, and the re- 
mainder to the theory of adaptations. The point explained in the first 
chapter is the fact that Darwin always held, and with increasing firmness, 
the doctrine that selection has been the main and not the only means of 
modification, but has been supplemented and assisted by other causes. 
With this the theory of Wallace and Weissmann, that selection has been 
the only cause of modification, is strongly contrasted, and the points of 
difference between the two theories are set out at great length. Mr. 
Romanes also discriminates between the true Darwinian theory and the 
ideas propounded by Sachs and Pfeffer, Geddes, Cope, and Hyatt. lu 
the chapters on Heredity Mr. Romanes expresses his conviction that, not- 
withstanding the arguments of Weissmann, the doctrine stands exactly 
where it was left by Galton twenty years ago. On the doctrine of utility 
Mr. Romanes differs from both Wallace and Huxley. In his opinon, re- 
garded as a universal principle, the doctrine of utility is purely a priori 
and being founded exclusively on grounds of deduction, it is impossible to 
combat it by an appeal to facts. * The question,' he says, 'is not one of 
fact ; it is a question of reasoning. The treatment of our subject matter 
is logical, not biological.' As usual, Mr. Romanes here sets forth his 
ideas and arguments with great force and clearness. The latter are tren- 
chant and exhaustive, and one can only regret that the hand which penned 
them is no longer with us, and that a career so conspicuously brilliant has 
come to what to all appearance was, in the interests of science, a prema- 
ture end. 

SHORT NOTICES, 

The Book of Job and EcclesiasteSy The Wisdom of Solomon (Macmillan) 
are two volumes of Professor Moulton's series entitled ' The Modern 
Reader's Bible.' To the general features of this series we called attention 
last quarter when noticing the first two numbers of it. The two before us 
amply bear out the promise of their predecessors. As was remarked then 
critical questions are avoided and the introduction with which each book 
is prefaced is for the most part taken up with an explanation or analysis of 
the text. Mr. Moulton's introduction to the Book of Job is particularly 
interesting. The analysis is lucid and will help the reader very materially 
to the understanding of a book whose meaning is not very generally under- 
stood, and as to which there is, and probably will continue to be, notwith- 
standing Professor Moulton's arguments, considerable difference of opinion. 
The passage in the introduction devoted to the exposition of the idea of 
Satan and the part he was supposed to play at the time the book of Job 



200 Contemporary Literature. 

was written, though not new to Theologians, will strike many as peculiar. 
The introductions to Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom are equally good, 
but here, again, it is more than probable that Theologians and Biblical 
critics will have something to say against the views they contain as to the 
ruling idea of each book. As in the other volumes the text of the Revised 
Version is used. The notes are frequent and apposite. Those to the Book 
of Job contain a brief account of Hebrew prosody. 

An Ethical Movement (Macmillan) by W. L. Sheldon, is chiefly remark- 
able as illustrating a movement, which has sprung up in the United States of 
America and has a few representative societies on this side of the Atlantic, 
having for its object the study and practice of Ethics of a more or less 
altruistic kind as a sort of substitute for the Christian religion. The 
lectures may be called Lay Sermons. There is nothing new in them, but 
they will serve to show the kind of teaching which is supposed to satisfy a 
number to whom Christianity, so far as they have heard or understood it, 
seems to be defective. 

H'iigh Miller, by W. Keith Leask, John Knox, by A. Taylor Innes, and 
Robert Bums, by Gabriel Setoun, are three volumes of Messrs. Oliphaut, 
Anderson & Ferrier*s 'Famous Scots' series. The volumes are being 
issued with commendable rapidity. The sketches they contain are neees- 
sarily, owing to the limitations of space, slight, but so far as they go, they 
have evidently been written with the intention of making them as attrac- 
tive and popular as possible. 

John Chinaman (Hitt, Edinburgh), by the Rev. J. Cockbum, M.A., is 
an excellent little volume. The author was formerly stationed at Ichang, 
and has had many opportunities of studying the Chinese on their native 
soil. The account which he has given of their ways and ideas is remark- 
ably instructive. More accurate information about them may be gathered 
from these pages than from some volumes, the perusal of which requires 
the expenditure of more time and patience. 

The summer number of The Evergreen (P. Geades & Colleagues) is full 
of varied and interesting reading. There is a careful and attractive paper 
in it by Mr. J. A. Thomson, with the title, * The Biology of Summer," 
and another equally good by the Editor, with the somewhat curious title, 
* The Flower of the Grass.' Over the signature of Dr. Bellyse Baildon 
we have a sonnet on Robert Burns of more than average quality. Among 
the poetry of the volume may also be mentioned a charming song by Sir 
George Douglas, and one or two eflTective renderings from the Celtic. If 
the number is not a specially strong one, it is at anyrate of more than 
average quality. 

Under the title, Milk, its Nature and Composition (A. & C. Black), Dr. 
Aikman has published a small handbook for the use of farmers and the 
information of the general reader, in which he treats briefly, but lucidly, 
of the chemistry and bacteriology of milk, butter, and cheese. No attempt 
has been made to deal with the practice of butter and cheese-making, but 
the scientific principles underlying these processes have been stated in as 
popular a way as possible. Incidentally, Dr. Aikman mentions that be- 
tween the years 1890 and 1892, no fewer than 1013 papers were published 
in connection with the study of bacteriology. A list of the principal works 
on dairying is given in an appendix. 

In The Authorship of the Kingis Quair (MacLehose), Mr. J. T. T . Brown 
subjects to a very close and searching examination the claims of King 
James I. to the authorship of the poem mentioned on his title-page. 



Contemporary Literature, 201 

Writers and Editors, including Dr. Skeat who edited the poem for the 
Scottish Text Society, have all along assumed that its author was un- 
doubtedly the first of the Jameses, aud have gone so far as t') fix the year 
and month in which it w^as written. Mr. Brown criticises adversely the 
grounds on which these opinions have been based, aud by a variety of 
evidence, external and internal, attempts to show that the author of the 
poem cannot have been the King to wiiom it is usually attributed, but an 
unknown author, who took for his model the Court of Lote^ a poem written 
not earlier than 3440, or thirty-five years later tlian the date to which the 
authorshii) of the Kingis Quair has hitherto been assigned. Mr. Brown's 
argnmeuts are strong if not decisive ; but perhaps Br. Skeat may have 
something to say on the subject. 

Scottish Poetry of the Eighteenth Century (Hodge & Cr).,) is another 
volume of the * Abbotsford Series of the Scottish Poets,* which has been 
issued under the editorship of Mr. George Eyre-Todd. The selections 
begin with Lord Tester's 'Tweedside,' and conclude with a couple of 
pieces by William Julius Meikle. Among them are examples from Alex- 
ander Ross, Allan Ramsay, Hamilton of Bangour, and John Skinner. 
The pieces are carefully edited and a short account is given of the authors 
from whose works they are taken. To many, one of the surprises of the 
collection will be to find that * Rule Britannia ' owes its origin to a descen- 
dant of the proscribed MacGregors. A second volume is to follow. 

The Story of Burets aiid Highland Mxry (Alex. Gardner), by Archibald 
Munro, M.A., is a book which will find ninny readers. Mr. Munro has 
been extremely diligent in his quest for information about Burns and 
Mary Campbell, and has succeeded almost beyond expectation. There is 
mucU that is new in his volume, while his manner of telling the story of 
the two lovers is skillful and attractive. 

The Duties and Liabilities of Trustees (Macmillan), is a series of six 
lectures delivered by Mr. Birrell, M.P., in the Inner Temple during the 
Hilar}^ Sittings, 1896, at the request of the Council of Legal Education. 
They were delivered to law students, but are as free from legal technicalities 
as possible and can scarcely fail to be intelligible to all whom they concern. 
Mr. Birrel, in fact, has put what he has to say so clearly and forcibly that 
no Trustee need hawj the slightest difficulty in understanding what his 
duties and responsioilities are. The. reading of his lectures is almost as 
pleasant as that of his Obiter Dicta. The same hand is apparent on almost 
every page as well as the same genial spirit. Law has seldom been ex- 
pounded in the same luminous and felicitous waj'. With Mr. Birrell's 
lectures ficcessible to him no Trustee will henceforth be able to excuse 
himself for not being acquainted with the duties and responsibilities of his 
position. 

The publication of the sixth and seventh volumes of the late J. R. 
Green's History of the English People in Messrs. Macmillan 's ' Eversley 
Series,' leaves but one more volume to be issued in order to complete the 
work in this Series. Its publication in this form is an undoubted gain. 
Like all the rest of the works in this Series, it is admirably printed, while 
its low price should place it within the reach of a vast number of readers 
whose means will not allow them to indulge in the luxury of the' more ex- 
pensive edition. 



THE 



SCOTTISH REVIEW. 



OCTOBER, 1896. 



Art. I.— the ANNANDALE FAMILY BOOK. 

The Annandale Family Book of the Johnstonet, Earls and Mar- 
quises of Annandale. By SiB WILLIAM FraSEB, K.C.B., 
LL.D. 2 vols., 4to. Edinburgh : 1894. 

WHEN the twentieth century has reached maturity, and 
the Scottish historian of that period is engaged making 
researches as to the early history of Scotland, there is one 
writer of the present time whose memory he will hold in 
special veneration. He may esteem highly three successive 
Historiographers-Royal — Dr. John Hill Burton, for his masterly 
studies of eighteenth century life ; Dr. Skeue, for his patient 
investigations of early Celtic history, and Professor Masson for 
his laborious work in transcribing and annotating the Register 
of the Privy Council. But for really valuable historical matter, 
for documentary evidence of an irreproachable character, and 
for the publication of the correspondence of prominent char- 
acters in general history giving curiously intimate glimpses of 
social life in bygone days, the future historian will feel par- 
ticularly indebted to Sir William Fraser. Before reviewing 
The Annandale Family Booky one of the latest products of Sir 
William's prolific pen, the reader of the present day may be 
interested in the story of the author's long and industrious 
career. It is a record of unexampled success in a field of 

XX VIII. 14 



204 The Annandale Family Book 

labour that is often barren and onfmitftil even to the most 
* eident ' worker. 

The modem method of historical research in Scotland, by 
which traditional evidence is carefully separated from that 
which is founded upon documents, may be dated from the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century. Thomas Thomson, who 
held the office of Deputy-Clerk-Register from 1806 to 1841, 
did much to clear away the myths and baseless traditions that 
were accepted as veritable history even by serious historians 
of Scotland. Trained as a lawyer, and accustomed to esti- 
mate the value of documentary evidence in the Courts of 
Law, Mr. Thomson brought the same logical processes to bear 
upon historical questions. With him, as with every sane his- 
torian, the written document, when its authenticity was proved, 
entirely superseded the oral evidence of tradition; and though 
he did not produce any elaborate history of Scotland, he ac- 
complished a far greater work by placing all future histories 
upon a secure and steadfast basis. His labours in the Register 
House were of incalculable service, for he reduced the chaos 
of documents committed to his charge into something ap- 
proaching order, and made valuable discoveries of neglected 
papers that have since been utilised profitably by every his- 
torian of Scotland. It is sufficient to mention his edition of 
The Acta of the Parliaments of Scotland^ The Register of the 
Great Seal (an interrupted work now approaching comple- 
tion), and The Chamberlain RoUsy to show what he accom- 
plished as a pioneer. In his position as President of the Ban- 
natyne Club, Mr. Thomson was also able to render efficient 
service to historical literature. His immediate successor in 
office was Willjam Pitt Dundas, grandson of Lord President 
Dundas, but it was not until Sir William Fraser became 
Deputy Keeper of the Records that Thomas Thomson's place 
was adequately supplied. 

Sir William Fraser, who is now an octogenarian, began his 
career as a Solicitor in Edinburgh, and was admitted as an 
S.S.C. in 1851. He had turned his attention at an early period 
in his life to the study of those family documents in which the 
real history of a nation is more accurately displayed than in 



The Annandale Family Book. 205 

any formal work that deals exclusively with State Papers ; 
and Peerage Law became one of his specialties. Long before 
his name was made prominent as an author he had gained a 
high reputation in professional circles as an authority on family 
history ; and he was frequently entrusted with researches in 
private charter-rooms for the purpose of discovering and pre- 
paring documentary evidence in important casea So highly 
was he esteemed as a competent ' black-letter lawyer ' that, in 
1852, Mr. Alexander Pringle of Whytbank, then Keeper of the 
Register of Sasines, offered Mr. Fraser the responsible position 
of Deputy-Keeper, and induced him to give up his legal prac- 
tice for this post At Mr. Pringle's death in 1857, it was ex- 
pected that Mr. Fraser would have succeeded him as head of 
the Sasine Office ; but that place was bestowed upon the late 
Mr. John Clerk Brodie of Idvies, who retained it till his death 
in 1888. Mr. Fraser remained in his post as Deputy-Keeper of 
the Register of Sasines until 1880, when a new arrangement 
of the staff in the Register House, Edinburgh, left the office of 
Deputy-Keeper of the Records vacant, and Mr. Fraser was 
promoted to this position. For the next twelve years he filled 
this post with conspicuous success ; but in 1892, when he had 
reached the official limit of 40 years' public service, his retire- 
ment became necessary. As he was still vigorously prose- 
cuting his life-work it was thought that a special arrangement 
might be made to prolong his term of service. The fear, how- 
ever, of establishing a precedent that might not always work 
well, prevented this reasonable proposal, and he retired, but 
not to inactive seclusion. His ability had been recognised by 
the conferring upon him of the degree of LL.D., by Edinburgh 
University in 1882, and by his enrolment as a Companion of 
the Bath in 1885 by Mr. Gladstone. Be was advanced to the 
dignity of K.C.B. in 1887 by Lord Salisbury — an honour rarely 
bestowed for purely literary services. 

While Sir William Eraser's work in organising the various 
departments in the Register House that have been under his 
charge has greatly expedited both professional and historical 
researches, he will be most highly appreciated by posterity for 
the wonderful books on Scottish family history — 24 in number 



206 The Annandale Family Book 

— ^that have iflBued from his pen. These have placed the 
writiDg of Scottish history upon an entirely new basis. The 
imaginative historian who accepts local tradition as if it were 
unchallengeable verity has been effectually put to flight, and 
fact is properly preferred to fancy. In this respect Sir William 
Fraser's books are models of accuracy, for though he may 
sometimes theorise upon the contents of a charter, or suggest 
a tentative explanation of a letter, he is always careful to give 
a copy of the document in dispute — often in fac-simile — so 
that the student may draw his own inferences from the veri- 
table parchment or epistle. How many violent historical feuds 
between rival partizans would have been avoided had it been 
possible to refer to originals and verify quotations! The 
literary career of Sir William Eraser has extended over nearly 
half-a-century. During that time he has not only produced an 
unique library of books on Scottish history, but has also been 
actively engaged in making reports of private Scottish col- 
lections for the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. 
In this department of labour, first as joint reporter, and then 
on the resignation of the late Dr. John Stuart, as sole re- 
porter for Scotland, be has worked assiduously since 1869, 
and has examined the principal charter-rooms of the Scottish 
nobility, and prepared elaborate statements as to their con- 
tents. The results of his work are made available in the 
valuable series of Reports published by the Boyal Commission. 
The great expense involved in the preparation of Sir William 
Fraser^s books necessarily prevented them from being taken 
up as a publisher's speculation, and their existence is due to 
the liberality and public spirit of the noblemen and gentlemen 
for whom they were * privately printed,' and by whom they 
have been distributed. Occasionally stray copies come into 
the market and bring very large prices, but it may be doubted 
if there is any private library in Scotland which contains the 
whole of these splendid volumes. To book-lovers and collec- 
tors the following full list of these books will be of especial 
interest. The Stirlings of Keir (1858) was undertaken for the 
late Sir William Stirling-Maxwell of PoUok and Keir, and was 
the earliest volume brought out by Sir WilUam Fraser. It 



The Annandale Family Book 207 

was followed by The Montgomeries^ Earls of Eglinton^ (1859) ; 
The Maxwells of Pollok^ (1863), both in two volumes; T'he 
Maxwelly Herries and Nithsdale Muniments^ (1865) ; The Polloh 
Maxwell Baronetcy^ (1866), each one volume; The Camegies^ 
Earls of Southesk^ (1867), in two volumes, for the present Earl ; 
The Red Book of Grandtullyy (1868), two volumes, for the late 
Sir William Stewart; The Chiefs of Colquhoun^ (1869), two 
volumes; Begistrum Monasterii de S. Marie de Cambuskenneth, 
(1872), for the Grampian Club; The Book of Cderlaverocky 
(1873), two volumes ; The Cartulary of Colquhoun, (1873), one 
volume; The i^nno^, (1874), two volumes; The Cartulary of 
Pollok Maxwell^ (1875), one volume ; The Earls of Cromartie, 
(1876), two volumes ; The Scotts of Buccleuch, (1878), in two 
large volumes, for the late Duke of Buccleuch ; The Erasers 
of Philorth^ (1879), three volumes, written in conjunction with 
Lord Saltoun ; The Red Book of Menteithy (1880), two volumes ; 
The Chiefs of Grants (1883), in three large volumes: The Doug- 
las Book, (1885), in four large volumes, for the Earls of Home ; 
The Family of Wemyss of Wemyss, (1888), in three volumes, for 
Mr. Randolph Erskine Wemyss; The Earls of Haddington^ 
(1889), in two volumes ; The MelviUes^ Earls of Melville^ and 
the Leslies^ Earls of Leven^ (1890), three remarkable volumes 
projected by Thomas Thomson in 1820 and finished by Sir 
William Eraser seventy years later; The Sutherland Book^ 
(1892), three volumes, for the late and present Dukes of Suther- 
land ; and The Annandale Book^ (1894), in two large volumes, 
for Mr. J. J. Hope- Johnstone of Annandale. The two last named 
works have been completed and published since Sir William 
Eraser retired from his public duties ; and it is by no means 
unlikely, despite his advanced years, that he will be able to 
finish some of the similar volumes which he has long had in 
view. 

Erom this list of his works it will be seen that Sir William 
Eraser^s researches have covered the whole of Scotland, from 
Annandale to the remotest parts of Sutherland; from the 
• kingdom of Eife ' to Ayrshire, the Colquhoun country, and 
the land of the Lennox. There is not a shire in Scotland 
which has not figured in some form either in his Reports or in 



208 The AnnandaU Family Book. 

his volumes. His experience, therefore, transcends that of any 
other living Scottish writer upon family history or genealogy, 
and his position is unique in this respect. His later works are 
fall of that ripe knowledge of affairs which is only gained by 
wide experience and research ; and The Annandale Family Book 
to which attention is now, to be directed, is a typical example 
of Sir William Fraser's style. 

Amongst the families that ruled the Scottish Borders the 
Scotts, the Johnstones, the Maxwells, and the Jardines long 
held prominence, and for centuries they contested among 
themselves for precedence, though they united against the 
common foe, ' cure ould inuemyes of England/ The chief 
power in Dumfriesshire was divided between the Johnstones 
and the Maxwells, and many a fierce contest took place to 
decide the supremacy of the one or the other. An old col- 
loquial phrase (utilised by Bums in one of his poems) asserts 
that whatever plea might arise on the Borders ^ the Johnstones 
had the guidin' o't.' They seem to have held much the same 
position in their own district as the Kennedies in Ayrshire, or 
the Douglases in Clydesdale; and they exercised baronial 
rights of ' fark and fosse, of pit and gallows,' and waged war 
upon their neighbours as well as against the English invader 
with the irresponsibility of independent sovereigna It is 
difficult to settle precisely the date when the Johnstones were 
established in the Annandale country, nor is it easy to tell 
from what place they came when their location was taken up 
there. Recent investigations have traced the family back to 
a certain * John ' who received lands in Dumfriesshire, either 
by inheritance or gift, from Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, 
in 1170, and who called the place * Joneetun,' afterwards cor- 
rupted into Johnstone. His son Gilbert de Jonestun was in 
possession in 1194, and was knighted some time before his 
death in 1230. Two of the grandsons of this Sir Gilbert swore 
fealty to Edward I. on 28th August, 1296, and most of the 
genealogists begin the Johnstone pedigree with Sir John 
Johnstone, the elder of these two brothers, though there is 
documentary evidence to carry back the line of the family to 
1170. Of the personal history of these early Johnstones little 




The Annandale Family Booh. 209 

is known, and even their names are only discovered in ancient 
charters. As the names of Gilbert and John prevailed in the 
family for three centuries, it is sometimes difficult to identify 
individuals ; but Sir William Fraser has made out a consecu- 
tive pedigree which shows the successive heads of the family 
from 1170 till the present day. The Johnstones were vassals 
of the Bruces, Lords of Annandale, from the time of their first 
appearance in 1170 until King Robert I. resigned the lordship 
to his nephew, the famous Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray ; 
and it would have been interesting could we have found proof 
that John of Johnstone atoned for the unpatriotic deed of his 
father in acknowledging Edward of England as his overlord. 
It seems probable that the father, Gilbert, adhered to the for^ 
tunes of Robert Bruce, since he received a gift of land in 
Annandale from that King in 1309, and it is likely that John 
of Johnstone distinguished himself at Bannockburn, as he still 
remained in possession of the ancestral property till 1332 ; but 
this is merely conjecture. 

The first warrior-hero of the family whose deeds are cele- 
brated in verse was Sir John Johnstone of that Ilk (1370-1413) 
who was one of the Wardens of the West Marches at a time 
when incursions from England were frequent and sanguinary. 
In describing an encounter on the Water of Solway in 1378, 
Wyntoun refers specially to Sir John's prowess, coupling his 
name with that of Sir John Gordon, who had defeated the 
English at Carham, 

When at the wattyr of Sulway 
Schyr Jhon of Jhonstown on a day 
Of Inglis men wencust a gret dele. 
He bare him at that tyme sa welle 
That be and the lord of Gordowne 
Had a sowerane gud renowne 
Of ony that was of thar degre, 
For full thai war of gret bounte. 

Adam Johnstone (1413-1454), son and successor of Sir John, 
has received an adventitious prominence in the annals of the 
family to which his own deeds may not have entitled him. 
The various claims for the dormant Annandale peerage which 



210 The AnnandaU FanUly Book. 

have been repeatedly made within the last hnndred years have 
turned to a large extent upon the question whether this Adam 
Johnstone was the common progenitor of the Johnstones of 
Annandale and the Johnstones of Westerhall. When Sir 
Frederick Johnstone of Westerhall preferred a claim to the 
Marquisate of Annandale in 1876 he brought forward evidence 
to prove his descent from Adam Johnstone, and as it is impos- 
sible to enter here into the details of that famous case, it must 
be sufficient to state that the Committee of Privileges of the 
House of Lords decided that he had not made good his claim. 
Adam Johnstone was both a soldier and a statesman. He took 
part in the battle of Lochmabenstone in 1448, and several 
times he visited England on pacific missions to the Court. 
There is a romantic story of his courtship told by quaint old 
Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington. According to Maitland, 
this Adam Johnstone was in love with Janet, widow of Sir 
John Seton, but could not prevail upon her to wed him. Her 
only son, George Seton, a mere boy, had been seized by 
Lord Crichton, then high in power, and had been straitly 
warded in Edinburgh Castle. The sorrowing widow promised 
to Adam Johnstone that if he released her son from captivity 
she would lend a gracious ear to his suit. With the courage 
of a Quixote and the diplomacy of a Machiavelli, the Border 
baron succeeded in liberating the youth, and brought him 
safely to his own castle of Lochwood. The end of the roman- 
tic tale is thus narrated by Maitland : — 

' The said lady heiring tell that the said laird had convoyit hir sone out 
of the lord Crichton his handis, sho was contentit to marie him, and bair 
to him monie Bones quhilk war all brether to lord George on the mother 
Byde, of the qahilk the eldest was callit Gilbert, quha was ef ter ane valiant 
man, and maid knight.' 

One would like to believe that a romance of this kind was 
veritable reality; but Sir William Fraser is inexorable. He 
points out that the Janet Seton whom Adam Johnstone married 
was not the widow of Sir John Seton, but of his son William; 
though he admits that George, first Lord Seton, was uterine 
brother of Johnstone's family. And as Sir Richard Maitland's 
own mother was a Seton, and he was bom in 1496, it is pos- 



The Annandale Family Book. 211 

Bible he may have heard the story from the lips of those who 
knew of the episode at first hand. 

The Annandale country had been under the superiority of 
the Douglases, but the Johnstones, though formerly vassals of 
that powerful race, took the side of the King against the Earls, 
and actively contributed toward the downfall of Douglas 
supremacy. John Johnstone (1454-1493), son of Adam John- 
stone, took part in no less than four battles, with the purpose 
of breaking down the Douglas tyranny, and was the recipient 
of royal favour as a recognition of his valour. He was suc- 
ceeded by several Johnstones, regarding whom little is known, 
although they must have contributed largely to the increase 
of the power of the family on the Scottish Borders. With 
John Johnstone of that Ilk (1524-1567) the historical import- 
ance of the Johnstones really begins. He was born in 1507, 
and before he had attained his majority he was a member of 
the King's Council. The rise of the Johnstones had provoked 
the jealousy of the Maxwells, and during this laird's long 
tenure a feud was begun which continued with varying inten- 
sity for many years. James V. was disposed to favour John- 
stone, and he intensified the ill-blood between the families by 
practically superseding Maxwell and making Johnstone re- 
sponsible for the keeping of the West Marches. Fortune did 
not always smile upon him, for the English overran Annandale 
in 1547, and attacked Johnstone in his own Castle of Loch- 
wood and bore him away to captivity in England. He was 
carried from place to place as a prisoner, and according to his 
own account, published by Sir William Eraser, bis enemies 
several times attempted to poison him while in prison. At 
length through the interposition of the Queen Dowager he was 
liberated early in 1550, and permitted to return home. It was 
during his time that the lands of the Johnstones in Annandale 
were united into the free barony of Johnstone and entailed 
upon his heirs male. Though he sympathised with the Re- 
formers (as far as a free-booting baron could distinguish 
between nice theological points) he did not interfere much 
with the progress of the Lords of the Congregation, preferring 
to ^ keep his ain hand ' on the Western Borders, and to rule 
from the saddle. 



212 The Annandale Family Book. 

Johnstone was sucoeeded by his grandson, Sir John John- 
stone (1567-1587), whose lot fell upon more troublous times. 
He was at first a partizan of Queen Mary, but after the hopes 
of her supporters were blighted at Laugside, Johnstone sub- 
mitted to the party in power, and gave his allegiance to suc- 
cessive Regents with volatile impartiality. During his time 
the feud with the Maxwells reached an intense degree. Out- 
rages and reprisals were frequent No Sicilian vendetta v^bs 
ever pursued so relentlessly as this hereditary dispute between 
two Border barons and their followers. At length matters 
reached a climax when, on 6th April, 1585, Lord Maxwell, at 
the head of one hundred and twenty English and Scottish 
rebels, attacked Johnstone's Castle of Lochwood in the night- 
time and plundered it, afterwards setting fire to the place, aad 
burning not only Lady Johnstone's jewels but also the charter- 
chest containing the family papers. But for the loss of that 
chest with its invaluable contents, the question of the Annan- 
dale peerage might have been settled long ago. Retaliation 
followed upon this outrage, and for nearly twenty years the 
Borders were kept aflame by the quarrels between these two 
families — the Montagues and Capulets of Scottish history. 
From 1587, when Sir John Johnstone died, till 1613, when the 
eighth Lord Maxwell signed a reconciliation on his way to the 
scaffold, constant warfare was maintained between the two 
clans, and the utmost exertions of Kiog and Parliament were 
powerless to arrest this feud * bequeathed from bleeding sire 
to son.* Referring to the rival families. Sir Walter Scott says, 
that during this period each of them lost two chieftaics ; one 
dying of a broken heart, one on the field of battle, one by 
assassination, and one by the sword of the executioner. 

Some time before his death, in 1567, John Johnstone, grand- 
father of Sir John, showed signs of relenting towards his 
hereditary enemies the Maxwells, and appointed John Maxwell 
of Terregles to bring about a marriage with some of the John- 
stone family, which was then the favourite method of termi- 
nating a feud. His grandson. Sir John Johnstone, was mar- 
ked to one of the Scotts of Buccleuch, but his great-grandson, 
Ir James Johnstone, at length fulfilled the request. Sir 



The Annandale Family Booh, 213 

James had taken part with his father in several of the raids 
against the Maxwells, and during the life of his father the feud 
had raged more fiercely than ever. Yet almost his first action 
when he came of age, one year after his father's death, was to 
enter into wedlock with Sara Maxwell, daughter of Lord 
Herries and full cousin of Lord Maxwell. This portentous 
experiment was sure to result either in complete reconciliation 
or in bitterer animosity. The latter was the consequence, and 
this fatal marriage was the indirect cause of his own assassina- 
tion. In the very year of the marriage (1588) Sir James John- 
stone had to take up arms against the Maxwells by the King's 
command, as it was known that Lord Maxwell was preparing 
to assist the Spaniards when the Armada had reached the 
shores of Scotland. Disputes followed upon Maxwell's sub- 
mission, but at length in 1590 a formal reconciliation took 
place, and was confirmed by a Bond of Amity in April, 1592. 
The peace did not last long ; it was only a truce before the 
renewal of hostilities. 

As head of the Johnstone clan Sir James was summoned to 
meet the King and Council at Edinburgh in March 1592-3. 
For some unexplained reason he failed to appear, and was 
promptly ordered into ward in Edinburgh Castle. He managed 
to escape from his prison, and this was reckoned so serious a 
crime that he was at once denounced as a rebel. Meanwhile 
a raid had been made by the Johnstones of Wamphray (cele- 
brated in the well-known ballad " The Lads of Wamphray "), 
upon the Crichtous of Sanquhar, and the latter appealed to 
Lord Maxwell as Warden of the West Marches for redress of 
their grievance. That nobleman was nothing loth to find an 
excuse for attacking his foes, and he obtained a commission of 
fire and sword against the Johnstones. Maxwell summoned 
out his forces, numbering 1500 horse and foot, and Johnstone 
could only muster about 800 men ; yet when the combatants 
met at Dryfesands on 6th December, 1593, Johnstone managed 
his little army so skilfully that the Maxwells were defeated, 
and their leader fell, slain, it was said, by the hand of Sir 
James Johnstone. This lamentable incident still further em- 
bittered the opposing clansmen, and for several years after- 



214 The AnnandcUe Family Book. 

wards the strife between the Maxwells and Johnstones raged 
more fiercely. Sir James made repeated attempts at reconoilia- 
tion, both for his own sake and that of the rival clans, but 
these were unsuccessful. At length, years after the conflict at 
Dryfesands, a meeting was arranged between Sir James and 
the new Lord Maxwell, but at the very moment when the feud 
seemed likely to be terminated, a dispute arose between two 
of the retainers, a pistol was fired, and Lord Maxwell, fearing 
some treachery, drew his own pistol and shot Sir James John- 
stone, wounding him mortally. This felonious deed took place 
on 6th April, 1608. Lord Maxwell escaped to France, and 
though he was closely pursued, he eluded capture. Wearied 
out with the constant dread of pursuit, he returned to Scot- 
land, a broken man, in March, 1612, and by the treachery of 
his kinsman, the Earl of Caithness, he was delivered into the 
hands of the avengers. His cousin, Sara Maxwell, the widow 
of Sir James Johnstone, relentlessly urged his execution, and 
the King wrote a letter to the Privy Council expressing his 
surprise at their delay in putting the murderer to death. The 
final act in this tragedy is thus described : — 

' On 18th May [1613J the Council issaed a warrant for the ezecation of 
Lord Maxwell to the Provost and Bailiea of Edinburgh. By that warrant 
he was to be taken from the tolbooth to the market cross on the 21st, and 
to be beheaded. Lord Maxwell was at once apprised of the decision of the 
King and Council. On the day fixed upon he was brought to the scaffold, 
where he acknowledged the justice of his sentence, asked mercy from God 
on account of his sins, and expressed the desire that the King would 
accept his punishment as an atonement for his offences, and restore his 
brother and house to the rank and place of his predecessors. He also 
craved forgiveness first from James Johnstone of Johnstone, his mother, 
grandmother, and friends, whom he acknowledged he had wronged, al- 
though without dishonour or infamy "for the worldlie pair t of it," and 
from Pollok, Calderwood, and his other friends present, to whom he had 
contributed harm and discredit instead of safety and honour. After giving 
himself to devotion, and taking leave of his friends and the Bailies of the 
town. Lord Maxwell placed his head upon the block, and was executed. 
His lordship was buried in the cemetery of Newbattle Abbey.' 

With the execution of Lord Maxwell the long-standing feud 
between the Johnstones and Maxwells was brought to a close, 
although it was not until 1623 that the murderer's brother and 



The Annandale Family Book. 215 

successor, Robert Maxwell, first Earl of Nithsdale, met Sir 
James Johnstone's son, James (afterwards first Earl of Hart- 
fell), jand in the presence of the Privy Council entered into a 
bond of friendship. It was not likely that a dastardly deed 
like the murder of Sir James Johnstone — so inexcusable as to 
provoke the indignation of King and Parliament even in an 
age when many heartless actions were tolerated — would be 
soon forgotten. But lest the Johnstones might forget the cir- 
cumstances of the assassination, the bereaved widow caused a 
tombstone to be erected to the memory of her husband bearing 
an inscription calculated to perpetuate the desire for revenge. 
That ' stone of remembrance ' still exists, and must have acted 
as a stirring call for vengeance while the murderer was at 
large. The quaint inscription reads thus : — 

Heir lyis the Ry^ Konorabil S' lames lohnstone of that Ilk, Kny^, 
Depairtit [this lyf] of 39 zeirs : Qvha vas maist tresonabillie myrtherit 
vnder traist be the schot of ane pestolat behind his bak be Lord Maxvel 
on the 6 day of Apryl, the zeir of God 1608 zeirs. For the crevel mvrther 
He vas maist ivstlie forfatit of his haile landis^ his armeis rivene in 
Parliament, and himself banischit the Kingis dominiovns for the trason 
don be him. 

The murder of Sir James Johnstone marked an epoch in 
the history of the family, for from the time of that event may 
be dated the rapid rise of the Johnstones in the political life 
of Scotland. James Johnstone, son of the murdered knight, 
was only six years of age when that event occurred, and his 
nearest kinsman on the father's side was distantly related, and 
had neither position nor influence to take upon himself the 
onerous duty of guardian or * Tutor * of the young head of the 
Johnstone clan. But the sad circumstances attending the 
death of his father had awakened the interest and sympathy 
of James VI. for the fatherless youth, and the King wrote 
several letters (printed by Sir William Fraser) commending 
him to the care of the Privy Council. When Johnstone was 
fourteen years of age he applied to the Council to have tutors 
appointed for him, and his kinsman, Robert Johnstone of Rae- 
cleuch, was not one of them. In 1622, Johnstone made an 
important alliance with a powerful family through his marriage 




216 The Annandale Family Book. 

with Margaret Douglas, eldest daughter of William Douglas 
of Drumlanrig, afterwards Earl of Queensberry. When Charles 
I. visited Sootlaud in 1633, Johnstone was elevated to the 
peerage with the title of Lord Johnstone of Loch'wood. He 
oast in his lot with the Covenanters, and was a member of the 
famous Glasgow Assembly of 1638 which abolished Episco- 
pacy. He afterwards raised a regiment in his own district to 
oppose the advance of the King at the head of the English 
army, and was actively engaged with the Covenanting army 
under Montrose. He signed the Cumbernauld Bond along 
with Montrose, which certainly contemplated the protection 
of the King against the Covenanters ; but as that document 
was afterwards declared treasonable and publicly burned by 
order of the Parliament, he joined with the other signatories 
in the declaration made in January, 1641, asserting that the 
Bond had been signed under a misapprehension. After this 
time, however, his ardour for the Covenant grew rather cool, 
and he was not with the Scottish army at Newburn. 

While appreciating the honour which Charles I. had con- 
ferred upon him, Johnstone's ambition was not satisfied with 
the mere title of a Scottish Baron. There are several letters 
quoted in Sir William Eraser's work which show that he ex- 
pected a much higher dignity, but he had to wait patiently 
for ten years ere his preferment came. In 1643 he was created 
Earl of Hartfell for his ' many conspicuous services ' to the 
King. His loyalty was soon put to the test, for when Mon- 
trose — ^then acting as Lieutenant-General for the King — made 
his ill-advised raid on Dumfries in April, 1644, the Earl of 
Hartfell refused to join him, and was reported to the King as 
having ' stumbled his service.' Nevertheless the Parliament 
looked upon him as a dangerous person, and he was ordered 
into ward and confined without trial for seven months in 
Edinburgh Castle. Ultimately he was liberated on payment 
of a fine of £1000 sterling and heavy cautionry. This did not 
prevent him from joining Montrose at Bothwell after the battle 
of Kilsyth, and raising men in the Annandale district to sup- 
port the Royal standard. The Earl of Hartfell was present at 

^ battle of Philiphaugh, and though he escaped from the 



The Annandale Family Book. 217 

scene of conflict, he was captured by some of the country 
people and handed over to the Parliamentary forces. He was 
brought to trial at St. Andrews in December, 1645, and con- 
demned to death. He and Lord Ogilvie were ordered to be 
the first executed, on 6th January following. The night 
before the execution Lord Ogilvie escaped, and the Marquis 
of Argyll, deeming this evasion had been managed with the 
connivance of the Earl of Haddington, used his influence, on 
the pther hand, to procure a mitigation of Hartfell's sentence, 
and was successful. After a year's imprisonment Lord Hart- 
fell was liberated, but was compelled to pay the bond of 
caution of £100,000 Scots, which had procured his former re- 
lease from confinement. The Earl of Hartfell did not again 
meddle with warlike politics, and even during the troubled 
days of Cromwell's occupancy of Scotland, he seems to have 
remained at home extending and supervising his estates. His 
death took place in April, 1653, and he was succeeded by his 
eldest son. 

James Johnstone (1653-1672), second Earl of Hartfell, was 
bom in 1625, and took his share of military work vith his 
father, being also partaker in his father's imprisonments. By 
his marriage with Lady Henrietta Douglas, eldest daughter of 
the first Marquess of Douglas, he still further increased the 
power of his family. He had suffered both fines and captivity 
for the Royal Cause, and when Charles XL came to his own 
again he did not forget the claims of the Earl of Hartfell. On 
13th February, 1661, the King bestowed upon him three new 
peerages, creating him Earl of Annandale,. Viscount Annand, 
and Lord Lochmaben. The earldom of Annandale had for- 
merly been the title held by a cadet of the Murrays of Cock- 
pool, but had become extinct on the death of the second Earl 
in 1658, and had reverted to the Crown. The patent con- 
ferring this title upon Lord Hartfell expressly states that *' no 
one is so worthy to enjoy the said title, as well because of his 
merits as of the proximity of the estates of Annandale to those 
of Hartfell.' The title was conferred upon him * and his heirs 
male, whom failing the eldest heir female of his body, without 
division, and the heirs male of the body of the said eldest 



218 The AnnandaU Family Book 

heir female, whom all failing, the next heirs whomsoever of 
the said Earl.' This very comprehensive destination of title 
might have been thought sufficient to secure permanency; and 
yet the title became extinct or dormant in less than a century 
and a half. The first Earl of Annandale and Hartfell died in 
1672, aged 47 years, and was succeeded by his eldest surviving 
son, William, in whom the honours of the family culminated. 
Referring to the second Earl of Annandale Sir William Eraser 
says: — 

* ThiB great chief of the JohnstoneB, the greatest of all the long line of 
hia faunily, lived in the reigns of six Soyereigns. Bom a few years after 
the Restoration of King Oharles the Second, and surviying till the acces- 
sion of King (George the First, he was thus a subject successiyely of King 
Oharles the Second, King James the Seventh, King WiUiam and Queen 
Mary, Queen Anne, and King George the First. Annandale was too 
young to serve in any official capacity under King Oharles the Second, but 
under all the other Sovereigns named he was more or less actively engaged 
in prominent official positions. Under King James the Seventh he first 
came into official life in the not very enviable position, in company with 
Sir Robert Grierson of Lag, of putting down the risings of the Oovenanters 
in the western counties of Scotland, a work apparently very uncongenial 
to the young nobleman. King James also made him a Privy Oouncillor. 
When William of Orange made his descent upon England, the youthful 
Earl of Annandale warmly espoused the cause of the Revolution. But 
immediately after, on account of his youth and inexperience, he was easily 
misled and induced by his brother-in-law. Sir James Montgomerie of Skel- 
morlie, to join in the plot which had for its object the restoration of King 
James the Seventh. Annandale, speedily repenting of this political indis- 
cretion, cordially confessed his fault, and was the means of ending that 
intrigue. His frank confession led to his ready pardon by Queen Mary as 
acting for King William. His revelations showed the extent to which 
King James the Seventh was ready to make concessions to recover his 
lost kingdoms. Annandale himself was to be Oommissioner to Parliament, 
and a Marquis, and commissions and patents of peerages were lavishly 
bestowed upon Montgomerie and Ross, the other two members of the 
Olub engaged in the plot, as well as upon their partizans. 

' Escaping from this youthful error, Annandale was afterwards received 
into Royal favour both by King William and Queen Mary, and the Royal 
commissions both by these and subsequent Sovereigns granting important 
offices of State to Annandale, which are still preserved in the Annandale 
charter chest, are probably more numerous than were received by any 
subject at that time. The mere enumeration of these royal commissions 
will show the extent to which Annandale was employed and trusted by his 



The Annandale Family Book. 219 

Sov^eigns. By King William he was sworn a Privy Councillor^ and ap- 
pointed an Extraordinary Lord of Session in 1693, while still comparatiyely 
young, being in his twenty-ninth year. Two years later he was constituted 
one of the Lords of the Treasury and President of the Parliament of Scot- 
land which met in Edinburgh in 1695. In 1701 King William appointed 
him Lord High Oommissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of 
Scotland. Queen Anne appointed him in 1702 Lord Privy Seal of Scot- 
land, and in the same year President of the Privy Council of Scotland ; 
and in 1705 and again in 1711 she appointed him Lord High Commissioner 
to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. In 1705 the Queen 
also made him one of her principal Secretaries of State for Scotland. In 
1714 King George the First appointed him Keeper of the Privy Seal and a 
Privy Councillor, and next year, when the Rebellion broke out, he made 
him Lord-Lieutenant of the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and 
Peebles. In that office he displayed great zeal and energy in support of 
the Government, and contributed largely to the suppression of the Re- 
bellion in these counties. Such in general outline is the official life of this 
distinguished statesman.' 

This quotation aflFords a very comprehensive panoramic 
view of the busy life of the second Earl of Annandale. His 
high rank and important offices brought him into many critical 
positions, and he has hastily been condemned as a waverer 
who gave up the Stuart Cause when the Orange party seemed 
likely to prosper. But the perusal of the detailed biography, 
written impartially by Sir William Fraser, and largely founded 
upon authentic documents not hitherto published, should con- 
vince every candid reader that the charge of treachery is an 
unjust one. A nobleman in so exalted a position had many 
enemies. His early connection with Grierson of Lag in sup- 
pressing the conventicles raised the feelings of the religious 
party against him, and Wodrow's few references to Annandale 
are evidently tinged with personal animus. The strong atti- 
tude which he took up against the Jacobites after he had seen 
how futile was their plot made them virulent in denouncing 
him ; axid even yet there are historians who accuse him of in- 
famous treachery. Alluding to the Montgomerie Plot, Sir 
Walter Scott says that Annandale was secreted by Robert 
Ferguson the Plotter for several weeks, ' a kindness which the 
Marquis repaid by betraying him to the Government' In the 
same strain the author of a recent book called ' Ferguson the 
XXVIII. 15 



220 The Antuindale Family Book. 

Plotter/ repeatedly refers to Anuandale as a faithless conspira- 
tor who won favour through bis treachery. 

Sir William Eraser's calm and judicial examination of the 
chief incidents in the career of Anuandale seems more worthy 
of acceptance than the opinions of inflammatory partizana The 
papers connected with this Earl of Anuandale, published by 
Sir William Fraser, throw much light upon the Massacre of 
Glencoe, and the Darien Expedition — two of the important 
events of that period. Lord Annandale's attitude towards the 
Union of Scotland and England is made very clear both by 
the biographical sketch of him and by the letters and papers 
included in the second volume. He was opposed to the 
Union, contending that the first step should be the regulation 
of the commercial relations of the two countries ; and even up 
to the very last day of discussion upon the Treaty of Union 
he was ready with protests against it But when he found he 
could make do way with the pro-Union Members, and was 
powerless to prevent or delay the Union, he resolved to do his 
best to make it beneficial to Scotland. This was not the 
wavering of a * trimmer,' but true patriotism. 

That Anuandale was ambitious cannot be questioned, yet it 
has not been proved, though often asserted, that he was ready 
to take devious ways to accomplish his own preferment. 
Honours were liberally bestowed upon him by the Sovereigns 
whom he served ; and it is no slight testimony to his worth 
and integrity that successive monarchs esteemed his moral 
character and highly valued his counsel. 

' The personal distinctions which he received from his Sovereigns were 
as marked as his official appointments. He inherited all the peerages 
which had been conferred on his father and grandfather by King Charles 
the First and King Charles the Second. By King William the Third in 
1701, when he represented His Majesty in the General Assembly, he was 
advanced to the dignity of Marquis of Annandale, Earl of Hartfell, 
Viscount of Annan, Lord Johnstone of Lochwood, Lochmaben, Moffatdale. 
and Evandale. And after his appointment as President of the Privy 
Council in 1702, he was, in 1704, invested by Queen Anne with the ancient 
order of the Thistle, re-established only in December of the previous year 
by Her Majesty. Although Annandale enjoyed so many principal offices 
of State and personal dignities, there was still another office and a still 
higher dignity to which he aspired. The office was that of Lord Chan- 



The Annandale Family ^Book: ^h 

cellor of Scotland, and the dignity that of Duke of Annan. Bui he did, 
not survive to receive either of these appointments.' 

The Marquess of Annandale died at Bath on 14th January, 
1721. By his first wife, Sophia, daughter of John Fairholme 
of Oraigiehall, he had three sons and two daughters. His^ 
second wife, Charlotta Van Lore, daughter of John Vanden 
Bempde of Hackness, had two son& James Johnstone, the . 
eldest son, succeeded as second Marquess of Annandale, and 
died unmarried in 1730. As both his brothers had predeceased 
him, unmarried, the succession fell to his half-brother, George 
Vanden Bempde Johnstone, who became third Marquess of ^ 
Annandale. The latter was born in 1720, and became Mar- 
quess when only ten years of age. The death of his brother... 
Lord John Johnstone, in 1742, deranged the mind of the Mar* ^ 
quess, and in 1747 he was declared incapable of managing his . 
aflEairs. He was never married, but he survived till 1792,^ 
when he was succeeded in the estates by his grand-nephew, 
James, third Earl of Hopetoun, directly descended from Lady 
Henrietta Johnstone, the eldest daughter of the first Marquess ^ 
of Annandale. As the patent of the Earldom of Annandale^ 
provided the titles to the descendants of the eldest heir^. 
female, failing the direct male line, James, third Earl of 
Hopetoun, as the heir female, claimed the title by petition 
in 1792, but did not assume the title of Earl of Annandale. 
As he had only female issue the Earldom of Hopetoun passed 
to his half-brother, Sir John Hope of Bankeillour, great- 
grandfather of the present Earl of Hopetoun. Lady Anne 
Johnstone Hope, eldest daughter of the third Earl of Hope- 
toun, succeeded to the Annandale estates and claimed the 
titles, but she died while her case was in preparation. Her 
son, John James Hope Johnstone of Annandale (1796-1876), 
took formal proceedings to have his right to the titles of Earl 
of Annandale and Hartfell declared ; but in 1844 the House of 
Lords resolved that he had not made out his claim. An im- 
portant document was accidentally discovered by Sir William 
Fraser in 1876, which seemed to make the claim of Hope- 
Johnstone unimpeachaj^Ie. The case was re-heard in 1876, 
and after a long investigation the decision of 1844 was 



y . ; 



T 

I 



222 The AnnandaU Family Book \ 

adhered to. Mr. Hope-Johnatone was sacoeeded by his 
grandson, the present Mr. John James Hope-Johnstone of 
AnuandalOy who has not made a formal claun for the titles. Sir 
William Fraser, who has been engaged in the Annandale 
Peerage case since 1841, and is thoroughly acquainted with all 
its mazes^ has written a most interesting appendix to his 
second volume, entitled * A Century of Romance of the Annan- 
dale Peerages,' in which he details all the proceedings, and 
very clearly sets out the basis of the Hope- Johnstone claim. 

The second volume of The Annandale Family Book is entirely 
occupied with letters and documents connected with the his- 
tory of the Johnstonea Some of these are important his- 
torically as throwing light upon obscure incidents; v^hile 
others are of value as affording glimpses of social life in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the latter may 
here be quoted as showing the literary taste as well as the 
defective orthography of ladies of the highest rank in the 
Scottish nobility two centuries ago. It was written by Chris- 
tian Leslie, daughter of the famous Duke of Rothes, and wife of 
the third Marquess of Montrose, and was addressed to Sophia, 
Countess of Annandale. The Marchioness had married Sir 
John Brace of Kinross, Bart., and she wrote her letter from 
Kinross House, the now deserted mansion near the town of 
Kinrosa 

' Kinrose, Jnly 4, 1693. 
* Madam, — I render yow a thowsant thankes for yonr play, which is vere 
good, and I heve rettomead itt with the bearear, and if your ladyshipe 
heve eather bnay mor good playes or novells which yow heve read, and 
will be plesead to lean them to me, I shall be vere fathefouell in restorenge, 
and teke it a great faver, for they ar vere deverting in the cantery. Yonr 
lord did me the honouer to dayn hear yesterday, and was vere well. 1 
hertely wished your ladyshipe had come alonge, for itt wold heve bin bott 
a devertisment in this good wather, and yow wold heve bin vere wellcome 
to, dear madam, your ladyshipes most humble servantt, 

*C. MONtBOBB. 

' For the right honorable the Gounttes of Anandeall, att hir logeng in 
Netherayes Waynd, Edinburgh.' 

It used to be a favourite joke with both Sir Walter Scott 

and Lord Macaulay to ridicule the spelling of JohA Graham 

f Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee ; but not the wildest caco- 



Victor Hugo. 223 

graphy of that much-abased hero could snrpass the epistolary 
style of this daughter of a Duke and wife of a Marqaes& 

So rarely has the reviewer an opportunity of finding an 
error in Sir William Eraser's works that the pointing out of 
the solitary mistake in these two bulky volumes may be par- 
doned. In his sketch of Sir James Johnstone (1587-1608) he 
writes :— * For the purpose of marrying the Princess Anna of 
Denmark, King James set sail for Denmark on 22nd October, 
1589. The marriage took place at Upsal on the 23rd Novem- 
ber, etc' Sir William has followed Tytler and other historians 
in giving to the place of marriage the name of ' Upsal.' David 
Lindsay, minister of Leith, who accompanied the King and 
performed the ceremony, wrote a letter home (quoted iu full 
by Calderwood, Vol. V., p. 69) dating it from * Upslaw.' In 
the Register of the Privy Council under date 1589 the name 
of the place is given as * Opsloe.' The name * Upsal ' which 
Tytler gives is not unlike Upsala, but that town is in Sweden, 
and the King of Denmark of the time had no control over that 
country. The whole question was examined in the Scottish 
Revieu) for 1893 (Vol. XXI., p. 142) in an article entitled * The 
Wedding Tour of James VI. in Norway,' and the town was 
identified as Oslo, the old Norwegian burgh now one of the 
suburbs of jbhe comparatively modern capital, Christiania. 
Even the very house in which the ceremony of the marriage 
took place is still in existence. 

A. H. Millar. 



Art. IL— VICTOR HUGO, THE POET. 

WHEN a great controversy has for ten years circled round 
a dead poet's name, we may assert without fear of con- 
tradiction that the world, with its many chisels of individual 
opinion, is already hewing his niche in the solid rock of fame. 
But it is Time alone which, in some mysterious manner, settles 
whether the shrine which the poet is to occupy shall be small 
or great. In the meanwhile a prophet may resign himself to 



334 Victor Hugo. 

the fact that many will cast doubts upon his prophecies. And 
indeed he has no easy task, for to arrive at any satisfactory 
conclusion he must compare with the poet uuder discussion 
not only the siugers of classic days but also those who for many 
years have influenced his literary life. 

Was Victor Hugo a great poet t That is, not only a poet of 
his day and a poet of his country, but a world-wide recognized 
poet ? Each country has its own answer as to what consti- 
tutes true poetry. Though England and France have but a 
narrow bracelet of opal sea between them they are -widely 
severed by many differences of opinion, and one of these refers 
to the question, * What is poetry f " No Englishman will 
challenge the inspiration of Shakespeare, the stately march of 
Milton, the greatness of Dante, and the sweet singing of 
Tennyson, but many, and Matthew Arnold was one of them, 
will deny that Victor Hugo deserves a place among the im- 
<mortaIs, in spite of the fact that Mr. Swinburne has placed the 
Frenchman in Shakespeare's company. 

It is but fair to say that the majority of Englishmen, even 
those who possess * a liberal education,' chiefly know Victor 
Hugo as the writer of Les Misirablesy but of his claim to be a 
great poet, a Titan of inspired song, they know nothing at all, 
and they will excuse this ignorance by the quid pro quo^ 
* What do our neighbours know of Shakespeare ? ' 

Certainly for many generations the French have lived in 
deplorable darkness on the subject of him who was ' self- 
schooled, self-scaun'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,' yet there are 
evident signs that a dfiange is coming, and that soon Shake- 
speare's best commentator may be a Frenchman. Before this 
happens let us at least give some passing study, if not to 
Victor Hugo's entire poetic productions — an impossible task — 
at least to the best poetry of his best period. Leaving his 
prose works entirely on one side, we are still confronted by an 
immense volume of verse, and the task of sifting it is not made 
easier by Mr. Swinburne's pages of panegyric. We naturally 
feel shy of contradicting the unhesitating and almost unquali- 
fied praise found in his * Study of Victor Hugo.' For a time, 
-^ deed, it leaves us silent and bewildered. A humble critic, 



Victor Hugo. 225 

who knows that he is mortal and therefore that he may be in 
error, is swept away by such oft repeated words as — * im- 
measurable ' — * incomparable ' — * vast and profound sense ' — 

* immeusity of imaginative range ' — innumerable beauties ' — 

* magnificent and rapturous hymn.' Worse, he is in dauger of 
losing all his bearings when he reads in print such verdicts as 
these upon the French poet. * There is nothing in Homer, or 
Dante, or in Shakespeare, the three only poets who can pro- 
perly be cited for comparison, of a pathos more poignant in 
its bitter perfection of sweetness.' — * The man by whose name 
our century will be known for ever to all ages and nations that 
keep any record or memory of what was highest and most 
memorable ip the spiritual history of the past. — " Onorate 
raltissimo poetaj' ' 

But turning next to a French critic of repute, strangely 
enough we find this last prophecy unhesitatingly contradicted. 

' Others/ says Lemaitre, 'are persuaded that Victor Hugo has incar- 
nated the philosophy of the century and that posterity will say '* the age 
of Victor Hugo," as we talk of the "age of Voltaire." This is a most 
extraordinary illusion. I assure you that in 1^00 no one will use this 
expression. The poet of the ** Ldgende " has often delighted our imagina- 
tion, but he has hardly stirred our thoughts, having but few of his own. 
The men of my generation owe him but little, those who. follow will owe 
him nothing at all. ' 

These are indeed opposite poles of opinion ; no wonder that 
lesser wits remain silent, uncertain how to refute the poet and 
not quite willing to give in their adhesion to the critic ; and so 
they go on in search of some other landmark of critical thought, 
or else — which is perhaps a wiser course — they refer to Victor 
Hugo's own works without offering a fee to any guide. Be- 
fore following this last course let us first listen to the opinions 
of other writers, remembering that all of them are helping 
time to formulate its unerring verdict, that is when each shall 
have been weighed in its perfect balance. 

M. Bourget who, on many subjects, possesses deep insight, 
was honest enough to own, when writing soon after Victor 
Hugo's death, that the poet's literary work was so immense, 
and so complex, that the ordinary methods of criticism failed 
before it, and that this man who for more than sixty years had 



226 Victor Hugo. 

startled the world with bis varied prodactions, paralysed 
analysis so that no single formula could comprise all that he 
had produced. 

' In the form of his work/ says M. Bourget, ' he at once rises above his 
peers. Lamartine was more melodious, Alfred de Musset more pathetic^ 
De Yigny more thoughtful, but no one before him manipulated rhymes 
and rhythm with so much ease, and no one has so strongly bitten in the 
right idea with the acid of the inevitable word. Compared with him, 
other poets sound a little dull, and other prose writers a little insipid. 
He was a great visualizer and like Kembrandt he worked in strong oolonrs. 
He was the great master of light and shade, revelling in the lightning that 
immediately precedes the thunder, and in the hailstorm that is chased 
away by sudden sunshine. His liking was for sharp e£fects and violent 
contrasts, so that classic restraint must have appeared somewhat mono- 
tonous to him. Yery early in his career he burst the bonds of French 
poetry, displacing the caesura, and making the Alexandrine bend before 
the breath of his special genius. Like the vision of the sheet let down 
from heaven he declared, once for all, that no work was unclean, exclaim- 
ing, '*Plus de mots sdnateur, plus de mots roturier." Having done this 
he then threw all the force of his genius into the enrichment of rhyme. ' 

In that admirable French series of * Les grands Ecrivains 
Francfais,' M. Leopold Mabilleau, whose book on Victor Hugo 
should be read by English readers, gives us what appears at 
first sight a very fair study of the poet as a thinker and a 
singer. Here the question is plainly asked, * What trace will 
Victor Hugo leave on human thought ? Can his philosophy 
be compared to that of an Aristotle, a Leibnitz, a Hegel, or a 
Darwin t Will he rank with Plato, Spinoza, or Kant, or can 
his poetry, as Louis Veuillot has insinuated, be summed up by 
the words " Vain imaginations circling round nothing," a mere 
windmill of words that has never let fall one of measurable 
weight ? ' 

M. Mabilleau declares at once that this accusation can be 
easily refuted, that Victor Hugo has more than most poets en- 
riched the world with ideas, and that he has allied abstract 
thought with popular phraseology. He realized the mystic 
union of the thought with the word, of nature with art, and 
brought about this unity with superabundant imagery. But 
the poet in fact outlived his own poetry. He had been a 
great romantist and romanticism was struck down. He had 



Victor Hugo. 227 

been called the master of lyric poetry, and he was superseded, 
so that presently young scomfuls, calling themselves natural- 
ists, symbolists, or decadents, threw mud at their former idol, 
at the forger who had wrought with his own hands the spears 
which now they hurled at him. 

Many modern poets who have failed to be original, have 
blamed Victor Hugo for not having been able to show them 
the path of fame, but we must not forget that Les Orientates 
was like a mighty revolution as well as a startling revelation to 
the votaries of rhyme. (We in this country must remember 
also that there is no such thing as blank verse in French, it 
simply does not exist). Henceforth all French poetry was of 
necessity and in spite of all detractors ' Hugonized.* More- 
over the poet was full of that vital strength which is an 
inherited birthright, indeed he was all life, and what he really 
felt he felt strongly. We may compare him to a modem 
instrument, played on by all the winds of thought, the breath 
of science only excepted. He was a reflection of everything 
and was influenced by everything, feeling as Keats felt, and 
as we believe all true poets feel, that he was but as strings 
vibrating to every passing touch, but as the echo of all voices, 
— ^that is, the least original of all men, because so highly sensi- 
tive as to respond to all. 

Representing thus all human sounds he yet added a personal 
note, though at times, indeed, he lost all sense of proportion, 
allowing the ego to become far too pronounced. This often 
caused blasphemers to point the finger of scorn at him, but on 
the other hand he delighted those — and they are many — who 
can but feel the impersonal through the personal, and who 
love to look through a microscope, so that for them the real 
may be ten times magnified. Shall we for this reason say that 
such people do not see the truth because all they look at is 
enlarged ? What they see is at the same moment truth and 
untruth, but if they cannot mentally correct the proportion, at 
least they can take in what otherwise they would never have 
seen at all. 

Th^ophile Gautier, that perfect workman in prose, had, 
as we know, a very near view of the poet. He did not in 



228 Victor Hugo. 

oonseqnenoe lose for him his feeling of enchantment, for he 
was always unsparing in his praise, but writing in 1867, 
he finds no difficulty in classing him amongst other French 
poets, and he shelters himself from a conclusion as to their 
relative worth by referring to the verdict of time. Lamartine, 
Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, are the names he joins together, 
and then he owns that he himself is fairly puzzled as to which 
poet shall be accounted the greatest By this we see that in 
his estimation Victor Hugo was Dot, though the ^ L6gende des 
Si&cles ' was already written, the unapproachable Titan whom 
some would have us think him. 

This uncertainty of opinion whether a man is a world-wide 
genius or merely one among other equals is a very interesting 
subject of thought to the ordinary reader. He asks himself, 
< Has chance some weight in the balance ? How is it that if 
the standard of an author is immeasurably high, every judge, 
however small, does not immediately recognise it, or is it that 
the ordinary mortal cannot lift his head high enough to see 
what rests upon the mountain ? Is it ignorance or humility ? 
Is the reader blind or dazzled, or is poetry, like love, a mystery, 
which only the initiated can really understand ? In fact, what 
is the aim of poetry, and what do we expect it to give us ? ' 
If we could answer this question we could more easily judge 
whether the poetic metal sends forth a true ring, or whether, 
on the contrary, it is debased or hollow. 

In whatever dress poetry may clothe itself it must not be an 
exact reproduction of reality. In this areua poetry would 
easily be conquered by truth. Poetry must not reproduce, 
but it must create ; nevertheless, its means are merely human, 
it cannot * speak the word ' and work a miracle, it can but 
create the ideal from the real. If poetry chooses history for her 
theme, she must give us the essence of abstract character by 
making use of new combinations. If she decides that the soul 
shall be her province, she must clothe this most ancient of sub- 
jects with new imagery and paint the ideal with a brush dipped 
in new and wondrous colours. If inanimate nature is her pro- 
vince, she must add new grace to the graceful, new beauty and 
new sublimity to the sublime. By these tests, then, shall we 



Victor Hugo. 229 

recognise true poetry, for they at once sweep away, amongst 
other evils, all that savours of the common-place. 

Further, poetry must never be the slave of reality, but, 
strange paradox, she must make the ideal appear to be the 
real. Her ever present aim must be to ennoble all that she 
touches, and thus to react on all who touch her, so that the 
progress of poetic thought shall be possible only upon a higher 
plane. * II faut avoir de T&me pour avoir du gdut ' has been 
said and we might adopt for poetry this truth about taste. 
But let us remember that poetry is on the lowest plane when 
she merely circles round the poet; so that the greater the 
poetic impulse, the farther will poetry soar away from its own 
source. 

Did Victor Hugo ever err on the side of the common-place, 
or in other words, did he ever strive to rival nature on her 
own supreme ground t To this accusation we must plead guilty 
for him, especially when considering the poetry of his earlier 
period. Hence the feeling which we occasionally experience 
of being in company with the common-place. Then it is that 
we realize that nature requires no dictionary and needs no 
inventory, so that the poet fails where the ready reckoner 
begins. Very often also he fails to rise above himself, for the 
personal is so strongly impressed upon his poem that this low 
flight of necessity never carries him up to the highest plane 
of poetry, that plane where the poet is as if he were not, and 
where only the heavens are to be seen. How little do we 
know of Shakespeare, how mucjm of Victor Hugo I On the 
other hand his imagination, th<^ugh at times failing in true 
humour, was boundless. He Would touch an object and 
immediately that object lived it^ own new life, whilst round it 
would surge new and endless inJages, like a fully grown tree 
whose branches spread out on aU sides of the tapering stem, 
but all of them having sufficieiiit room to expand and each 
being perfect in itself. In this. When he forgets to be his own 
echo but becomes the mouthpiece of earth's endless voices, we 
recognize the true poet. 

Another very noticeable featjure in Victor Hugo's poetry is 
his constant use of, and his perfect manipulation of the ores- 

I 
I 



J 



230 Vietor Hugo. 

cendo in thought and in constraotion. As he asoends^ the 
metaphors and the varied visionB unroll themselves fuller and 
stronger, till without warning comes the contrast^ then hovering 
on the summit for a longer or shorter time the gradual descent 
follows and he gently takes us back to earth, unless indeed, 
which is often the case, the poem breaks off suddenly like a 
horse pulled up on its haunches by the firm hands of an ex- 
perienced rider. In these cases we are carried away by the 
pure force of his genius and we forget the man and the 
manner : as in < La Com^te ' and ^ La Y^rit^,' and that most 
perfect of all descriptions of battles, ' Le Cimeti&re d'Eylau.' 

But then suddenly we pause and we try to analyse what it 
is which has just moved ua Was the thought adequate to 
the accumulated feeling, and were all the images true reflec- 
tions of the central idea ? Some there are who have coldly 
analysed the poet's subject matter and scornfully asked, 
*Do these themes adequately represent the philosopher 
of the nineteenth century and the deep thinker among poetic 
prophets?' In many cases he is a true philosopher, but we 
must not look for deep philosophy from the man who was but 
little influenced by science, though he lived in the very midst 
of a scientific age. He was not one who could gaze for long 
together down into the heart of things ; but on the other hand 
may we not ask, is this absolutely necessary for a poet ? We 
think not, especially if the tests which we have suggested are 
not found wanting. He was accused of giving us merely 
everybody's ideas in his own words — words forming a style 
which was eminently his own and to which he had given 
birth. We all know that everybody's ideas may too easily be 
expressed in platitudes, and before his best period we find 
platitude in Victor Hugo. But everybody's ideas clothed in 
new and costly attire and adorned with new imageries, till the 
commonest word appears to palpitate with life, this is certainly 
a poet's crown of glory, and we may unhesitatingly accord it 
to Victor Hugo. 

When the volumes entitled Chdtiments and Contemplations 
appeared, Victor Hugo had, perfected this new style, this 
original and Uving imagery which is so extremely difficult to 



Victor Bugo. 231 

discover, because the ordinary mind is strongly wedded to old 
grooves and the race is essentially conservative of its old 
forms. We still use worn out imagery, though for us it has 
long lost its true meaning. We say, * The rosy dawn,' * The 
gentle zephyr,' etc., but Victor Hugo, by the instinct of his 
genius, cut the chains that bound us to these old thoughts 
and in their stead substituted new imageries ; always well 
chosen, and when in company never jostling each other. 
Neither was he satisfied to give us merely one new image to 
serve an old idea. Like a ball kept bounding by repeated 
blows, the old idea is kept renewed with many and various 
similitudes and new interpretations, till the reader is left 
amazed and delighted, hardly finding his way in the enchanted 
labyrinth full of living and personified thoughts and of per- 
sonified nature. 

There was yet another effect which Victor Hugo trusted in 
and which, in the end, he sadly exaggerated, though perhaps 
no master has used it so ably. This was his extraordinary 
power of enumeration. We are swept away by the torrent, 
though our sympathy and our admiration are most often 
left high and dry. It savours too much of the reference 
dictionary and of prepared lists. At times, indeed, when we 
take the trouble to examine these lists, we are left still more 
confirmed in our feeling of disappointment, for however much 
they may tickle the ear they remind one too closely of a con- 
juror and of his wonderful bag full of incongruities. In like 
manner the names and places which Victor Hugo strings to- 
gether, with no break or stop, are often hopelessly indefensible 
if the reader pauses to think. The leading idea is drowned in 
the whirlpool of words, being unable to find a reasonable sup- 
port either from the historical or from the other allusions 
presented for our edification. Further, perhaps Victor Hugo's 
own character inclined him to love paradox, the paradox 
which startles the reader and arrests his attention. This habit, 
if we can call it so, may easily be carried too far, though 
often, as in Victor Hugo's case, it adds just that touch of per- 
sonal character which is much to be admired. For instance, 
what can be more lovely than this idea, 




232 Vietar Hugo. 

' Anx ohampBj d'oil Pon voyait nn si vaste horizon 
Qa'un petit enfant seal ponvait Templir.' 

Or again when he says that God sometimes replaces a 
mother bj a grandfather, 

* Et fait, jageant Thiver 8eul capable de flamme, 
Dana F&me d'an vieillard More an coenr de femme.' 

But after a time this strophe and antistrophe becomes a 
little irritating, because we soon learn to expect its arrival, 
and even when it is most perfect — (as to imagery and Bait- 
ability it is nearly always so in Hugo's best period) we are 
not so much moved as we should be, for it savours too 
much of a tiick, or of a confirmed habit, and loses the beauty 
of the unexpected. Because of this, however, Victor Hugo's 
poetry becomes a mine of good things, though not always the 
familiar friend with whom one loves to saunter in all weathers 
and in all moods. On the other hand, how few poets have the 
wit to create a perfect contrast, and how often it is a failure 
when they attempt it ; Hugo's source was never dry, but lan- 
guage is a very delicate instrument which should never be 
hurled about like a footbalL Every thought, however refined, 
has, could the author find it, its perfect vocabulary. Every 
image, however subtle, has its right colour, could the artist of 
words paint it ; but to connect ideas together — that is ideas 
which in reality should never touch each other — this will cer- 
tainly produce an eflFect, but it will not be the right effect, and 
it will only help to deteriorate that perfect taste to attain 
which, as we have said, the possession of a soul is needed. 
Victor Hugo's taste is often at fault, and at times even leads 
him into ridiculous places, especially when he makes himself 
the mouthpiece of God. For instance in * Quelqu'un met le 
Hoik ' in the first * L^gende,' after enumerating what God can 
(Jo — a list which decidedly lacks dignity — he thus ends with 
this violent antithesis. 

' Et qui, lorsqu'il lui plait, donne des millions 
D'astres aux firmaments et des poux aux lions.' 

But when kept within its just limits, this power of contrast 
adds brilliancy to what is brilliant. In * Le cimeti^re d'Eylau ' 



Victor Hugo. 233 

which is perfect throughout, the subject and the words are 
exactly fitted to each other, and the juxtapoBition of ideas is 
not too Btartlicg for the occasion. We doubt if a battle has 
ever been, or cao be, better rendered. Oat of it we might 
select a, dozen perfect lines, but the whole should be read- 
' Mais rien ne salt mourir comme les bons vivants. 
Uoi je doDue mon coenr, mau ma peau je la vends.' 



' Les rois ont les soldats comme vons tob jouets.' 

Notice also the delicate irony which inspires this simple touch, 
' Tacher de n'Stre morts qu' a six heures du soir, 
En attendant tuer, c'^tait notre devoir.' 

When Hugo deals with children hie metaphors are never 
exaggerated. Here he can use the right word and we have 
not to reproach him, as so many of the modem writers have 
reproached 'le pfere Hugo.' for his bombastic language. 

Of the child a year old he says in ' L'idylle du vieillard,' 
' U a le tiemblement des herbes et des fenilles, 



La joaerie avant le langage eat la fleur 

Qui pr6ride le fruit, moiiis beau qu'alle, et meilleur 

Si c'eat Stre meilleur qu'Stre plas n^ssaire.' 

' Sea premiers mots ont peur comme ses premiera pas-' 
Another example of the perfect strophe and antistrophe we 
find in the poem entitled 'A quoi songeaient les deus cavaliers 
dans la fdret ' in Co^emplationt which again avoids any ex- 
aggerated antithesia 

' En ce moment, dea yeui pleurent, d'autrea yens Teillent, 
Et je lui dis " H^laa" d'autrea sout endomuB.' 

But on many other occasions the poet seeme to lose sight of 
the relative worth of words and of facts, making the historian 

shudder and the mystic frown. M. Lema" — ' — ' ' ^ 

himself in Victor Hugo whilst writing a 
this opinion somewhat in Hugo's style, w 
' A man for whom Robespierre, S. Just, an 
Marat are giants, and for whom Bossuet 



234 Victor Hugo. 

odious monsters, for whom Nisard and M^rim6e are fools, that 
man may have genius but be certain that he has nothing else.' 

We must remember, however, that this genius — who was 
* nothing else ' — wrote for sixty-nine years and published fifty 
or sixty thousand verses* Posterity has to weed out his many 
faulty lines and to enshrine the perfections of his special 
genius. When it has done so, we do not doubt but that the 
residue will live and will become classic, and that Victor 
Hugo, in spite of his many faults, will take his place amongst 
^ Ces grands esprits parlant avec ces grands fantdmes,' even if 
he has to accept the lowest seat. For, as a modern writer 
has said, ^ He in whom blind hatred for particular classes of 
men and great political institutions, has become a passion, can 
never be a poet of the history of humanity, for the muse of 
that history is love and not hatred. A man must be a partaker 
of Shakespeare's all entrancing toleration before he can ascend 
to Shakespeare's altitude. True tolerance, wisdom and judg- 
ment are the requisites of every great work, and therefore of 
every good poem. The failure of men of the first order is thus 
a lesson in the highest morality as well as in the highest criti- 
cism.' 

To help those who have no leisure to hunt for pearls we will 
briefly notice a few poems of the poet's best period. Anyone 
who takes up the Victor Hugo theme feels quite at a loss to 
select examples, for even these must often only resolve them- 
selves into the writer's favourite selection from a limited num- 
ber of his poems. 

Though Lea Orientales gave great promise of his genius, Les 
ChdtimenU and Contemplations^ published in 1856, have been 
generally accepted as the best volumes from which to date this 
period of perfection of workmanship and of highest poetic flight. 
In this period we include La Ligende des Sihcles, Les Chansons 
des rues et des bois^ L'annSe terrible, Seconde LSgende^ and L*art 
d^etre Grandpire; this last was published in 1887. Ten out of 
his eleven plays had appeared before Les Chdtiments, and form 
a period apart. His last play, Torquemada, was published in 
1882, and has not received much general favour, yet if we 
examine Ruy Bhs, the last but one of his plays, we shall see 



Victor Hugo, 235 

all the best and all the worst of his dramatic wit in it, and not 
for one moment can a critic — endowed with less genins than 
Mr. Swinburne — bring his lips to breathe a comparison between 
the author of Hamlet and the writer of Ruy Blas^ Cromwell^ or 
any other of the eleven playa Hugo is infinitely superior — 
according to our present ideas of superiority — ^in the art of 
construction. The mise-en-'Sckne is excellent, the characters 
live and move, come in and go out, as stage folk should do. 
They follow laws of expectancy and laws of contrast, laws of 
surprise and laws of satisfied justice. Shakespeare, actor as 
he was, does not satisfy modem dramatic art in this way, 
therefore let us, if we like, place Hugo far above the singer of 
the Avon for stage knowledge; but does all this trick of 
machinery constitute a great dramatic poem 1 Does perfect 
rhyme and rhythm only give us what is necessary to make the 
poet, or does the portraiture of the inner depth of character, 
the magic mirror, held up to human motives and to the strange 
irregularity of human thought, count for little ? Take this 
speech of Ruy Bias and compare it with the lines spoken by 
Hamlet 

' Ecoutez, quelle que soit sa sphere, 
Monseigneur, lorsqu 'un traitre, un fourbe tortueux, 
Oommet de certains faits rares et monstrueux, 
Noble ou manant, tout homme a droit, sur son passage, 
De venir lui cracher sa sentence au visage, 
Et de prendre une ^p^e, une hache, un couteau ! 

Pardieu ! j'^tais laquais ! quand je serais bourreau t ' 
• •••••••■ 

' What is a man, 
If his chief good and market of his time 
Be but to sleep and feed 1 A beast, no more. 
Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, 
Looking before and after, gave us not 
That capability and god-like reason 
To fust in us unused.' 

In the first we find the dramatic setting of the words per- 
fect, but the second raises us above all thought of the theatre 
or of the footlight. Cromwelly a fine play though never acted, 
is still full of that consciousness of dramatic power which the 
highest art alone can hide. Take for instance the following 
XXVIII. 1 6 



i86 Victor Hugo. 

lines, when Cromwell is reproaching his son for drinkiug the 
king's health. 

' Ya, c'est un vin fatal qui trouble la raison ! 
A la santd du roi tu buvais du poiaon ! 
Ma vengeance veillait, muette, aur ton crime. 
Quoique tu sola mon fils, tu seras ma victime. 
L'arbre a'embraaera pour d^vorer son fruit ! ' 

And Richard answers — 

' Pour un verre de vin vbilk beauooup de bruit ! ' 

The love of strong antithesis is already visible, a love which 
was carried much further and with stronger effect in the poems 
of the middle period. 

Though an English critic has assured us that the four or 
five best dramas of Victor Hugo must be looked upon as 
his most perfect work, we must venture to differ from this 
judgment. Certainly they are splendid plays, they are full of 
fine lines, they satisfy our dramatic instincts ; but they fail to 
satisfy our highest ideal. Leaving them on one side, therefore, 
we turn again to the books which we have mentioned, to find 
that which may prove really satisfying to the best part of our 
poetic nature, though feeling that on this vast subject the 
critic must perforce be somewhat personal, and that he can 
but point to the right path and must not stop to enumerate all 
the flowers growing by the way-side. 

But first, in order to justify our choice, we must repeat what 
has been said so many times before, that art should avoid mere 
personalities and mere personal invective. Many fine things 
will be ruled out of the volume of perfection because of this 
transgression. The verdict of time often reverses judgments, 
but it never gives in its adhesion to pure invective. Victor 
Hugo wasted much of his energy in chastising his enemies, 
forgetting, in spite of the good advice, as well as the trite mor- 
ality, which he bestows on us, that he himself transgressed be- 
yond forgiveness when he published his private hatreds to the 
literary world, a world which requires from its servants that 
art should be impersonal, that is an inheritance for all, and not 
an amusement for the spiteful. Your sin will find you out 
more certainly in that which you write than in anything else. 



Victor Hugo. J87 

for vanity, revenge, individual hatred, all these find no place 
in works which live, and the cup of poison mixed for another 
has in the end to be drunk by the author himself. Happily for 
us there is much of divine pity in posterity, and it reverently 
buries bitter curses, refusing to make them classic. Yet if 
ever poet fancied he had a sacred cause it was Victor Hugo 
when he hurled his literary lightning at Napoleon III., for it 
is in Les chdtiments that Hugo's power reaches maturity. The 
seven books contain nine motifs. In the first the bandit, 
hidden by the fog, has taken his lamp and his knife, and 
approaches the bed of the sleeping Republic. Secondly, the 
crime is accomplished. Paris has been plunged in silent horror 
by the coup d'itat. The soldiers, the generals, and the law- 
yers all throw themselves at the feet of the bandit. Thirdly, 
the man who has inherited the name of Emperor strives to 
throw some splendour on his own darkness by lighting his 
lantern at the flame of Austerlitz. Fourthly, all that is base 
surrounds him, cringing for favours. Fifthly, a vision of those 
who have died. Sixthly, the murderer's progress to the place 
of consecration where the Archbishop blesses him. Seventhly, 
the departure of those sent to Cayenne. Eighthly, the pro- 
phecy of the expiation. What will it be? Not the guillotine, 
for the Christ had said 'Love one another.' Then lastly comes 
the punishment, t.^., the pillory of the poet's hatred. 

We must quote a few lines of this splendid Nox et Lux^ this 
palpitating poem of hatred for a debasing system, remembering 
that the poet prophesied long before Sedan, and that, whether 
at first from chance or from deep insight, he never swerved 
from his hatred of Napoleon * le Petit' 

The poem addressed to the people and justly admired, be- 
gins, 

' Partout pleura, sanglots et cris fun^bres. 

Pourqiioi dors-tu dans les t^n^bres % 

Je ne veux pas que tu sola mort. 

Pourquoi dors-tu dans les t^n^bres ? 

Ce n'est pas Tinstant ou Ton dort.' 

ending with the fine retrain of, 

' Lazare ! Lazare ! Lazare ! 
L^ve-toi.' 



Victor Hugo. 

the troe poetic iiDg and no mere veree making; the 
poDtaneooB, and we bow before the poet's true 
gain, 

' Od ne pent paa TivT« una pain ; 
On na pent pas uon plui rivre una p&trie.' 

le poet forbids the death of the tyrant we have this 

[on, liberty, non, people, il ne faat pu qn'il meute. 
« pn^iis, odme et fort, et tonjoura ioDocent, 
Fe Hit pas ce qne c'eet qoe de Terser le suig.' 

il note of hope in the poem is intensely dramatic, 
g in a fine oreflcendo and followed by the gradnal 
he lull after the hurricane; 

llean peiuous. Noa joon sont des jonn d'amertume ; 

B quand nous jt«ndoiu Ibb bras dana cette bmme 

IB Bentona une main ; 

jid noDs iDarchons, courb^, dans rombra da martyr, 

IB enteadoiu quelqa'un deniire nous nona dire ; 

'est ici le chemin." ' 

"onUmplationa the outside world is discarded, and 
eps into an inner sanctnary, for the book has been 
le Memoirs of a SoaL' He first contemplateB child- 
comes the shadow cast by love, then the soul ex- 
I everything is viewed with new understanding. 
iches her many leasons, the birds, the stars, the 
] fruits, and the ripples on the water ; then manhood 
ty must be faced, and truth sought for in the pro- 
man ity. 

ugo had always unbounded faith in his vocation as 
nd a prophet, and it was because of this that those 
d was purely ' art for art's sake,' would not reconcile 
with the exile of Guernsey. Kow he takes up the 
□cial evils, and shows that the root of the evil is 
dence. He believes sincerely in God, bat, says he, 
! now veiled but one day the mask will falL' Id 
bile the ignorant and the unlearned see deeper than 
' I'au deli,' for the man who began life as worshipper 
ided his career by worshipping the people. Lastly 



Victor Hugo. 239 

the poet takes up the theme of death, and perhaps Victor 
Hugo's unshaken belief in immortality did more real good than 
many of his mighty innuendoes against rulers and rich people. 
In *Mors,' * Cadaver,' and *Ce que c'est que la mort/ he 
shows his belief. In the first he sees a smiling angel walking 
close behind the reaper Death. In the second, we find a splen- 
did idea of the joy of the dead body now regaining its freedom 
in the universe, and being no longer subject to man's will. 

' Je vais me rajeunir dans la jeunesse ^norme 
Da buisBon, de Teau vive et da chSne et de I'orme, 
Aux ravins, aux haHiers, aux brises de la nue, 
Aux murmures profonds de la vie inconnue ! ' 

In the third poem the poet sums up the subject by saying, 'Ne 
dites pas mourir : dites uaitre. Croyez.' 

But the Contemplations are not merely themes about life and 
death, there is a place given — and from henceforth there will 
be always that place at Victor Hugo's hearth — to satire. His 
literary enemies and those who scoff at his religious creed 
are scourged with words. Riponse a un acte (Tacct^ation is a 
splendid torrent of defence against the accusations of his 
enemies and a description of the work he has accomplished in 
liberating language and poetry from its ancient chains. Quel- 
quea mots a un autre is a satire of the first order. / 

We must pass on to Les Chansons des rues et des bois. Here 
his imagination comes more into play than his passions ; it is 
a lull in the battle. Souvenir des vieilles guerres and Le Soir 
are good examples, but when we come to the volume called 
TJannie terrible Victor Hugo is more in his element. Sedan 
opens it. The old victories are enumerated, the old generals 
of the famous wars appear, and the heroes of Waterloo rise up 
and deliver up their swords. The book naturally falls into 
two parts. The first is the struggle with the foreign foe, the 
second is the civil war. In the first Hugo is strong as the 
soldier's son, and he exclaims: 

' morts pour mon pays, je suis votre envieux.' 

And then remembering that once he wished all nationalities 
to be merged into one great brotherhood, he gives this expla- 
nation of his altered attitude. 



MO Vietor Hugo. 

* IdaiB I'amoor devient haine en prteenoe dn maL' 

In Vannie terrible his little grand-obildren flit across the 
scene and throw welcome light upon the darkness. He is 
preparing for his work Hart d*itre grandpire when he says, 

* A chaque paa qu*il fait Tenfant derri^re lui 
Laiase plusieurs petita fantdmea de lui-mSme.' 

This beautiful idea has, we think, never been expressed before, 
or at least never so welL 

Then comes his cry for no vengeance on those who brought 
about the civil war. 

' De ces pleura, de oes maux sana fin, de oea conrroux 
On entendait sortir ce chant aombre. Aimons-noua.' 

Certainly no one could hate better than the poet who, from 
this time, however, is to become the preacher of love, but even 
hope in this sad book is painted pale, and we close the volume 
with a sigh. 

Casting aside the personal, Victor Hugo sets before him in 
the triple Ugende des sibcles, the epic of the centuries. It was 
to be his greatest work and it had a plan as vast as life. God 
and the devil, evil and good, were his themes, the struggle of 
humanity towards divinity. In the poem Vision he explains 
the motif of his work. He sees the wall of centuries rising out 
of darkness, a chaos of human beings joining the nadir and 
the zenith. Two celestial chariots appear. One is Fate, the 
other God. Their paths meet, there is a grand upheava', 
darkness is shaken and the centuries are broken up, but out of 
the wreck one is conscious of the invisible presence of God. 
We dimly perceive the ray emanating from liberty, and we 
can hear the flutter of the wings of hope. 

La Legende naturally begins with the origin of man ; then 
follow many figures of the Old Testament. Eve, Cain, Iblis, 
Daniel, Boaz, the soul of Balaam, then Christ in His tomb. 

The well known poem called Conscience is full of striking 
symbolism and explains how the epic will be developed. Con- 
science is the ray of light crossing the wall of the centuries, it 
is she who shines through all the darkness, and she is here 
compared to one drowned in an ocean of shame where all is 



Victor Hugo. 

turbulence, but ever and again tbe drowned oor 
not only to each men as the did and Eviradnue 
the brute creation. Wild beasts and the horses < 
endowed vrith speech and become symbols help 
out his great metaphor. The Archangel's sword t 
the slayer of chUdren, for, he explains, to kill a cl 
oonscienoe. 

' Dane I'enfant qui b^aie on eDtend Dieu paric 

Further on tbe poet conclusively proves the 
good over evil, and with many symbols he ma: 
wards the final struggle, though death was to c 
poet himself before he could reach the end of his , 

Every one has read ' Boaz asleep,' a perfect idyll i 
grandeur. In it Victor Hugo refers to Divine good 
words, for the optimist in him was more and n 
ground — 

' Vne immenBe bont^ toinbe dn fimuuiieut.' 



We cannot follow out the ' L^gende,' where myl 
ties are blended into a gorgeous whole. We can < 
some of the poems to be noticed. His continual cr 
in Qod, the soul is immortal, and the great moral 
kept.' His satire on the vanity of all things can be 
seven wonders of the world,' but much of the ' L^j 
close attention if we would follow out his argun 
ever-recurring refrain of belief in man's future life. 
' Et noua nous en irons vera I'^toile ^terDelle. 

But be does not give himself up merely to conte 
believes that man must ever progress, and he has th 
it in these very fine lines — 

' Ce n'est pas de toucher le but, c'eat d'Stre en rai 
, Bt cette marche, avec I'infini pour flambeau, 
S«ra continu^e au Aelit dii tombeau, 
O'eat le progrfes. ' 

Before leaving the ' L^gende ' we should like tt 
poem in a lighter vein and which is as spirited a 
rovers as we have seen. 



242 Victor Hugo. 

* En partant du golfe d'Otrante 
Nous ^tdoDB trente, 
Maifl, en arrivant k Oadu^ 
NouB ^tions dix.' 

Also ^ Chanson d' Eviradnus/ ^ Le Mariage de Boland/ and 
many others. Numberless lines might be quoted, but we had 
better refer the reader to the original, for the more we read the 
more we pause to reflect, and feel that though all the critics may 
be great, Victor Hugo is greater^ even if we cannot express this 
fact as M. Lemaitre does, when he says, * Let us put Victor 
Hugo in his right place, that is the first rank — ^nothing less, but 
nothing more.' 

Is there not something more in these quotations T 

' O triste mer, a^pulcre oh tout semble vivre.' 

' Non je ne donue pas k la mort ceux que j'aime 
Je les garde, je veux le firmament pour eux 
Pour vous, pour tous.' 

But we must leave space for ^ L art d' 6tre grandp&re I * Here 
Victor Hugo is full of tenderness and of passion. Tenderness 
for grandchildren and all children, full of anger against those 
who brand the new-born as criminal. Satire, idyll, and philoso- 
phy, all these can be found in this volume. Tb^ophile Gautier 
said of it, ^ This book is great like Homer and simple like the 
" Bibliotheque bleue." ' To him the child is * La souverainete 
des choses innocentes.' 

Perhaps there has never been such a poet of childhood as 
Victor Hugo. His great love for his own children and grand- 
child and his power of becoming one of them, enabled him to ac- 
complish what only a very few grown up people can do, that is, 
mentally to become as a little child. Whatsoever may be their 
mood he can translate their ideas. From the first opening of 
their sleepy eyes and all through the livelong day, he can think 
as they think, and be as delightfully positive as they are, till 
nightfall comes, and tired out, they are silent in slumber. 
* Jeanne asleep ' is the title of four poems in this volume, and in 
each a new phase of this charming subject is presented. He sees 



Victor Hugo. 243 

Paradise thrown open to sleeping children, and he hears the stars 
bidding them to be good. 

' Jeanne au fond du sommeil m^dite et se compose 
Je ne sais quoi de plus celeste que le ciel." 

' II est si beau V enfant avec son doux sourire, 
Sa douce bonne-foi, sa voix qui veut tout dire, 

Ses pleurs vite apais^es, 
Laissant errer sa vue ^tonn^e et ravie, 
Offrant de toutes parts sa jeune 4me k la vie 

Et sa bouche aux baisers." 

One should read the * Sieste', and the poem on the children's 
visit to the Jardin des plantes, where * Five-years-old' says, *Les 
lions c'est les loups ', and ' Six-years-old ' answers, * C'est tr^s 
m^chant les bites/ but for perfect and quiet humour we could 
not choose better than the poem on Jeanne when she is naughty. 
We see her comforted by her grandfather, who brings her some 
jam whilst she is in durance vile, much to the indignation of 
those in authority. But jam brings Jeanne to penitence. 

* Et Jeanne a dit d' une voix douce, 
" Je ne toucherai plus mon nez avec m'on pouce, 
Je ne me feral plus griffer par le minet." 
Mais on s' est ^cri6 — " cette enfant vous connait ; 
EUe salt a quel point vous Stes faible et ld.che, 
EUe vous voit tou jours rire quand on se f^he." ' 

We dare not multiply quotations. If some have thought that 
a child's ideas were hardly worthy of a great poet's attention, 
such have failed to gather up the philosophy of life and have not 
understood what Victor Hugo expresses so well in his poem 
called * The Pope.' ' L'enf ant, c'est I'ange. Laisse-moi le b^nir.' 
The child is the outward expression of what is best in human 
nature, besides being, as Wordsworth so well expressed it, 
" Father of the man.' 

But we must close this short study of a great subject. We 
have but slightly indicated what can be sought for and found 
in Victor Hugo's book. After 'L'art d'etre grandpfere' he 
published in 1881 the third Lfegende, then * The four winds of 
the spirit/ in 1882, dying two years after in 1885. His later 
poems are perhaps more echoes than new notes, but they are 
xxviii. 17 



244 Vietor Hugo. 

noble echoes of the former music of the aged poet, who at 83 
years old passed away when the month of May brought back 
the roses. 

Often when a critic has spread out his carpet, meaniog to sit 
in judgment on Victor Hugo, before long we find him like 
Balaam, blessing instead of cursing. Victor Hugo's themes 
are certainly old themes, and 'decadents' may scoff at them 
as at worn out creeds, for these creeds merely embody justice, 
love, faith, reason, beauty, liberty and the ideal. Perhaps, as 
in ' Plein Ciel,' these moral virtues are too indiscriminately dis- 
played, but does humanity always rule itself so entirely by 
them as to find them trite ? Are such themes ever worn out ? 
The poet's own faith in God never wavered, and therefore he 
never ceased to fulminate against suicide, foreseeing the in- 
crease of it, to which increase we can testify, for as faith dies 
courage becomes weak and life's burden is too easily cast off. 
When death deprived the poet of his beloved daughter two 
mouths after her marriage, though prostrated by grief, he 
could still write these lines, — 

' Je viens k vous, Seigneur, P^re auquel il faut croire ; 
Je vous porte^ apais^ 

Les morceauz de ce coeur tout plein de yotre gloire^ 
Que vous avez bris^ . . . 
Dans vos cieuz, au deHt de la sphere des nues, 
Au fond de cet azur immobile et dormant, 
Peut-^tre faitea-vous des choses inoonnues^ 
Oil la douleur de Thomme entre comme ^^ment.' 

His enemies said that he saw too many visions, — so did the 
great Hebrew poets, whose writings are still our admiration. 

Look at the force of this vision of a sower, in which three 
lines give us a picture full of deep thoughts. 

' L'ombre oh. se mdle une rumeur 
Semble ^largir jusqa'aux ^toiles 
Le geste auguste du semenr.* 

Again, he proved too much that the rich are bad and the 
poor are good. He liked the paradox, * Le laid c'est le beau ; ' 
but if we read * Lea Mallieureuxj we see what a fine argument 
it is for poverty, and if it is exaggerated it is a finer exaggera- 



Victor Hugo. 245 

tion and worth more than our own plea of heredity which so 
often sweeps away all responsibility. More and more we shall 
have to be grateful to the poet for his belief in the opposite 
creed, and for not hurling his imprecations at the inequality 
of human lives, for he had a jSrm faith in a happier hereafter. 

' Le monde captif^ sans lois et sans regies 
Est aux oppresseurs ; 

Yolez dans les cieux, ailes des grands aigles, 
Esprit des pensenrs ! ' 

Even if we could afford to despise his ' common philosophy ' 
there is one crown which we could not displace from his brow. 
This is the perfection of his style, in whatever sense we may 
interpret this word. * Because Victor Hugo was a great artist 
in words,' says the famous critic M. Brunetifere, * some of the 
most hidden depths of language and thought were revealed to 
him.' What finer teleology and autology than his poem en- 
titled Abime when God answers all vain-glorying nature and 
proud humanity by this single line, 

* Je n'aurais qu'k parler et tout serai t de Tombre ! ' 

It is just ten years since Victor Hugo died, and this decade 
suffices for us to feel the pulse of criticism, though it is not 
long enough for Time to make a clear distinction between 
what is earthly and what is heavenly in the poet's work. 
Victor Hugo has been no exception to the rule that the 
greater the man the more will he be open to fierce attack, for 
has it not been truly said that everybody in a crowd can throw 
mud and most people wish to do so ? But attack shows signs 
of life, so do not let us be deceived by this visible warfare, and 
do not let us fear to misplace our honest admiration because 
critics have spoken otherwise. It is now too much the fashion 
to think through others either for good or for evil, to criticise 
through critics, and to praise through connoisseurs; often 
therefore all that we might gain by direct contact with an 
author is lost, and we are gradually bereft of power to dis- 
criminate between good and evil. 

The truth is that few critics have the genius to know a 
great poet or a great prose writer on his first appearance} 



246 Sutherland Folk-lore. 

tbey like a precedent and genius has none. Jules Janin, 
called ' the prince of critics,' tried to kill Balzac, prophesying 
that his books would appear but to be forgotten : now it is 
Jules Janin who is nearly forgotten. It needs genius to 
recognise genius, so let us take our critics for what they 
are worth. It is not their verdict which builds up a reputa- 
tion; in some mysterious manner it is that of the humble 
readers, for usually it is they that receive a genius gladly. 
Jules Janin scornfully reproached ' Paris ' for reading Balzac, 
meaning by * Paris ' the great bulk of readers who were of no 
consequence. Well, Paris received Victor Hugo and applauded 
him though he was unlike any previous French poet. They 
could not criticise, they could not pick holes in him, but they 
knew that a great poet had been in their midst, and they 
honoured him gladly. He had been their mouth-piece, he had 
expressed what they felt, though they could not put it into 
words. He had understood their sins, their virtues, and their 
imprisoned idols, and so they rejoiced. 

If we, on our side, cannot adopt all Mr. Swinburne's lan- 
guage, if we cannot say with him, ' Quorate Taltissimo poeta,' 
reserving this praise for a greater than Victor Hugo, we can 
at least crown him with a laurel wreath, and forgetting that at 
times he degraded poetry by uniting it to party hatred, re- 
member only that at his best he soared to the gateway of 
heaven. 

EsME Stuart. 



Art. hi.— SUTHERLAND FOLK-LORE. 

THAN Sutherland there are few Scottish counties richer in 
folk-tale and legendary lore, despite the fact that this remote 
shire is less strictly Celtic than the more southerly shires of 
Inverness and Argyll, both as to native population and as to 
language. In the days of the Vikings, this part of Scotland was 
the favourite ' outland ' of the Scandinavians : there was a day, 
says Rob Donn, the Sutherland bard, when the men of Lochlin 



Sutherland Folk-lore. 247 

were spilt on these shores, and like manure they enriched the 
land they despoiled, so that to this hour the Norseman and the 
Gael dispute the soil in West Sutherland. 

Unquestionably the natural nomenclature is everywhere mainly 
Celtic, except along the actual seaboard where Scandinavian 
suffixes and prefixes stand out like rocks among the Gaelic 
designations. For the most part, too, the names of the people 
are Celtic, though Somerled, Torcall and other Norse names are 
frequent, and here and there almost as common as in the Long 
Island itself. The commonly accepted version of the first, of 
these names is that it comes from Sumarlidi, the summer-sailors, 
as the Vikings were called from their habit of setting forth at 
the first sight of summer on their predatory excursions to the 
Hebrides and the Sutherland and Ross coasts. 

To a West Sutherlander I am indebted for a brief narrative 
in connection with another Norse name, Sven. He declared 
that the common Irish MacSweeny and the less frequent 
Scottish MacSween or Sweenie are variants of Sven. There 
was a Loch Inver man, according to him, of the name of Sween 
MacSween — Sven Svenson as the Norse would have it. This 
man died many years ago ; and when he was ill he told a friend 
that he knew where on the Ross coast was a long lost treasure 
of the Norsemen, and that the secret had been handed down 
from generation to generation. The reason why none of the 
family had availed themselves of the knowledge was because of 
a dreadful curse which had been laid upon it. Thrice, indeed, 
daring spirits had ventured to put the legend to the proof, but 
each occasion was followed by results so terrible that sacrilegious 
curiosity was damped emphatically for a generation or two. 
The story is that each of these treasure-seekers was seized by 
invisible hands, whirled round and round, and then dashed to 
pieces on the rocks. The third was hurled over one of the cliffs 
of Loch Torridon — far away from the supposed site of the Norse 
treasure — and was dashed against them like a storm-blown bird. 

It is this survival of the Scandinavian strain in place-names, 
human-names and in the general characteristics of the people, 
which makes Sutherland so especially interesting. 

To the Scandinavian adventurers of old the Sudr-ei/jar, the 



248 Sutherland Folk-'lore. 

Soath Isles, were the Fortanate Isles of the West. They knew 
them first in the smiling summer months or when the halcyon 
calms of September made them seem doubly beautiful; and 
moreover the summer-sailors came to them from bleak Iceland or 
from the even bleaker if less ice-bound Orkneys. Thus the 
Sudr-eyjar (particularly the Hebrides) and Sudrland (Suther- 
land) became to them the land of promise. As to those daring 
sea-rovers of a bygone time, so, too, is the Sutherland of to-day 
a Sudrland, a land of promise, to the lover of old romance, of 
hero-tale and folk-song, of strange half-pagan survivals and of 
stranger and wilder superstitions. 

A century ago the mother of Rob Donn, the pride of the Reay 
country, would sing songs old as the tongue she spoke so sweetly, 
would recite stories of the heroic days when Ossian sang and 
Deirdr@*s beauty made swords flash from sea to sea. To this day 
there are men and women of Sutherland whose hearts are 
warmed by a glow from the same wonderful past, and in whose 
minds still linger dreams of the time when Bran, the best-loved 
hound of Fionn, was buried in the district of Loth. 

The place-names of Sutherland, so admirably brought together 
by Mr. John Mackay, yield a rich harvest to the student of folk- 
lore, and in not a few of them is revealed the imaginative 
insight of the Celt, while many others are suggestive of the one- 
ness of his life with the life of nature. Here are some typical 
instances: — Oagar-feosaig, hill of the whispering wind; Asca- 
na-greine, hill upon which the sun's rays first shine ; Clais-na- 
creamha, hollow of the wild garlick ; Dalbhain, snow-white 
meadow, producing abundance of daisies ; Ben-chlibric, speckled 
mountain of strength ; Monadh-stairneach, moorland of noise (of 
brooks); Loch-coire-na-fearna, loch of the corrie of the alder 
wood ; Loch mo Naire, loch of my disgrace, a piece of water in 
Strathnaver, so called because, hard pressed, a woman of Ross 
had to throw therein her three pebbles efficacious in the cure of 
many diseases ; Loch-an-f hionn-leathad, loch of the fair slope ; 
Meall-na-h-oillte, hill of terror ; Lochan-na-claidhean, lochan of 
the swords. 

I shall not tell here of the Last of the Giants, of the Origin 
of Loch Ness, of the BroUachan, or any of the other Sutherland 



Sutherland Folk-lore. 249 

tales included in Campbell of Islay's wonderful collections. 
Neither shall I recount the story of Farquhar, the physician of 
the Keay conntry , of the Cailleach Mohr who dwelt on Ben 
Chlibric ; of Modr Bhain, the witch of Assynt ; or of Donald 
Duival and the band of little men who made the elfin bridge 
across the Dornoch Firth. The legends here given were gathered 
many years ago in Sutherland, although variants of some of 
them are common to other parts of Scotland, and will be familiar 
to folk-lorists. I am greatly indebted to Mr. John Mackay for 
his generous aid, and also to Mr. George Morrison, from whom 
I hold several of these legendary episodes. 

In Sutherland, as in other parts of the Highlands, the summer 
shelling and the winter ceilidh were two of the most potent 
factors in the creation and development of the love-song, in the 
conservation and familiarising of the folk and hero-tale. At the 
sheiling {i.e., the hillside-croft at the summer-pasturing on the 
mountains) the women would sing songs while they were milk- 
ing, and the old wives, and the shepherding folk in general, 
would narrate legends of the past, or wild tales of the Hill- 
witch, the Water-kelpie, and the mysterious Leannan-Sith or 
fairy-lover. The ceilidh might be described as the Winter 
Nights' Entertainment. Here the village historian, the bard, 
and the seanachaidhy recite and extol the heroic deeds of the 
clan — feuds of old time, wrongs righted or unredressed, forays, 
encounters, dramatic episodes by hill and glen, by moor and loch, 
or on the wild north seas. These songs and legends would be 
recited during the ceilidh round the ingle-nook throughout the 
long winter evenings, when the glow from the peat-fire fell on 
the face of many a brother Gael. On the hills, too, the shep- 
herd-seanachaidh was wont to brood over the legends and 
traditions of his home and of his people that bad passed from 
mouth to mouth for many generations. In this way the old 
leg9ndary lore has not only survived, but often gained a new 
significance. 

Every village and hamlet had its special house for the celebra- 
tion of the ceilidh. Sometimes it would be one of those low, 
turf-built dwellings such as were to be found in Sutherland at 
the beginning of this century. The largest of the four rooms. 



250 Sutherland Folk-lore. 

built in single line, and one opening in to the other, was pro- 
bably given up to the kye ; next came the ha' or sitting- room, 
its peat-fire smouldering on a flat stone in the centre ; the third 
room was subdivided for sleeping purposes, and the fourth was 
known as the place of the stranger, for of yore, as to-day, in the 
Highlands, a passing guest was ever welcome. Sometimes the 
ceilidh folk met in the kitchen of a larger house, where were 
several chairs and a big couch. As the stories were told, and 
song followed song, the man of the house would make a new 
creel, mend his nets against the fishing season, or wind ropes of 
heather or straw for his roof. Meantime the girls would be card- 
ing wool, and his woman would sit at her spinning-wheel, rising 
only to add peats to the fire round which the company sat. 

Until recent years, many such meetings took place in the 
parish of Eddrachilis. This parish, lying on the north-west 
coast of the country, embraces some of the wildest and most 
desolate parts of Sutherland. On the heights of Beiun Hee, 
the hill of solitude, the eagle has his eyrie ; beneath, the narrow 
glens are the haunt of the wild deer. The people hereabouts 
are supposed to be descended, for the most part, from the Pictish 
tribes that dwelt in the straths before the Norsemen came from 
over the sea and drove them inland. In these days, of course, 
there were giants, and here is an Eddrachilis tale of one of 
them : — 

In the valley which runs between Polin, the place of the pool, 
and Blairmore, the big moor, the carn-famhair may be seen to 
this day : great boulders of gneiss guard the entrance to the 
cave, and the fissures in the ground tell of the travail of the 
earth in past ages. Many centuries ago, before St. Ronan had 
set sail from Ireland towards the coast of Brittany, before 
Donan, the Ouldee missionary, and his fifty * muinnter ' died the 
martyr's death on the Isle of Eigg, at the time, it is said, when 
the Druids performed their strange rites in the green solitudes 
of the forest of Keay, a giant dwelt there. Whence he had 
come, no man could say ; only that it was from a distant country, 
peopled by giants grim and mighty as himself. He was strong 
as the oak, and like it his strength increased with the passing 
years : tall he was, for his figure towered above the trees of the 



Sutherland Folk-lore, 251 

forest ; his long hair was black, but no whit less black than the 
shaggy, matted beard which fell over his great chest ; eyes, red 
with the thirst for blood which flamed therein, were almost hidden 
by the black eye-brows, and coarse black hair sprang from his 
nostrils. Save for a girdle of animal skins, he was naked ; but 
even in time of snow, or when the deer sought shelter from the 
northern blasts, the tangle of hair which lay thick on his skin 
protected him from cold. Marks of many a bloody battle he 
bore, and the scars and cuts on his face made it still more hideous 
to look upon. His only weapon was a staff cut from the tremb- 
ling poplar, of the same height as himself, and of a thickness 
with his thigh. This he wielded as if it were a cane. In his 
rough mane of hair was a tangle of aspen leaves ; and one thing 
the Gaels of old held was that he who wore a wreath of tremb- 
ling aspen leaves on his head loved not their gods ; they knew, 
too, that the strength of such an one came from the under-world. 

The giant fed upon the children of the Oldshore district. 
Often, as the mists crept down the mountain, he was seen to 
enter his cave with five or six little ones on his back. At times 
he feasted on the men and women, and he had been known even 
to carry away a Druid priest, white-robed, in the act of worship. 
But he liked best the tender flesh of youth, and when this was 
within easy reach, the elders were safe. 

As day followed day, the giant grew more ravenous, and there 
was scarce a household that had not paid to him the tribute of a 
young life. Then those who dwelt between the kyles held 
council, and decided to march against the monster. With gar- 
lands of mountain ash and of- oak to protect them from evil, and 
in their hands the rude weapons of the time, the men set out for 
the cave ; but ere they were within arrow-shot of the entrance, 
great stones, flung by the giant as if they were pebbles, fell, 
killing some of the most valiant of the band, and compelling the 
others to retreat. The stones, rounded by the force with which 
they hurtled against the earth, now stud the hill above carn- 
f amhair ; on several are marks of the giant's nails graven as they 
slipped from his fingers. Thereafter this enemy of man grew 
more fierce; his devastating hand was ever at work, his wild 
eyes were as balls of fire in the country of Ashir. Again the 



252 Sutherland Folk-lore. 

people plotted to kill him. This second time they lay in ambush 
at the tnoath of his dwelling. Long they waited for his coming, 
and at last he entered through the gate of stones ; then with a 
shout of victory they surrounded the opening. He must starve 
was their thought, as day followed day and he did not appear. 
Their watch continued. Finally, when two moons had waxed 
and waned, it was found that the giant had escaped by a low, 
winding passage to an outlet a mile distant; even as they waited, 
he was wreaking his vengeance on the women and the children. 
The mounds which rose as he forced his way through the tor- 
tuous passage mark his course to this hour. In vain ambassadors 
with peace offerings in their hands were sent to the giant ; with 
a savage grin he fell upon them, and flung their bones to the 
expectant folk of the clachan. 

At last the great festival of the Druids drew near. White 
bulls were made ready for sacrifice ; men were chosen to die the 
death on the rath of the stones. White-robed priests 
chaunted strange lays to Hesus, the deity whose pulse was the 
ocean-beat, whose breath was the winds of the world. The bulls 
were slain, the fair Gaels bound to the altar : all awaited the 
coming of Hesus. Instead of the god, the figure of the giant 
appeared striding swiftly towards the place of sacrifice. Every 
man fled, and the giant gorged himself upon the carcasses of the 
bullocks, and upon the flesh of the men on the altar. It may 
be that because of this thing the anger of Hesus was loosed, but 
no man can say for sure. Thereafter the Druids worshipped in 
the groves of the oak, and when the day of sacrifice was come 
again, they called with a yet louder voice to the mighty Hesus. 
Then a strange thing befell. A giant, Eoghan he was called, 
came to do battle with the shaggy man of the cave. Whence 
he came none save the priests knew, and they were silent when 
men questioned them. Eoghan was not so tall as the cave- 
dweller ; his face and his hair were fair, and he wore a covering 
woven of leaves. No fierce light burned in his eye, but it seemed 
as if the wind and the sun had beat upon his face for long. An 
oaken club, neither so long nor so stout as the poplar staff of his 
adversary, was his sole weapon. ^ On the morrow,' said he, as he 



Sutherland Folk-lore. 253 

set foot in the couDtiy, ^on the morrow I will fight the demon of 
cam*famhair.' 

The yellow month had passed. Every hill-side was clad in 
purple, and as the sun rose a soft wind, with a whisper of coming 
winter therein, passed over the mossy plain of Blair- Odhar — now 
a desert of sand — the blooms of the Canach waving their white 
heads as it passed. 

Scarce had the sun risen over the chain of hills, when the 
giant of cam-famhair was seen to emerge from his rock-dwel- 
ling and stride towards the plain, brandishing his staff in the air 
and uttering fierce imprecations. Then Eoghan went out to 
meet him. Foaming with rage, the giant said : ^ Hast thou come 
out to gaze on my strength, to minister to my wants^ or dost thou 
await the glory of being slain by me, O thou fair man 1 ' And 
Eoghan made answer : * I come, I come, but I come not in vain, 

giant. Neither to look upon thee, to serve thee, nor to be 
slain by thee do I come. I am here to aid the distressed. I am 
the servant of Compassion.' * Bedone 1 ' roared the giant ; ^ as 
the beasts of the forest fled at my coming, so will I drive thee 
from this land.' Eoghan heard the words unmoved. *Vain 
boaster,' he said, * on this field^ thou must die, and over thy body 

1 will raise a hill of sand. Generations of men to come shall hear 
the crackling of thy bones as they walk thereon.' Then each swung 
his staff in the air, and their words of incantation were heard by 
the folk who watched. The roar of the hairy monster was as 
the roar of the incoming tide in the deep caverns of Cape Wrath, 
but Eoghan was silent and calm as the cloud-capped summit of 
Beinn Hee. For long it seemed as though the giant would be 
victorious, but at last a mighty stroke from the staff of the fair 
man felled him. His cries of agony rent the air, and rocks, with 
the strength of ages upon them, were cleft on the hill-side ; his 
brains were spilled over the plain, and awe was in the heart of the 
onlookers. Eoghan went towards the Sea. As he approached, 
the wind broke into fury and the waves rose. Then the sand of 
the shore was borne in great clouds to the plain, in clouds so 
thick that the sun was darkened and day became as night. Thus 
the body of the giant was covered. Blair-Odhar became Onoc- 
Odhar, and what before was a sandy shore is now a beach of 



254 Sutherland Folk-lore. 

shiogle. The bones of the giant still crackle beneath their bed 
of fine sand, but Eoghan, the deliverer, has been seen no more. 

The district of Assjmt is overlooked by the four oldest moun- 
tains in the British Isles : Ben More, proud of his age and of his 
greatness ; Quinaig, the couchant lion, guarding Loch Assjnt ; 
Canisp and Suilven whose rade heads peer over the heather-clad 
heights and the walls of rock that rise out of the water on the 
opposite side of the loch. At dawn and at sunset, and as the 
mists drift off the mountains, exquisite hues, like the vivid colours 
of dream-clouds, may be seen here ; rich gold fading through 
saffron to a warm half-light, or ambers too delicate to reproduce. 
It is, truly, a fit retreat for the * people of old ; ' and, if, any- 
where, the Celtic gods still linger hidden among the lonely places, 
it may well be that the land of their exile is this remote corner of 
Gaelic Scotland. 

Formerly, and indeed until a comparatively recent date, Assynt 
was populous. But here, as elsewhere, *the Sutherland evic- 
tions ' cleared the ground in a tragically literal sense. Where 
the smoke of the croft once rose from machair and strath, may 
now be seen only wandering flocks of sheep, and where the laugh- 
ter of children came from the bothie in the glen or the shieling 
upon the hill, is now to be heard only the whirr of the grouse- 
cock or the monotonous belling of deer. 

In one of the many clachans scattered over this mountain land, 
Piobaire OonnuU was born. His name was familiar throughout 
the home-straths, for Connull the Piper it was who made the 
piobroch speak as no other man of them could do, and sweet is 
the sound of that voice to the Gael. In time of battle, he 
marched with the clan, and it was as if victory were already 
theirs ; when a chief was * laid under the turf of truth,' Connull 
played the coronach ; and at a wedding feast none other could 
play save Piobaire Connull. Loved by his chief and by his peo- 
ple, the hero of the fair daughters of the clan, he won the heart 
of the fairest girl of all. Sons and daughters were born to them, 
and the two lived the free, blithe life of the time. 

It chanced one day that the Piobaire was bidden to a marriage 
a short way off. It was a Thursday, and for every hour in it he 
played to the guests as he had never played before ; even at 




Sutherland Folk-lore. 255 

nightfall his pipes gladdened their hearts^ for in those days the 
dance and song lasted long. Not until dawn did he rest, and 
then after a brief pause and more than one cuachs of drink, he 
went to the sports. Again, as darkness fell over the country, the 
skirl and drone of his pipes made the folk dance more madly than 
ever, made the drinking cups pass from hand to hand more 
swiftly. On Saturday ConnuU followed the young couple as 
they visited their friends of the clachan.. The afternoon feast was 
heavy, and as each guest bade farewell, he quafifed the deoch-an- 
doruiSf the door-drink. The Piobaire's draught was a long one, 
worthy of his race and of his calling, and thereafter he set out 
for home, marching to his favourite tune, ^I am away, I am 
away, I am away from Assynt I ' The sound of his pipes was 
heard long after his figure had passed out of sight. 

That night his woman waited for him by the peat -fire. At 
last, weary of watching, she fell asleep. Sunday passed, and 
still the piper did not reach home. On the morrow word of his 
absence was carried far and wide, and search was made for the 
missing man. Folk sought along the banks of the loch ; the 
river was followed from its source among the hills to its mouth ; 
and men peered into rocky chasms and under a hundred great 
boulders. But all was in vain : days and weeks passed, and 
Piobaire ConnuU was seen of no mau ; none heard the sound of 
his pipes or set eyes upon his face. ' He has gone on the way,' 
said some ; others held he had been done to death by a rival 
piper, or that, weary of his own people, he had fared to the land 
of the stranger. But one or two, on a Friday it was, when the 
* men of peace ' cannot hear, murmured, ' For sure he is with the 
fairies ; has he not played to them before 1 ' And the lone 
woman he had left knew in her heart that this was a true thing. 

Some time thereafter the chief was killed in a broil with a 
neighbouring clan, but another piper than ConnuU had to play 
the coronach when his body was laid in the earth. Many things 
chanced as year followed year, and at last another man took the 
place of the Piobaire by the side of his widow. 

At this time there lived in the district of Assynt one known 
fis Bean-Mhath Achabhan, the good wife of the fair meadow. 
Every woman with the ^ sweet illness ' upon her knew that it was 



1 



256 Sutherland Folk-lore. 

she who tended them well, and brought them to the green land 
of joy that lies on the farther side of the black passage of child- 
birth. She watched by the bed of peasant and chief; her 
gaunt figure was known alike in the croft and the castle. One 
night the midwife sat alone in her turf hut. Qazing at the 
peats, she saw token of a stranger coming for her, and she 
questioned whether to give him welcome by heaping more peats 
on the fire, or to spurn him by pouring water on his image. 
While she mused there was a gentle rap at her door. Opening 
it, she saw a little person clad in green cloth, a bow and arrow 
in his hands : ' Good evening, Bean-Mhath Achabhan,' was the 
friendly greeting of the dwarf, but the midwife knew he was a 
fairy of high rank. * It is following me you will be, for my wife 
is in travail, and has sore need of you,' and despite a thrice- 
spoken refusal, the midwife at last consented. With the green 
girdle of the fairy over her eyes, for more than an hour she was 
led over hill and valley. Then she heard a sound of distant 
music, and the bandage was removed. She was in a grotto, 
brilliantly lighted, and of vast size, whose walls were gorgeously 
decorated. On her way to the couch of the queen she passed 
through the great hall. There stood a man playing the pipes, 
and what should the tune be but * I am away from Assynt ' ; 
^ A, ghaoilaich I A, Phiobaire I is it you I'm seeing,' exclaimed 
the midwife. ' Yes, Bean-Mhath Achabhan,' said the man, and 
without further word he continued his playing. The shout of 
joy that came from the green-robed multitude when the good 
woman left the bed chamber of the queen filled the great palace ; 
a host of little beings offered her thanks, and when she was 
ready to return, with a ' Peace be with you ' to all, the Piobaire 
again stood in her path. * Is it coming home with me you are, 
Connull, my man ? ' 'As soon as I will play this tune,' he re- 
plied. ' I was away for two nights at the marriage feast, and 
my word is upon giving these people a tune before I go home.' 
^ You have been absent many years ; the chief is dead, and your 
woman married to another man,' Bean-Mhath Achabhan said. 
But the light in the piper's eyes was strange as he made answer, 
* You have drunk too deep of the water of AUtan-bhan, mid- 
wife; when I finish my tune, it's coming I will be." As she 



'\ 



Sutherland Folk-lore. 257 

followed the prince the soand of the pipes grew dim. She 
never saw the piper again. 

Her guide led her, as before, blindfolded. When she thought 
to have reached firm ground, she drew a clew from her pocket, 
and, as if intent upon fastening her brogue, fixed the end to a 
twig by her side. Thus she hoped to discover the abode of the 
quiet people. Before she reached her hut, however, the thread 
ran out, but after a long search on the next day, she came upon 
the loose end and traced it to the dwarf birch whereto she had 
fastened it. Thereafter a council of the hill-folk was held. Now 
there lived in a cave on the Assynt coast, near Rhu Stoer, a 
hermit skilled in the black art. At cockcrow on a certain 
morning, this man made a circle round the fairy knoll, a staff of 
oak in his right hand, in his left a rowan branch. Alone on the 
summit of the knoll — for the people at his bidding had with- 
drawn, in order that his spells might work — ^he put the two staffs 
one across the other ; below the- point of meeting a garland of 
oak and rowan twigs was laid, and in the four spaces the legs 
and comb of a pure black cock, the mane of a black stallion, and 
the fins of a haddock were laid. Then the man repeated his 
duanag. No sooner had the cock crowed, than the skirl of pipes 
was heard on the other side of the knoll. There sat the piper 
ConnuU, with his pibroch at his side. 

Frail and old was the man, and few of the clan could recoff- 
nise him. He was dazed too. Not even the sight of the tigh-' 
duhh * or the sound of the piobmor cheered him. After a brief 
while, as the darkness gathered, he was seen to leave his house. 
The way he took led to the hills, and since that night the piper 
has been seen neither on the mountain slopes nor in the valleys 
of Sutherland. It may be he still pipes to the green-clad in- 
habitants of fairyland. 

Swordley, a hamlet in the parish of Farr, has been an elfin 
region for many ages ; of the numerous sith-raths in the hamlet, 
four, known as na cairn caoilj the narrow cairns, are conspicuous 
objects. Around these and other cairns the little people danced; 
beneath them, in palaces whose gilded splendours form the subject 

* Black house where the whiskey was distilled. 



258 Sutherland Folk-lore. 

of many a ceilidh romance, they made merry as only fairies can. 
Within the last few years old inhabitants of Swordley have seen 
a ring of green-clad folk dancing on one of the conical hills in 
the centre of the clachan. There now dwells at Swordley a 
family whose grandsire's grandsire was Adam M6r; the miller. 
His mill-wheel was turned by the Swordley burn. The little 
Daoine Sithe paid him many a visit, indeed at times he thought 
that they stole his meal as it was being ground. Nevertheless, 
Adam, who was a prudent man, held his peace and said not a word 
to their discredit. Time came, however, when, incensed at the 
repeated visits of the men of the knolls, Adam muttered, * This 
thing is no longer for the enduring ; ' so early one morning he 
turned the water off the mill and went home. When Adam 
M6r returned a few hours later he saw that not one stone re- 
mained upon another ; even to its foundations, his mill had been 
razed to the ground. Thus do the men of peace treat those who 
seek to do them ill. 

The heights of Sutherland are studded with lochs, and each 
has its name, Loch-na-h-ealadh, the loch of the swan, no less 
than great Loch Shin. Many of these lochs were favourite 
haunts of the Each-uisge^ the water-horse or kelpie. At times 
he would appear as a dark, shaggy pony, or as a brindled horse 
with fine, glossy skin ; occasionally he would take on himself the 
form of a man, or lie moored to the lochside as a black boat with 
oars in the rowlocks ; nay, he has been seen to move down the 
centre of lochs in the guise of a boat under sail. 

Loch Chrois, the loch of sorrow, which lies in a remote part 
of the county between Oldshore and Strathan and at the foot of 
Ben Chrois, has for generations been the home of a kelpie. He 
has assumed various forms, and played many a belated traveller 
false on misty nights ; but for the most part, save for the tale 
which follows, no crime is laid to his charge. 

On a summer afternoon when silence brooded over the hills, 
and the waters of Loch Chrois were motionless, two lovers sat 
on a sand-dune at the end of the loch, h milis cH bum h 
cup nuair ghoideas na a\ * sweet is the water out of the cup when 
stolen,' says a proverb of the Gael, and sweet to the lovers was 
this time because none knew of their meeting, least of all their 



I 



/' 



Sutherland Folk-lore. 259 

fathers and mothers, for between the two families was a great 
feud. As thej talked, the sun sank behind the mountain ; still 
they sat side by side when the afterglow suffused the western 
sky. The silence of a summer afternoon passed into the peace 
of a summer evening, and dark shadows gathered in the hollows 
around them ere the lovers bethought them of their hotnes. 'The 
game 1 came out to snare is still on the wing/ the youth said ; 
* the kye are on their way to the homestead/ was her answer. 
As they spoke, their eyes lighted on a black horse which 
pastured beside the loch. Thinking that it belonged to the 
clachan whence they came, the lovers led it towards a boulder, 
and there sprang on its back. Hardly were they seated, than the 
horse headed lochwards, and when they tried to slip from his 
back, they found that an invisible power gripped them. Then 
they knew that their steed was the Each-uisge of Loch Chrois. 
On the further side of the water, men and women were returning 
from Fuaran-gearradh, the cool well, whose waters, blessed by 
a passing saint, cured sick folk of many diseases. To them the 
lovers shouted for help, but it was in vain, for already the kelpie 
had gained the edge of the loch. Louder than the cries of the 
unwilling riders, rose the wild neighing of the black horse, as 
with unwonted fierceness he reared and plunged into the loch. 
On either side of him as he fought his way to the centre, vast 
clouds of vapour were seen to rise from the water; and the 
people fled affrighted at the weird sounds that broke the stillness, 
and the strange sight on the loch. The bodies of the lovers 
were never found, and in every clachan and strath for miles 
around it is held that the demon carried them to the loch-depths 
where he dwells, there to await the call of the pibroch on the 
day of days. 

An old woman who died at Oldshore not more than 
fifty years ago once saw this same kelpie. She was returning 
from Shinnery at the end of summer, when a thick mist fell, 
wrapping the valleys in gloom. Well as she knew the road, she 
lost her way, and the grey of the mist had become the black of 
the night ere she reached the edge of a loch. The boulders on 
its banks seemed to her as gigantic rocks, the ripple of the water 
XXVIII. 1 8 



260 Sutherland Folk-^lore. 

as waves that beat menacingly against a shore. 'It is at Loch In- 
shard, the loch of the high flat lands, I will be/ thought the woman, 
but even as she so mused, and as she was about to set foot in the 
sailing boat which lay there, her eyes fell on a stone that she 
knew. With a prayer on her lips, she ran towards her home. It 
was the Each-uisge of Loch Cbrois who had sought to lure 
her away. 

Loch-na-Cloinne, in the Reay country, had its kelpie too, and an 
evil deed he did one day of days. A party of young Highlanders 
had spent many hours in the shade of the forest, exploring every 
remote corner, and telling tales of the wood-spirits who dwelt 
therein. Their path home led by the loch, in whose depths lay 
strange secrets of the past, and on whose surface the cloud- 
beauty of the moment was reflected. At the edge of the loch a 
horse grazed, and as its look was gentle, all the boys save one 
went up to stroke its sleek coat and its soft nozzle. Ere a cry 
could escape him, the onlooker saw the horse plunge into the 
water, bearing with him all his comrades. And thus it is that 
the loch is called Loch-na-Cloinne, the loch of the children. 

But the lochs of Sutherland were the habitation of other strange 
creatures, the crodh-oighre to wit. It may be that these were 
cattle banned by some witch, or over which an evil spell had been 
cast, or perchance they were long-lived beings from another 
world. During the early years of this century there lived in the 
clachan of Swordlev a woman known as Ogha Bkn, the fair- 
haired grandchild. She slept in a small bothie, quite alone, and 
though her words were fair, the folk of the strath whispered that 
she had dealings with the evil powers, perhaps because, as they 
passed the bothie, they would hear her voice raised as if in dis- 
putation with a visitor, when full well they knew that Ogha Ban 
and no other woman or man stood therein. But there are those 
still living who say that at such times she did but rehearse the 
legends and hero-tales which, from her childhood, had been 
sweet to her ear and dear to her heart. Of the many tales she 
would tell, one was of a sister Gael who was old when Ogha Ban 
had the glory of youth about her. This woman had the power 
to charm the crodh-oighre. *Na-ghurraI gu'n tig Suidheag; 
na-ghurra ! gu'n tig Buidheag ; na-ghurra 1 gu'n tig Croman- 



Sutherland Folk-lore. 261 

t-sabhaill; 's na-ghurral gu'n tig an Odhar-Mhor, 's dar 
thig sin thig mo chiodhs uile gu leir,' she would say in the 
tongue which was the only one she had. Thereat each one of 
the creatures would come from the loch-depths ; she would milk 
them, and they would return to their home beneath the waters. 
* The day of the black dog is coming.* Thus runs a proverb of 
the Reay country, and the legend connected therewith is this : — 
Donald Tuathal, first Lord Reay, had a favourite black deer- 
hound ; fierce and valiant it was, with the great sinews of Its 
race, and faithful too. It chanced one autumn that the chief, 
his visitors, and gillies, set out upon a deer-stalking expedition. 
As they climbed from the strath to the heather-clad hill-slopes, 
a thick mist fell, wrapping everything in grey obscurity. Never- 
theless the gillies, who knew each brook, morass, and crag, for 
they had trodden them every day from their boyhood, led the 
party upward until they reached in safety the hunting bothies. 
The mist did not lift, and stalking was impossible. Night drew 
on, and the gloom became denser than before, so it was determined 
to sleep in the bothie. Food was produced, and each one of the 
party, hungry with the hill-tramp, ate with relish. Meanwhile 
the dogs, among them the black hound of Donald Tuathal, lay 
outstretched on the floor. One of the strangers spoke of the 
spirits of the mountains, and bade the gillies tell of them. It 
was soon after this that a lady, gaily clad, entered the hunting- 
bothie. She was blithe spoken, and the talk ran more merrily 
than before. Chancing to look towards the ground, one of the 
visitors marvelled to see that in the place of a boot she had a 
cloven shoe. At the cry of terror that came from his lips, the 
black hound rose, and with one leap, fell upon the intruder. 
The fight which followed was long and fierce, but at last the 
hound drove the woman from the bothie, albeit she had the 
strength of a giant. Without, the combat grew yet fiercer, while 
within the men gazed awestruck into each others eyes. The 
howls of the dog and the cries of its opponent rang in the ears 
of the men in the bothie all through that night. At daybreak 
Donald Tuathal peered through a crevice in the wall. His noble 
hound lay a few paces distant, foully done to death by a thousand 
wounds. The day of the black dog had come. 



262 Sutherland Folk-lore. 

' Each donn deas mliiagliach, 
Ca buidhe bus dubhach, 
Stailinn geur cruaidhaoh.' 

' A right maned dun hone, 
A yellow, black muzzle dog, 
A sharp-pointed piece of steel.' 

In the Reay country, the home of Rob Donn- the singer, and 
many another Gaelic bard, and throughout Sutherland, this 
folk-saying was common. A man riding such a horse, guarded 
by such a dog, and having on his person such a piece of steel, 
was invulnerable ; elf, evil spirit, or fairy could do him no hurt. 
One night a native of Farr, the place of the watching, fared 
homeward on his dun horse, beside him trotted a yellow sheep 
dog, and on his person he had a piece of sharp-pointed steel. 
The place at which he crossed the Farr Bum was remote, and 
the night was black. * Ian Mhor, Mhic Mhurcaidh, Mhic Asgill. 
'S crasgach t-ainmd, am beil am bior du, 's am muighean agad,* 
* Big John, son of Murdoch, son of Casgill, strange is thy name. 
Hast thou the bright-pointed steel and the right-maned horse ? ' 
Thus was he accosted by a voice out of the dark, a voice that he 
knew well belonged to no man of the strath. And he made 
answer, * Tha, Mhosag ! tha 1 's gabha thusa do chasan,' ' Yes, 
thou ill-fayoured one, I have. Begone ! ' But the kelpie, for 
his interlocutor was no other, would not be put off ; it followed 
the man of Farr until, with anger in his heart, he bade his faith- 
ful huaduy black-muzzle, attack his enemy. The obedient hound 
sprang upon the creature, while the traveller galloped rapidly in 
the direction of the clachan. Before sunrise on the morrow he 
set out for the field of the encounter — no other place it was 
than the field of Tiscarry, whereon his ancestors had driven back 
the Norsemen and ended their hated overlordship of the Reay 
country. The dog, spent with the fierceness. of the contest, lay 
half dead on the ground, but as his master patted his head, the 
big eyes had a look of gladness in them. Beside the hound lay 
the dead kelpie, its body changed into a pulpy mass like a great 
jelly-fish. 

Before Alexander Murray joined the 93rd Highlanders, and 
that was in 1800, a strange thing befell him, and he told the 



Sutherland Folk-lore. 263 

story to Mr. John Mackay in 1836, as that true son of Suther- 
land fared from Eogarth to Golspie. 

As a lad and a Highlander, Alexander Murray was wont to 
spend the nights of winter first at one house, then at another, 
telling tales and singing songs round the peat fire. But he was 
young, and his heart was the fiery heart of the Celt. It came 
about that he saw and loved a fair daughter of the strath, and 
after his day's work he would walk to her home instead of to the 
ceilidh. As he set out one night the snow lay thick on the 
ground, and it fell silently and steadily as he continued his way ; 
but with his plaid round his shoulders, a stick in his hand, and 
Caomhan, his faithful dog by his side, he trod onward joyously. 
White dreams were his, white as the snow-flakes that fell about 
him. His leannan gave him welcome, and more peats were 
heaped on the fire. The man of the house made ropes of heather 
and coiled them round his chair ; his woman sat at the spinning- 
wheel; and by her lover's side the girl carded wool. With a 
story of the heroes of olden time from the host, and much blithe 
talk and song, the hours passed merrily. Meantime a wind had 
sprung up ; fitful and sullen at first, it gathered force until, swift 
and tumultuous, it swept down the valley with a roar as of the 
tides let loose to wreak vengeance on the shores that confine them. 
* The guardianship of the Almighty and of his saints be over 
you,* said the girl, as she wrapped his plaid about him and opened 
the door; *the night is wild. It is careful you will be; my 
heart goes with you, for sure.' And with that he went into the 
night. 

The snow, caught by the hurricane, was driven in thick clouds 
which beat fiercely against the wayfarer and made it difficult for 
him to discern the path. After strenuous battling with the wind, 
he had almost gained the summit of a hill when he saw a strange 
object in his course. Black it was despite the snow which covered 
every other thing. ^It is an imp of darkness on some foul 
errand. Forward, Caomhon I ' But the dog, faithful at other 
times, would not stir; instead, he cowered behind Murray as if 
some ghostly presence were near. To advance was impossible ; 
to retreat was dangerous, for if indeed it were an evil thing, it 
would rapidly overtake him ; moreover, did he not grasp his oak 



264 Musie in Old England. 

staff, and was he not a Oael, with the heart of his race beating 
strongly within him. The object in his path seemed to grow 
more black, its size to increase. ^ It is repeating the holy com- 
mandments I will be/ and he said them word for word. Still the 
figure stood silent before him, oblivions of the wind and the snow. 
Thereafter the words of the creed were on his lips. The evil became 
larger than before. * It is done, and I am lost/ murmured the 
lone man, but he stood facing the terror, his hand tightened round 
his rude weapon, his teeth firm set. Minute succeeded to minute 
until, on his windward side, a coating of snow many inches thick 
hid his plaid, and a numbness such as he had never known crept 
over his body. * It is the blessed circle I must be making, in 
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy One,' and with 
the end of his staff he traced it on the snow-clad earth. Betwixt 
him and his home the black object still stood. Finally, when 
death stared him in the face, alike if he went on, or if he stayed 
to starve under the gaze of the weird visitant, the man, drawing 
his plaid close around him, stepped forward. *Be it God or 
Devil that you are; if it is killing me you will be with your great 
claws or with a Highlander's dirk ; Holy Virgin take my soul in 
your keeping ! ' A blast of wind more powerful than before made 
him reel for an instant ; the howl of it was as the wail of a lost 
Boul. But when Alexander Murray confronted the evil, and was 
about to deal it a mighty blow, he found that a thistle confronted 
him. 

Frank Kinder. 



Art. IV.— music IN OLD ENGLAND. 

History of English Mime. By Henry Dayey. London: 
Ourwen. 1895. 

T/ie Story of British Music. Vol. I. From the earliest times 
to the Tudor Period. By Frederick J. Crowest. Lon- 
don: Bentley. 1896. 



^ 



Music in Old England, 265 

Shakespeare and Music. By Edward W. Naylor. London : 
Dent. 1896. 

English Minstrelsie. Edited by S. Baring-Gould. Edinburgh : 
Jack. 

THE story of British music as a separate growth is now, 
strancre as it may seem, told for the first time. Wide and 
comprehensive as the scope of English literature undoubtedly is, 
we have hitherto been without a book dealing specifically with 
the birth and growth of English music. General histories of the 
art almost rival the planets in number, but if there is one thing 
for which these otherwise useful works are deserving of note it 
is the scant attention which they pay to the origin and progress 
of music in our * tight little island/ The nearest approach to 
anything of the kind was the late Sir Frederick Ouseley's 
additions to'Naumann's History of Music^ but this attempt could 
not be expected to meet the necessities of the case owing to the 
circumscribed conditions under which the author wrote. Yet the 
subject of England's music is thoroughly deserving of ample 
treatment ; and the fact that in Mr. Davey's History it has now 
received, and in Mr. Crowest's Story will ultimately receive, its 
due measure of recognition must be regarded as a matter of con- 
gratulation on the part of professional musicians and lovers of 
the art all over the countrv. 

Mr. Davey's History is far and away the most valuable work 
in our list, but the book has several objectionable points, and it 
may be well to deal with them at once. To begin with, Mr. 
Davey writes in a style which can only be characterized as slip- 
shod. Certain musicians had Hhe art of thriving in the world; ' 
Moore * invented the down-trodden and weeping Erin;' it is 
* strange that Gilbert should so persistently prevent the operas 
from Continental success : ' Handel was a genius, certain other 
composers were * only talents.' We read in one place that * since 
Dissent and the Low Church party began to lose their narrow- 
ness and weaken' such and such things have happened; in 
another place we are told that ^ musical history at this time, as 
elsewhen, was a part of general history ; ... it was an age 
of Wycherley, Rochester, and Aphra Behn, as of Milton, Bunyan, 



266 Muiie in Old England, 

Baxter, Henry More, Leighton, and Ken.' And so on. ITet 
Mr. Davey has the daring to say that one of Sir John Hawkins' 
faults as a musical historian was that he lacked literary skill I 

But Mr. Davey's English is not his only weak point. There 
is a self-complacent boastfulness about him which has positively 
an irritating effect upon the reader. Macfarren defended the 
Puritans, but he ^ could not go as far as I have done in their 
defence as he was unacquainted with much of the evidence I 
have collected.' One great point upon which he prides himself 
is his extraordinary discovery that ' the art of musical composition 
is an English invention.' This, it is only necessary to say in 
passing, is just as absurd as if some one were to say that the art 
of writing in English was invented by Chaucer. Mr. Davey, 
however, persists in his absurdity, reiterating his statement again, 
and again with a dogmatic assurance which would be amusing if 
it were not so exasperating. Indeed this repetition of what he 
imagines to be * discoveries ' is one of the most obvious defects 
of Mr. Davey's History. He is wroth with Macaulay, because 
Macaulay, like every other writer of general history, does not 
stay to deal with the subject of music ; and not satisfied with 
pointing out the circumstance once for all, he must needs repeat 
the statement in three or four places. He is not pleased with 
Burney because that learned historian ^had a singular dislike to 
madrigals/ and this, too, must be insisted upon on various pages. 
Again, there are statements throughout the book which can only 
be described as grossly and wildly exaggerated. As if it were 
not enough for a writer to declare solemnly that the English 
John Dunstable ^invented musical composition/ Mr. Davey 
must add that without the said Dunstable ^ there could have been 
no Palestrina, no Bach, no Mozart, no Beethoven 1 ' Evidently 
Mr. Baring-Gould had not read Mr. Davey when he remarked 
that it is one of the most characteristic features of the English 
people that they are ready to disparage whatever is of home 
growth. And what are we to think of such a statement as this f 
— ' When a child practises a scale, when a great pianist plays a 
Beethoven concerto, they are repeating passages which were first 
used by Hugh Aston,' the said Aston being of course an English- 
man. The statement, to be sure, is quite pointless as it stands, 



Ml 



Music in Old England, 267 

but Mr. Davey would no doubt liave us infer that without 
Aston, as without Dunstable, we could have had no Beethoven. 
Mr. Davey's patriotism is indeed pathetic. Johnson said of Cave 
that he could not spit over his window without thinking of the 
GentlemarCa Magazine i our author cannot take pen in hand 
without extolling some one of his countrymen for deeds of 
musical prowess in which nobody else would see particular cause 
for jubilation. The English, he declares, in one of his fits of 
reiteration, invented the art of musical composition, and the 
Germans carried it to its highest point. And yet, even his 
patriotism does not save him from exaggeration. In one place 
he asserts that ^a general history of music might after 1700 omit 
the compositions of Englishmen almost entirely ; ' in another he 
declares with a boldness which is perfectly staggering that Scott 
(as a poet), Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, and Shelley * wielded no 
influence by their writings.' Moore's Irish melodies, we read, 
have had and may continue to have enormous political conse- 
quences, while the political, social and religious opinions of his 
immeasurably greater English contemporaries do not influence a 
single mind. After this the deluge, with Mr. Henry Davey and 
the shade of Dunstable in the ark. 

Mr. Crowest's historical matter is less original, less valuable 
than Mr. Davey's ; but he effectually disarms criticism by admit- 
ting frankly that the ground covered by his volume is not only 
the most sterile in facts and material, but also the least interest- 
ing period over which his narrative, when completed, will extend. 
The question, however, arises whether it was worth attempting 
to deal with this admittedly barren period of English musical 
history at all. The conjectural and imaginative system does not 
usually commend itself to the sober historian ; and where, as in 
this case, there is an almost entire absence of authentic data 
there would seem to be nothing for it but to leave the matter in 
that limbo of obscurity which is alone its true safeguard. How 
the plan has been made to work by Mr. Orowest may be seen in 
a single example. This is the way in which he deals with 
* Britain's first musical breathings,' to use his own phrase : 

' At this earliest stage the music of our country was the carolling of 
birds, the monotone of bees, the fluttering of leaves, and the chirpings 



268 Afusie in Old England. 

from the night inseoU. Sometunea it was the rnsh, at others the ripple of 
waters that haye since swollen into onr pleasant riyers. Then the groan 
of the wild ox and the wolfs cry clave the air ; while here and there rose 
the human Toice of gifted savages, vehement with the emotions of the 
giant frames which emitted it.' 

There is nothing whatever to be got out of this kind of writing, 
unless it be a smile ; and unfortunately there is far too much of 
this kind of writing in Mr. Crowest's volume. It is not a grave 
faulty of course, that our author's imagination should thus touch 
our risible faculties ; but, on the whole, Mr. Orowest would have 
pleased us better if he had begun his serious history at the point 
where he had serious facts to set before us. The later part of 
his work shows that he may be fully trusted where he is able to 
quote his authorities, and we look forward to his succeeding 
volumes with the greatest interest. It is a bold undertaking on 
which he is engaged, and we trust he will find his reward where 
the musical writer is but seldom successful — ^in a very large 
body of readers. 

As compared with the other arts, the rise of music in England, 
as indeed elsewhere, was comparatively late ; for it was not until 
the close of the Mediaeval period that it began to assert itself as 
an art product. It must have often occurred to the inquiring 
mind how music thus came to be so far behind the other arts in 
its rise and development. Yet the explanation is not so far off 
after all. As Mr. Crowest remarks, unlike the art of the poet> 
the sculptor, or the painter, there were no materials at hand 
upon which to base a tangible musical record and argument. 
Learning and science had first to make some headway. Music 
had to find its materials out of other arts, sound not being pal- 
pable in form and materialistic in the sense that wood or stone 
is. Then, again, being a mathematical and theoretical art, no 
foundations could be laid, nor a structural form given to music 
until a vast amount of speculation and calculation had been pro- 
pounded, worked out, tested, and reduced to rule. The deduc- 
tions drawn and approved became the first basis of a formulated 
theoretical system. It is quite clear that such an elementary 
musical grammar could only come when learning and education 
generally had made some progress here, which was long after 



Music in Old England, 269 

some of the most brilliant periods of other arts and sciences. Of 
course it is not to be denied that music of a kind existed in Eng- 
land long before any one dreamt of making it part of an art or 
science. Folk-songs, ballads, traditional tunes, dance tunes, in- 
door and outdoor music of all kinds, as Mr. Baring-Gould's col- 
lection sufficiently proves, existed in abundance ; but these, to- 
gether with the music of the Church, lacked one great aid — they 
could not be perpetuated, accurately recorded, and beyond all 
logically expressed. To quote Mr. Crowest : 

' Whatever had been the case with the original Britons and Welsh in 
the matter of musical systems, nothing of the kind existed in England at 
the period which we are considering — that time when music, especially 
secular music, was an unregulated, ill-ordered, shapeless art throughout 
the country. There were instruments, tunes, and dance-rhythms without 
number, but there was no method of husbanding all this, of making it the 
vehicle of a reasonable art, or of using it in combination and in order, 
according as varying circumstances and conditions required. This vocal 
and instrumental material might lie to-day where it was four hundred odd 
years ago, save for the happy thought that overtook men's minds of 
moulding the art into a shape which would permit of development at the 
hands of those who applied themselves particularly to theory and composi- 
tion.' 

In this department of theory our native musicians, such as Dun- 
stable — who has been called the father of English contrapuntists 
— took a leading share ; but it is not our purpose in the present 
article to touch on technical details which are unlikely to interest 
the general reader. The early English School of music, so far 
as we have any record, was certainly inaugurated by Dunstable ; 
but it will never do to say with Mr. Davey, that he, or any one 
individual, * invented' an art like polyphony. Eather should we 
adopt the cautious statement of Tinctor, who remarks that 
* this new art had its fount and origin among the English, of 
whom Dunstable was the principal.' Even this should be enough 
as a concession to our national conceit. 

It will be impossible of course to deal here in any detail with 
the history of music in England; nor, in the circumstances, 
would such detail be expedient, even if it were possible. The 
most that we can do is to select a few leading themes which are 
likely to prove of general interest. A great deal of curious in- 



270 Muiie in Old England. 

foroiattoQ has been got together by both oar historians regard* 
ing the history and use of the organ in England. The Anglo- 
Saxons seem to have been acquainted with the instrament at a 
very early period. In the so-called Utrecht Psalter, generally 
ascribed to the eighth century — thoagh Mr. Growest unaccount- 
ably says the fifth or sixth — there is a representation of an organ 
plaved by a couple of monks ; and we know that the instrument 
had been introduced into the Roman Church by Pope Yitalian 
I. about the year 660. Vitaliau's missionaries, Theodore and 
Adrian, are reputed to have brought the art of organ-playing to 
England, and this is very likely, as they were ' charged to lead 
the singing at the Church services, and to instruct others so to 
do/ Bishop Aldhelm of Sherborne (died 709), who mentions an 
in3trument with a thousand pipes, is credited with introducing 
an organ into England, • a mighty instrument with innumerable 
tones, blown with bellows, and enclosed in a gilded case.^ 
William of Malmesbury chronicles the presentation by St. Dun- 
stan of an organ to the Abbey of Malmesbury in King Edgar's 
reign (942-74). This instrument, as Mr. Growest points out, is 
important, since it appears to have been made entirely by English 
workmen, who by this time had attained to such skill in their craft 
that they had introduced • improvements ' in the way of copper 
pipes for lead. In the Malmesbury instrument the pipes were of 
brass, no doubt with the view of obtaining a more brilliant tone. 
It appears to have been fabricated on the Abbey premises, per- 
haps under the direction of Dunstan himself, who was an expert 
artificer in metals. In this same century Count Elwin presented 
an organ to the Convent of Ramsey. On this instrument he is 
said to have expended the then considerable sum of £30 in 
copper pipes, which, * resting with their openings in thick order 
on the spiral winding in the inside, and being struck on feast- 
days with a strong blast of bellows, emit a sweet melody and a 
far -resounding peal.' A most remarkable instrument, if we are 
to judge by the account given of it by Wulston, a Benedictine 
monk, who died in 963, was that built at Winchester by Bishop 
Elphege. Wulston declares that seventy men were required to 
blow it ; that there were four hundred pipes and forty tongues ; 
twelve bellows above and fourteen below. The instrument was 



Music in Old England, 271 

played by two monks, ' each of whom mariages his own alpha- 
bet.' Concerning the power of the instrument, the chronicler 
continues thus forcibly : * Like thunder the iron tones batter the 
ear, so that it may receive no sound but that alone. To such an 
amount does it reverberate, echoing in every direction, that 
everyone stops with his hands his gaping ears, being in nowise 
able to draw near and hear the sound which so many various 
combinations produce. The music is heard throughout the town, 
and the flying fame thereof is gone out over the whole country.' 
We should think so, indeed I Let us be thankful that such 
organs are not built in our day. Modern instruments are some- 
times loud enough in all conscience, but an organ that can be 
heard * throughout the town ' is happily a non-existent pheno- 
menon. No wonder that by Shakespeare's time the word * noise* 
had become a synonym for music I 

Although we are not altogether without details regarding 
these early English organs, their exact character, as well as the 
manner of playing them, cannot be determined with any 
certainty. It is, however, agreed that the keys were of such 
width that they could not be played in the usual way with the 
fingers, but had to be operated upon, like carillons, by a blow of 
the fist. Dom Bedos speaks of some primitive organs whose 
keys were five and a half inches wide I Keeping this fact in 
mind, it need not surprise us that the first organists were called 
* organ-beaters ; ' and indeed a modification of that term seems to 
have been employed as late as the time of Purcell, who, in the 
records of Westminster Abbey, of which he was organist, is 
described as the ' organ blower.' Only one note could be sounded 
at a time on these early organs ; nor, indeed, was more required, 
for harmony did not then exist ; melody of the crudest kind was 
alone in use. The mode of supplying the wind was from the 
first, and long continued to be, a great difficulty with the organ- 
makers. For centuries the bellows remained in the most imper- 
fect state, some twenty or more being required to supply the 
wind to a moderate sized instrument. Preetorius, in 1620, gives 
a curious representation of the twenty bellows which he found 
existing in the old organ in the church of St. JEgidien in Bruns- 
wick. Upon each bellows is fixed a wooden shoe ; the blowers 



272 Music in Old England. 

held on to a transverse bar, and each man, placing his feet in the 
shoes of two bellow8| raised one as he lowered the other. Great 
ingenuity and constructive labonr seem to have been bestowed 
upon such bellows ; but a supply of wind of uniform strength 
could never have been obtained from them, and^ as a consequence, 
the organ could seldom have been in tune. Our present-day 
organists know but very little of the troubles of their predecessors 
in the way of * blowers/ It is sometimes difficult enough to get 
one blower ; what must it have been when a score or more were 
needed ! 

In connection with these earlier organs, Mr. Crowest records a 
curious custom which throws some light upon the construction 
and portable character of the instruments. One church used to 
lend its organ to another church. Thus, in the account of St. 
Margaret's, Westminster, for the year 1508, we find an item — 
'For bringing the organs of the Abbey into the Church and 
berying them home agayne, ijd.' Not an extravagant expendi- 
ture, to be sure, but money values were different in those days, 
and after all the ' tuppence ' may have been only a porter s tip. 
Another entry is : * 1485. To John He we for repairing the 
organ at the altar of B. V. M. in the Cathedral Church, and for 
carrying the same to the House of the Minorite Brethren, and 
for bringing back the same to the Cathedral Church, 13s. 9d.* 
Such instrumental aid indicates that the organs were placed in 
close proximity to the singers — a natural and desirable arrange- 
ment, which, as Mr. Crowest remarks, should not have been 
departed from. It is strange, by the way, to be reminded by 
Mr. Naylor that Shakespeare nowhere makes direct mention of 
the organ. We have that fine metaphor of the organ-pipe in 
* The Tempest,' but as for the instrument itself, it is as com- 
pletely ignored as the virginal, which to the young ladies of 
Elizabeth's time was all that the pianoforte is to the young ladies 
of to-day. 

The treatment of the organ at the Reformation and later on 
by the Puritans makes a sufficiently curious chapter in the his- 
tory of English music. So early as 1536 the Lower Hous3 of 
Convocation included ecclesiastical music and organ-playing 
among the eighty-four faults and abuses of religion; and al- 



Music in Old England. 273 

though a temporary reaction set in, the nohility presently took 
sides with the Eeformers in their eagerness to continue the 
spoliation which had brought them the wealth of the monas- 
teries. The attacks on ecclesiastical music were renewed, and 
in 1552 the organ in St. Paul's was silenced. When Mary came 
to the throne, there was another brief reaction. Froude, des- 
cribing Her Majesty's triumphant entry into London, tells how 
' the Lords, surrounded by the shouting multitude, walked in 
state to St. Paul's, where the choir again sang a Te Deum, and 
the unused organ rolled out once more its mighty volume of 
music' But Mary's reign was short, and when the Protestants 
who had exiled themselves at Geneva returned under Elizabeth, 
they at once began to press for the abolition of all ecclesiastical 
* ceremonies,' the choral service being one of their special abhor- 
ences. A motion to put down 'curious singing' and organs, 
which were both ranked with image worship, was made in Con- 
vocation in February, 1562-3, and was lost by only one vote. 
Where a Genevan disciple obtained ecclesiastical preferment, 
there the choral service was suppressed ; and there is extant a 
tract entitled, ' The Praise of Musick,' from which we learn that 
about 1567 ^not so few as one hundred organs were taken down 
and the pipes sold to make pewter dishes.' The silly outcry of 
the Puritans against * playing upon organs, curious singing, and 
tossing about the Psalms from side to side ' was indeed one of 
the features of Elizabeth's reign. In 1571 they say in their 
Confession : ^ Concerning singing of psalms, we allow of the 
people's joining with one voice in a plain tune, but not of tossing 
the psalms from one side to the other with intermingling of 
organs.' In 1586, again, they pray that 'all Cathedral churches 
may be put down where the service of God is grievously abused 
by piping with organs, singing, ringing, and trowling of psalms 
from one side of the choir to another, with the squeaking of 
chanting choristers disguised in white surplices.' Prynne in hi& 
Historio'Mastyx^ published in 1633, was even more ridiculous. 
The music in the churches he affirmed to be not * the noise of 
men, but a bleating of brute beasts : choristers bellow the tenor 
as it were oxen ; bark a counterpoint as it were a kennel of dogs^ 



274 Miuic in Old England. 

roar out a treble, as it were a sort of balls ; and grunt out a base^ 
as it were a number of hogs.' 

Such were the views of the Puritan party at this time^ and 
such they were found to be when the Long Parliament assembled. 
Church music was now one of the first objects of assault. A 
committee of the House of Lords in 1641 recommended — ^ That 
the music used in cathedral and collegiate churches be framed 
with less curiosity, and that no hymns or anthems be used where 
ditties are framed by private men.' An attack upon cathedrals 
and cathedral choirs began soon after. The drunken habits of 
the singers, who, when leaving the cathedrals, went straight to 
the alehouses, were a special grievance. War was declared in 
the summer of 1 642, and almost on the very day that the King 
set up his standard the soldiers ruined the organ at Canterbury 
Cathedral, mangling the service books, and 'bestrewing the 
pavement with leaves.' Cromwell wrote to the Dean of Ely, 
calling upon him to stop his choir-service, ' so unedifying and 
offensive,' and when the Dean refused, visited Ely himself and 
cut the service short in the middle. At Westminster Abbey the 
soldiers carried off the organ pipes and bartered them for beer. 
On the capture of Winchester a great fire was made of the 
choir-books, and the same was done at Norwich, apparently by 
the townsmen. Cromwell forbade his soldiers to injure Peter- 
borough Cathedral, but they destroyed * two pair of organs ' and 
the library, with some monuments. At' Chichester the organ 
was hewn down with poleaxes and the choir books thrown about 
in derision ; while at Exeter the soldiers marched along the 
streets blowing the pipes of the instrument they had pulled to 
pieces. These outrages, the result of ignorant fanaticism, were 
continued in legal form after the passing of the Bill for the total 
abolition of Episcopacy in 1643. Organs were now included 
with ^ superstitious monuments,' and their complete removal from 
all churches and colleges was enjoined. This was soon effected 
in most cases, and when the war closed in 1646 a great and 
fundamental change had come over English music. It was not 
until the lapse of more than half a century after the Restoration 
that the English parish churches again began to be supplied 

"th organs. In 1708 when Hatton published his New View of 



Music in Old England* 275 

London a very large number of places of worship were without 
them. To what an extent other cities were deficient in this par- 
ticular may be gathered from Drake, who, in his Eboracunij 
published in 1733, says : ' There is now only one parish church 
in the whole city of York that possesses an organ, and that came 
from the Popish Chapel/ It is expedient to note, however, that 
even among the Puritans there were some who took a sensible 
view of the organ question. Thus, the Rev. Paul Baynes, in 
his commentary on the Ephesians, when remarking that the 
Psalms must be used to edification, speaks in this way of the 
Beggs of his generation : ' This doth rebuke a common practice 
among us who do run forth out of churches at psalms if sung 
with instruments — as the organ and others, comfortable and 
laudable — as if they were no part of God's ordinances for our 
good; whereas we are expressly charged by God's Spirit to praise 
Him both on stringed instruments and organs. If it were at a 
comedy, men would not lose the song and instrument or dance 
though played on divers pipe-instruments ; yet the wind of one 
pipe in the organ will blow out their zeal in the church, and 
them from the church.' It would thus seem that even some who 
did not scruple to attend the theatre could not endure an organ 
in the church I 

Why the main body of the Puritans objected to organs, prose 
chanting and church music generally, is . not very clear. Mr. 
Davey thinks the example of Calvin may have had something to 
do with it, and something was no doubt to be laid to the account 
of the personal dislike to Laud and the bishops. But it is quite 
as likely that the action of the Puritans arose, to some extent at 
least, in consequence of the revulsion arising from the glaring 
abuses of the old worship. Like the Scottish Reformers, 
too, they may have entertained the conviction that their parti- 
cular view was in accordance with the teaching of the New 
Testament and the spirit of the Christian dispensation. In any 
case their reputation has suffered the penalty inflicted by 
posterity as a punishment for the exhibition of bigotry and 
intolerance in one particular direction. Mr. Davey puts himself 
to considerable pains in trying to remove the popular conception 
of those somewhat misguided enthusiasts in the matter of music. 

XXVIII. 19 



276 Music in Old England. 

Admitting, however — and of coarse I^Ir. Davey admits it — ^that 
the Puritans had a violent dislike to church music and that they 
suppressed it as far as they could, there does not seem to be any 
special necessity for a defence on other grounds. Some musical 
historians, it is true, have assumed that all music was suppressed 
because ecclesiastical music was. But the assumption is un- 
founded. It does not necessarily follow that though the Puri- 
tans disliked the cathedral service and the organ, they disliked 
music outside the church ; and there is plenty of evidence to 
show that the exercise of the art in what might be called the 
secular walks of life was as much unquestioned then as it is now. 
Cromwell, Milton and Bunyan, three very diverse types of Puri- 
tan, were all enthusiastic musical amateurs in different ways. 
Even Prynne himself admits that ^ musicke of itselfe is lawf ull, 
useful], and commendable ;* while another Puritan author of the 
period declares that ^ musicke is a chearefuU recreation to the 
minde that hath been blunted with serious meditation.' Again, 
Thomas Fuller in his Worthies says ; ' Kight glad I am that 
when music was lately shut out of our churches, on what default of 
hers I dare not imagine, it hath since been harbored and wel- 
comed in the halls, parlours and chambers of the primest persons 
of this nation.' In short, the Puritans really did no harm to the 
art except in connection with the church — although, indeed, that 
in itself was serious enough. Why then, as Mr. Davey asks, 
have the Puritans been so maligned? Mainly because the 
popular imagination takes a salient point ^nd is apt to generalise 
from that point. The light and the shade, the modifications and 
the details are overlooked. The Puritans objected to music of 
one particular kind for one particular object ; and popular pre- 
judice will have it that they necessarily objected to music at all 
times and in all places. A false notion of this kind is not readily 
corrected, but Mr. Davey has done all that can possibly be done 
towards that end, and his version of the matter assuredly claims 
the attention of future historians who may have to deal with the 
subject. At the same time it is quite impossible to defend the 
action of the Puritans in regard to Church music. It was worse 
in its effects than the doings of Knox's ' rascal multitude.' 
While on the subject of Church music, it may be pointed out 



jlL 



Music in Old England. 277 

that Mr. Davey is somewhat unfortunate in his treatment of the 
history of psalm and hymn tunes. Dr. Worgan, he tells, is * deserv- 
ing of remembrance, as his name is attached, rightly or wrongly, 
to the grand melody sung to the Easter Hymn.' Seeing that 
this * grand melody' appeared in the Lyra Davidica in 1708, 
while Dr. Worgan was not born till 1724, the 'rightly or 
wrongly ' can very easily be determined. Moreover, Dr. Worgan 
did not die in 1794, as Mr. Davey has it, but in 1790. Again, 
our author perpetuates the common error of supposing that the 
well-known hymn-tune * Helmsley ' (associated with ' Lo 1 He 
comes,') is an adaptation from a hornpipe melody sung by the 
notorious Ann Catley in The Golden Pippin. * Musicians,' says 
Mr. Davey, * have frequently denounced this tune as essentially 
secular, even vulgar ; but all attempts to replace it have entirely 
failed, and it represents a part of the historical life of the 
Church, while it is undeniably melodious.' Now one may readily 
agree with the musicians that ' Helmsley ' has a touch of vul- 
garity about it, but as to its being ^essentially secular,' it is no 
more so than many of the old-fashioned, ranting ^ repeat ' tunes 
that were once held in so much 'veneration. The fact is, that 
* Helmsley ' is held up to execration not because it is intrinsically 
bad, but because it is supposed to have been manufactured out 
of the aforesaid hornpipe. But the curious thing is that it was 
quite the other w^y : the hornpipe was made out of the hymn- 
tune I The latter was published by John Wesley in 1765, under 
the name of * Olivers,' when Miss Catley was in Ireland, and 
long before 7 he Golden Pippin was written. The first strain, 
however, seems to have been suggested by a popular song of the 
day entitled * Guardian angel, now protect me," and the melody 
of this song (adapted to the words ^ Where's the mortal can resist 
me ? ') was introduced into The Golden Pippin in 1776. It was 
not in the burletta as first produced in 1773. A hornpipe con- 
structed from the same tune appears to have been danced by 
Miss Catley in The Golden Pippin, but this was several years 
after the publication of the hymn tune. It is really time that 
this foolish notion about the origin of * Helmsley ' was corrected. 
In the matter of the ^ Old 100th,' again, Mr. Davey is not free 
from errors. He tells us that, * as the tune originally appeared, 



278 Music in Old England. 

the notes at the beginning and end of each line were semibreves.' 
The fact is, that while the first three lines began with a semi- 
breve, they ended with three semibreves, while the last line ended 
with two semibreves and a breve. A musical historian should 
be exact. Nor do we understand Mr. Davey when he says that 
in the 1556 edition of Sternhold an attempt was made 'to adapt 
the Genevan tune, which finally became settled in popular 
favour as the Old 100th.' There was no adapting : the tune 
appeared in practically its present form in the Marot and Beza 
French Psalter of 1551 (five years before Mr. Davey's date), 
where it was set by Bourgeois to the 134th Psalm. Its first 
known publication after this is in the edition of 1561. We may 
just add here that there is no need to throw doubts on the 
authorship of the Psalter attributed to Archbishop Parker. 
Parker's claim is proved by several circumstances, not the least 
being that in the preface to the 119th Psalm, consisting of six- 
teen rhyming lines, the first letters of each line make the acrostic 
— * Mattheus Parkerus/ 

Regarding the musical instruments in general use among our 
forefathers much that is interesting might be said. The fiddle, 
curiously enough, was long regarded as a vulgar instrument, 
suitable only for minstrels and vagrants. The lute and the 
various members of the viol family long kept it in the back- 
ground. In Elizabethan times the viol held the place that the 
violin holds now. It was made in three different sizes, corres- 
ponding to our modern violin, viola, and violoncello. It had six 
strings in place of the four now used in stringed instruments, and 
there were frets on the finger-board to mark out the notes. Viols 
were always kept in sets of six — two trebles, two tenors, and two 
basses — and the set was technically known as a * chest ' of viols. 
The musical amateur seldom failed to have a 'chest' in his house, 
and when his friends visited him they would play ' Fancies ' in 
several parts, from two to the full six, according to the number 
of those present. About the middle of the seventeenth century 
the viol began to decline in favour, and by the beginning of the 
eighteenth century the violin had taken the place it has held ever 
since. It had come into general and fashionable use under the 
patronage of the Court of Louis XIV., and thus, as Mr. Naylor 



Music in Old England. 279 

• 

puts it, the English nation, trae to their ancient habit of buying 
their * doublet in Italy, round hose in France, bonnet in Ger* 
many, and behaviour everywhere,' took up the French fiddles and 
let their national ^ chest ' of viols go to the wall. Next to the 
viol the lute was the most popular stringed instrument. Its 
general shape was that of a mandoline, but about four times as 
big. It was used somewhat in the fashion of a guitar, and natur- 
ally it figured frequently in serenades, especially when anything 
had to be sung outside a lady^s window. The * Merry Monarch ' 
was a great admirer of the instrument, and it was a favourite 
with all lovers in the Stuart age. Yet Dr. Burney, writing in 
1776, says, ^The lute, of which hardly the sound or sJiape is known 
at present, was during the last two centuries the favourite instru- 
ment of every nation in Europe.' It was driven out by the spinet 
and harpischord, which, as Mr. Baring Gould remarks, afforded 
an easy path to those musical ends which had previously been 
reached through the lute, only after much difficulty and labour. 
Thomas Mace in his ^ Musick's Monument ' of 1676, has a curi- 
ous piece of advice about how to preserve a lute in order. ' You 
shall do well,' says he, * even when you lay it by in the day time 
to put it into a bed that is constantly used, between the rug and 
the blanket ; only let no person be so inconsiderate as to tumble 
down upon the bed whilst the lute is there, for I have known 
several good lutes spoilt with such a trick.' Better have pro- 
vided a bed for the sole use of the instrument! In his historical 
sketch of English national song, Mr. Baring Gould shows very 
clearly how the character of early English melodies was affected 
by the instruments to which they were sung. There were harp 
and lute accompaniments to ballads, and many a ballad air seems 
to call out for the stringed instrument to fill up the background. 
Nearly all the Welsh melodies proclaim that they were com- 
posed to be chanted by a minstrel who was attended by a harpist; 
so do many of those belonging to the West of England. For it 
must not be supposed that the harp has always been associated 
peculiarly with Wales. It was much played in England in the 
seventeenth century. M. de Rochefort, who printed his travels 
in this country in 1672, says, 'The harp was then the most 
esteemed of musical instruments by the English.' Again, Garew 



280 Jifusu: in Old England. 

in hi« Snrvej of Cornwall^ tells how a certain f amilj Iiad been 
dispoM CMcd of their estate because of their adherence to the 
Soman Catholic faith, and how the son * then led a walking life 
with his harp to gentlemen's honses.' At this time also the harp 
enjoyed a considerable popnlarity in Scotland. 

Both onr historians natnrallj give passing attention to the 
bagpipe, and Mr. Baring-Gonld notices it equally with Mr. 
Naylor. Mr. Davey identifies the instmment with the * tym- 
pannm * fonnd in early eleventh centnry mannscripta Noiiv^ in 
two cases where the * tympanum ' is mentioned among a list of 
musical instruments, mention is also made of an instrument 
under the name of * corns' or *chorua' Mr. Davey says he 
cannot decide the meaning of the latter term. In this he is 
not singular. Tytler, in his History of Scotland (II., 370), fal- 
tered as to the meaning of * chorus/ and somewhat rashly sub- 
stituted for it the word * cornu.' Pinkerton did not comprehend 
the word; Leyden and Ritson misinterpreted it; and the 
reverend author of an * Essay on the Influence of Music in the 
Scottish Highlands ' proposed it as a sort of enigma for the 
solution of the Scottish antiquary. But there is a fairly satis- 
factory interpretation of the word, notwithstanding; and if 
Mr. Davey will turn to the introduction in the Bannatyne Club 
edition of the Skene MS., he will find the solution of his diflS- 
culty. In Strutt's Manners and Customs of the English (I., plate 
21, pp. 50, 109), there are certain drawings of old instruments, 
' so very imperfect,' as Stnitt remarks, that he fears * their use 
will not be readily discovered.' Fortunately the accompanying 
letterpress assists us very materially. Underneath two of the 
drawings we find the words: 'Corns est pellis simplex cum 
duabus cicutis.' This inscription, as Mr. Dauney, the editor of 
the above-named MS., remarks, seems to give a certain degree 
of distinctness to representations otherwise too vague to be 
readily intelligible ; and the result is that we see before us the 
outline of two figures which appear to correspond with the 
description. One of the figures has apparently two and the 
other three tubes or pipes attached. Both definition and de- 
lineation seem to indicate the simplest form of bagpipe. Fur- 
ther, in the Epistle to Dardanus, attributed to St. Jerome, we 



Music in Old England, 281 

have the following: *Synagog8a antiquis temporibus, fuit 
chorus quoque simplex pellis cum duobus cicutis aeriis et per 
primam inspiratur, secunda vocem emittit.' That is to say : 
' At the Synagogue in ancient times there was also a simple 
species of bagpipe, being a skin (or leather bag) with two 
pipes, through one of which the bag was inflated, the other 
emitted the sound.' The words themselves give rise to no 
ambiguity, and only one interpretation seems possible. 

But there is more precise evidence than even this as to the 
meaning of the word * chorus ' — evidence which we owe to the 
research of the late George Farquhar Graham of Edinburgh. 
Walafridas Strabo, a Benedictine monk, who wrote in the 
ninth century a Latin commentary on the Scripture, published 
at Paris in 1624, describes the ' chorus ' as ' a single skin with 
two pipes.' Again, reference is made to a book printed at 
Lyons in 1672, which distinctly implies that the bagpipe and 
the * chorus ' were even then considered the same instrument. 
Graham cites two other instances, and adds : * The barbarous 
corruptions of Latin were so frequent that there is no saying 
but somebody may have distorted even corium (a skin) into 
chorus^ and this is the more likely as it is occasionally spelt 
corus,^ The same interpretation of the word is given by 
Mainzer, who in his Music and Education says the bagpipe 
* was called tibia utricularis or chorus (from corium^ skin) among 
the Romans.' From all this it will be seen how improbable it 
is that the tympanum was the bagpipe, and how probable — 
nay, how certain — it is, on the other hand, that the * corns' was 
practically identical with the present ' war note of Lochiel.' As 
to the history of the instrument, our authors have nothing new 
to tell us. Mr. Naylor is even puzzled by Shakespeare's use of 
the term ' woollen bagpipe * in The Merchant of Venice. ' What 
is a woollen bagpipe ? ' he asks. The obvious explanation 
would seem to be that the air-bag of the instrument may 
sometimes have been made of sheep-skin with the wool left on 
it. There is just a possibility, however, of the text being cor- 
rupt in this particular instaoce : * wawling ' would perhaps be 
a more suitable word. But there need be no difiiculty about 
the phrase as it stands. Mr. Baring-Gould, we may add, is not 



282 Mutie m Old England. 

quite courteons to the pipa He has found an old sixteenth 
oenturj figure of a goose playing the instrament, and he takes 
this as an evidence that the bagpipe was then falling into 
ridicule. Nay, he even declares that an old sow playing on 
this instrument for the delectation of its piglings is a not 
infrequent subject on perpendicular bosses to vaulting ribs I 
No wonder the bagpipe, as he puts it, retired to Scotland as a 

* last refuge.' Only he forgets to tell us of that figure of an 
angel playing the pipe which appears on a crosier given by 
William of Wykeham to New College, Oxford, in 1403. 
William knew how to propitiate (prospectively) the Celt ; Mr. 
Baring-Gould does not know how. 

One of the most interesting of the many subsidiary questions 
dealt with by Mr. Davey is the origin of our National Anthem. 
Mr. Davey takes the view that the music is in all probability 
from the pen of Purcell, while the words in their present form 
he would assign to Henry Carey. There is, however, no evi- 
dence to support these claims. The song is said to have been 
given by Carey, the composer of * Sally in our Alley,' at a 
dinner held in a London tavern to celebrate the capture of 
Portobello in 1740. This statement is made in a letter signed 

* W ' which appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1796. 
The writer asserts that he was present on the occasion, and we 
have therefore no reason to doubt that Carey really sung < God 
save the King ' at the banquet. But Carey never claimed the 
words of the anthem ; nor is the song included in any collec- 
tion of his works. He died in 1743, leaving a young family, 
and it was not until 1795 that a formal claim was put in for 
him by his son, George Saville Carey, avowedly with the 
object of obtaining a pension from the Government in return 
for his father's services in writing the loyal song. The claim 
was, however, unsupported by evidence, and the pension was 
withheld. The anthem, words and music, was printed for the 
first time in Harmonia Anglicana^ undated, but generally 
believed to have been published in 1743 or 1744. In the 
absence of a date on the title-page, it is impossible to say 
whether • God save the King ' was thus printed during Carey's 
life-time. At anyrate, it is anonymous, which it is not likely 



Music in Old England, 283 

to have been if contributed by or known to be by Carey, for 

the latter was one of the most voluminous song- writers of the 

day. 

But there is more than this to militate against the Carey claim. 

At the end of 1743 or in 1744 a concert was given by John 

Travers, organist of the Chapel Royal, and a unique copy of the 

book of words discovered some years ago contains a ' Latin 

chorus/ which is quite evidently intended for the tune of our 

National Anthem. Here is the first verse : 

O Deus optime ! 
Salvum non facito 
Kegem noafcrum ; 
Sit Iseta Victoria^ 
Comes et gloria, 
Salvum jam faecto, 
Tu Dominum. 

There are two stanzas, and on the opposite page there is an Eng- 
lish version, which is, however, merely a literal translation in prose, 
and not the alleged Carey verses, which would almost certainly 
have been printed had Carey been, as claimed, the original com- 
poser in 1740. And why make a Latin version at all, if original 
English words were written only three years before t Dr. Ame — 
who subsequently harmonised the tune for Drury Lane Theatre 
— ^when questioned on the subject, is reported to have said that 
it was a received opinion that the anthem was written for the 
Catholic Chapel of James 11., and as Arne was a contemporary 
of Carey it is inconceivable that he should make this statement 
regarding a composition written in Carey's lifetime. Moreover, 
in one of Benjamin Victor's letters to Garrick in 1745 the song 
is referred to as * the very words and music of an old anthem 
which was sung at St. James' Chapel when the Prince of Orange 
landed.' Taking all the available evidence into account, it seems, 
therefore, tolerably certain that * God save the King ' really had 
its origin in King James' Chapel in 1688, and was more than 
likely written by one of the clergy attached to the chapel. The 
adherents of the Stuart family would no doubt preserve it in 
their memory ; and in any case it is a curious circumstance that 
when it burst into popularity it was as ^a loyal song' at the time 



284 MiAsic in Old England. 

of the Scottish Rebellion of 1745. The original manuscript or a 
copy of it may have been found by Travers in the Chapel Royal ; 
while the tune and English words probably reached Carey in a 
somewhat similar manner, but independently. It is quite possi- 
ble, of course, that Carey may have made his version from the 
Latin of 1688 ; but that there were English versions or adapta- 
tions of the Latin in existence at an earlier period there would 
be no difficulty in showing. 

This much as to the words : what can be said regarding the 
music ? Mr. Davey, referring to the circumstance of the anthem 
being sung at the Chapel Royal in 1688, says: *This points to 
Purcell as the composer.' Why should the circumstance point 
to Purcell T He was not the only musician of the time, and the 
tune of the national anthem is not such an elaborate thing that 
we need to father it upon a composer of distinction. As a 
matter of fact Mr. Davey has no evidence whatever to connect 
the melody with Purcell. It is quite true that some of the best 
of PurcelPs airs are, like the national anthem, in triple measure, 
but that is nothing to the point. The most plausible theory is 
that which attributes at least the framework of the melody to 
Dr. John Bull, King James I.'s organist. In a MS. volume of 
compositions by Bull dated 1619 there appears a kind of organ 
voluntary entitled simply an ' Ayre,' which is identical in rhythm 
with ' God save the King,' and bears a striking resemblance to it 
in the form of its melody. True, the ' Ayre ' is in the minor 
key, but this is of small importance seeing that other essential 
elements are present. Moreover, it is quite possible that Bull 
may have omitted to write in the accidentals, trusting to 
musicians understanding what was required. In the MS. of 
King Henry VIII. *s * Pastime with Good Company,' now in the 
British Museum, all the accidentals are omitted, and the like is 
true of much of the manuscript music of. the same period. But 
to resume: if the National Anthem was really produced in 
1688, the author of the words was likely to have been ac- 
quainted with Bull's piece, and there is nothing improbable in 
the theory that it supplied the basis on which the tune of ' 
Deus optime ' was founded. Dr. Bull had been dead for sixty 
years, and his composition being only in MS. there would be 



Music in Old England. 285 

no scruple about using it. This, we may note, is practically 
the view of the matter taken by Mr. Baring-Gould. He thinks 
that Buirs * Ayre ' got modified into the modern scale in the 
mouths of the people, who were becoming unused to the old 
modes, and had a fancy for the new. The final shaping of the 
tune into the form now generally known, he would attribute 
to Carey. But tlie whole subject is one of great difficulty, and 
no doubt it will be debated in the future quite as much as it 
has been in the past. 

Mr. Naylor's admirable little work is valuable not only on 
account of its detailed explanation of the various musical 
allusions in Shakespeare, but also because of its summary of 
the history and condition of music in Elizabethan times. It is 
indeed quite indispensable that the student of Shakespeare 
and music should have a clear idea of the social status and 
influence of the art in the great dramatist's day. With this, 
and with such explanation of the technical terms as Mr. 
Naylor affords, there is no reason why every reader of Shakes- 
peare should not understand his many references to music and 
musical instruments in a much fuller light than the majority 
of readers do at present. That there is some need for a guide 
on the subject is only too apparent when, as Mr. Naylor points 
out, Schmidt's admirable Lexicon commits itself to such a 
misleading statement as that a virginal is a kind of small 
pianoforte, and when * a very distinguished Shakespeare 
scholar' has described a viol as a six stringed guitar! Nor 
are these the worst kind of errors. Even as we write the 
musical journals are making merry over a droll musical 
blunder into which an eminent lawyer has fallen in an ' After- 
dinner study of Hamlet.' The learned luminary, after drawing 
various excellent legal parallels, proceeds to say : ' Then again 
it is curious that Shakespeare should not call a flute-player a 
flute-player. Wedded to legal matters, he salutes the musicians 
as the Recorders — small local judges with £40 a year.' It 
would indeed be curious if Shakespeare had committed such 
a piece of foolishness ; but as a matter of fact there is hardly 
one of his musical references to which exception can be taken, 
either on the ground of fact or opinion, and in the present 




286 Music in Old England. 

case be called the mudoians the Reoorders beoauae they played 
iDfitruments of that name. 

Nor is it the layman only who needs to be instmcted in re- 
gard to Shakespeare and music : there are obsolete terms 
which even the professional musician of to-day has some diffi- 
culty in understanding. One such term may be referred to as 
having been the subject of more controversy than perhaps any 
of the others. In ' Henry the Fifth ' and elsewhere reference is 
made to 'broken music' Now what was * broken music?' 
Mr. Naylor's idea is that the phrase may be referred to the 
natural imperfection of the lute. The lute was a pizzicato 
instrument — that is to say, the strings were plucked, not played 
with a bow ; hence the player could not do more than indicate 
the harmony in * broken' pieces. Here, probably, says Mr. 
Naylor, is the explanation of the phrase * broken music' But 
this explanation will hardly bear examination in view of the 
evidence in another direction. Matthew Locke, for example, 
published in 1672 'Compositions for Broken and Whole Con- 
sorts.' Now we know that a set of viols was often spoken of 
as a * consort; ' and Mr. Chappell's explanation therefore seems 
feasible that when the * consort ' was imperfect — that is, when 
one of the players was absent, and an instrument of another 
kind, such as a flute, was substituted for his viol — the music 
was said to be ' broken,' Bacon gives some support to this 
view. In his essay * Of Masques and Triumphs ' he has the 
following passage : * Dancing to song is a thing of great state 
and pleasure. I understand it that the song be in quire, placed 
aloft, and accompanied with some broken music' Again in 
his * Sylva Sylvarum ' the same author mentions several * con- 
sorts of instruments ' that agree well together : for example, 
'the Irish harp and base-viol agree well; the recorder and 
stringed music agree well ; organs and the voice agree well ; 
but the virginals and the lute agree not so well.' All these 
and similar combinations — combinations of different instru- 
ments — seem to have been described as ' broken music' But 
the term is admittedly a difficulty, and probably no satisfactory 
explanation of it will ever be found. The phrase ' broken 



Mune in Old England. 287 

time,' sometimes used in our own day, is of course easily 
understood. 

With regard to the state of music in Shakespeare's time, 
both Mr. Naylor and Mr. Davey bring, out clearly that if ever 
a country deserved to be called musical, that country was 
England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. King 
and courtier, peasant and ploughman, each could * take his 
part,' with each music formed a feature of the daily life ; while 
so far from being above knowing the difference between a 
minim and a crotchet, a gentleman would have been ashamed 
not to know it. In the time of Elizabeth — who was herself a 
good virginal player — ^it was the custom for a lady's guests to 
sing unaccompanied music from ' parts' after supper ; and in- 
ability to take a part was liable to remark from the rest of the 
company. Clergymen, too, were supposed to take music as a 
regular branch of their education. A letter from Sir John 
Harrington to Prince Henry (brother of Charles I.), about Dr. 
John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1592, says that no one 
* could be admitted to primam tousuram except he could first 
bene, le bene con bene can^ as they called it, which is, to read 
well, to construe well, and to sing well, in which last he hath 
good judgment.* The three benes are, of course, le-gere, con- 
struere, and can-tare. Hawkins asserts, in his History of Mueic^ 
that all candidates for Fellowship at Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, were supposed to be capable of taking a part in the 
choir service, and the statement is only a little exaggerated. 
The statutes provided for an examination in singing for can- 
didates for fellowship, and ability to sing gave a candidate an 
advantage, in case of equality. Singing was not required of 
all candidates, but the subject was considered on the fourth 
day of the examination, along with the essay and verse com- 
position. There is, however, plenty of evidence to show that 
the university gentlemen of these days thought it nothing out 
of the way to learn all the mysteries of counterpoint, and to 
solace themselves after hard reading with the practice of part- 
singing. Thus Anthony Wood, who was at the University in 
1651, gives an exceedingly interesting account of the practice 
of chamber music in Oxford. He tells us that * the gentlemen 



288 Music in Old England. 

in privat meetings, -which A. W. frequented, play'd three, four, 
and five parts, with viols, as treble-viol, tenor, counter-tenor, 
and bass, with an organ, virginal, or harpsichon jojn'd with 
them : and they esteemed a violin to be an instrument only 
belonging to a common Fidler, and could not endure that it 
should come among them, for fear of making their meetings 
to be vaine and fidling.' Wood went to a weekly meeting 
of musicians in Oxford. Amongst those whom he names as 
* performing their parts ' are four Fellows of New College, 
a Fellow of All Souls who was *an admirable lutenist,' 
a certain * Ralph Sheldon, Gent., a Roman Catholick, ad- 
mired for his smooth and admirable way in playing on 
the viol,' and a Master of Arts of Magdalen, who had a 
weekly meeting at his own college. Besides the amateurs, 
there were eight or nine professional musicians who fre- 
quented these meetings. This was in 1656, and in 1658 
Wood gives the names of over sixteen other persons with 
whom he used to play and sing, all of whom were Fellows of 
Colleges, Masters of Arts, or at least members of the Univer- 
sity. Amongst them, it is interesting to note, was * Thom. Ken 
of New College, a Junior,' — afterwards Bishop Ken, one of 
the seven bishops who were deprived at the Revolution — who 
could/ sing his part.' All the rest played either viol, organ, 
virginal, or harpsichord. * These did frequent the weekly 
meetings, and by the help of public masters of musick, who 
were mixed with them, they were much improved.' Only two 
persons out of the thirty-two mentioned by Wood seem to 
have had an undesirable quality, namely, Mr. Low, organist of 
Christ Church, who was * a proud man,' and * could not endure 
any common musitian to come to the meeting ; ' and ' Nathan. 
Crew, M.A., Fellow of Line. Coll., a violinist and violist, but 
alwaies played out of tuue/ Poor Nathan, was afterwards 
Bishop of Durham. 

Thus we find that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
a practical acquaintance with music was a regular part of the 
education of all gentlemen of rank and the higher middle 
classea Nor were the lower classes wanting in enthusiasm. 
A large number of passages in contemporary authors prove 



Music in Old England, 289 

clearly that singing in parts, especially of * catches/ was a 
common diversion with artisans and working people generally. 
In Delaney's History of the Gentle Crafty 1598, one who tried 
to pass as a shoemaker was branded an imposter because he 
could neither * sing, sound the trumpet, play upon the flute, 
nor reckon up his tools in rhyme.' Even the barber kept an 
instrument in his shop — ^lute, cittern, or virginal — expressly 
for the amusement of waiting customers; and although the 
* barber's musick ' may have been * most barbarous,' still it was 
music — of a kind. The guests in a tavern, too, were con- 
stantly being entertained with music. A pamphlet entitled 
The Actor's Remonstrancej printed in 1643, speaks as follows of 
the decay of music in taverns, which resulted from the closing 
of the theatres in 1642 : ' Our music that was held so delect- 
able and precious [i.e., in Shakespeare's time] that they (sic) 
scorned to come to a tavern under twenty shillings salary for 
two hours, now wander with their instruments under their 
cloaks into all good houses of fellowship, saluting every room 
where there is company with, Will you have any music, 
gentlemen ? ' Again, from Gosson's Short Apologie of the 
Schoole of Abuscy 1587, we find that * London is so full of un- 
profitable pipers and fiddlers that a man can no sooner enter 
a tavern than two or three cast of them hang at his heels to 
give him a dance before he depart.' These men sang ballads 
and catches as well. They also played during dinner. Lyly 
says : ' Thou need no more send for a fidler to a feast than a 
beggar to a fair.' All this, and much more that might be 
quoted, leads fairly to the conclusion that the ' good old days' 
were, musically speaking, not so barren as they are generally 
supposed to have been. Where shall we now find a promis- 
cuous company able to sing through a canon in three parts at 
first sight? Yet they managed as much in the public-house 
songs of Elizabeth's time. All these details find ample corro- 
boration in the works of Shakespeare, and the student of the 
subject is under a debt of gratitude to Mr. Naylor for having 
brought them together within one cover, to say nothing of the 
lucid and generally satisfactory explanations of the dramatist's 
musical references which he sets before us. 



290 Mtme in Old England. 

Mr. Baring-Gould^a English MinstreUie will be a monumental 
work when completed ; as yet we have before us only five of 
the eight volumes which have been announced by the pub- 
lishers. The collection, as indeed the editor expressly tells 
us, must not be taken to be more than a sample of what Eng- 
lish minstrelsy has been from the Tudor age to the end of the 
first half of the present century. It differs somewhat from 
other collections, inasmuch as it does not confine itself exclu- 
sively to published songs by well-known composers. It takes 
account of the living traditional song of the people, and all 
classes are represented by its melodies. This is as it should 
be. The special charm of Scottish minstrelsy consists in its 
being so entirely natural. It came into existence no one quite 
knows how, unassociated for the most part with the names of 
its originators. The great bulk of English printed song, on 
the other hand, was composed by accomplished musicians to 
words often having no relation whatever to real life, but 
describing the amours of Corydons and Pastorellas in an ideal 
and fantastical world such as never existed. Let the English 
folk-music be put into association with this, and the simplicity, 
the genuineness, of the one at once makes an agreeable con- 
trast to the affectation of the other. The English labourer, as 
Mr. Baring-Gould remarks, is now an important factor in 
politics ; that he has been a factor in English music has not 
been recognised as it ought to have been. If in the future 
there is any failing in this respect it will not be the fault of 
the author of * Onward, Christian Soldiers,' who in the present 
work has set his hand to an undertaking that promises to be 
unique in its special line. 

Mr. Baring-Gould is not only furnishing his collection with 
notes on the various songs; he is also, as will have been 
gathered from previous remarks, contributing to the history of 
English music. His work in this department is, to be sure, 
a trifle scrappy, and in some ca^es superficial, while it is also 
somewhat weak in the matter of coherence and form, to say 
nothing of its ' style.' But the material is both abundant and 
interesting, and where it is put forward as illustrating the 
subject of national music, it is peculiarly valuable. The plan 



Music in Old England. 291 

has been, bo far, to give aa historical essay in every alternate 
volume, the notes to the soogs being of course printed 
in each volume. In the first volume Mr. Baring- Gonld 
deals with the general history of English national song. 
The minstrels, he thinks, originated most of the early 
ballad airs. These minstrels were, so to speak, the musi- 
cal college of the Middle Ages. They were players on 
maaj instruments ; some formed a local guild, and sat in 
the rood-loft of the screen dividiug the chancel from the nave 
of the church, and accompanied divine worship with their 
iostrumental music. Such minstrels are represented at the 
east end of Lauuceston Parish Church, carved in granite ; at 
Beverley minster also the minstrels are represented. These 
primitive musiciaos fell out of favour to the reign of Heury 
VIII., and still more so in that of Elizabeth. In 1593 an Act 
was passed putting down the minstrels, and it was ordered 
that any one caught wandering from place to place with 
minstrelsy as his profeseioo was to be treated as a rogue and a 
vagabond. The third parliament of Cromwell again smote the 
minstrels, not now for travelling about, but for frequenting 
taverna It was enacted that any minstrel or ballad singer 
caught singing or making music in an ale-house, or was found 
to have solicited any one to hear him sing or play was to be 
taken before the magistrate, whipped and imprisoned. Here 
is a bint for those legislators who are at present agitating for 
the regulation of our street music I Iq 1642 it was gravely 
proposed in Parliament that, in view of the great popu- 
larity of ballads and carols, the striking deeds of Oliver 
Cromwell should be put into rhyme and set to be sung 
at Christmas in place of the carols in honour of the 
Nativity. The proposal however was not favoured, and 
nothing came of it. On December 13, 1648, there was a 
Provost-Marshal appointed 'with power to seize upon all 
ballad-singers, and to suppress stage-plays.' But the RebeUion 
struck and injured not merely the ballad minstrels ; it affected 
all instrumentalists attached to theatres and churches, and led 
to a great migration of musicians to the Continent. The 
national song was, however, left untouched. As Mr. Baring- 



292 Music in Old England. 

Gould remarks, the people did not miss the scientific musicians; 
they had never cared for their motetts and madrigals ; and if 
the minstrel and the fiddler were suppressed by Act of Parlia* 
ment, * no Act of Parliament could restrain the mother from 
singing to her babe, the milkmaid from warbling under the 
cow, the old ballads they loved so well to the dear old tunes 
that they had themselves learned in infancy/ 

It was now that the opera rose to be a dominating power in 
altering and moulding the character of music; and in his 
second essay Mr, Baring- Gould shows very clearly how this 
branch of the art affected the English song. The first opera 
ever produced in England was written by Sir William Daven- 
ant, Shakespeare's godson, who liked to have it thought that 
he was the great dramatist's son. This was The Siege of 
Rhodes J produced in 1650. Shakespeare himself introduced 
songs into his plays, and other dramatists — Ben Jonson, Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, Dekker, Middleton and Webster — did the 
same. These plays were the parents of the ballad-opera ; for 
the opera as at first understood in England was no more than 
an increase in the number of songs and choruses introduced. 
In 1727 Gay wrote his fanjous Beggari Opera^ in which all the 
songs but two or three were set to folk-melodies born in Eng- 
land. The plot of the piece is of the poorest, but it turned out 
an immense success, the people being ' refreshed and rejoiced 
to hear the old familiar notes of the English muse/ It put 
money in the pockets of both the author and Rich, the manager 
of the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Field, so that it was well said 
that the play had made Rich ^ay and Gay rich ! But the 
Beggars^ Opera had a further effect : it drew away the audiences 
from the then fashionable Italian opera, and, as the wags re-- 
marked, made that indeed what the other was in name — the 
beggars' opera. The enormous success of Gay's work encour- 
aged others to follow in the same track. Over forty ballad 
operas appeared, and as most of these were published along 
with the music, they furnish us with a treasury of the folk- 
melodies of the English people which it is doubtful if we should 
otherwise have had preserved. There is another thing to be 
noticed which had something to do with the history of English 



m 



Coronation of Jamea L of England, 293 

song. In no theatre, except the two patent houses, Drury 
Lane and Covent Garden, was it lawful for actors to perform 
a drama. In others only burlettas and farces were legaL To 
evade the law, the performers were obliged to introduce songs, 
whether appropriate to the play or not. In some cases a piano 
was tinkled during the dialogue, so that the piece might escape 
the condemnation of the Chancellor's Court, by being described 
as a musical performance. But this necessity to evade the law 
provoked musical invention and brought into notice and popu- 
larity a number of songs that might not otherwise have been 
composed. 

The limits of space prevent our following out this interesting 
subject in further detail. When Mr. Baring-Gould's work has 
been completed, we may have an opportunity of dealing with 
it again. In the meantime we close with a word of congratu- 
lation to the publishers of the English Minstrelsie, They are 
producing the work in a manner which is in every way credi- 
table to the literary traditions of the Scottish capital. The 
music is beautifully engraved, the binding is handsome, and 
the many illustrations add greatly to the value of the collec- 
tion. It is a work which every lover of music, and especially 
of national music, should see to having on his shelves. 

J. CUTHBERT HADDEN. 



Art. v.— the CORONATION OF JAMES I. OF 

ENGLAND.* 

KING James VI. of Scotland was wont while at home to 
speak of his English inheritance as * the Land of Promise,' 
but when he came to take possession of it, there were many dis- 
appointments. The first year of his reign, which was to have 
been inaugurated by a magnificent coronation, was passed 
betwixt fear of the plague, then raging in London, and the 
alarm caused by the double conspiracy of the Main and the Rye 



* From the Despatches of the Venetian Envoy. 



294 Coronation of James I. of England. 

Plot, which almost seemed a rehearsal of what afterwards made 
the Fifth of Novemtier so celebrated. James, though fond of 
<pomp, was timid by natnre, and curtailed the coronation. In- 
deed, Dr. Lingard has written in regard to this matter that ' the 
ceremony was hastily performed by the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury without the nsnal parade.' The following account, how- 
ever, from the Venetian Despatches tends to prove that this is 
hardly an exact statement of the case. The originals of these 
Despatches are preserved in the Archives at Venice, where they 
have remained since. Week by week they were sent home by the 
Envoy of the Serene Republic, read before the Senate, and then 
stored away to be kept jealously hidden from prying eyes. For 
giving as a vivid picture of the time, these DUpacci are unrival- 
led ; their number is so considerable that but a very small part 
has, as yet, been copied, translated, or even calendared, and 
those of the year 1603 — hitherto unpublished — with which the 
present article deals, were sent home by Mr, Secretary Scara- 
melli, who arrived in England a few weeks before the death of 
Queen Elizabeth, and recount many things that are worthy of 
note. 

King James of Scotland, as is well known, owed his peaceable 
accession to the English throne mainly to the prudent measures 
concerted by Sir Robert Cecil. Before London even knew the 
death of Queen Elizabeth, the Privy Council, with the Lord 
Mayor and other persons of note, had been assembled at White- 
hall, and under the guidance of Cecil, they then and there drew 
up and signed the Proclamation conferring the crown upon 
James. Cecil himself proclaimed the King at the cross in 
Cheapside, and very promptly the citizens testified their adhesion 
to the new order of things by the customary acclamations, bon- 
fires, and ringing of bells. 

However, five weeks before the death of Elizabeth, it had not 
d certain that matters would go so smoothly, Scaramelli 
that King James of Scotland, 'a melancholy, prudent, 
iterary' prince, has indeed from his earliest years ever 
d to succeed to the English crown, ' which hope, they say, 
insed him to digest the offence of the shedding of his 
r's blood ; and further, with much obsequiousness and show 



Coronation of James L of England. 295 

of obedience, he has striven never to irritate the Queen against 
himself.' But the Venetian envoy warns the Doge that James 
will have two chief difEculties to overcome in making good his 
claims to the throne — * the one, that he, not having been born 
in this Kingdom, is by the law of the Realm incapacitated from 
wearing the crown thereof ; and the other, that the Queen of 
Scots, his Mother, having been beheaded for conspiracy was, as 
a rebel, by Parliament declared to be deprived of every right to 
the succession, and consequently that he, James, her son, is also 
for the like reason incapacitated therefrom.' Scaramelli, how- 
ever, evidently thinks that James will overcome his difficulties ; 
the revenues of Scotland (he affirms) now amount to 400,000 
crowns a year, and James has recently obtained the promise, 

* with pact and oath,' from thirty thousand of his vassals to follow 
him south of the Solway Firth and the Tweed when occasion 
requires. 

None the less, the five weeks which still elapsed before the 
death of Elizabeth, in spite of all that Cecil could do, were 
anxious times for King James. Scaramelli mentions in his 
letter of the 6th of March (24th February, O.S.) that the 
report had come in from Edinburgh of the suicide of a certain 
prisoner of State, who had thrown himself off a high tower, he 
having been the chief member of a conspiracy against the King, 

* who, by his death remaining in ignorance of all detail of the 
plot, and going in terror of his life.' Even as late as three 
weeks before his accession to the English throne, James ^ found 
himself, in certain wise, surrounded on all hands by fear of death 
from conspiracy,' and this too within his own realm of Scotland. 
At length, however. Queen Elizabeth expired, April 3 (March 
24, O.S.), and on April 12 (2nd, O.S.) the Doge is informed 
that James, having received news of the death of his ' Aunt,' has 
written a letter to the Mayor and Common Council of the City 
of London, and that one hundred thousand crowns have been 
immediately voted for the expenses of his Majesty's journey, with 
four hundred thousand crowns more, to be held at his royal 
pleasure, against the time of the coronation. James left Edin- 
burgh on the 5th of April, O.S., and the Despatch of the 17 th 
(the 7th, O.S.) announced that His Majesty had come south as 



296 Coronation of James L of England. 

far as Berwick, < the strongest place that the English have on 
the Tweed.' The Secretary continnes that James is aboat to 
assume the title of ' King of Great Britain in order thereby to 
denominate the whole of the Island under one name, after the 
fashion of that ancient and most famous King Arthur, whose 
Kingdom is now in the possession of his Majesty, and is a coun- 
try of seventeen hundred miles in circumference/ 

A fortnight later, Thursday, May 1st (April 2l8t, O.S.)> 
Scaramelli reports that Cecil had gone to Giorch (York), * a city 
one hundred and fifty miles from London, where His Majesty is 
stopping for a week, in order to celebrate Easter-tide, this being 
the date according to the English reckoning/ Easter Sunday, 
O.S., fell on April 24th of that year, and the close of the 
Despatch announces that the Coronation is fixed for St. James' 
Day, the patron saint of His Majesty, ' for the which, the pre- 
parations already begun, are truly magnificent, as is the habit of 
such things in this country, where the people greatly love pomp 
and ceremony/ The Queen is to be crowned at the same time 
to save extra expense, so the Despatch of May 15th (5th O.S.) 
informs the Doge, — and many Ladies have already started for 
the north to pay their respects to Her Majesty, whom the King 
at his departure for his Land of Promise, had left safe in Scot- 
land until it might clearly be seen what welcome would be given 
him by his new subjects. The welcome, however, left nothing 
to be desired ; James reached London by May 17th (7th O.S.), 
and on the 22nd, Scaramelli sent oS two despatches to Venice 
communicating the first impressions which had been made on 
him by a rather distant view of His Most Sacred Majesty. 

' The King has been stopping four dayis in a Palace near the City which 
in old times was a Monastery of Carthusian Friars, and yesterday made 
his state entry into the Tower, but without passing through London. His 
Majesty will remain at the Tower all to-morrow, for the ceremony of 
taking possession of the regalia, and will thence proceed four miles further 
to Greenwich, a favourite pleasaunce of the late Queen. This is situated 
on the Thames, and thither they have ordered up the six great Ships, and 
the two Pinnaces that were this year put into commission and armed, by 
order of the late Queen, and which have hitherto been lying at the Downs 
near Dover ready to sail for the harrying of the Spanish coast. These 
vessels His Majesty wishes to see, and he will meanwhile pass the time in 



Coronation of James 1, of England. 297 

hunting and other amusements, proceeding also to set the royal household 
in order ; and further, at Greenwich, he will begin to grant audiences to 
the Ambassadors and Ministers of the various Princes, for the which pur- 
pose I, too, have had assigned me the next day after that on which the 
Ambassador of France will be received.' 

This last was Monsieur de Beaumont, the new Ambassador 
sent by Henry IV., and whose Despatches form an important 
authority for the history of this epoch. Scaramelli goes on to 
state that * di Beomont ' (as he spells his name) is to receive six 
thousand crowns a year ^ di ben pagata provisioned meaning 
doubtless that the salary would be punctually paid. The second 
despatch of the same date begins with the following para- 
graph : — 

* The King had not been two hours in the Tower of London — close by 
and in view of which is my lodging in one of the houses of the city [Borgo], 
newly built^ and fair to look at, standing in a garden laid out in the Italian 
fashion by a native of Lucca, formerly a merchant here — when His Majesty 
sent one of his Gentlemen to visit me with messages of great regard to 
Tour Serenity and personal kindness for me, Your humble servant. This 
gentleman stated that the King was well informed both of my business 
and of me personally, that his Majesty must be held excused for not 
having sooner granted me an audience, but after the Ambassador of 
France, who had already made his demand, the King would receive me, 
and this, prior to receiving either the Count of Nassau, the Ambassadors 
of the States of Holland, or the Envoy of any other power ; further, that 
his Majesty desired afterwards to speak with me in private, and more fully 
than he would be able to do publicly.' 

To all this Scaramelli returned a suitable reply : and in due 
course, under date of the 28th May, the Envoy, describing his 
first audience with James, which had taken place the day pre- 
ceding, namely Tuesday, the 17th old style, writes as follows : — 

'Most Serene Prince, — The King having appointed my audience for 
yesterday at 2 o'clock afternoon, I went down accordingly to Greenwich| 
and found the crowd at Court so great as to surpass what I have ever seen 
even at Constantinople, when that Empire is in perfect peace, and when 
the attendance exceeds ordinarily ten or twelve thousand persons. Such 
was the crush at Greenwich that the Guards, though using violence, coald 
hardly obtain for me an entrance, even into the outer rooms through which 
I had to pass, filled with a great crowd of all the nobility of the' realm, till 
at length I came to the Presence Chamber where the King himself was 
seated surrounded by the Council and an infinity of other Lords, who 



298 Coronation of James L of England. 

were all, so to speak, in the act of paying him their adoration. Seeing me. 
His Majesty rose from his chair and came forward six steps towards the 
middle of the room, going back one st«p aftor having made me a sign of 
greeting by a movement of the hands ; and here he halted, listoning to me 
with attention, and holding his hat in his hand for some considerable time, 
both at the beginning and at the close of the audience. His Majesty was 
dressed in grey satin, perfectly plain, wearing a long doak of black doth 
which came down to his knee, lined with sarcenet. He held one arm 
resting in a sling of white ribbon going round his neck, for when out 
hunting his horse had fallen, the arm being under him ; however, the 
alarm of the accident has proved greater than the hurt. 

' By this dress, only, the King might have been mistaken for the mean- 
est of his courtiers, (for in this matter he displays purposely his own liking 
and his humility), were it not that His Majesty was wearing a collar of 
Diamonds, with a great Diamond in his hat, which they say is the one 
Don Antonio of Portugal * gave in pledge here to certain merchants for a 
loan of eighty thousand crowns, and which the late Queen, aftor his death, 
insisted should be given up to her for the like sum of money, although the 
gem is now valued at the price of about two hundred thousand crowns. 
As to the personal appearance, stature and complexion of His Majesty, 
Your Serenity will have but to recall to mind the figure of the late most 
Illustrious Signore Federico Kani, whose appearance, as he was some ten 
years before his death, might count as absolutely identical with that of 
the King of England, — and my memory does not serve me for ever having 
seen two persons more alike.' 

Scaramelli then gives a summary of his speech to King James, 
which (he adds) was of small importance, for, after having briefly 
referred to the unpleasant business which had especially brought 
him to England, namely, the recent acts of piracy of certain 
English sailors, — in which business everything yet remained un- 
settled, the darkness awaiting *the light of the Justice and 
Grace of His Majesty ' — the Secretary launched forth into com- 
pliments, and rejoiced especially to be the first Venetian to con- 
gratulate His Majesty on his most rightful accession. James, 
in his reply, spoke in French, saying that he knew Scaramelli to 

* Don Antonio of Portugal, hotter known as the Prior of Crato, was the 
illegitimate son of Don Luis Duke of Beja, hrother of the Cardinal-King 
Henry. On the death of the latter in 1580, Don Antonio ineffectually laid 
claim to the crown of Portugal. He was defeated by the Duke of Alva, 
whose master, Philip II., incorporated Portugal into his dominions. Don 
Antonio, with a price set on his head, fled to France, and after seeking 
refuge in England and Holland, ultimately died in Paris, in 1595. 



Coronation of James L of England, 299 

be well acquainted with this tongae, * and hence (said the King) 
I will reply to you in that same, in order not to have recourse to 
interpreters, since I myself cannot spfeak Italian as I would wish/ 
James then expressed his thank^ to the Senate of Venice for 
their congratulations, and promised hi^ . immediate attention to 
the matters at issue, namely, the pirates, which his ' sister, the 
late Queen, before her death, had been unable to settle.' Scara- 
melli made a short complimentary reply and took his leave, after 
presenting the King with a clearly-written * memorial ' of the 
case as touching the Venetian galleon Venier which the English 
pirates had unlawfully captured. 

In May, 1603, the Queen Consort, Anne of Denmark, was 
still in Scotland, and Scaramelli next relates what he had learnt 
of the character of Her Majesty. Anne, it is well known, had 
some time before this secretly become a Catholic, and the Vene- 
tian despatch affords us some curious details on this and other 
points : — 

'The Queen, whose father was^ as they call it here, a Martinist, was 
brought up in the Lutheran faith, but became a Catholic since living in 
Scotland, through the agency of three Scotch Jesuits who had come 
thither, the one from Kome and the other two from Spain. In Scotland, 
although she attends with her husband the public services of the heretical 
church, she nevertheless observes certain of the Catholic rites in private, 
and at times can even hear Mass secretly, with the permission of the Eling, 
who loves her greatly, so that she has also obtained from him leave that 
her one surviving daughter, now a girl of eight, may be brought up by a 
Catholic lady. ' 

The Doge is next informed that Prince Henry, on the other 
hand, is brought up as a Protestant ; and to insure this the King, 
his father, has hitherto kept him apart from his mother, leaving 
him, on his own departure for England, at Stirling Castle under 
the care of the Countess of Mar. The Despatch then relates 
how the Queen, being left in Edinburgh to her own devices, had 
recently tried to kidnap Prince Henry from Lady Mar, but 
failing to accomplish this purpose, had thrown herself into such 
a rage, striking herself so violently as not only to imperil her own 
life but also to deprive the King of his hopes of a third son, for 
the child had come into the world still-born. All this, however, 
and how the Earl of Mar and the Duke of Lennox were sent 



800 Coronation of James L of England* 

down to Scotland to see to the matter, may be fonnd more fully 
detailed in the pages devoted to Anne of Denmark by Miss 
Strickland in her Queens of England ; and, finally, what Scara- 
melli relates is merely hear-say report. He closes with the 
melancholy news that the Plague was gaining ground in London, 
and that an order had been issued for all dogs to be killed. 

The next despatch, dated June 4th (May 25tb, O.S.), speaks 
of the diflScult question raised by the coming Protestant corona- 
tion as to how the rite should be solemnized, since (as Scara- 
melli reminds the Doge) ' former kings had all been anointed by 
the hands of Catholic priests and with the Roman rites, for even 
Edward YI. and Elizabeth, though Protestants, had, at their 
coronation, attended the Roman Catholic Episcopal Mass.' A 
postscript gives the ominous news that during this last week 22 
had died of plague in 13 parishes, and the following week 32 
deaths are announced from 15 infected districts. The plague 
continuing to gain ground (30 dead are mentioned for the seven 
days ending the 19th June, N.S.), the Court removes to Wind- 
sor, where the King remains and awaits the arrival of the Queen ; 
and on July 10th (June 30th, O.S.), Scaramelli writes : — 

' The Queen arriyes to-day at Windsor with two hundred and fifty 
coaches and more than five thousand horsemen, for these daring the whole 
length of her journey kept increasing in numbers, being intent on escort- 
ing her. Her Majesty will be received by the King and the Court with 
much ceremony and magnificence, and with her comes the Prince. Their 
Majesties will then remain at Windsor till the 3rd of August, New Style, 
when they will make their State entry into Londoa together, and staying 
at the Tower on the 4th, will on the 5th celebrate the Coronation.' 

The plague, however, the Secretary continues, is gaining 
ground everywhere, causing the King much anxiety, and the 
despatch of July 23rd (13th O.S.) announces that the state entry 
into London will be postponed till October, when it is hoped the 
plague may have diminished, and for this latter date also Parlia- 
ment has been summoned. The despatch states that the Queen, 
though duly attending the public worship ^of the heretical 
Church,' is nevertheless taking into her own service as many 
Catholic Lords as may be ; Scaramelli then concludes by thank- 
ing the Doge and Senate for letters received, as well as for the 



Coronation of James L of England* 301 

promise of 120 crowns salary a month, of which, however, he 
says that he will only receive 98^ in consequence of the exchange 
being against him to the amount of 18 per cent., on all ' white 
money ' {moneta blanca^ presumably silver), paid out by the most 
illustrions Chamberlains of the Ducal Palace. Even with the 
loss by the exchange, this monthly allowance comes to 1,182 
crowns a year, a very fair income at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century, when the scudo^ equivalent to five shillings 
English, had a purchasing power of at least four-fold its present 
value. 

On July 30th (20th O.S.) a long Despatch, in cypher, relates 
the details of the recently discovered Plot to assassinate Eling 
James before his coronation had taken place^ and to give the 
Grown to Arabella Stuart ; but Scaramelli adds nothing to what 
is already known of this double conspiracy generally called the 

* Main Plot ' and the * Kye,* in which Sir Walter Kaleigh was 
implicated. Of the same date as this cypher despatch is another 
in which Scaramelli reports that the Court has moved from 
Windsor to Oatlands, and thence proceeded to Hampton Court, 

* a great palace with one hundred and eighty rooms, each provided 
with doors and locks.' Here, after an audience with the King, 
who naturally could talk of nothing but the Plot, Scaramelli had 
proceeded to his first interview with Anne of Denmark, who 
also spoke to him in French (as did the King) ' for Her Majesty 
does not understand a single word of Italian.' This incidental 
detail serves to contradict the assertion of Miss Strickland, 
who, on the authority of Cardinal Bentivoglio, the Nuncio at 
Brussels, describes Anne as 'an Italian scholar.' Scaramelli 
pays the Queen many compliments, and when he alludes diplo- 
matically to her being of the Catholic faith, her Majesty smiles 
and answers him with much gracionsness. 

It was probably at this interview that Scaramelli proffered his 
request to be allowed to see the royal children, who were at this 
time staying at Oatlands. The request was granted, and on 
Wednesday, August 6th (July 27th, O.S.), the following des- 
scription of Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth was penned 
for the edification of the Doge and Senate of the Republia 
Scaramelli dates from ^ Somberi,' evidently Sanbniy in Middle- 



302 Coronation of James I. of England. 

sex, three miles above Hampton Court, whither he had recently 
removed from ' Eghen/ to wit Egham near Staines, the phice 
where he and the Envoys of Lorraine and of the Netherlands 
had lodged, while the Court was at Windsor. He writes as 
follows : — 

' I have recently visited the most Serene Prince and Princess at Oat- 
lands, much to their pleasure and mine, as also to the satisfaction of the 
Lords their Governors, for none of the various Mimsters of foreign Princes 
who are living in this neighbourhood have as yet either visited them or 
even sought so to do ; and both the Eing and the Qaeen appear to have 
been gratified by my insistance in requesting this permission. The Prince, 
who has not yet completed his tenth year, received me in the middle of 
his audience Chamber ; he is slender in body, high-spirited, and displayed 
much politeness in manner, with a gravity beyond his years, for, first 
taking off his hat, he bade me cover my head, and prolonged the con- 
versation by narrating to me, through the interpreter, all his various 
exercises in dancing, tennis-playing, and hunting. Then the Prince 
himself, accompanying me down the steps, through the Palace, and up 
the other staircase, conducted me to the apartments of the Princess, his 
sister, whom we found well attended, surrounded by her Maids of Honour 
and her Ladies. Her Highness, standing under a canopy, received me 
most graciously, although she be not yet eight years of age. Both the 
Prince and the Princess acquainted me with their desire to learn our 
speech, and— as their teachers had instructed them — rendered their thanks 
to Your Serenity for having despatched me hither. No sooner had I 
taken my leave of their Highnesses, than the Governor of the Prince sent 
off a courier to their Majesties, with the news that the royal children had 
most fitly behaved, himself informing me that the Queen had expressly 
commanded him thus to send her word : which same I now notify to your 
Serenity lest I be lacking even in this small matter, rather than from any 
real importance that can be attached thereto.' 

The account of the Coronation, which had taken place on the 
previous Monday, Scaramelli gives in his second despatch of this 
same Wednesday, August 6th (July 27th, O.S.) All that re- 
lates to the ceremony is here translated in full, for it contains 
many curious details not to be found elsewhere, and affords a 
curious picture of the Court and manners of our first Stuart 
King. The account of the ecclesiastical rites and vestments is 
also interesting, for the Puritans had not, as yet, curtailed the 
ritual established by Elizabeth. 



Coronation of James L of England. 303 

' Most Serene Prince : 

' The lately discovered Plot having made the King even more 
desirous than before of receiving the allegiance of the nobles 
and taking the oath at the Coronation — that affairs should 
thereby be brought as much as possible to a settlement — did 
lately issue divers orders for preventing persons coming out of 
London (where they are dying every week of the plague by 
thousands), from making their way into the Abbey during that 
ceremony. Further, his Majesty who had already named those 
of the Court who were to attend him, causing them to be given 
special tickets for admission, at the last moment revoked some 
of the orders for ensuring the complete privacy of the Corona- 
tion. On the last day of the month just elapsed, the King 
created eight Earls and four Barons, and then on [Friday] the 
first day of this present month their Majesties both set out from 
Hampton Court in two companies, each company having five 
hundred men of the Guard in attendance, over and above the 
usual number ; and halting to sleep that night a mile distant 
from London. The next day [Saturday] passing outside London, 
they went straight to the royal Palace at Whitehall, which stands 
near the Abbey of Westminster. On Monday morning, which 
was St. James's Day, Old Style [25th July, the 4th of August, 
N.S.], their Majesties embarked on the river Thames accom- 
panied by the whole of the Council, and their respective Courts 
of Lords and Ladies in Waiting ; and proceeding, landed at the 
ancient fane of Westminster, which, on the land side, was made 
impossible for the people to approach by reason of the numerous 
Guards posted at all the Gates of London — while as to those 
who went by water they must lie in peril of their lives from the 
crowd of boats, and from fear of falling in with plague-stricken 
persons come out from London. Their Majesties, as soon as 
they had disembarked, entered the Abbey, and the Coronation 
immediately began; the Procession being in such order and 
fashion as follows : — 

* First marched twelve Heralds, in tabards, open, and painted 
with the arms of the four Kingdoms, after these came various 
companies of the merchants and officials of the City of London, 
followed by the Lord Mayor ; all these were habited in long 



804 Coronation of James /. of England, 

robes of red cloth, with broad sleeves, and the officials were some 
score in number. Next came two drummers and ten trumpeters 
sounding their instruments, then, the Officers of Justice, who 
were habited after the same fashion as the Officials of the City, 
with the Chief Justice walking behind them, wearing over his 
red robe a gold chain going about his shoulders, and as broad as 
is the Collar of the Order. These numbered about five and 
twenty, all marching two by two, as also did all the others. 

* Sixty Knights of the Bath followed, which is an ancient 
Order of Knighthood, and these can only be created at the 
Coronation of a new Sovereign, hence of those created by the 
late Queen, two alone now survive.* Their habit is a tunic, 
reaching to the middle of the leg, with wide sleeves of purple 
satin ; a sort of sleeve, or rather pouch attached to the belt, 
which, passing over the shoulder, hangs down behind, as far as 
the hips, after the fashion of an amice ; further, they wear 
white plumes, but besides a plain gilt sword, with leathern belt 
and straps, have no other special badge. 

' After these came some thirty Barons in long tunics of scarlet 
cloth, with mantles of scarlet over the same reaching to the 
ground, very fully gathered, lined with ermine, at least those 
parts that were visible, the sleeves hanging down ; while behind, 
over the left shoulder, these mantles had two bands across them 
outside, and were also of ermine over the shoulders. Next fol- 
lowed the Earls, near fifteen in number, whose robes consisted 
of crimson velvet under-tunics reaching down only to the 
middle of the leg, also mantles of crimson velvet lined with 
ermine, having full and gathered ermine capes coming down to 
the hips, with cowls of crimson velvet hanging down over the 
said capes, somewhat like a stocking, being four fingers broad ; 
further, they wore caps of crimson velvet, with ermine fillets and 

* Elizabeth created eleven Knights of the Bath at her coronation, and, 
as a matter of fact, made no more during her reign, but the statement is, 
of course, incorrect that the sovereign could only create them at the coro- 
nation. James, for instance, besides the sixty dubbed on his corona- 
tion-day, made twelve more Knights in 1605 when Charles was created 
Duke of York, and twenty-five when Henry was created Prince of Wales 
in 1610. 



_z_ 



Coronation of James I. of England. 305 

small plain golden coronets, in place of bands ; each peer carry- 
ing in his hand a small slight sceptre. All, whether Earl, Baron, 
or of other degree, went bare-headed. 

'Behind these came the King, walking nnder a light and 
simple canopy, upheld by four rods, and from the summit of 
each rod there depended tinkling bells of silver-gilt. The King 
was habited as were the Earls, except that the cape was of 
crimson velvet lined with ermine, while the coronet round his 
cap was somewhat larger than theirs. Preceding his Majesty 
was the Begalia borne by certain Earls to wit the Crown 
Imperial, to be used in the coronation, carried upon a cushion by 
the Lord Treasurer, and after the like fashion the Sceptre, the 
Sword of State with its sheath, the Chalice with the Wine 
therein, and the Pateu, also the Ducal cap set on a wand. In 
front of the King went the Chief Herald or the King of Arms, 
who acted as master of the ceremonies, wearing a plain coronet 
without the cap, a mantle of crimson satin reaching to the 
knees, and, over this, the coat of arms emblazoned with the 
quarterings of the four Kingdoms. Following the King were 
the Gentlemen of the Court, in coats to the knee of crimson 
velvet ; further, one hundred and fifty halberdiers, the usual 
Royal Guard, in their crimson liveries, but these were that day 
new, having gold embroideries, rich above the ordinary, covering 
both back and front ; then about thirty Gentlemen Pensioners^ 
in coats of red silk reaching to the knee, some of whom carried 
halberds, the staves being covered with velvet. Immediately 
behind the King walked the Queen under a canopy similar to 
that of His Majesty, wearing a long crimson robe lined with 
ermine, having wide sleeves without any ornament, and a simple 
girdle, her hair hanging loose over the shoulders, confined by a 
plain gold coronet. Preceding the Queen were the Countesses 
in robes of crimson velvet, lined with ermine without ornament ; 
but the Peeresses had their hair braided up, and each wore a 
small coronet. 

* The King on entering the Abbey found the clergy already 
standing at the door to await him, all fully robed in Chasuble 
and Cope (these vestments being after the Boman pattern), and 
they accompanied his Majesty up to the Choir, where the King, 



306 Coronation of James L of England. 

ascending the dais covered with red cloth, between the Choir 
and the High Altar, took his seat on the Chair of State, as like- 
wise did the Queen. Their two Chairs were similar one to the 
other, set apart with a distance in between them of about seven 
feet, and both turned towards the aforesaid Altar, — if, indeed, 
one may call " Altar " what was merely an ordinary and move- 
able table. The King being thus seated, the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, between the Lord High Admiral and the Lord 
Treasurer, with the King of Arms preceding him, advanced 
before the people, and the King of Arms called aloud three 
times in the English tongue,* " Hear ye ! Hear ye ! Hear ye 1 " 
on which the Archbishop read out of a book certain words to the 
effect That should there be any who held King James the Sixth 
of Scotland, but First of England, to be no lawful King of 
England, he should straightway declare it, for hereafter such a 
one would come to be a traitor, seeing that he, the Archbishop, 
was about to bestow on King James aforesaid the Insignia of 
the Kingdom, it being the general hope of all men that his 
Majesty would defend and govern well his people, who therefore 
prayed unto God to grant him a long life. Thereupon, and 
after the Archbishop had thus spoken, the people all shouted for 

joy. 

* This part of the ceremony being accomplished, the King and 
the Queen went up to the altar, where they knelt at two fald- 
stools, and for a space of time made their prayers to God ; after 
which, again seating themselves, they listened to the sermon 
preached by one of the Bishops. The sermon being ended, the 
Archbishop read the Gospel from the Book which lay on the 
altai', and afterwards gave the same to the King to kiss. Then 
the King, being disrobed by his Earls, and standing up in doublet 
and hose of white sarcenet, he having unlaced the front part of 
the said doublet, knelt before the altar, when the Archbishop 
immediately anointed his Majesty in various places on the bare 
skin, having taken the holy oil from an ampulla which stood 
upon the altar in a basin covered with a white cloth. On this 
altar also stood the regalia which had been carried before the 

•Doubtless *Oyes, Oyes, Oyes,' pronounced English fashion. 




J 



Coronation of James L of England. 307 

Sang, to wit, the crown and sceptre, as also the chalice and 
paten. It is said this holj oil was consecrated in ancient days, 
and that it was found in the same place where the crown, like- 
wise consecrated, was kept ; further, that with this same oil 
Edward VI. and Elizabeth were annointed, although they both 
were Protestants, as is also this present King, Then after his 
Majesty's head had been wiped with a white cloth, the King was 
re-habited, but in other robes ; of these, namely, there was the 
long coat of crimson velvet, lined with white, reaching down to 
the middle of his leg, having sleeves not very wide, over this 
came a royal tunic fashioned like a deacon's cassock, with the 
garter, sword, and collar of the Order, his Majesty wearing 
over all a mantle of purple brocade without pleats, like a cope. 

^ Bobed after this fashion, the King was conducted to his seat 
on the royal Throne of red brocade, that stood in the middle of 
the space between the dais and the Altar, facing the people. 
Then the Archbishop coming forward, took the Crown from the 
Altar, carrying it to the King, and placed it on his head. The 
King having thus been crowned, was conducted by the Arch- 
bishop to the Altar, where the latter read some words from a 
book, giving this same book to his Majesty, who, laying his hand 
thereon, took the Oath. Then one of the Earls, taking the 
Sword of State from the Altar, drew it from the scabbard, and 
carried it thenceforward, always drawn, before the King, who 
took his seat again on the Throne above mentioned, while the 
Archbishop, bringing the Sceptre and the Wand of gold, placed 
the Sceptre in the right hand of the King, and the Wand in his 
left. The Sceptre is about two palms in length, with the Orb 
at the one end, surmounted by the Cross; the Wand is of a 
length to reach the ground, with the Orb at the top surrounded 
by a Crown. 

* When all these ceremonies had been duly accomplished, the 
Archbishop, assisted by the Lord High Admiral and the Lord 
Treasurer, who both had taken a special part in all that has been 
above described, accompanied by the Earls and Barons, led the King 
(his crown being upheld by two bishops) to the Dais, where his 
Majesty took his seat on the Throne, raised on steps, forming an 
octagon base about eight feet in diameter. The King being thuy 

XXVIII. 21 



308 Coronation of James L of England, 

« 

enthronedi the Earls advanced, and having previously pat on 
their caps, took the Oath of Allegiance thus covered, then again 
uncovered ; following them the Barons did the same, but these 
bare-headed. After the Oath of Allegiance had been taken in 
this wise, the Earls first, next the Councillors and the Barons, 
one by one, went up and kissed the King^s hands, with the fol- 
lowing ceremony : namely, each advancing bowed at the foot of 
the throne, went up the steps and knelt on a cushion of red 
brocade ; next each kissing his own right hand laid it upon the 
King's crown, which some also touched with their lips ; the King 
then extended his hand, and this each of the Peers kissed. 
Among the rest was the Earl of Pembroke, a graceful youth, 
who is much with the King, and he, being very fond of joking, 
in addition kissed his Majesty on the face ; whereupon the King 
began to laugh, and gave him a good slap. While this obeisance 
was taking place, the King of Arms advancing between the Lord 
High Admiral and the Lord Chancellor, as before, called three 
times upon the people to give ear, and the Chancellor, speaking 
in a loud voice, declared to them that His Majesty was indeed 
their rightful King and supreme Lord, being now anointed and 
crowned : and, when he had finished speaking thus, the people 
once again shouted for joy. 

^ This being ended, the Archbishop with the assistance only of 
the Lord High Admiral and the Lord Chancellor, proceeded to 
crown the Queen with the Crown Imperial, and gave her a 
Sceptre and a Wand of gold like those which the King carried; 
then, with no further ceremony, they led her up to the Dais and 
seated her on a Throne raised upon steps similar to that occupied 
by the King, in a line with the same, but of smaller size, and 
standing some eight feet distant therefrom ; for it should have 
been said that up to this moment her Majesty had remained 
seated in her private chair near the altar, taking no part in 
aught that was going on. The King then went up to the altar 
and kneeling in his f aid stool received the communion at the 
hands of the Archbishop, with the Bread and the Wine that had 
been carried before him in the chalice aforesaid; but the Queen 
did not receive the Communion, and did not indeed move from 
]i» Throne. 



Coronation of James L of England. 309 

< The Coronation was now ended, and the Eling withdrew to 
certain rooms behind the altar, as likewise did the Queen, and 
here the King exchanged his crown for one of lesser weight, 
while the Queen taking off her red robes exchanged these for a 
black dress. Then their Majesties, after having taken some re- 
freshment, came forth again, and the procession returned in the 
same order as it had come ; the King and the Queen going on 
board a great barge, magnificently decked out, which carried 
their Majesties for a long space, in full view of the people, in a 
triumphant procession down the river to the City ; whence they 
finally returned to dine at the Boyal Palace [of Whitehall] 
already mentioned. Here all have remained until this evening 
[Wednesday] when the King and Queen, the Court and the 
Council have departed, and have now gone back to Hampton 
Court.' 

The conduct of Queen Anne, in refusing the Protestant 
Communion, naturally caused much scandal ; but the Govern- 
ment, both now and later, consistently ignored the fact of her 
having joined the Church of Rome ; for Anne, though at times 
obstinate, was of too frivolous and pleasure-loving a nature to 
have any desire for the glories of martyrdom. Her tempers and 
her vagaries are often mentioned in succeeding Despatches, but 
this account of the Coronation may be fitly brought to its close 
with a paragraph, that Scaramelli thought important enough to 
warrant its being put in cypher when forwarding his next com- 
munication to the Doge, under date of August 13th (the 3rd 
O.S.) that is to say on the following Wednesday. 

' On the date of the Coronation, the King had urged the Queen most 
strenuously to partake of the Communion with him at the Abbey, accord- 
ing to the Protestant rite, and further, the chaplains of the Archbishop, 
that same morning, had done their uttermost to persuade the Queen 
thereto. (For otherwise, as it was justly said, her Majesty must seem to 
live, and in fact must live, without Religion : for she could never be per- 
mitted to practise any other religion than that which had been established 
by Law, and which is now preached throughout the Kingdom.) However, 
her Majesty placidly answered '* No " two or three times to all their re- 
monstrances, and after this refused to add another word.' 

James, on this occasion, evidently did not press the matter, 
and showed much good sense in not being more obstinate than 



310 & MarVs Tndebtednes$ to S. Matthew. 

the Queen. Of Court functions in England, however, Scaram- 
elli had reported the last, for before the end of the year 1603 he 
was superseded by the arrival of the Ambassadors-Extraordinarj 
— the Most Illustrious Pietro Duodo and the Most Illustrioas 
Nicolo Molin sent by the Doge to congratulate the King on his 
accession, and thereupon to renew full diplomatic relations be- 
tween the Serene Republic and the Court of St. James. The 
two Ambassadors had their first audience of the King in the last 
days of November ; and Secretary Scaramelli, being recalled, 
travelled in January 1004 via Calais to Brussels, next transacted 
some business for the Republic at the Hague and Utrecht, from 
thence going direct to Venice, reaching home again after an 
absence in the north of a little over a year. 

Guy lb Strange. 



Art. VL— ST. MARK'S INDEBTEDNESS TO ST. 

MATTHEW. 

MY object is to prove that S. Mark is generally posterior to 
S. Matthew. There is, of course, nothing really novel in 
such a view — S. Mark's posteriority was long ago proclaimed at 
Tubingen — but since the days of Tubingen, advocates of the 
opposite view have had a complete ascendancy. As a sum- 
mary of the present situation, we may conveniently turn to the 
article on the ' Gospels' in the new edition of Smith's Bible Dic^ 
tionary. Dr. Sanday, the author of it, declares that the greater 
originality of S. Mark is, if not an assured result of criticism 
is rapidly becoming so ; but he is obliged to recognise that 
the claim * cannot be made without reserve ; ' and he follows 
with a tentative conclusion that * there are distinct layers in 
our present S. Mark, one layer (commonly called **ur-Marcus") 
that is earlier than our S. Matthew, and another (" deutero- 
Marcus ") that is later.* 

The present situation is obviously far from satisfactory; for 
*ur-Marcus' and * deutero-Marcus ' have been in stock for a 
considerable period, and the difficulty of separating them is 



S. Mark's Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 311 

just as much a difficulty dow as it was forty years ago. 
Matters appear to be at a dead lock. No one has ever suc- 
ceeded in distinguishing the two layers solidly, or in discover- 
ing any internal signs of duality in S. Mark which correspond 
with the variation of aspect towards S. Matthew, or in sub- 
tracting from S. Matthew any considerable amount of the 
matter common to S. Mark without leaving the remainder of 
S. Matthew unmanageable. Besides, it has never been more 
than an assumption, one of several explanations possible, that 
the dual aspect of S. Mark towards S. Matthew is. an index of 
duality of source. The only essential difference in the situa- 
tion to-day from what it was forty years ago is the formidable 
increase of S. Mark's supporters — it is apparently their number 
that convinces Dr. Sanday of S. Mark's approaching triumph — 
but the significance of this increase may easily be over-rated. 
The doctrine of S. Mark's originality, it so happens, has appealed 
to a diversity of interests ; and that Westcott, ' Abbot, and 
Renan, should have coincided in advocating S. Mark's claims 
is a phenomenon which loses in effect when we discover that 
the reasons for their preference are, to a great extent, inter- 
necine. 

One of the chief differences between S. Matthew and S. 
Mark is the distinctly un-Judaic character of the latter. It is 
a difference ot which advocates of S. Mark's priority have 
scarcely realized the full import ; for that a Gospel prepared 
for Gentiles should afterwards have been altered to suit Jews, 
is almost inconceivable. True that some of the most Judaic 
features in S. Matthew occur in passages altogether peculiar 
to that Gospel, and may perhaps be derived from quite another 
source than the sections paralleled in S. Mark, but the sections 
paralleled in S. Mark contain too many for this avenue of 
escape to remain open very long. On one side or the other 
there must have been deliberate alteration of the text. 

In reporting the cure of the withered hand our Second 
Evangelist omits all mention of ' the Law,' and in place of the 
rabbinical rule about sheep fallen into pits, he gives us the 
general principle as to saving life or killing. He again omits 
all mention of ^ the Law ' in reporting the lawyer's question. 



312 & MarVa Indebtedneu to & Matthew. 

* Some say thou art Elijah/ — ^he omits 'and others, Jeremiah;' 
< that yonr flight be not in the winter/ — he omits * Dor on a 
Sabbath ; ' ' the abomination of desolation/ — ^he omits * spoken 
of by Daniel ; ' ' no sign given yon/ — ^he omits * save the sig^ 
of Jonah/ 

The omission last mentioned is especially interesting, for 
the reference to Jonah is one of those things that occur in the 
First Gospel twice (Matt. xii. 39 ; xvi. 4), and in the eyes of 
many critics these doublets are evidence of the combination 
of two distipct documents. In any case the fact of the double 
occurrence renders it very unlikely that *save the sign of 
Jonah ' is a post-addition. Similar remarks apply to S. Mark's 
omission of the twice quoted passage, * mercy not sacrifice ' 
(Matt ix. 13 ; xii, 7). 

Notice again S. Mark's omission of the prophecy quoted in 
Matt. xiii. 14, 15. Surely we find a relic of this prophecy in 
Mk. iv. 12, — * That they may not perceive, lest haply they 
should turn again and it should be forgiven them.' The 
quotation being from the lips of our Lord Himself it seems, 
prima facief far likelier that the shorter form in S. Mark is an 
abbreviation than that the longer form in S. Matthew is an 
expansion. 

In his report of the rich ruler's enquiry, S. Mark omits the 
chiliastic promise * In the regeneration ye shall sit on twelve 
thrones judging the twelve tribes ' — an omission which makes 
the subsequent request of James and John for the two chief 
thrones sudden and abrupt. In the brief denunciation of 
Scribes and Pharisees (Mk. xii. 38-40, contrast Matt xxiiL) his 
introductory phrase iv rg 5tdaxv adroO iXeye, * said in the course of 
teaching/ is suggestive of his knowing more that it was to his 
purpose to report. By omitting Christ's declaration about the 
need of fulfilling all legal righteousness he leaves Him undis- 
tinguished from the penitents who come ^confessing their 
sins.' By omitting * then shall appear the sign of the Son of 
man in heaven : and then shall all the tribes of the earth 
mourn ' he leaves the subsequent d^oi^reu Q Then shall they see ') 
without a subject 

Still more significant is his treatment of the Syro-Ph<Bnician 



S. Markka Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 313 

narrative. He omits the first repulse and Christ's declaration of 
being sent only to * the lost sheep of the house of Israel ' (Matt 
XV. 24) ; and thus plunging in medias res he leaves the woman's 
abject attitude unaccounted for, and also, to some extent, 
Christ's commendation. But especially notice the statement 
with which he replaces the matter omitted, — * Jesus entered into 
a house, and would have no man know it, and he could not be 
hid ; * for here the naiTatives in S. Matthew and S. Mark are 
running too parallel for independent information to be reason- 
ably expected, and while it is obviously impossible to derive 
S. Matthew's description from S. Mark's, the reverse process is 
easy. S. Mark's new detail looks like an excuse for, and ex- 
planation of what he does not relate : the request of the dis- 
ciples, ' Send her away for she crieth after us,' being interpreted 
as a desire to avoid publicity, not a reflection on the woman's 
Gentile birth, it would seem natural that her second approach 
should be timed when the privacy of a house afforded the 
opportunity needed. 

If it be admitted that our Second Evangelist had Matt. xv. 
21-28 in his hands, then it seems probable that he also had 
the analogous passage in Matt x. 5, 6, ' Go not into any way of 
the Gentiles: go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' 

Before quitting the subject of the un-Judaism of our Second 
Evangelist, attention is due to his constant explanation of 
Jewish customs and softening down of Jewish terminology. 
We are informed that John's disciples and the Pharisees were 
in the habit of fasting ; that the first day of unleavened bread 
was that on which the Passover must be slain ; that amongst 
Jews it was of traditional obligation to rinse the hands before 
eating and after marketing. (In passing, notice what an awk- 
ward repetition this gloss about rinsing necessitates, — 'had 
seen that some of His disciples ate with defiled hands ; ' * Why 
do they eat with defiled hand?'). * Syro-Phcenician ' takes 
the place of * Canaanite ; ' ' healed ' is twice explained by 
'taught;' Mong robes' replace the large fringes and broad 
phylacteries of Matt xxiii. 5 ; and for the oriental metaphor of 
bearing the shoes is substituted ' unloose the latchet' Such 



314 S. MdrV$ Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 

differenoes between S. Matthew and S. Mark are of oooise 
merely superficial, but oumnlatively they have force. 

In fine, the on-Judaism of 8. Mark is consistent, systematic 
and eminently artificial. 

A comparison of the Eschatology of S. Mark and S. Matthew 
reveals some significant differences which tell strongly for the 
priority of S. Matthew. 

In Matt z. 23 Christ promises that the Messianic reign shall 
commence before His disciples have visited all the cities of 
Israel, but just at this point the replica in Mk. xiii. 9-13 stops 
short It is conceivable of course that this verse is a post- 
addition; but its peculiarly Judaic character, its close con- 
nexion with what precedes (cf. * To the lost sheep of Israel '), 
and the fact that it completes the parallel to Matt. xxiv. 14-19 
render the idea of post-addition exceedingly improbable. 

In Matt xvi. 28, Christ declares that * some stand here which 
shall in no wise taste of death till they see the Son of man 
coming in his kingdom.' But in Mk. ix. 1, * in no wise taste of 
death till they shall see the kingdom of God come with power.' 
The original idea was surely of the personal advent, for it is of 
His coming with the augels that Christ has just spoken, and of 
rendering to every man according to his works. Does not the 
interpretation in an impersonal sense, — 'some standing here 
shall see my gospel triumph ' — indicate a time when the ex- 
pectation that Christ would return during the lifetime of His 
immediate followers was already disappointed ? 

So again with regard to the great final charge in Matt xxiv. 
We are told that 'this gospel shall be preached to all the 
nations ; and then shall the end come.' The otip in the next 
verse, (* When therefore ye see ') makes the setting up of the 
great abomination a sign of the beginning of the end. And, 
further on, the darkening of the sun and the appearance of the 
Son of man on the clouds of heaven follow the desolation of 
Jerusalem emw, — « immediately after the tribulation of those 
days.' But in Mk. xiii. these prophecies appear with such differ- 
ence as to suggest that a difficult interval after the destruction 
of Jerusalem has^already elapsed. * The gospel must first be 
^reached to all nations' repeats the Second Evangelist, but 



S. MarJca Indebtedness to S. Matthew* 



315 



without telling us that when missionaries to all nations have 
gone forth, ' then shall the end come.' The setting up of the 
great abomination is introduced by * W * instead of otp. And 
the advent of Christ follows the destruction of Jerusalem in- 
definitely, — * In those days after that tribulation.' 

It is perhaps worth noticing too that instead of S. Matthew's 
* standing in the holy place' we have in Mk. xiii. 'standing 
where it ought not.' The variation may be merely due to S. 
Mark's un-Judaic design, but it may also be due to the fact 
that the flight to Pella was not occasioned by the setting up 
of any idol in the Temple itself. The general expectation of 
an idol in the Temple was never realized, and expounders of 
prophecy appear to have been thrown back on the Roman 
eagles that encircled Jerusalem (c/. Luke xxi. 20). 

The glosses and expansions which occur in the second Gos- 
pel may next be noticed : — 



In S. Matthew. 
'Preached saying, Repent.' 



In S. Mabk. 

'Preached a baptism of repentance 

unto remission of sins.' 
'Repent and believe in the Gospel.' 
' For my sake and the Gospel's ' 
(twice). 
' How hardly they that have riches.' Qualified, ' That trust in riches.' 
' Shall receive a hundredfold and Precluding Ohiliastic interpretation. 



' Game into Galilee saying, Repent.' 
* For my sake.' 



inherit eternal life.' 



' Destroy this temple and build it in 
three days.' 

' The poor ye have always with you.* 

' If I send them away fasting, they 

will faint by the way.' 
' Many publicans and sinners sat 

down with Jesus.' 
'He prayed, Father, let this cup 

pass from me." 

' Father, if it be possible.' 



' A hundredfold now in this time 

with persecution, and in the world 

to come eternal life.' 
' This temple made with hands, and 

in three days build another made 

without hands.' 
'Always with you, and whensoever 

ye will ye can do them good.' 
' Will faint by the way, for some of 

them come from afar.' 
' Sat down with Jesus, for there were 

many and they followed him.' 
With explanation, ' He prayed that 

the hour might pass from him, 

saying.' 
Lest the Divine power should seem 

to be limited, ' Father, all things 

are possible unto thee.' 



316 & Mark's Indebtednui to S. Matthew. 

' Drink je all.' ' And they bU drank.' 

'Hialepn>«7 wa« oleanwd.' ' Str&ightii'ay the leproay departed 

from him, and he wu made dean.' 
Ambignonalf, 'A renowned pru- Renowned, batfochuorinie«, 'lying 
oner ' Mff^i/wt. bound with them that had mada 

inaarreotion, men who had com- 
mitted murder.' 
*The other Mary,' 'James,' 'the With ipecification, ' Mary of Josea,' 
■OQB of Zebedee,' 'Simon of Cy- ' JamsH the Less,' 'James and 

rene.' , John, the aoni of Zebedee,' ' the 

father of Alexander and Rufua.' 
'WhoBoeTetah&ll put away his wife.' Further providing for a contingency 
impoBBible under the Jewish Law, 
but common enoni(h in Greece 
and Borne, ' And if she herself 
shall pnt away her husband.' 
' The disciples bad indignation, say- Softened, * There were somt that had 

ing. To what purposeis this waste. ' indignation. ' 
'Then come the disciples of John, Acquitting John's disciples, 'They 
saying. Why do we fast, and thy come and say, Why do John's 

disciples not 1 ' disciples } ' 

Pilate immediately grants the body He only grants it after obtaining a 
to Joseph. certificate of death from the cen- 

turion. Our second Evangelist 
refutes the cavil that Christ mere- 
ly revived from a swoon. 
' MriSl fii^Sav fi,i,Si iroS^imTit.' Mitigated, 'El fij; pi^Sor ^ror, dUi 

^oSeSi/i^toiis iriuidXia. ' 
Notice in this case the two awkward ruptures of coustruc- 
tioD that the alteration involves — ' He charged them that they 
should Qot take — but shod with sandals — and do not put on 
two coats.' Id 8. Matthew, Herod said, ' This is Johu the 
Baptist He is risen,' — in S. Mark, ' Herod said John the 
Baptist is risen. But others said. It is Elijah. And others, It 
is a prophet even as one of the propheta But Herod said, 
im I beheaded, be is risen.' The extra matter in S. 
[8 very like a slavishly- conceived justification for the 
leld about Christ which the disciples are presently to 
i-ud notice the awkward repetition of Herod's opinion 
s intercalation necessitates. In S. Matthew, Herod 
kill John, hut fears the people, for all account him a 
In S. Mark, it ia Herodiaa who desires to kill, and 



S. Markka Indebtedness to Si Matthew. 317 

Herod's respect for John that prevents. The discrepancy is 
pronounced, but the two Gospels at this point are running too 
parallel to allow our taking refuge in the hypothesis of in- 
dependent traditions. We are obliged then to infer the exis- 
tence behind both Gospels of a text susceptible of either 
interpretation ; but while to arrive at it we have only to alter 

the text of S. Matthew slightly, {e.g.y koX IjdeKcv odr^i' drorrearot jcea 

^0o/?ij^i7 8ti irAyTes d)s vpofp-^y airrhv etxov ) we are obliged in the caso 
of S. Mark to dispense with several extra details which are 
thus shown to be secondary — * She set herself against him/ 
*He kept him safe,' * He was perplexed and heard him gladly.' 
Again, it is surely a sign of posteriority that the Second 
Evangelist should twice excuse the apostles' attitude — *For 
they wist not what to say ; ' should supply the moral to be 
drawn from the Draught of Meats, ^ This he spake making all 
meats clean ; ' should explain the Gadarene demoniac's ejacu- 
lation, * What have I to do with thee ' by adding, ' For Jesus 
had said, Come forth, thou unclean spirit;' should give motive 
for Christ's toiLching the leper, ' Being moved with compas- 
sion;' should think it necessary to explain Herod's relationship 
to Herodias *for he had married her ; * should extenuate * they 
left their father in the ship,' by adding, * with the hired 
servants ; ' should account for Christ taking the Twelve apart 
(Matt. XX. 17) by explaining that the rest of the company were 
in a state of panic ; should qualify the harshness of ' It is not 
meet to take the children's bread,' by prefacing * Let the chil- 
dren be fed first ; ' should illustrate ' straightway ye shall find ' 
by making the disciples in very fact find the ass in a gateway, 
and should represent the contingency provided for *if any man 
say aught ' as actually arising ; should illustrate ' Go into the 
city to such a man' by adding a note for identification ; should 
account for the sternness of * Behind me Satan ' by represent- 
ing the prediction of the Passion as uttered Toftjrnaia, and Peter 
as remonstrating in the presence of the disciples ; (There are 
awkward consequences here, for our Second Evangelist, re- 
quiring some enlargement of audience for the utterances that 
follow, avails himself of ' the multitude,' forgetful that Christ 
is in retirement at Caesarea Philippi). Again, those statements 



318 & iSarVs Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 

in Mark iv., 10, 33, 34, that Christ was ' alone ' when qnes- 
tioned about the sower, and explained all things to the disci- 
ples * privately/ are they not due to a mistaken interpretation 
of Matt. xiiL ? — ^for at the close of day Christ is still sitting in 
the boat in the presence of the multitudes ; and the notion of 
His selecting an audience frustrates the invitation < He that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear,' and also the reproach ' They 
close their ears.' 

Our consideration of the longer text in S. Mark now 
brings us up facing that elaboration of detail which S. Mark's 
champions never weary of appealing to as infallible proof of 
originality and eye-witnesa There are, however, as Strauss 
pointed out, good grounds for a view quite contrary. What 
an extraordinary conception of S. Matthew we are driven to 
by the hypothesis that the precise vivid details of S. Mark are 
original I For these details are absent from S. Matthew one 
and all, and if the Matthaean narratives are to be derived from 
those in S. Mark, the conclusion is inevitable that the author 
of the former was unprecise, unpicturesque deliberately! 
Again, on the hypothesis that the precise vivid details are not 
the outcome of determined artistic design, but a natural result 
of eye-witness, how strangely they sometimes occur. The 
first, in an utterance of the Baptist's, * <ci5^oj ;' the second, * with 
the wild beasts,' belonging to a time when Christ was alone. 
From the exactitude of ' even to the half of My kingdom ' are 
we to infer that the artless eye-witness was actually present 
at Herod's banquet? As a rule, the sequence of events is 
definitely noted (*on that day,' 'straightway after'), and 
gestures and emotions are continually reported ('looking 
round,' * frowning,' 'embracing,' * sighing'), but let anyone 
consult his own memory as to events a few years back. How 
often can he really assign events to a day, to an hour t How 
often can he recall the exact expression on a person's lips, the 
direction of his eyes, the tone of his voice ? No ; in any case 
we are forced to infer a certain self-consciousness and a 
deliberate artistic design on the part of the Second Evan- 
gelist. 

The Second Evangelist's details are often purely ornamen-» 



S. Mark's Indebtedness to S. Mattheip. 319 

tal, rather awkwardly distractiDg attention from the main 
idea, and quite dispensable. Such are his statements that the 
blind man threw off his garment when he rose, and that his 
father s name was Timeeus ; that there were four men carry- 
ing the paralytic's mattress, one at each comer ; that the cock 
crowed twice before Peter remembered; that the feeding 
multitudes arranged themselves in groups, and that the grass 
on which they sat was green ; that the angel of the sepulchre 
sat on the right side ; that it was in the stern of the boat, on 
the cushion, that Christ lay asleep ; that a child whom Christ 
raised was exactly twelve years old, and that her father's 
name was Jairus ; that the number of rabid swine was two 
thousand ; that the sum requisite for the purchase of loaves 
was two hundred pence, and the market value of 'the precious 
ointment three hundred. 

How few of these details really require any special know- 
ledge I How many are suggested by or might be inferred 
from the briefer narrative in S. Matthew ! Anyone might 
conclude for himself that when Peter was recognised he was 
exposed to some artificial light ; that when the disciples 
arrived in port * they moored to the shore ' ; and that Herod's 
birthday guests, whose good opinion he valued, were 'his 
lords, the chiliarchs, and the chief men of Galilee.* The 
legion of possessed swine would naturally suggest the idea 
that the demoniac's possession was multiple. The fact that 
in Matt., xxi 19, the withering of the fig tree takes place 
* immediately,' might well lead to a commentatorial notice 
that the foliage appeared drooping on the day subsequent ; 
and that such is the relationship of Mk., xi. 11-23, to Matt., 
xxi. 19, is proved by the fact that this desideration of a second 
day for the curse to take outward effect, leaves our Lord on 
the first day of his arrival in Jerusalem with nothing whatever 
to do except ircpt/3X^e<r^ai (ouc of our Second Evangelist's 
mannerisms), and ^Iso involves an awkward repetition of the 
evening retirement to Bethany (Mk., xi. 11, 19). Consider the 
frequently trivial character of these details. It is a rule in 
biography that later biographers employ what the earlier 
disdain. Crumbs are swept up only when the feast is finished. 



320 & Mark's Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 

CoDfidder, too, the tendencj to emphasize the manrellous. 
With the phoDomena of the apocryphal gospels before onr 
eyes, it ought sorely to be reckoned a sign of decadence that 
oar Second Evangelist dilates so exuberantly on the Gada- 
rene's ferocity and the epileptic's paroxysm. And sometimes 
the new details do not seem conceived quite in the character 
of the narratives to which they are added. ' The time of figs 
was not yet' explains the tree's barrenness, but is inhar- 
monious with Christ's expectation of finding fruit. After 
the very vigorous expulsion of the money-changers, it is 
said * He would not suffer that any man should carry a 
vessel through the temple ' ; a remark which awkwardly 
separates the money-changers from Christ's address to them. 
It is strange to hear that * He wanted to pass them by * after 

* seeing them distressed He came to them walking on the 
sea ; ' strange that the demoniac about to cry out against 
interference • ran ' to meet Christ ; strange, and from its need- 
less exactitude, grating, *And they had only one loaf after 

* They had forgotten to take bread.' 

Finally, we come to that point, so emphasized by Strauss, 
that the new details, though in some cases bizarre enough to 
give us confidence that they were not invented, are, in others, 
of a character incompatible with their being first-hand. It 
may well have been that a paralytic was let down by cords 
from a roof, let down into an ordinary central court-yard, 
but the Second Evangelist makes the bearers actually dig 
through and break up solid tiling, notwithstanding that the 
people were underneath. In the case of the pricing of the 
loaves and of the precious ointment, is there not something 
untrue to nature in making the disciples so ready with their 
figures ? Did onlookers in Gadara really occupy themselves 
in ascertaining the exact number of swine that perished? 

All the characteristics above noted in S. Mark's elaboration 
of detail are especially conspicuous in the Jaifrus history. Let 
us consider the extra items separately. Firstly. Why should 
the hemorrhagic woman come behind and touch? Because 
Christ was thronged suggests our Second Evangelist. But 
'^rowd has had no opportunity to gather, for Christ has 



S. Mark's Indebtedneit to S. Mattltm. 321 

only just disembarked from Gadara (a difficulty nnderlined by 
our Third Evaogeliet's tranBparent device of keeping a pre- 
viouB crowd waiting on the shore, Luke viiL 40). Further, 
Christ's address to the womau is rendered ineffectual by the 
awkward interval of thronging which separates it from her cure. 
Secondly. Notice the exuberance, ' begging and prayiHg ; ' 
'fearing and trembling;' also the nervous explanations of 
motive, ' Perceiving that the power from Him had gone forth,' 
'Overhearing the word which was spoken,* 'Feeling in her 
body that she was healed ; ' and the replacement of the 
oriental ' flute-players ' by the elucidatory paraphrase, ' many 
weeping and wailing.' Thirdly. Does not the First Evan- 
gelist's statement that the hemorrhage was of twelve years' 
standing imply its incurability? It is mere embellishment 
then, when the Second Evargelist adds, ' And she had suffered 
many things of many physicians, and spent all she had, and 
was nothing bettered, but rather made worse.' Fourthly. The 
ruler's amazingly trustful request — as reported in Matt ix. — 
that Christ will come and work such an unprecedented wonder 
as raising the dead is one that to a later writer, straining after 
verisimilitude, would naturally seem to require some shading 
off. That this is our Second Evangelist's motive in at first 
representing the child as merely sick is shown by Christ's 
speech to Jairus, when death has actually supervened, ' Pear 
not, only believe.' Fifthly. ' Talitha Cumi.' It is a thing to 
be felt, not argued about, that it was a later generation that 
required here and elsewhere the actual wonder-words, but it 
may be observed that in another case where the Second 
Evangelist, as against the First, supplies an Aramaic expres- 
sion, viz., ' Boanerges,' Mk. iii. 17, the remarkable disturbance 
occasioned in the construction extrudes it as unoriginal. 
Sixthly. ' He charged them (Jafrus and his wife) that they 
should say nothing to any one.' But Christ was accompanied 
by a great crowd let us remember, when He started for Jalrus's 
house. The message of the child's death was publicly de- 
livered ; and He found the house full of mourners. What 
possibility was there of secrecy! Wl 
comes from will appear presently. Sul 



322 & Mark's Jndebtednett to S. Mat&tw. 

that it IB eotirely oat of keeping with its cootezt Thus tbe 
JalruB history of Mk. v. aeems to stand ia the same relation to 
the oorreBpondeDt section of Matt ix. as a developed picture 
to an origioal sketch. Though thrice as loDg, it contaios few 
fnaturee really new. But magnifying these new features to 
the utmoet, still we have no more reason to assume that the 
author was iadepeodent than to infer from the ordinary un- 
oanoaioal details of a sacred picture that the artist had any 
exceptional source of information. 

8. Matthew is twice corrected in S. Mark. Firstly, we find 
S. Mark singularizing the pairs of Matt viii., is., xx., two blind 
men near the house of Jainis," two Gadarene demoniacs, two 
blind men at Jericho. It is generally supposed, in fact no 
other reasonable explanation has ever been su^ested, that 
the duplication in Matt viii., ix., xx., is a harmonist's device 
for recouoiliug oonflictiDg traditions: and, at any rate in the 
oasa of the cures at Gadara and Jericho, it is certain that 
neither of these conflicting traditions can possibly have been 
derived from S. Mark, since all and everything predicated in 
8. Matthew of the two Gadarene demoniacs, the two blind 
uieu at Jerii-lto, is predicated in S. Mark of the single Gadarene 
deutouiac. the single blind man at Jericho. It may be also 
uoti).^ tliat the L^ectind Evangelist's definite personal dee> 
Diipliona of the Gadarene «ud of the blind man at Jericho 
VMuld preclude subaequeut duplication. Thus, although in 
«iit}t\tlanxing the pairs of Matt viii., ix., xx., the Second Evan- 
(^lisl aeente ttt stand o» superior ground to the First, the form 
of hia uamtive jihows that he singularized with the narrative 
(^ the paira betVure his ey<e& t>eci^udly, we find S. Mark de- 
tiberatifl^' intprx^'inj; on the iutrvHJnotton l>> the charge ' By 
Beelaebub ' Matt ix. :$;-^ ; xii i:f-i4 With regard to this 
iutivHlu^'litU), ex'eryihiuj; m ^ Matthew is in the greatest con- 
tut^w. In ix. JT-M w« have the pair of blind men, mlre«dy 

M*v>*HiK« tv> ivWattfY iW aunKw M Bm^mnU Mk. viii. tt- 
i MmI, is,, \\Mit*»^r«MSs W« nr»^ iW Sewwd Gosf-^ oaiita 
f iV F\rM. Wsi.W4., t2iM« W Mswaii'iiBc^ as to tl>« |aiT>cj 

IKK 111* WAaW *.-tN>«. lh« Ut^tMCtkw «< W«t<KT, «Ihi Um 



S. Mark's Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 323 

mentioned, and a dumb man (v.r. 'and deaf); and in xii. 32- 
24, evidently a donblet to the above, a man blind and dumb 
(v.r. 'and deaf*).* In S. Mark on the other hand we have 
clear definite descriptioDS of a deaf mute in Decapolis Mk. vii. 
32-37, and, as said before, of a blind man at Bethsaida : but 
neither of these narratives corresponds in position to the bliad- 
deaf-dumb cures of 8. Matthew, and their place as introduction 
to the charge ' by Beelzebub ' is taken by ' His friends went 
out to lay hold on bim for they said, He is mad.' Let us ex- 
amine these new passages separately. 

The cure of the deaf mute in Decapolis, standiDg where it 
does, is demonstrably a foreign intrusion, for (a) It eats away 
a necessary preface to the eongregation of the 4000 : cf. Matt. 
3v, 29-31. How abruptly the 4000 appear in Mk. viii, 1 1 
They have already been with Christ three days I (b) A sur- 
viving fragment of the Matthiean preface, 'He doefh all things 
well ' Mk. vii. 37, requires for its justification some wider proof 
of power than a single cure; cf. Matt. xv. 30, S^ '''•'' Th" 
appearance of two multitudes Mk. vii. 33; viii. 1 
private withdrawal for the mute's cure involves is 
the extreme, (d) and so is the ' they ' in verse 37, fc 
the mute are alone. But though the Decapolis w 
at all of a piece with its context, it is easy to \ 
attraction which that context presented, viz., tl 
Matt. XV, 31 to 'the dumb speaking.' Similarly 
to the miracle at Bethsaida, a context seems to 
suggested by ' Having eyes, see ye not ; ' and th( 
case there is nothing actually resentful in the coni 
miracle stands isolated, yet it is so obviously fro 
pen as the miracle iu Decapolis that the two nan 

• 'And two blind mon followed. . . , And there n 
bim a dumb man. And the dumb spake : and the multitni 
Baying, It was never bo seen in Israel, But the Pharisee 
prince of the devils castath he out devila,' Itfatt. iz. 27-34. 

' There was brought to him one blind and dumb : and th 
ftnd saw. And the multitudes were amazed, snd said, Is t 
David 1 But the Pharisees said, This raan doth not cast < 
bj Beelzebab the prince of the devils,' Matt. zii. 22-24. 

XXYIII. 22 



324 S. MarV$ Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 

be extruded together. It may be added that both are shown 
to be editorial by the fact of their being entirely coached in 
the general style of the Second Gospel, the style common to 
all parts indiiSerently.* 

And now let us look back on the decapitated Beelzebub 
section in Mk. iii. That new and independent-looking intro- 
duction, &n i^4<rni < they Said, He is mad,' so impressive at first 
sight on account of its startling crudeness, is it new and inde- 
pendent in reality? Turning to the parallel passage in the 
First Gospel we find that there the multitudes i^Urrcuno (the 
only instance of HUrrawcu in S. Matthew), and the coincidence 
between the two Gospels cannot reasonably be set aside as 
fortuitous. Possibly it is the multitude, not Christy that ought 
to be supplied as the subject of i^^ff-ni, a supposition rendered 
likelier by the fact that mention has just been made of frenzied 
concourse. But the text at this particular point is in great 
confusion, and there is much in favour of the Codex Bezat and 
the old Latin ^(kefov yh.p 6ri i^iffTarai a^roi^,' ^excntiat coa' Which- 
ever explanation be coirect, one thing is clear, that the STi^ivrrt 
of Mk. iii. 21 is not independent of Matt xiL 22-24. 

Thus, by many considerations, we are brought to a con- 
clusion which the doublet, Matt. ix. 27-34; xii. 22-24, by itself 
renders inevitable. For it is obvious that the introduction to 
the Beelzebub section given in Matt. ix. ; xii. and that given 
iu S. Mark are, as literary devices, antagonistic ; and the co- 
incidence between the two MatthsBan introductions, (both 
narratives stating that Christ cured blindness and dumbness, 
that the multitudes were amazed, and that their amazement 
provoked the Pharisaic charge, 'By Beelzebub,') precludes 
any reasonable suspicion of unoriginality in S. Matthew. 

Let us turn now to the injunction of secrecy, Mk. v. 43. In 
Matt, ix., Christ raises the daughter of Jaifrue, and then heals 
two blind men — ' and he strictly charged them {ive^pLit-ffiri) say- 



* Notice the forcible phraseology and the exactitude of detail,— the 
medium employed in both cases, the Syriac wonder-word, the graduation 
of the blind man's recovery, and the report of Christ's gestures and emo- 
tions. 




f 



S. MarKs Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 325 

ing, See that no man know it But they went forth, and 
spread abroad his fame (8i€<p'^fuff<xy) in all that land.' As the 
two blind men are omitted in the Second Gospel (see 
above), it results that the injunction of secrecy is left 
applying to the persons mentioned just previously, viz., to 
Jamis and his wife — 'He charged them much that no man 
should know this * Mk. v. 43. Now it may be answered that 
the addition of an injunction of secrecy to the longer account 
of the raising of Jafrus's daughter in S. Mark is independent 
of the injunction to the blind men, and that here we have only 
a curious coincidence. But the absolute impropriety of the 
injunction as delivered apropos of the raising of Jafrus's 
daughter, a case in which secrecy was absolutely impossible 
(see above), stands in the way of such an escape. Again, this 
view of the matter is confirmed by the evidence of language. 
The combination of the words * ifiPptfjuUreou ' and .' SuufnifdteLv ' is 
peculiar to the passage in point and to Mk. i. 43, 45 — ' He 
strictly charged him (the leper), See thou say nothing to any 
man. But he went out and began to spread abroad the 
matter.' Things being so, it seems that in Matt ix. 31. we 
have no mere editorial addition, but that behind both the First 
Gospel and the Second, there was a document which con- 
tained matter peculiar to each. If the injunction of secrecy in 
Mk. V. 43, be admitted as a veritable relic of the cure of the two 
blind men, then once more we have occasion to recognise the 
priority of S. Matthew's pairs to the narratives of single cures 
in S. Mark ; for, the doubleness being evidently systematic, 
the cure of these two blind men cannot but come from the 
same hand as the double cures at Gadara and Jericho. Once 
more we have occasion to recognise the priority of the three 
simple narratives of Matt, viii., ix. xx., to the ornate narratives 
in S. Mark with all their picturesque details. And if in these 
three cases the priority of S. Matthew be admitted, then it 
must be admitted also in the case of the other miracles simply 
recounted in S. Matthew, embellished in S. Mark, e.g.j in the 
case of the cure of the epileptic (Matt xvi. 14-20, Mk. ix. 14- 
29). Thus the arguments for the posteriority of S. Mark over- 
lap, confirming and re-confirming one another. 






326 & MarVs IndebtedneM to & Matthew. 

It is always difficult for one writer to abbreviate another's 
work quite sucoessfully. Subjoined are certain reasons for 
inferring that the frequent abruptness, forcedness, and iQCon- 
sequentiality of the Second Gospel are due to abbreviation 
and excision. Champions of S. Mark's originality generally 
explain this abruptness by adducing a very late tradition * 
that S. Mark made hasty notes of S. Peter's discourses — an 
explanation which breaks down entirely when worked out in 
detail. For (a), the instances of abruptness, as will appear 
presently, are not at all of a superficial or irregular character, 
such as one might expect in a reporter's note-book, but are 
uniform and often intricate ; (6), the Second Gospel, far from 
being a haphazard collection of notes, exhibits both in sub- 
stance and style unmistakable tokens of art and design. No, 
it is in the fuller Matthaean text that the explanation of S. 
Mark's abruptness is to be found. The apostolic mission (Mk., 
vi. 7-13) lacks occasion ; we require the shepherdless multi- 
tudes of Matt., ix. 36. The prohibition against any viaticum 
appears] uumotived in the absence of *For the labourer is 
worthy of his hire.' That reference to the inhospitality of 
Sodom (unsuited to our un-Judaic Evangelist's Gentile 
audience), its* omission leaves us with the impotent climax I 
— * Shake off the dust for a testimony.' The centurion's 
sudden exclamation, * Surely this man was the Son of God,' 
requires phenomena like the earthquake and opening of the 
tombs to justify it, for of the rending of the veil the centurion 
would of course know nothing. The 4000 appear quite 
unexpectedly in the absence of any prefatory statement like 
Matt, XV. 29-31. ' But one of them that stood by smote the 
servant of the high priest' stands isolated and without literary 
motive, whereas in S. Matthew it forms a natural introduction 
to Christ's utterance about the legions of angels and drawing 
the sword. * He will send His angels to gather His elect ' is 
surely no fitting climax to the eschatology of Mk. xiii., but 
leads us to expect a higher note such as is struck in Matt. 
XXV., • Then shall he sit on the throne of His glory.' On 

* Reported by S, Jerome. 




S. Markka Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 327 

artistic grounds it seems impossible that the skeleton account 
of the Temptation (Mk. i. 12, 13) should be original ; and the 
ministration of angels, in the absence of any allusion to fasting 
and hunger, is left unexplained. Christ's suddenly reproach- 
ful address to the disciples, ' O faithless generation,' explicable 
enough in S. Matthew, where the disciples' failure to cure the 
epileptic is due to their want of faith,* stands without point in 
S. Mark, where the failure is attributed to other causes than 
faithlessness. The extreme awkwardness of * After two days 
was the passover : and the chief priests sought,' appears due 
to the Evangelist's incorporating Matt., xxvi. 2 (' Ye know 
that after two days the passover cometh *) into the narrative.! 
Such a climax as Peter's confession seems to require some 
commendatory reply to emphasize it, and without such reply 
the severe rebuke ensuing is left unbalanced. (By the way, 
notice the close correspondence between commendation and 
rebuke in Matt. xvi. — * Art a rock,' *art an offence;' * revealed 
to thee by God,' 'savourest of men'). How disappointing, 

* He entered into Jerusalem into the Temple ' (Mk., xi. 11), not 
followed by any incident whatever.} How superfluous * And 
they came to Capernaum. And when He was in the house,' 
etc., Mk., ix. 33 ; for the incident subsequent, the contention 

* Who greatest ? ' is not one that requires any localization ; 
whereas when we turn to S. Matthew we find that there the 

* ' If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed,' perhaps omitted by our 
Second Evangelist because another authority provided him with the text 
elsewhere (see Mk., xi. 23). 

tit is difficult to imagine the reverse process, an Evangelist's putting 
part of the narrative into a speech of Christ's. 

J In S. Matthew this entry is followed by the expulsion of the money- 
changers, and the introduction into the Temple of 'the blind and the 
lame ; ' but the extra day desiderated in the Second Gospel (see above) 
attracts the money-changers, and the introduction of the blind and the 
lame,' significant merely as pointing a contrast between David and the Son 
of David (cf. 2 Samuel, v. 6-8), would have been inharmonious with the 
Second Evangelist's un- Judaic design. 

Apropos of the excision of 'the blind and the lame,' compare Matt., 
xxi. 15, 16, with Mk. xi. 18. The latter might be derived from the 
former, but the former could scarcely be derived from the latter. 



328 & MarV9 Indebtedness to S. Matthew. 

mention of Capernaum and the house are thoroughly appro- 
priate, prefacing as they do the demand on S. Peter for the 
didrachma — a demand which would naturally have been made 
in Capernaum where Peter's house was situated. 

Mk. iii. 7-20 is in some respects one of the most important 
passages in S. Mark That remarkable abruptness and forced- 
nees, which has before been noticed, here reaches a climax. 
How strangely and suddenly the scene shifts, — ^ He spake that 
a boat should wait on Him,' * He goeth up into the mountain,' 

* He cometh into a housa' The ascent of the mountain is 
surely but inadequately accounted for by the mere intention 
to appoint Apostles. How strange that Christ should be said 
to appoint Twelve with the object of conferring on a future 
occasion the functions for which He appointed them I* Is 
there not some strain observable in ^ He calleth unto him whom 
he would himsel/y and they went unto him ? ' Why the awk- 
ward repetition of rX^oi in verses 7, 8 ? 'A multitude from 
Galilee followed him. And from Judea and from Jerusalem 
and beyond Jordan a multitude hearing what great things he 
did, came to him.' * Hearing what great things ' — but none 
have been recorded at this particular juncture. 

But all these peculiar phenomena receive explanation when 
we consider Mk. iii. 7-19 in connection with the correspondent 
verses in the preface to the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. iv. 
23, V. 1). There the congregation of the multitude from Galilee 
and the remoter districts follows naturally on a great circuit 
during which Christ * healed all manner of disease : and the 
report of him went forth into all Syria : ' but separated as it is 
from that circuit in our Second Gospel (cf. Mk. i. 39), the 

* irX^^of ' * irX^^of * bccomes necessary, the distinction that is to say 
between a multitude of Galileans who followed from a particular 
town, and a multitude from the remoter districts who ^ hearing 
what great things he did,' came. Again, considering the pre- 
face to the sermon en bloc^ we can see that the coming of the 

* ' He appointed twelve that he might send them forth to preachy and to 
have authority to cast out devils,' Mk. iii. 14, 15. * He called the twelve, 
and began to send them forth, and he gave them authority over the un- 
clean spirits,' Mk. vi. 7. 



S, Mark's Indebtedness to S, Matthew. 329 

disciples to Christ in Matt. v. 1, forms a clear doublet to their 
coming in Matt. ix. 35, 36 ; x. 1; * and thus we obtain adequate 
motive for the nervously awkward gloss above noted in Mk. 
iii. 14, 15, *that he might (presently) send them forth/ etc. 
Further, considering the combination in Mark. iii. 12 of 
*His disciples came unto him' (Matt. v. 1) with *He called 
unto him his twelve disciples' (Matt. x. 1), we find ade- 
quate motive for that other nervously awkward gloss, 
that the disciples who came to Christ were * whom he would 
himself.' Again, the close connection observable in Matt. 
IV. 23, V. 1, between circuit and multitude and disciples for- 
bidding any doubt that the arrangement there is original, it 
follows that Mk. iii. 13-19, interrupting the narrative so sadly, 
is a section out of place. Once having broken the continuity 
of his narrative by inserting this mountain section our Second 
Evangelist was obliged to pick up the thread from the point 
where it was broken ; and hence we are told ' He cometh into 
a house ' and * The multitude cometh together again.' Thus it 
appears that the peculiarities of Mk. iii. 7-20, far from evidenc- 
ing originality, constitute on the contrary a striking exhibition 
of elaborate mechanism. Other peculiarities pointing in the 
same direction are noticed elsewhere. And the importance of 
the passage is still further increased when we consider that 
Matt. iv. 24, v. 1, thus fragmentarily repeated in S. Mark, is 
the preface to the Sermon on the Mount, and presumably in- 
volves some portion of the Sermon itself, t 

* ' Jesus went about in all Galilee, teachiug in their synagogues, and 
preaching the gospel of the kingdom^ and healing all manner of disease 
and all manner of sickness. And seeing the multitudes, he went up into 
the mountain : and his disciples came unto him,' Matt. iy. 23, v. 1. 

'Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their syna- 
gogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner 
of disease and all manner of sickness. And seeing the multitudes, he was 
moved with compassion for them. And he called unto him his twelve 
disciples,' Matt. ix. 35, x. 1. 

t S. Mark omitted the Sermon perhaps because it presupposes the Law, 
— * Ye have heard how it was said by them of old time.' It may be no- 
ticed too that he was otherwise supplied with several of the important 
utterances (Mk. iv. 21 ; ix. 43-50 ; x. 11, 12 ; xi. 25, 26 ; xii. 40). But 



330 S. Mark's Indebtedness to & Matthew. 

In conclusion, there are manj other points, illustratiye of S« 
Mark's posteriority, on which I should like to have dwelt ; for 
example — 

The fact that in S. Mark the apostolic charge is given an 
immediate character (contrast Matt xiv. 12, 13, with Mk. 
vi. 29, 30), and that a portion, unsuitable under the 
altered circumstances, is transposed — (Mk. xiii. 5-13, 
Matt. X. 16-23 ; The fact that several of the Matthaean 
parables which S. Mark omits are connected by phrase- 
ology with matters that he repeats, and that on one 
notable occasion the omission is marked by ' With many 
such parables spake he unto them'; The fact that the 
angels' speech (Mk. xvi. 1-8), appears to involve a position 
outside the sepulchre ; 
The fact that in Mk. i. 1, and elsewhere we have re-echoes 
of S. Matthew's redactorial matter, and, contrariwise, that 
none of the general, presumably redactorial, peculiarities 
of S. Mark are reproduced in S. Matthew ; 
Finally, the fact that in substance and style S. Mark is one 
and whole in a sense in which S. Matthew is far from being, 
and, consequently, that the removal of any portion causes 
the whole work to fall in pieces — the unity of its design 
becoming a fatal measure of its unorigioality. 
These and other points I hope soon to deal with in book 
form, making it my object to trace S. Mark's indebtedness to 
the extent of not leaving suflScient material or room enough 
for an * ur Marcu&' The present article is only a reconnais- 
sance, undertaken with further operations in view, but I sub- 
rait that it contains proof that the indebtedness of S. Mark has 
been vastly under-rated, — that priority to S. Matthew is not 
the rule but the exception. 

F. P. Badham. 



in this and similar cases we must beware of exaggerating the difficulty of 
.omission. S. Mark's elaboration of miracle shows that his view of the 
relative importance of things was not the same as ours. Above all it must 
be borne in mind that we do not know to what extent he intended to 
supersede previous documents. 



(331) 



Art. VII.— the POETRY OF THE SKALDS. 

THE Old Northern poets were liberal in praise, and they have 
not lacked pens to commend them : they were sometimes 
bitter in satire, and they have not escaped the contempt of others. 
Two quotations will give in brief compass the attitudes of their 
admirers and detractors. The one is : — 

' Such an inspired and improrised poetizing occurs nowhere else in his- 
tory. Compare but the northern poets — and they were all improvisers — 
with the lamentable poetastery of the Roman emperors which Suetonius 
quotes, or with the Emperor Hadrian's verse-making, among which the 
disgusting '* animula vagula blandula" is known* to all.'* 

The other runs : — 

' If we make a distinction between Eddaic and Skaldic poetry, *' grand 
and sublime '' are epithets quite inapplicable to the latter, by far th& 
greater part of which is mere bombast, "tumid and obscure " enough to 
be utterly worthless. 'f 

There are reasons for both of these opinions, and it may be 
worth while to make some attempt to disentangle them. The 
Old North has so much poetry in its history, that one is loath to 
dismiss its poets as the Muse's charlatans. To judge them 
aright, some account must be taken of their own aims and poetic 
ideals ; and if their work is to be presented in a tongue not their 
own, this must be done in forms which do not entirely omit all 
that they considered essential to it. 

The common conception of a skald seems to be that of a poetic 
berserk, who hurled himself into the midst of battle, shouting 
rude snatches of alliterative verse to cheer the hearts of his fel- 
low-warriors. The picture is not unnatural, but is nevertheless 
incorrect. It has, however, the merit of being a shade nearer 
reality than the belief that the skalds were the authors of the 
sagas. No doubt Snorri and Sturla were good skalds, but that is 
not what is meant by the belief. 

The skald is primarily neither fighter nor historian, but a poet, 
and this is all that his name in itself implies. In respect of 
worldly position, he might be either king or cottar, earl or hench- 

* Benedict Grondal. t J. A. Blackwell. 



I 



332 The Poetry of the Skalde. 

man, 8o long as he had in him the g^ft of verse. The shepherd 
who lay on the old poet's grave-moand, and wrestled in vain with 
the making of verse, until the dead man came by night and 
helped him, became, we are told, * a great skald/ and made his I 

fortune at the courts of foreign princes. So the most untravelled 
Icelander might be a skald, though he had never seen the face 
of king or earl, and never wielded sword and shield, nor seen 
more glorious fray than a dispute over a horse-fight or the right 
of pasture. No doubt, if he were a good skald, this home-glory 
would not content him. It was a stirring time in those days, 
when * the cankers of a calm world and long peace ' were un- 
known. But his travels would only confirm the title, and not 
confer it. If his verses found favour with the king or earl whom 
he chose to visit, he might become retainer and court-poet, and 
follow his lord both in peace and war, but all this was only the 
external glory of his profession. The skald was not the battle- 
bard of Celtic custom (the precursor of the bagpipes and their 
bitter rival in the seventeenth century), though his own verses, 
or his recitation of older poems, might help at times to stir the 
courage of his comrades. When Thormod made the valley above 
Stikla-stead ring at daybreak with the lines of the old Bjarka- 
mil, he only did it by request for King Olaf s entertainment, 
and the saga adds that the host was delighted with his idea. 
King Olaf also wished to have his skalds safe inside the shield- 
burg. * You shall stay here,' he said, ^ and see all that is done, 
and it will be no carried tale then, for you yourselves shall tell of 
it, and make verses on it.' The skalds then agreed with each 
other that it would be a good thing to make some memorial verses 
on the events about to happen. So each of them composed a 
single verse, which was immediately got by heart by the men who 
stood round about them. 

It is probably from a few instances like these that the concep- 
tion of the wild fighting skald has been derived. Mallet, for 
example, states of Earl Hdkon's skalds that ^ they each sang an 
ode to animate the soldiers before they engaged ' with the J6ms- 
vlkings. Some verses certainly did pass on that occasion, but 
they bear no analogy to Mac Vurich's hrosnachadh catha at Har- 
law, or to any institution of the kind. It may also be suspected 



The Poetry of the Skalds. 333 

that Bagnar Lodbr6k's death-soDg has helped the common view 
a little. There is indeed no lack of battle-rage in Krdku^mdlf 
but * many speak of Wallace who never bent his bow,* and the 
author of the poem was not with Bagnar in the serpent-pit. 

The name of skald, then, whatever its various applications may 
be, means in itself no more than ' poet,' one skilled in the art of 
verse-making. Its origin is uncertain, none of the derivations 
that have been proposed being quite satisfactory.* Dr. Gud- 
brand Yigfusson inclines to the belief that the original sense was 
a bad one, denoting a composer of satirical or libellous verse. 
There are certain facts which lend some support to this theory, 
but there is against it the strong objection that language does not 
tend to improve the meaning of such words, and the word is com- 
monly used in a good sense. Even the compound skaldskapvy or 
skaldship, which in legal language denoted ' a libel/ is also current 
with the honourable meaning of * poetry,' especially in its formal 
aspect. 

The formal side is indeed, as we shall see, the safest from 
which to approach the poetry of the skalds, if we use the name 
in its technical sense, — the sense in which it commonly meets us 
in the sagas. The skald in the tenth, and still more in the suc- 
ceeding centuries, was above all an artist in language. His 
poetry consisted in the expression quite as much as in the matter 
of his verse, and the tendency was for the former to overgrow the 
latter. ^ The rude strains that were jingled out on the skaldic 
lyre,' is no more applicable to the verse of Sighvat and Arnorr 
than to the odes of English laureates. There may be differences 
of opinion as to the interest or poetic value of their work, but 
the form is perfect of its kind, and as far from * rude ' as any 
verse could well be. On the other hand, when we read that 
Kormak's verses * were equally devoid of true poetic genius as 

* Most improbable (or rather impossible) is that which derives it from 
the Old Irish scHide, a story-teller. Even if the word should not more 
correctly be written scUaighei the Norsemen could never have heard it so 
pronounced as to give it the form skald. In modern usage the word is 
written skdld, and pronounced almost like the English scowledf but the 
vowel was originally short. The plural has the same form as the singular, 
the gender being neuter. 



334 The Poetry of the Skalde. 

those of the other verBe-Btniihiere . • • who, in that mde age, 
hammered oat their rhapsodical ideas into the form of alliterative 
metre,* the criticism is more to the point, though none the less 
capable of being disputed. 

The forms of Old Northern verse were numerous enough, as 
may be seen at length in Snorri's treatise (Edtta-^al), — ^for the 
Icelanders wrote metrical treatises as well as the Irish, though 
they did not divide the metres into * common,' ' uncommon,' and 
* unknown I ' In dealing with skaldic verse, however, we have 
practically only one metre to consider, — that which goes by the 
name of drdtt^kvcett.* The earliest specimens of this belong to 
the poets of Harald Fairhair, and throughout the tenth century 
the metre is steadily ousting all others; in the eleventh and 
twelfth it is all-prevailing. The name indicates that the poems 
composed in this metre were intended for recitation before the 
king and his drdit (O.E. dryht)^ or household. It was thus the 
commonest metre for the drdpuj or laudatory poem, in which the 
skald celebrated the exploits of the king or earl to whom he 
attached himself, or whose favour he was desirous to gain. The 
name of ^ court-metre ' is thus appropriate enough, but it had 
another and no less important use. It was the constant sonnet- 
metre of the improvising skald, in which he expressed some feel- 
ing of the moment, or summed up some personal exploit. The 
limitations of space gave no great room for poetry, perhaps, but 
the lines were easily remembered; they served as a perpetual 
register of the fact which caused them, and they formed an 
essential part in the telling of many a tale. On such verses the 
saga-writer often had to depend, and numerous incidents were 
no doubt only remembered because of their connection with the 
poet's words. If these single verses lack the complex symmetry 
and majestic swing of the regular drdpa^ they contain much of 
what is most poetic in the work of the skalds. A solitary verse 
is sometimes the expression of the most striking moment in the 
life of an indindual. The author of it may not be reckoned 
among the famous skalds, but his single sonnet had enough in it 

* The substitution of vior uia the English word quite will give the pro- 
nunciation of kvatt. 



xii^Mi 



The Poetry of the Skalds. 335 

to keep his name alive to after-times. When Hallstein, son of 

Thengil the voyager, returned from Norway to his home in the 

north of Iceland, and learned that his father was dead, he made 

these lines : — 

' Droops the Headland^ 
Dead is Thengil ; 
Long hills lightly 
Laugh to Hallstein.' 

The simplicity of this is something rare among the verses of the 
skalds, to whom intricacies of metre and of diction were very 
dear. 

The first essential of a regular drdttkvcett verse is that it shall 
consist of eight lines, each of three accents, and commonly of 
six syllables. This at once distinguishes the Scandinavian al- 
literative verse from the Anglo-Saxon and Old German, where 
no such division into stanzas is observed. That the skalds con- 
sidered the verse to consist of eight lines is manifest from several 
passages in the sagas, to say nothing of the treatises on metre ; 
and it is very unfortunate that in the Corpus Poeticum Boreale 
the arrangement of printing the stanza in four long lines was 
adopted. It is not only contrary to universal practice, but has no 
advantages to recommend it. 

Alliteration, of course, is necessary; no Icelandic poetry can be 
without it, from the earliest times to the present day. When this 
type of verse was first introduced, probably no more than the 
above requirements were necessary, but even in the earliest speci- 
mens the additional ornament of assonance is present. This 
feature is lacking in the older and shorter measures employed in 
the lays of the Edda, and its adoption has been attributed to 
Celtic influence. We are here on very doubtful ground indeed. 
Chronicles assure us that Scandinavian contact with Ireland be- 
San in 795 A.D., and for a long time the relations were exclus- 
ively hostile. The poet Bragi must have flourished previous to 
850 A.D., as Dr. Finnur Jdnsson has lately taken the trouble to 
establish. In Bragi's verse we find the beginnings of this system 
of assonance, so characteristic of the Skaldic verse. Whether 
these dates will allow us to assume, with Whitley Stokes, that 
assonance was adopted from the Irish metre rinnardj is a very 



336 The Poetry of the Skalde. 

doubtf al point. The rules for the composition of rinnard are by 
no means the rales obsenred in drdttkvcety and the imitation is at 
best veiy problematical. 

The general effect of Bragi's verse, as distinct from its more 
elaborate successor, may be sufficiently illustrated by two later 
examples. The one is taken from the verses composed by Torf- 
Einarr, the Orkney Earl, and the other belongs to Egil the son 
of Skallagrim, or at least is assigned to him in the saga. Einarr 
had avenged the death of his father Rognvald, and thus com- 
ments on the way in which his brothers had neglected their plain 
duty in the matter. 

' Neither Hrolf's nor HroUaug's 
Hand I see outsending 
'Plight of shafts on foemen, 
Father's death avenging : 
And this eve, while eager 
Arms we bear, uncaring 
Thorir, thane in MaBri, 
Thinks of naught but drinking.' 

This verse, besides the strict alliteration required,* shows full 
assonance in some of its lines (bearj care; think^ drink)^ and im- 
perfect in others {handy send ; TTiorir, M(Bri\ being rather more 
complete in this respect than the original, which has only imper- 
fect ones. Nor is the second assonant syllable always found at 
the end of the line, as in the above. Egirs verse, which fol- 
lows, shows it in a position not uncommon in this early type. 
Egil, in his seventh year, had lodged an axe in the head of one 
of his playfellows, which made his admiring mother declare that 
there was good viking stuff in him, and that he must get a war- 
ship when he was old enough. Then Egil, says the saga% made 

this verse : — 

' Mother mine has bidden 
For myself to purchase 
Yessel fast in floating — 
Fare abroad with vikings : 

■ ■ ■ — ■ — - - ■ _ ■ - 

* The second line of each couplet shows the alliterative letter in its first 

accented word. The same letter begins two words in the preceding line. 

Thus-- 

* Rognvald's Fell is fairly 

(JP^ate is just) requited.' 




The Poetry of the Skalds. 339 

is doing on the tent there, and have your verse ready by the time 
I have finished reciting mine, and don't use any words in your 
verse that I use in mine.' These and other instances, such as 
Hallf red's * sword ' verse, show that the skald was expected to 
express himself with readiness even under additional difiiculties. 

But if a single verse in this metre was not such a, difficult task, 
to compose a drApa of twenty, thirty or even sixty stanzas was 
something for the skald to be proud of. Einarr Skiilason's poem 
on King Olaf, which he recited before the kings and archbishop 
at Nidaros in 1152 a.d., extends to 71 stanzas of drdttkvcBti, and 
its composition could have been no light task. While other 
metres were not seldom employed for this class of poem, no other 
was so general a favourite. Some poets attempted variations on 
it by dropping a syllable in the line, but the result is not a 
pleasing one. It is very different when the line is lengthened by 
a foot, resulting in the metre hrynhend, the best specimens of 
which are the poems of Arnorr and Sturla. Of Arnorr's poem 
King Harald Hardrddi declared that it would be repeated so long 
as the Northern lands were inhabited. Probably the earliest 
specimen is the fragment of a poem composed by a Hebridean 
Christian, when the ship he was sailing in encountered some 
tremendous waves in the Greenland seas, about the vear 986. 
The stefy or burden, of the poem is preserved in Landndmahdkj 
and makes up half a verse. 

* Mildest judge, that monks upholdest, 
Make my path amidst the breakers ; 
Highest might, in heaven that sittest, 
Hand me safe through all my wand'ring.' 

It might have tasked the worthy Egil to save his bald pate 

and wolfish ej^ebrows at York, if he had tried to compose his 

* Head-ransom ' in any of these metres. He chose the rarer but 

simpler device of end-rhymes, and set out thus in praise of Earl 

Eirik. 

* O'er waves I went 

To westward bent, 

With Odin's art 

In eager heart ; 

Drew out my oak 

When ice upbroke, 
xxviii. 23 



340 The Poetry of the Skalde. 

And launched along 
With load of song.' 

This was in 936 aj>., before the use of drdttkvcBtt had become 
so inevitable as it was at a later period. When Gonnlaug in 
1002 treated Earl Sigtryg^ at Dublin to a poem in the same 
metre, he was no doubt influenced by the example of Egil, in 
whose district he had grown up. Only twelve lines are 
preserved, besides the etef or burden (which is * With flesh he 
feeds The Fury's steeds,' ue.^ the wolves) : — 

* I know right well 
Whose worth I tell ; 
Of Kvaran's kind 
His kingly mind. 

To me he'll lend 
(He loves to spend : 
The bard is bold) 
His brightest gold. 
Did ere his ear 
Another hear 
His fame rehearse 
In finer verse.' 

One can hardly believe that this kind of thing cost Gunnlaug 
much racking of brains. Perhaps he thought it good enough for 
.Earl Sigtrygg, who was evidently unaccustomed to hear his 
praises from a skald. When the recitation was ended, he called 
his treasurer to him, and said, ' How shall I reward the poem ? ' 
' What do you think yourself ? ' asked the treasurer. * How 
would it do, if I gave him two merchant vessels ? ' asked the 
king, as the saga styles him. 'That's too much,' said the 
treasurer ; ' other kings give such things as swords of gold rings 
in return for a poem.' Sigtrygg, thus advised, rewarded Gunn- 
laug with articles of dress and a gold ring. The story makes 
one speculate whether Earl Sigtrygg was ever berhymed by Irish 
bards, as his father Olaf Ouaran seems to have been in the lines, 

* Olaf, that's over 

» The eastern outflow 

Of Erin the ancient,* 
The dear king of Dublin, etc.' 



* ' Prince of the eastern ford of meadowy Erin ' is the literal rendering, 
i.e.. King of Ath-Gliath, or Dublin. 



The Poetry of the Skalds. 341 

These are lines which certainly have a kind of Northern ring 
about them, and make us wish to know more about the personal 
relations of Gall and Gael in tenth-century Ireland. 

To return to the drdpa^ there are various technicalities con- 
nected with its arrangement, division into parts, insertion of the 
burden, and so on, which need not be more minutely considered. 
They could hardly have added much to the difficulty of composing 
it, though they may have made it more hard to understand when 
it was recited. In this we come to the real crux of skaldic 
poetry, over which so many have stumbled. The hardest of 
Greek choruses is not more diflScult to unravel than some of 
these complicated verses, though if but one-tenth of the labour 
that has been spent on Greek choruses had been given to the 
Old Northern poetry, the difficulties would have been much 
fewer by this time. To a considerable extent they have been 
due to manuscript corruptions, and to imperfect acquaintance 
with the poetic vocabulary and rules of the verse. Comparison 
and wise conjecture have already done much to remove these 
initial bars to the study of skaldic verse, and there is now no 
lack of reliable material on which to work. In no long time we 
may expect to see the whole of the Old Northern poetry in as 
satisfactory a form as that of Greece and Home. 

The point that remains is that of the boy with the alphabet, — 
is it worth while going through so much to learn so little ? A 
verse of eight lines is apt, when analysed and- translated, to 
dwindle down to some dozen words of very ordinary import, in 
which no poetry whatever is discernible. * Translating the 
Gaelic word for word is what spoils ft,' and it is probably a false 
method of translation that has ruined the reputation of the 
skalds as poets. The elocutionist who insists that verse is to be 
read as prose leaves no reason for writing in verse at all ; and 
what operae pretium is the skald to have for his alliterations and 
his assonances, if his work is to be judged by its value in unre- 
generate prose I The reader of the bald abstracts in the Corpus 
poeticum boreale may well be excused for seeing neither beauty 
nor poetry in what is there presented to him, but who would 
estimate a chorus of Aristophanes by its value even in the best 



342 The Poetry of the Skalds. 

translation? The translation ought to guide us back to the 
original, and not take its place. 

It was not metre, however, but mythology, combined with 
their views of poetic diction, that made the skalds both di£Fuse 
and obscure. The kenning^ or device to avoid calling a spade a 
spade, or anything else by its own name,* is the distinctive 
mark of all their verse ; and Grondal is right in saying that it is 
* the eternal theme which lies at the bottom of these complaints 
that so little is to be made out of the poetry when one has got to 
understand it.' It is, no doubt, extremely annoying to the be- 
ginner to find that some two lines of sonorous words, mainly 
perfect strangers to him, mean no more than ' man,' or ^ woman,' 
or ' ship ; ' and there is ample excuse for his saying in his haste 
that the whole of skaldic verse is vanity. He is not likely to 
appreciate the enthusiasm of Grondal, who maintains that the 
kenniiigs are the glory and beauty of the poetry, — * the magic 
veil which the poet casts over the idea. There is such an en- 
chantment over all this poetry, that we become enchanted our- 
selves, and do not know up from down. These are the dragons 
of fabulous colours and forms which lie outside Beauty's en- 
chanted castle, and when one has overcome them, they themselves 
become Beauty, the true poetical idea.' 

We must plead guilty in the matter of the kennings, and we 
fihall probably take the true view of them, if we remember that 
the skald was, above all, an artist in language and an authority 
on myths. In his verses he desired to display both of these ac- 
complishments, and it is a feature by no means confined to 
Northern literature if in the end the style overpowered the 
matter. Skaldic poetry is not simple and easy to understand, 
simply because it was never meant to be. If Thucydides wrote 
darkly tva fi^ iraxraf etif parbs dXXA rots Mav (robots, as Marcellinus assures 
us, so also the skald composed with the fear of his fellows before 
his eyes. When the poetic aspirant, fresh from the wilds of Ice- 



*A kermmg is a phrase like 'storm of the sword's edges '= battle ; 
' wound-snake '= sword; 'wound-snake's wielder'= warrior. The ken- 
nings for ' man ' in Grondal's Clavis Poetica extend to 39 closely printed 
columns, probably some 2000 in all. 



The Poetry of the Skalds. 843 

• 
land, thrast himself into the king^s hall in Norway, and asked 
leave to recite his panegyric, he knew that among his hearers 
would be the king's own skalds, ready to comment on any want 
of knowledge or want of skill he might display. Elaboration of 
allusion, of language, and of metre, was the standard that all 
aimed at. When Gunnlaug recited his poem to the Swedish 
King Olaf, the latter asked Hraf n for his opinion of it. * It is 
a high-sounding poem,' said he, ' but coarse and somewhat stiff, 
as Gunnlaug^s own nature is.' Then Hrafn recited his own 
poem, and Gunnlaug criticised it. * It is a pretty poem.' he said, 
* as Hrafn himself is in appearance, but it has little show about 
it; and why,' he added, *did you make only Siflohk about the 
king ? Did you not think him worth a drdpa ? ' 

In reading the verses of the skalds, whether the single sonnets 
or the long poems, the question suggests itself, whether it is pos- 
sible that they could have been clearly understood by those who 
heard them for the first time. The elaborate kennings, the 
parenthetical clauses, the insertion of parts of the burden in 
separate verses,* — all this must have laid a heavy tax on the 
attention of the hearers even although the style of poetry was 
familiar to them. This is shown by the fact that a modern Ice- 
lander finds the verses unintelligible without study, though every 
word may be familiar to him, and in reading the sagas aloud, the 
verses are nearly always omitted as conveying no meaning to the 
audience. It is perhaps going too far to say that they were 
^conundrums' to the poet's contemporaries, but in the sagas 
themselves indications are not wanting that the meaning was 
sometimes difficult to follow. When Thorleif made bold to re- 
peat his satire to its object, Earl Hdkon, the latter was at first 
under the impression that there was praise in every verse. This 
may have been an exceptional piece of cleverness on the part of 
Thorleif, but one is inclined to think that various other poems 
could not have yielded a very distinct impression at their first 
hearing. The probability is that only when the verses were got 
by heart, did the meaning of each word and line become perfectly 

* As in Hallar-Stein's Bekateffa, where it requires the last lines of three 
verses to make up the whole iUf, 



844 The Poetry of the Skalds. 

« 

clear. This was certainly the case with much of the Old Irish 
verse, in which wisdom was intentionally darkened by obscarity 
of expression. An oral literature is not necessarily a simple one, 
as we are sometimes inclined to think. It may be suspected that 
not seldom the unprofessional hearer of a drapa was in the posi- 
tion of the King of Greece, when Brian, the son of Tuireann, 
made his covert request for the famous pigskin. ' That is a good 
poem,' said the King, ^ only I do not understand a word of its 
meaning.' 

Even a skald might at times be imposed on in this way, if we 
are to give credit to the amusing anecdote of Sneglu-Halli, told 
in the saga of Harald Hardradl Halli was in England, and 
when all his preparations to sail for Norway were complete, he 
went to Court and recited a poem to the English King. When 
the recitation was ended, the King asked a skald who was with 
him, what the merits of the poem might be. The skald answered 
that it was well done, whereupon the King asked Halli to stay 
there and let it be learned by others. ' That may not be,' said 
Halli, ' I am all ready to depart, and can make no stay here.' 
* Then,' said the King, * your reward for the poem will be in ac- 
cordance with the satisfaction we have out of it. Sit down there, 
and I shall make them pour silver over your head, and you shall 
have what sticks in your hair.' Halli went outside first, got his 
hair smeared with tar, and made it stick out as much as possible, 
80 that it caught a fair amount of the King's silver. But as for 
the poem, says the saga, it was all nonsense, made up as he went 
along. 

We shall, therefore, in all likelihood be doing no injustice to 
the skalds if we judge their work to a great extent, though not 
entirely, from the formal side. Of its excellence in this respect 
there can be little question, considering the difficulties of the 
form. Lucilius, with his two hundred verses an hour stans pede 
in una, had a slight task compared with the Old Northern poet. 
But the skald had an ample reward when his poem was com- 
pleted. In the hall of some mighty king or earl, hung with 
shields and swords, and filled with famous warriors, he would 
pour forth his well-conned poem, with the ring of battle in every 
line, till the listeners seemed again to hear the clang of blades 



The Poetry of the Skalds. 345 

and crash of shields from some hard-foaght fray, in which they 
themselves had borne a manly part. This was a glory well 
worthy the poet's pains, and shield or sword or good gold-ring 
were a snre addition to his treasures. It needs no understanding 
of their meaning to feel the effect of the sounding lines of Hall- 
fred or Sighvat, Arnorr or Sturla ; and it is not the poet's fault 
if the effect he aimed at is lost, when the wreathed folds of his 
verse are shaken out into plain prose. 

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that there is only 
form and nothing more in the verse of the skalds. They are 
not to be talked of all in one breath ; some were true poets, and 
others were mere versifiers, as in anv other literature of the same 
extent. It must also be borne in mind that many of the separate 
verses in the sagas are of very doubtful authenticity. The saga- 
editors of the 12th and 13th centuries did not hesitate to put 
verses of their own manufacture into the mouths of their heroes. 
Such, for instance, are the verses in Grettis Saga, which need 
not be laid to the outlaw's charge. Th^t such verses should 
have much poetic value is hardly to be expected. But where the 
verses are genuine, there is often true poetry in the thought 
which underlies the skald's artificial expression, and it only 
requires a thorough acquaintance with his language, and 
some sympathy with his conception of the poetic ideal, to 
discover a real beauty in his work. To translate it ade- 
quately is difficult, often well-nigh impossible, because the 
kennings are not available in a modern rendering, and in them 
lies the poetic adornment of the thought. Whatever be the value 
,of his verses, it is doing the skald an injustice to translate them 
into prose, or even into ordinary English verse. This is a task 
which the English translators of sagas have not come out of as 
well as could be wished, probably from an indisposition to give 
the necessary time to it. One can well uaderstand that a trans- 
lator of Heimskringla, for instance, should feel impatient at the 
even flow of Snorri's prose being broken up by these polished 
boulders of verse. They can hardly be thrown aside, but they 
are to be got round as easily and as quickly as possible, and a 
rough rendering into English rhyme enables the translator to go 
on again with the prose narrative. This is scarcely fair treat- 



346 A Liberal Education, 

ment either of the skald or of Snorri, who relied on the verses 
for his factSy and inserted them to adorn his tale. If fall jastice 
is not to be done to the technique of the verses, it would be much 
better to omit them altogether. To render them worthily it 
would be necessary either to practice the writing of drdttkvcBtt in 
English — which would be no impossible feat— or to adopt some 
equally complex metre more in accordance with the spirit of 
English rhythms. The kennings, no doubt, would have to be 
largely abandoned. Their allusions are too recondite for the 
general reader, and the want of variety in English inflections 
would render them awkward to handle. Some natural expansion 
of the poet's thought might be required to fill their place, but 
this need not altogether spoil the faithfulness of the rendering. / 
Only when this method of translation is properly carried ojil/ 
will English readers have any opportunity of forming a fair 
judgment of the quality of skaldic verse. Their opinion then 
would probably be, that the truth lay very much between the 
two views with which we started. The verses are scarcely to be 
called ^inspired/ and 'grand and sublime' are not the natural 
adjectives for them ; but they have an accuracy of form that 
removes them from any charge of being * rude,' nor are they 
always * tumid and obscure enough to be utterly worthless.' They 
have nojnean value in many respects — artistic, poetic, linguistic 
and historical, but perhaps no one is likely to find much enjoy- 
ment in them, who is not thoroughly versed in the language and 

learning of the skalds themselves. 

W. A. Craigie. 



Art. VIII.— a LIBERAL EDUCATION : THE FUNCTION 

OF A UNIVERSITY. 

An Address delivered before the University of Ediribv^rgh at the Graduation 

Ceremony, llih April, 1896. 

THE Universities of Scotland have lately passed through a 
series of changes probably wider and more searching than 
have ever befallen similar institutions within the same space of 
time. It was natural, therefore, that many of my recent pre- 



A Liberal Education. 347 

decessors in this place should have found matter for their dis- 
courses in the revolution, by which they themselves were so 
closely affected. My chair, on the other hand, is one of the 
products of the Universities Commission, and it would be a 
sort of impiety on my part, even if I possessed the necessary 
knowledge, to criticise the system which gave me birth. 

But avoiding particular remarks, which would be out of 
place, and setting aside personal considerations, which it is 
always easier to do where one acknowledges a benefit than 
where one conceives an injury, I may be permitted to con- 
gratulate the University on the general scope and direction of 
the recent change. It is a reform imbued with a large and 
tolerant, a progressive and hopeful spirit. Without obstruct- 
ing the ancient and time-honoured avenues of learning, the 
Commission has opened up new roads to distinction, and sanc- 
tioned new methods of stimulating mental activity. By en- 
larging the curriculum, it has not only recognised studies 
hitherto ignored or discouraged ; it has also implicitly adopted 
the view that the method of education is even more important 
than the subject, that it matters less what you learn than how 
you learn it. It has, in fact, brought the University one long 
step nearer to the ideal towards which all Universities should 
strive — the ideal of a liberal education. 

In these days of commercial schools and technical instruc- 
tion, it may almost seem retrogressive to point to liberal 
education as the supreme end of academic effort. And yet I 
am inclined to maintain the paradox, that it is just in these 
latter days that we are grasping, more closely than before, 
not only the true nature of liberal education, but also the fact 
that a University is its proper home. But first, what is a 
liberal education t Let us define it as a mental, moral, and 
physical training, which aims uniquely at the elevation of the 
mental, moral, and physical man. This, indeed, is liberal edu- 
cation in its fullest sense : it is moral and physical as well as 
mental : but, as the function of a University is primarily intel- 
lectual, and as the distinctive marks of a liberal education are 
to be found on its intellectual side, to that side I shall naturaHy 
confine myself. 



348 A Liberal Education. 

The first, then, of these marks is a negative one. A liberal 
education fits a man for no special pursuit ; it turns him out a 
master of no single crafL On the contrary, it makes a boast 
of that characteristic which, in the eyes of Cato the elder, was 
the reproach of Oreek philosophy. Its very essence, if we 
regard it from the utilitarian point of view, is its inutility ; for 
it is in the fact that it has uo professional aim, that its liberality 
consista Professional education, however excellent in its own 
way, inevitably partakes, in a greater or less degree, of what 
the Greeks called, rd /Sdravo-or, the mechanical. As it becomes 
practical, it ceases to be liberal Hence it was that the 
medieval schools distinguished the three great faculties of 
Divinity, Law, and Medicine, from the seven Liberal Arts. 
But let me not be misunderstood. There is nothing more 
ennobling than the earnest and enlightened pursuit of those 
great professions in which year by year the flower of our youth 
enlists — the professions of the Church and the Bar, of Medicine 
and Education. The special instruction which fits a student 
for these professions is energising in the highest degree: it 
stimulates mental activity and holds aloft the lamp of learning ; 
but, in so far as it is hmited or specialised in its aim, in so far 
as it conduces to success and distinction in a certain walk of 
life, it is not liberal. It w,ould be well, if it were possible, that 
all those who enter on those special courses of study could 
pass first through the wider fields of a really liberal education. 
I do not say that professional education is better or worse than 
liberal : I am not concerned to argue this point : all I say is, 
that it is not the same. It may no doubt be urged that the 
utility of a liberal education is only less apparent because it is 
more general, more diffused. But its defenders had better 
resign the claim to utility. Nothing is gained by confusing 
different things. 

From this primary difference there follows a second. Inas- 
much as liberal education aims at the improvement of the 
whole man, irrespective of any special vocation, it is naturally 
universal in its intellectual range. It is free, unrestricted, 
liberal, not only in its object, but in its scope. It takes all 
knowledge for its province. All subjects of human enquiry 



A Liberal Education, 349 

are open "to it, so they fulfil one condition — the condition, 

namely, that they shall be capable of scientific treatment. I 

do not mean to say that a man shall not claim to be liberally 

educated till he have mastered all the sciences. Whatever 

<^ J>^ universality of knowledge an Aristotle or a Bacon may have 

W C attained to, in the days of Aristotle or of Bacon, such univer- 

"^ sality is no longer attainable by the most gifted of men, much 

less by the average University student. What I mean is, that 

it is essential for a place of liberal education that it shall ex- 

olude no worthy branch of human knowledge : that all manner 

of studies shall be open to the student, who has a right to find 

in a University competent direction in any subject which he 

may desire to know. 

This was not, I need hardly say, the old idea of a Univer- 
sity : it was not the principle which governed the great schools 
of the Middle Ages, whence our modern Universities have 
sprung. The ancient University of Salerno was simply a 
school of medicine : the University of Bologna was a school of 
law : yet they were none the less Universities in the medieval 
sense. We are all of us aware that the -title University had 
no original connection with universality of learning ; it was 
flimply a collective title for the whole body of teachers and 
students : but it is inseparably and rightly connected with the 
idea of universality in the present day. It is in this sense that 
a University has been well defined by a great teacher as * a 
school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and 
learners from every quarter.' So we may have schools of 
theology, schools of medicine, schools of agriculture, but it is 
the University which contains them all. 

This universality at which we now aim leads me on to an- 
other distinctive mark of a liberal education. As it is unlimited 
in its range, as it has no specific professional object, what is 
the unity that binds it together? It is to be found in its 
method and its aim — an aim and method inseparably con- 
nected — the scientific pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. 
I use the phrase, * for its own sake,' because it expresses the 
independence which I insist on ; but it must not obscure the 
fact that the advancement of the student, and not the advance- 



350 A lAberal Edueatioiu 

ment of knowledge, must be the supreme aim of a place of 
education. A University is indeed, or ought to be, not only a 
place of education, but a place of learning and research. I 
would even maintain that, whatever elementary teachers may 
do, no holder of an academic chair can duly instruct and 
stimulate his pupils, unless he enlarge and re-invigorate his 
own mind by frequent voyages into the unexplored or less- 
known regions of the science which he is called to teach. 
This, however, is by the way. It is with education, not with 
research, that we are just now concerned. Regarding our 
academic duties from the educational point of view, we subor- 
dinate research to education, and say that it is essential to 
liberal education to pursue knowledge for its own sake. 

But the scientific nature of this pursuit introduces the limita- 
tion of which I spoke just now — the limitation, namely, that 
the subjects studied in a University must be capable of rational 
treatment. They must be food not merely for the perceptions 
or the memory, but for the intellect. In other words, they 
must belong rather to the field of science than to that of know- 
ledge. It is not the acquisition of knowledge, but the pro- 
cesses of reason which educate the mind. Knowledge, we are 
often told, is power; but science, which is reasoned knowledge, 
is powerful in a tenfold degree. For knowledge is applicable 
only to particulars, but a scientific education — I use science in 
no narrow sense — gives a general capacity and flexibility to 
the intellect. And this scientific training is at its best when 
it is both wide and independent ; when, as the Greeks put it, 
the mind follows whithersoever the \&yos leads, with no ulterior 
motive beyond the discovery of truth. This kind of intellec- 
tual pursuit is, indeed, essentially Greek : the stimulus to pure 
research is one of the greatest of our debts to Hellas. It is 
also the main business of a University, whose highest function, 
as John Henry Newman has said, is ^ to educate the mind to 
reason well in all matters, to reach out to truth and grasp it.' 

Yes, to reach out to truth and grasp it, to desire truth and 
to become capable of finding and holding it — that is indeed 
the highest aim of a liberal education and of University life. 
And this is where the moral effect of a University training 



A Liberal Education. 351 

comes in : here the moral and intellectual influences converge. 
The Church may inculcate morality by precept, the home may 
induce it by practice and example, the law may enforce it by 
legal sanctions, but it is for the University to found it upon an 
intellectual basis. Have we not been told, by the Greeks 
again, that virtue is knowledge — in other words, that intelli- 
gent virtue is the stoutest, the most enduring virtue? It is 
not the primary duty of a University to teach morality : its 
direct influence is principally intellectual; but its indirect 
ethical effect can hardly be over-estimated. For, on the one 
hand, this bold and independent search for truth stimulates 
and sustains the higher morality by the qualities which it calls 
into play, by the devotion to an ideal aim, by the abnegation 
of self; while, on the other hand, it facilitates the discovery of 
that rational basis of ethical conduct which is demanded by 
the reasonable man. 

But it is not only the art of reasoning well, not only the 
desire for truth, which a liberal education should confer. 
There is also something further, something which is not reason 
nor science nor knowledge, but rather is connected with these 
as effect with cause. It is a habit of mind, which, for want of 
a better name, we call culture. I am half afraid to employ 
the word, so abused has it been, so tainted, one may almost 
say, by the neighbourhood of priggishness and pedantry. 
And yet surely it is a most estimable quality of mind which is 
produced by a liberal education, working on a generous and 
fruitful soil. * Reading,' says Bacon, * maketh a full man,' but 
reflection must be added to make culture. Culture is not 
fullness : at all events it is not repletion. It is rather an 
attitude or habit of mind, comparable to the effect of good 
society on manners and deportment, or to the bodily results 
produced by a suflSciency of good food and plenty of whole- 
some exercise under the open sky. 

The mind that has habitually fed upon what is worthiest 
in science and literature acquires a combined firmness and 
sensitiveness, a grasp and subtlety, a decision and a delicacy 
of touch, which are the mental equivalents of vigorous bodily 
health. Such a mind gains confidence, for in its stores of in- 



J 



352 A Liberal ^ueorion. 

formation it poBBesBes a touchstone, a atandard by which to 
judge new things. But at the same time it is humble and 
oautiouB, for it has proved its own weakness, and has found 
how difBcult it is to see into the heart of things. It is not 
laviBh of its praise, for it is aware how few reputatioas stand 
the test of time ; hut it is tolerant, for it knows that a great 
many average men go to make oae genius. It is this thought- 
ful mental habit, this candid and dispassionate outlook, which 
we associate with culture in its true sense. The furniture of 
\ the cultivated mind is not facts, not what we call learuiug, 
\ but rather the ideftp which are the deposit of facts well 
Ipondered : its peculiar characteristic is that meutal oqurteay 
and polish which springs from intimacy with the great works 
of the iutellect in alt time. This is the ripest fruit of a liberal 
education : a University is the garden where it ought most 
eaRily to grow. I am far from saying that it infallibly ripens 
in a University, or that it ripens nowhere else. All I say is 
that it is in a University, and by means of a liberal education, 
that it has the best chance of coming to maturity. 

There are yet two other aspects of University life which 
contribute to the liberality of its influence. One nf these is 
A^ its cosmopolitanism, its social universality. A University is, as 
' I said just now, not only a place of universal learning, but a 
body of teachers and learners from every quarter. It is a 
microcosm, a little world, open to every comer. Here we find 
a larger choice of friends than we have ever had before, larger 
probably than we are ever like to have again. And we rank 
our friends, our prophets, our heroes, by a liberal, an uncou- 
ventional standard. It is in one sense a democratic, in another 
sense an aristocratic society, to which we belong. It is aristo- 
cratic in that it discards the pretence of equality, that it falls 
willingly into liue behind its recognised leaders: it is demo- 
;aders hear sway according to what is in 
I, not in proportion to the money in their 
es they wear upon their backs. Such 
all : here we have, as nowhere else, th© 
(ent», 
beyond the bounds of our parish, our 



A Liberal Education. 353 

school, our religious circle, our native town, even our native 
country, into a wider field, which knows, or at least may know, 
no limits save the great world. We rub shoulders with men 
from across the Border, from across the seas, from the furthest 
ends of the earth. We do not come to love our country less^ 
but to appreciate other countries at a truer rating. We do 
not grow less patriotic, but we learn that patriotism need not 
be provincial. 

And this brings me to the last of those elevating and 
liberalising influences exercised by a University, to which I 
call your attention to-day — the influence of site, of beautiful 
and stimulating environment. We leave our homes: we 
exchange what in general must be petty or common-place 
surroundings for new scenes, a wider range of view, noble 
buildings and historic memories. The influence which these 
things bring to bear should at once deepen the feeling for our 
native land, and relieve it from ignorant and narrow prejudice. 
Such an influence is in itself a liberal education, and it is one 
to which we in this ancient seat of learning owe a peculiar 
debt. Other famous places of education may trace their origin 
to a more remote antiquity, and in the midst of their gardens 
and their palaces may enjoy a more opulent repose. But in 
no other academic spot is the genius loci at once so original 
and so inspiring : in no other are the beauties of nature and 
the adornments of art so effectively intertwined : in no other 
are we so forcibly reminded at every turn of a great and his- 
toric past. Nowhere else does the routine of academic life so 
readily draw inspiration from the infinite field of national 
history, from the vital associations of popular romance and 
song. Yet at the same time the towering monuments of 
ancient glory look down in this city upon no dead or decaying 
present. The busy tide of human life, the rush of industry 
and trafiic still sways to and fro in the streets where Doug- 
lases and Hamiltons strove for power or revenge ; it hums 
and bustles over the stones where Knox lies buried, under 
the walls whence Montrose stepped bravely forth to death, 
past the haunts which Scott and Stevenson knew and loved 
so welL 



354 • Journalism from the Interior. 

In no other place of education are these two influences so 
barmonioasly blended : in no other is the ancient so subtly and 
so equally fused with the modern, the living with the dead. 
Fortunate, indeed, are you who are now going forth into the 
world, bearing with you, among all the other liberal influences 
of academic life, the potent and, let me hope, enduring memory 
of those scenes and conditions among which you have spent 
your happiest and most fruitful years. They should be to you 
no slight source of inspiration in after-life. The roll of fame 
appointed for the alumni of this great University is not yet 
full : in it there is always room : see that some of you at least 
repay the debt you owe to your Alma Mater by adding to her 
glory ; see that you set up fresh examples to be followed by 
the generations of Edinburgh students that are yet to come. 

G. W. Prothero. 



Art. IX.— journalism FROM THE INTERIOR. 

LORD ROSEBERY may not be the greatest of living men 
of affairs, but he has certainly no rival in the art of play- 
fully hinting what many other men are thinking seriously, and 
of humming to himself, and by way of rehearsal as it were, a 
tune which is certain in time to become a national favourite. 
He never did this more effectually than when in June of the 
present year, he took advantage of the opportunity afforded 
him by the opening of a public library in London, to make 
some remarks on ^ the dying out of independent thinking' and 
* the growth of intellectual apathy ' in the country, and to asso- 
ciate both with the present-day triumphs of journalistic enter- 
prise. He did not deny the fact or the extent of that enterprise. 
Nobody, of course, can. It is one of the greatest feats of allied 
money and brains in modem days. But what he contended 
was that the newspaper, being so much in evidence, was ac- 
cepted too implicitly and absolutely as a dictator, in public 
opinion, and that the amplitude of details which it supplies 



Journalism from the Interior. 355 

upon every subject it treats of, destroys the intellectual vitality 
of its readers. Lord Rosebery's remarks were much, and in the 
main unfavourably, commented upon at the time they were 
delivered, and it is, of course, easy to say that no reader of a 
newspaper need accept its guidance unless he is so minded. 
At the same time, these remarks, from their very originality, 
are calculated to lead to a reconsideration, on the part of the 
public, of the very remarkable 'industrial, social, political, and 
possibly ethical questions involved in the power of the press. 

There is no doubt whatever as to the sentiment which pre- 
vails in circles outside of journalism as to the magnitude of 
that power, and the rapidity of its rise. Mr. Gladstone is still 
the most eloquent expositor of popular opinions upon certain 
familiar subjects, and he was quite in his vein when, in a letter 
to a correspondent who had sent him a copy of the Times a 
hundred years old he recently wrote * The mustard seed of the 
press has, indeed, grown into a tree that overshadows the 
earth.' Possibly the press suggests to many minds a mustard 
blister rather than mustard seed. But the image will be 
generally accepted as a manifestation of the mark-of-exclama- 
tion order of the wonder with which the uninitiated public re- 
gard the rapid development of a power which, being exercised 
anonymously, has all the curious fascination that is associated 
with mystery. Lord JRosebery, perhaps, because he is a 
younger man, and more of a humourist than Mr. Gladstone, 
is not content to hold up his hands in wonder at and admira- 
tion of this portent. He is audacious enough to hint that the 
influence exerted by this modern Veiled Prophet of Mokanna 
is not all for good, even that from the purely intellectual point 
of view it may be positively demoralising. He almost hints 
that there is a good deal of humbug about the Prophet, Veil 
and all, but especially the Veil. One could conceive him, 
were he to get behind the scenes, revelling in the part of the 
incendiary Pancks, and, with infinite gusto, shearing the flow- 
ing locks, tearing off the spectacles, and crushing the imposing 
hat, which constituted nine-tenths of the patriarchal benig- 
nity and coercive authority of the autocrat of Bleeding Heart 
Alley. 

XXVIII. 24 



356 Journalism from the Interior^ 

Were the Press conducted on the principles not of capitalism 
but of co-operation, were it disciplined as a modem Trade 
Union or even an old Trade Guild is disciplined, it could — so 
much is plain even to the outsider — be converted with ease 
into the most influential Secret Society the world has ever 
seen. As things are, it has its agents in every corner of 
the globe, who are quite as eager and enthusiastic as ever 
were the members of the Society of Jesus, though for more 
sordid reasons. Were the unscrupulousness which is perhaps 
not quite fairly associated with modem financial operations 
when conducted on a su£Sciently large scale, imported into 
journalistic management, that might very well become the 
embodiment in modem literature of the ^ Napoleonic idea ' 
looked at from the Craigeuputtoch standpoint as colossal 
selfishness in the individual and buccaneering aggression on 
the part of the nation. There is no saying what mischief 
might not be done by powerfully written but utterly and in- 
tentionally misleading leading articles based upon cooked 
news. It may be said that no such danger will ever occur in 
such a country as Great Britain, the distinguishing note of 
whose public life is probity. This is insisted upon in what is 
perhaps the latest paper on journalism by a journalist — 
' The Power of the British Press,' by Mr. H. W. Lucy. Mr. 
Lucy undoubtedly deserves to be heard upon this subject. 
He has had, he himself confesses, a very large experience in 
all the departments of newspaper work that are with compre- 
hensive vagueness described as ' editorial.' He is, above all 
things, a journalist pure and simple. He is not a man of 
letters who occasionally dabbles in journalism, but a journalist 
who occasionally dabbles in literature. After dwelling upon the 
melancholy case of the luckless French millionaire, M. Lebaudy, 
— ^ this hopeless inheritor of millions of francs made in the 
sugar business having been drawn by conscription, half a 
dozen newspapeis fastened upon him like wasps on the oozing 
joints of the paternal sugar vats,* — ^he proceeds to lay down 
these views as being of the kind that are beyond dispute. 

' An 1g" gli»^^ newspaper may be lacking in all the qnaliiieB that go to 
luake a daily or a weekly news-^eet acceptable. But the poorest in 



p- 



Journalism from the Interior. 357 

condition is free from taint of deliberate black-mailing. There are occa- 
sionally hints current in financial circles of newspapers launched with the 
design of preying upon company promoters. But the mere suspicion of 
such a design attached to a newspaper in London or any provincial centre of 
financial activity is sufficient to defeat the purpose of its proprietors. Its 
good word is not worth buying, nor is its hostility to be feared. It may 
be accepted as an unassailable axiom in respect of the English press that 
the higher is the standing of a newspaper, the wider the range of its influ- 
ence, the more unapproachable it is by those who come with money bribes 
in their hands. . . Probably the worst thing an English Prime Minister, 
desiring to further a particular line of policy, could do would be to send a 
message to the editor of the so-called ministerial organ, instructing him or 
even inviting him, to adopt a stated line of argument or assertion. . . . 
The power of the press in England is mainly based on conviction of its 
honesty of purpose, and the cleanness of the hands of those who conduct 
and contribute to it.' Finally, * the power of the press in England might 
become even dangerously autocratic but for a lack of cohesion. If there 
existed amongst newspapers any organization akin to Trade Unions the 
British newspapers might rule the roost. Unfortunately (perhaps fortu- 
nately) every paper, whether daily or weekly, stands aloof from its con- 
temporaries, or comes in contact with them only for the purposes of a 
scolding match. The idea in every British newspaper office, small or 
large, is, that the sheet it turns out is, if not literally the only one printed 
that morning, the only one worthy of notice. This curious delusion is 
carried to such lengths that, for fear of breaking the spell, no well regu- 
lated morning paper will mention another by name. If temptation to 
show how foolish or unreliable a neighbour has been prove irresistible, it 
is loftily alluded to as "a contemporary." ' 

This is a very fair statement of the present position of the 
British press, regarded from the standpoint of good-natured 
optimism. Mr. Lucy, though he writes from the inside, is toler- 
ably contented with things as they are. And yet it will be 
seen that even in his eyes our press is in a position of unstable 
equilibrium. It is based on British 'character' which may 
change, and it is allied with an inefficiency of organization 
which might be altered for the better or, as Mr. Lucy evidently 
prefers to believe, for the worse. He says roundly : ' If there 
existed among British newspapers any organization akin to 
Trades Unions, the British newspapers might rule the roost.' 
But why should there not be such an organization ? Trades 
Unions cannot be said to be ' un-English ; ' on the contrary they 
flourish on British soil better than they do anywhere else. The 



358 Journalism from the Interior, 

relations between capital and labour in the ^working-class' 
field are regulated by them. The spirit of Trade Unionism, if 
not its modem organization, dominates the leading professions. 
It will take generations, if not centuries, of Trade Union con- 
gresses to make any trade in the United Kingom such a power- 
ful corporation as any one of the Inns of Court is at the present 
moment. Working printers have a Trade Union, and one which 
is not only powerful but aggressive. How comes it that work- 
ing journalists have nothing of the kind ? There is indeed an 
organization of newspaper men, called the Institute of Jour- 
nalists, with a charter and branches all over the Kingdom, and 
which holds an annual conference in the autumn. But it is 
expressly debarred by its own charter from becoming a Trade 
Union. As a matter of fact, capitalists, in the persons of news- 
paper proprietors, are the most important persons in it. No 
doubt the Institute does real good as a Friendly Society. Its 
annual conference, also, appears to be a very agreeable picnic, 
like the annual meetings of most congresses. The Institute 
may be a temporary obstacle in the way of the creation of a 
journalistic Trade Union ; it will certainly not hasten that pos- 
sibly undesirable consummation. 

But this talk of the formation of a Trade Union among news- 
papers or among newspaper men raises the whole question of 
the relations between an important daily journal, which is 
the only one worth considering in this connection, and the 
public on one side and its employes on the other. Such 
a paper is now-a-days essentially, though not absolutely, 
a commercial concern, and one involving the expenditure 
of an enormous amount of money, and therefore requiring 
the backing of an enormous amount of capital. Thus it 
was recently computed that the starting of a new daily 
paper in Scotland to compete, after an inevitable loss of 
time and money, with the journals firmly established, would 
mean an outlay of £500,000. When it is borne in mind 
that but a hundredth part of that sum was required only about 
half a century ago to start in Edinburgh a political journal 
bich in the course of ten years became the leading organ 
ere, the marvellous growth of the influence of capital in 



Journalism from the Interior* 359 

newspaper production may at once be realised. According to 
many thinkers on economical questions, the great struggle of 
the future will be not between capital and labour but between 
capital and co-operation. Considering the triumphs which of 
late years haive been achieved by co-operation in the commer- 
cial and industrial fields, it might be rash to say that a great 
newspaper governed by and managed on co-operative princi- 
ples may not be started and successfully carried on. It is safe 
to say, however, that such an enterprise does not come within 
the ken of co-operative dreamers or the range of probability. 

For one thing, the very inception of such an enterprise 
would involve a complete and precipitate revolution in news- 
paper management and personnel. Leaving out of considera- 
tion the commercial aspect of journalism — although in a sense 
that is the most important of all — let us. contemplate a daily 
newspaper from the employer and employed points of view. 
It involves the most efiPectual subordination of labour to 
capital that the world possesses at the present moment. In 
any other large mercantile undertaking — a railway company, 
a bank, a limited liability brewery — some employee, a General 
Manager, an Agent, a Secretary, is known and accessible by 
name to the public. Even a drapery or ironmongery firm 
advertises that our Mr. Blank has returned from Paris or 
Berlin with the latest special trade ideas or fashions. But, as 
a matter of etiquette, no person actually engaged on^ news- 
paper is known to be so by its customers and patrons. On its 
last page the information is vouchsafed that it is printed and 
published by, say Messrs. John Smith & Co. They employ a 
gentleman called * the Editor,' for their business Announce- 
ments generally include some such statements as that ^AU 
Letters are to be addressed to the Editor,' and that 'The 
Editor does not undertake, under any circumstances, to return 
rejected Manuscripts.' ' The Editor' has of course the natural 
human ties of ordinary men, and so a particular Thomas Jones 
or Edward Brown is known not only to his colleagues and 
subordinates, but to a circle of friends and acquaintances, 
as being * the Editor.' He may, in answer to a letter addressed 
to * The Editor,' sign himself Thomas Jones, and so take off 



860 Journalism from the Interior. 

the mask which conceals his face. Id these days of * personal * 
journalism, one often sees a parag^ph announcing — ^probably 
qnite inaccurately — that a particular person who is named is 
editor, or sub-editor of, or contributor to a particular journal. 
All this, however, is quite irregular, and out of keeping alike 
with the conditions and with the traditions of anonymous 
journalism. The legendary perhaps, rather than the real, John 
Thaddeus Delane, who for many years edited the Timea^ was 
the incarnation of impersonal jourDalism. According to gossip, 
which has no doubt some backing of fact, Delane declined to 
accord personal interviews to official personages, however 
high in their own hierarchy, not to speak of their own estima- 
tion — ^foreign princes, and evQU Scottish Lord Provosts — that 
called at the Times building and asked to see him by name. 
Mr. Delane, however, made one great, and indeed fatal 
mistake in his editorial career. He allowed himself to be 
drawn into a personal controversy by Mr. Cobden over a 
question in which the policy of the Timea^ and therefore of the 
company that publishes that newspaper was involved. He 
withdrew himself from the shelter of anonymity when it was 
personally unnecessary, and officially improper for him to do 
BO. What was perhaps even worse, he came oflf second best 
in the dispute. This was the exception, however, that proved 
the excellence of the Times' rule of anonymity. 

It is a tolerably open journalistic secret that 'the Editor' 
has under and associated with him a staff of officials, the size 
of which varies with the importance of the paper. These 
include leader-writers, whose business is to present in more or 
less literary form the opinions which the journal holds on 
political, ecclesiastical, social, and other questions ; reporters, 
who attend local meetings, and, speaking generally, see that 
their newspaper gives an adequate record of the events in its 
district; and sub-editors, who prepare for publication the 
enormous amount of telegraphic and other intelligence which 
is sent by news-agencies and correspondents all over the 
country, and indeed all over the world. As a matter of fact, a 
newspaper office is as much a business establishment and is 
conducted on as strictly business principles, as a bank or 



Journalism from the Interior. 361 

manufactory;, or a large shop. It is not quite on all fours with 
these other business establishments, however, in that unity 
and solidarity of interest which are the bases for a Trade Union. 
There is not for example that plain ascent to the top of the 
tree that there is, say, in a bank — where clerk may become 
cashier, and cashier become agent, in due hierarchical 
order. There is no such ascent in a newspaper. A reporter 
may develop into a sub-editor, and a leader-writer may be- 
come an editor. But as things are now-a-days a reporter or a 
sub-editor is not at all likely to become a leader-writer. The 
reason is obvious. A man may be a good shorthand writer, 
or may have considerable faculty for preparing news for a 
paper, and yet have no decided opinions on any subject under 
the sun, or even the capacity for giving expression to the 
opinions of others. There is no real community of professional 
interest between the editor and the leader-writer on the one 
hand and the sub-editor and the reporter on the other. The 
creation therefore of a genuine Trade Union feeling in * the 
editorial department ' of a large daily newspaper is a virtual 
impossibility. One can quite understand reporters or sub- 
editors uniting for the purpose of raising the rates of re- 
muneration for their special labours. That work is if not 
quite mechanical, devoid of partisanship. In other words, 
there is nothing in professional etiquette or honoifr at all 
events to prevent a reporter who has a salary of £100 on a 
Liberal newspaper from leaving his post for another worth 
£150 a year on a Unionist journal. He has nothing to do 
with the opinions of others. His business is simply to record 
accurately, impartially, and at the rate of so many words a 
minute, what a speaker says. What is true of the reporter, or 
of the man who records events himself, is true of the 
sub-editor, or of the man who prepares for publication records 
of news that have been sent in from the outside for publica- 
tion. The positions of the editor and the leader writer are 
somewhat diflferent. They hold their positions largely because 
their opinions are in agreement with those held by the pro- 
prietors of the newspaper in whose employ they are. No 
doubt it is open to a contributor to a newspaper, as it is to any 



862 Joumaliim from the Interior. 

other man, to change his opinions, and to leave a concern in 
the prosperity of which he has, therefore, ceased to have an 
interest But for the editor of a Liberal jonmal to become the 
conductor of a Unionist organ simply because ho is offered 
£200 more of salary would be regarded — and rightly regarded 
— as a piece of mercenary cynicism, if not of political black-* 
guardism. His professional, political, and personal reputation 
would, in all probability, be irremediably ruined. 

Should, therefore, an attempt be made in the profession of 
journalism, to establish a trade organisation of labour with a 
view to checkmating or controlling capital, it may be assumed 
that two at least of the foremost orders in the hierarchy of that 
labour would be excluded from it An editor or a leader- 
writer might, adequate temptation having been offered, ex- 
change from one newspaper into another of the same per- 
suasion. But journalistic Trade UnioDism based on, or even 
associated with partisanism is an impossibility. No doubt the 
conductors and proprietors of newspapers have private methods 
of discovering the sort of men that will suit them. The pro- 
fession of journalism, like every other, has its freemasonry, 
which allows of, and, indeed, encourages the secret deed of 
kindnesa Above all things, a very capable man cannot be 
prevented, even by the restraints of anonymity, from asserting 
himself, and making himself known to a circle interested 
beyond the newspaper with which he is connected. At the 
same time a trade which is composed of men arranged in 
grades that have virtually nothing in common, and between 
which there can be nothing savouring of esprit de eorps^ cannot 
organise itself to any effectual purpose. It is, and must be, at 
the mercy of capital. That so placed it has remained so pure, 
so free from even the taint of bribery, is a very high testimony 
to the worth of the British character on which Mr. Lucy so 
much relies. 

Is journalism, looked at as in a sense a department of litera- 
ture, upon the decline ? The Spectator has recently answered 
this question in the affirmative, and the conductors of that 
journal deserve to be heard with the respect which is due to 
men of very long experience and highly honoured in their pro- 



Journalism from the Interior. SBS^ 

fession. The statement may seem a remarkable one to make 
in view of the extraordinary growth of ordinary newspapers as 
news-agencies even within the past few years. They were 
never such complete records of contemporary history as they 
are at the present moment. Yet, in spite of their very perfec- 
tion as historical records, their literary quality, — certainly the 
literary quality of the leading articles in which opinion is ex- 
pressed upon current events — ^is said to be on the decline. It 
can hardly be otherwise. The public demand not only that the 
events of a day be recorded for their advantage on the following 
morning, but that they be commented upon at the same time. 
At all events the conductors of newspapers believe so, and that 
comes to the same thing. It follows, as a matter of course, 
that this comment must be hurriedly prepared. And then the 
old law of literature undoubtedly holds good, that what is 
easily written is easily read ; or rather it is not read at all by 
men who have any conception of what constitutes either style 
in letters or weight in opinion. The wisest editors seem to be 
quite aware of this. They are trying to abolish the long 
leading article dealing with some political event of the pre- 
vious day or night which for many a year was regarded as 
being quite as essential a feature of the morning paper as the 
ante-breakfast tub is of the ordinary Briton's life. And they 
are substituting for the long leaders numbers of what in the 
fearful, wonderful, and nowise literary slang of the profession 
are known as * leaderettes ' — short paragraphs containing in- 
telligent chat on Lord Salisbury's 'incisive speech* upon the 
Eastern Question, Lord Kelvin's ' thoughtful paper upon the 
Rontgen Rays,' or *the latest triumph of the vigilance of 
Scotland Yard.' This is better because honester work than 
the long leading article written against time, and notable 
simply as a feat of sentence-spinning within a certain number 
of minutes. But it is not satisfactory, as every journalist who 
is true to his ideals must admit. In the first place it is impos- 
sible for a writer thus situated to be literary, at least in any 
true sense of the word. He has no scope in a paragraph. 
He cannot work out the ideas he has — or ought to have 
— in a few abrupt sentences. Writing for and against time 



364 Journalism from the Interior. 

be cannot even try to write for eterQity, whioh ought to be tbe 
aim of all Uteratare. Colour and light — suoh things journalism 
taboos and must taboo. Leading is equally out of the question. 
A public writer may be as good a man and as able a thinker 
on political questions as the Foreign Minister or ex-Premier 
whom he criticises of an evening, but he has not the advan- 
tages of his opponent (or fellow-partisan), even if they are ou 
an equality as regards experience and ability. The politician 
has time to get up the CMe he presents to the public, the 
journalist has not No doubt after twenty-four hours' reflec- 
tion the journalist may have something to say worth putting^ 
in print, but he will be behind the fair, and will find himself 
hopelessly distanced in the race for the public head, or heart, 
by his rival Besides, in twenty-four hours a new sensation 
may appear which will call for the critic's attention and com- 
ment, to the exclusion of its predecessor. 

It is the consciousness of this weakness which is leading the 
more astute and far-seeing conductors of newspapers into 
certain new developments, which the general public will have 
to watch with care and even with anxiety. One of these has 
been brought into striking relief by the Armenian ^ atrocities' 
agitation. The massacres in Constantinople ' under the very 
eyes of diplomacy and journalism,' sent a thrill of horror 
throughout the country. But they occurred in the holiday 
season, in what one of the most ardent of British sympathisers 
with Armenia mournfully termed ^ the desolation of Septem- 
ber.' The ordinary leaders of public opinion, such as the 
front-bench politicians, were off duty, and seemed reluctant to 
leave their summer recreations — which, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances no one grudges them — to take a part in great 
public meetings. Then a daily morning newspaper in London, 
which has during the past few years distinguished itself by its 
fearless and almost feverish sensationalism, rushed to the front 
and summoned the nation to arms against the Turk Fiercely, 
and almost rudely, repudiating the generally recognised 
leaders of the party with which it is associated, and more 
particularly Lord Bosebery, it called upon ' the people ' and 
the party to ' march * without leaders. Whether this journal 



Journalism from ilie Interior. 365 

acted rightly or wrongly in making this appeal, whether the 
special policy in connection with the Armenian problem which 
it advocated is a dangerons or a safe one, need not be dis- 
cussed. But what it did was, to use the expressive slang of 
the day, < good businesa' Its name was in all mouths ; its 
articles led to its correspondence columns being flooded with 
suggestions. It may be doubted if any newspaper even per- 
formed so successfully the feat, through the pen of its leader- 
writer, of playing off its own bat, as did the Daily Chronicle 
on this occasion. Its example, having been so successful, 
cannot fail to be catching. For playing off one's own bat, chimes 
in with the self-respect which is to be found in the breast of the 
anonymous journalist as of every other man. It is better, or 
at least ever so much pleasanter, to write out one*s thoughts 
npon a particular question, than simply to mince down or 
repeat the thoughts of Mr. Balfour or Lord Salisbury upon the 
subject, which must be what the writing late at night or early 
in the morning of an article upon a speech comes in effect to. 
This tendency will grow unless, of course, it is checked by 
some other influence which is not apparent at the present 
moment. It may be doubted whether the growth of the ten- 
dency will be beneficial either to journalism or to the public, 
which is but too apt, as Lord Rosebery has noted, to take not 
only its reading but its thinking from the newspaper or news- 
papers it reads. It will and must have the effect of making 
newspaper articles effective pieces of declamation rather than 
of reasoning. The first business of a newspaper is to sell — 
and to sell it must tell. And a telling effect is produced 
much more easily by an appeal to emotion in the shape of 
a sustained strain of rhetoric than by an appeal to reason in 
the form of a detailed but cold piece of argumentation. A 
league of journalists would find it a much less difficult task to 
persuade the country to undertake a great war than to pass a 
oomplicated Local Government Bill. An anonymous journalist, 
anxious to impress his personality upon the country or upon 
the district in which he performs his work, will seek to become 
not so much a preacher or a pleader, as a tribune or a dema- 
gogue. 



366 Journalism from the Interior. 

There is another feature in what is called the New Jour- 
nalism which must contribute to the decline of the ordinary 
newspaper from the ordinary literary point of view. This is 
the development of the * interview ' — an institution borrowed 
from the go-ahead but not specially dignified journalism of 
the United State& The development of the * interview ' means 
the growth of the expert at the expense of the ordinary news- 
paper man. When Dr. Nansen returns from his expedition in 
search of the North Pole, or Sir Henry Irving announces his 
intention of venturing on a new Shakespearian production, 
the enterprising editor sends a reporter to interview the 
hero of the new sensation. Or, if it is impossible to get 
at principals, who, owing to their importance, or perhaps their 
self-importance, may object to be * drawn,' the interviewer 
gets at some other or outside authority, some other Arctic 
explorer than Nansen, some actor who has, or fancies he has, 
a right to criticise even the manager of the Lyceum. The 
enterprising editor is right. The man who reads his morning 
paper after breakfast, or in the train when travelling between 
his suburban house and his city office, and who is almost in- 
variably in a hurry, prefers to have the judgment of a known 
rather than of an unknown man upon the phenomenon of the 
day. He reads the * interview,' and lets the unsigned article 
of the anonymous leader-writer severely alone. That once 
admired person, *the all-round journalist,' who was believed 
to be capable of treating any subject, at any moment, from 
Shakespeare to the Rand Gold Mines, is being jostled out of 
his old and commanding position. There is no room for 
Captain Shandon in a modern newspaper office. Jack Blud- 
yer has gone ; and the old but rather sloppy omniscience of 
the Admirable Crichton of the leading columns will soon go 
too. As newspapers become larger and specialism develops, 
something like an ideal newspaper may be produced — one 
written entirely by experts. 

This ideal is in the future, however. It may never be 
realised. For the bulk of writing for daily newspapers has of 
necessity to be done at a very late hour. The man who com- 
mences his work at nine or ten o'clock at night labours under 



Journalism from the Interior. 367 

unhealthy conditions and cuts himself adrift from the ordinary 
pleasures of domesticity. Abandon all hopes of longevity all 
ye who enter here, might with truth, though not perhaps with 
propriety, be written above the doors of most newspaper offices. 
It may be questioned if genuine experts in politics, literature, 
science, and art, could be tempted by such inducements as 
the proprietors even of very wealthy newspapers can oflFer to 
leave their firesides night after night, if at all events they 
could command a market elsewhere. Second-rate writers 
and thinkers, more or less of the all-round type, though 
no doubt quite conscientious, must for many years to come 
perform the regular work of ordinary newspapers. It is, 
no doubt, to the haste and consequent perfunctoriness with 
which daily newspaper thinking and writing have to be 
done, that we have to attribute the increasing demand for 
weekly newspapers and monthly magazines of the more 
serious order. If a man has a week or a month to mature 
his ideas in, he will certainly be able to give weightier 
and more artistic expression to them, than when he has to 
write on the spur of the moment. And so a sort of quasi- 
hierarchy is emerging in periodical literature. The monthly 
magazine gives materials if not a que to the weekly news- 
paper; the weekly neWspaper gives a cue, and less frequently 
materials, to the daily journal. This quasi-hierarchical 
arrangement is not without its uses. The monthly magazine 
and the weekly newspaper between them keep in check the 
demagogues or tribunes of the daily journals. It is through 
the three between them that *the common-sense of most keeps 
a fretful realm in awe,' and secures it peace with dulness. 

In one of the few greatly daring moods in which Mr. John 
Morley has shaken his fist in the face of British Philistinism, 
he described the newspaper press as a great engine for keeping 
thought and discussion on a low level. There is in this de- 
scription quite as much truth as is to be found in most state- 
ments whose vitality depends upon their literary form. Mr. 
Morley did not take any account of one of the reasons why dis- 
cussion and thought are kept on a low level — ^the men who do 
the thinking and discussion in the newspapers are themselves 



368 JonrfwlUm from the Interior. 

kept on a low level To use a fine Disraelian distiQctioD, 
journaliam is very greatly respected, but jonmalists are very 
little regarded. Of newspapers everybody speaks with bated 
breath ; newspaper men nobody knows. The Jlmes^ it has 
been declared, has oflener plunged the nation into war, or pre- 
vented it from being plunged, than any statesman even of the 
highest rank. Yet the leader-writers who, as a matter of fact 
performed these feats, have died unwept, unhonoured, jBLud un- 
sung. It was either Mr. Tremaioe Bertie, or Mr. Bertie Tre- 
maine, who said that personal progress was most effectually 
marked by the dinner invitations one receivea In this respect 
journalism is the least honoured of all the professions ; strictly 
speaking, it is not a profession at all. It will be admitted that 
a first-class reporter performs an important duty to Society ; 
yet whoever met such a man *in Society T' A leader-writer 
may mould a mighty state's or a large vestry's decrees; a 
dramatic critic or a reviewer may make or damn a literary 
reputation ; yet a young clergyman, lawyer, or doctor is of 
almost infinitely greater regard and influence than leader- 
writer, critic, or reviewer. An editor may be and frequently is 
asked to social functions ; but he is asked not as Mr. So-and-so 
and for his personal qualities, but as the conductor of a par- 
ticular journal. In nine cases out often virtue is the moderately 
successful journalist's sole reward — virtue and a salary as large 
as that of a second-class clerk in a Government office or a 
large mercantile establishment. 

It may be said that this social ostracism, or negative ostra- 
cism in the shape of ignoring, is due to the conditions under 
which the work of journalism is performed. The bulk of it is 
done anonymously. How is it possible for * Society' to ask to 
its functions men whose names it does not know, whose names 
in a sense it ought not to know T Again, journalists are as a 
rule at their busiest at night, when other men make a business 
of pleasure. For a newspaper man, therefore, to make a prac- 
tice of dining-out would mean that he must make a habit of 
neglecting his duties at the only time when they can properly 
be performed. Besides this, journalists are almost forced to shirk 
entertainments which, owing to their comparatively limited 



Journalism from the Interior, 369 

means, they cannot return. A successful newspaper being sup- 
posed, largely on account of the mystery associated with it, to 
have a great amount of power in various departments of human 
activity and adventure — ^politics, commerce, literature, art, the 
drama — it has become the interest of a very great number of 
people to * get at ' or ' nobble ' it. And incomparably the easiest 
and most swiftly eflFectual way of accomplishing this result is to 
show some social attention to a contributor to or official in the 
newspaper who from the character of his connection with it 
may, if he chooses, say a good word for a new novel, a new 
play, a new mining syndicate, or even a new political leader. 
A journalist who wishes to preserve his purity and indepen- 
dence, and to do his duty by his journal with an easy con- 
science, resents effi)rts to ' get at' him, and declines invitations 
to social entertainments, the real object of which is obviously 
to influence that journal through him. 

All this is true. But it only emphasizes the fact that jour- 
nalists are and must be under existing newspaper conditions, a 
class apart. It may be said that they may form a society 
among themselves like artists or men of letters. But this they 
can do to a limited extent, and that nowhere but in London. 
Besides, as has already been seen, they cannot form a solid 
class. The reporter or the sub-editor, the man who obtains 
or arranges the news, has no natural sympathy with the 
leader-writer, or the editor, or the critic, the man who 
criticises a speech, or thinks out a policy, or judges a modern 
book by the classics of the past. The two men may be friends, 
but they are not drawn into friendship by community of pro- 
fessional interests like painters or novelists, doctors or lawyers. 
Not having the freedom of other professional men, they have 
not the social or personal power. From their anonymity and 
their inability to form trade combinations among themselves 
and to make genuine and profitable friendships among the 
members of other classes, they are more completely at the 
mercy of the capitalist than any other labouring men. 

All this involves no disparagement of the moneyed people 
who either individually or in companies run, and must run, 
large newspapers. They are neither better nor worse than 



370 Journalum from the Interior. 

the men who run other businesses. Having paid the piper 
they have a right to call the tune, and even to dismiss 
the piper at a month's notice, no outsider daring to inter- 
fere. Moreover, the public hear very few complaints of 
cruelty or injustice by the literary emgjoyees of newspapers 
against their capitalist employers. The very fact that 
every newspaper's hand is against every other's, and that it is 
engaged in labour the value and profit of which depend largely 
upon the secrecy with which it is performed, often brings 
about a sort of freemasonry or even family feeling in a news- 
paper oflSce — a feeling which is cherished by employers quite 
as much as by employees. Life is a lottery at the best ; and 
the man who is the servant of a newspaper publishing com- 
pany, conducted on the admirable business principles preached 
and practised by the Cheeryble Brothers, might lead as happy a 
life as he would under any other conditions At the same time 
the finger of capital is always on his shoulder, even although its 
touch be caressingly, not patronisingly, slight and tender. The 
journalist, therefore, and more particularly the journalist 
who tries conscientiously to perform his duty to his em- 
ployers, cannot possibly write with the vigour which is 
apsociated with or springs from absolute freedom. He must 
always be thinking of his employer's interests, and endeavour- 
ing to reproduce not what he himself thinks, but what they 
would say were they in his place. The ideal of the ordinary 
journalist, unless he be an editor with an absolutely free hand 
— which is, speaking generally, an absolute impossibility — 
is very much that of the confidential clerk writing to dictation. 
He produces so much 'copy' within a certain time, and at the 
rate of so many guineas a week. But the production of so 
much * copy ' does not mean the production of so much think- 
ing or of so much literature. It means in many cases quite the 
reverse. The large and increasing employment of capital in 
newspaper production confers many advantages upon the pub- 
lic. Above all things, it ensures a very large, and, thanks to 
competition, a marvellously accurate supply of newa Journals 
were never such complete daily histories of the world as they 
are at the present moment. After all, it is the first business ot 



Journalism from the Interior* 371 

a newspaper to give news ; the public ought to do for them- 
selves the bulk of the thinking which such news suggests. 
The reporter, not the sophist or party disputant,, is the 
mainstay of a daily journal ; that is inevitable. But it also 
involves the dominance of the reporter's ideal — the production 
of so much up-to-date * copy ' within a certain limited time — 
in the departments of the journal that are concerned with 
thought, politics, and criticism. The ordinary writer sets 
himself, quite unconsciously perhaps, to write out what he 
imagines his proprietors, as represented by his editor, would 
wish to be said. His is not and cannot be the feeling of the 
ambitious literary aspirant whose bread depends upon his 
originality, or who, being above all things an artist, takes a 
supreme delight in giving the best literary form to his ideas. 
The inclination of successful capitalist journalism is, and must 
be, to substitute caution for brilliancy alike in thought and in 
expression. And if the public, as Lord Rosebery appears to 
believe, takes its thinking as well as its news from daily 
papers, no wonder that public discussion tends all round to 
become tame even to monotony. If dulness, relieved by 
occasional bursts of demagogism, is the journalist's ideal, and 
if the public take their views from him simply because he 
is every day in evidence, the outlook for an Empire which is, 
in the last resort, governed by argumentation, is neither very 
bright nor very reassuring. 

Thus far, then, the evolution of the newspaper and the 
application of capital to its production have brought us. But 
it might be rash to add, at least in a pessimistic vein, ' and no 
further.' Newspaper enterprise must, like every other, be 
governed by public demand. Undoubtedly there is a demand 
for * smartness,' above all things else in literature. That 
demand has revolutionised monthly magazines, and it threatens 
to revolutionise weekly newspapera Within the last few 
years, moreover, there has been an extraordinary develop- 
ment of evening newspapers, not only in London but 
in the provinces; so much so, that prophecies are freely 
made that the evening newspaper will supersede its 
morning rival or collaborator, as the leading power in daily 

journalism. Be that as it may, the strength of an evening 
xxviii. 25 



372 Joumalism from the Interior. 

newspaper depends in the first instance on the amount and 
variety of its news, and in the second on the literary piquancy 
of the comments upon that news. If the evening newspaper 
ever becomes in any formidable sense, the rival of its morning 
contemporary, the latter must betake itself to some of the 
weapons of the aggressor. Already, as has been noted, the 
more far-seeing conductors of newspapers are anticipating 
the future, by introducing articles on special subjects by 
experts more and more freely into their columns. There will, 
in time, be a demand for vigour of thought and artistic ex- 
pression. There is, no doubt, abundance of capital at the 
back of the great newspapers to command these if it were 
only a question of money. But the artist and the 
thinker demand something more. They wish, in the gratifi- 
cation of a natural ambition, to make a personal i'mpressioa 
upon the public; and in the interests of truth artistic and 
other, they desire to be and to feel independent. There is at 
least a faint glimmer of hope that their wishes may be grati- 
fied. It is a growing tendency with large daily newspapers to 
become less and less the organs of parties and interests, and to 
become more and more the forums for the free and full discus- 
sion of public questions. What is to prevent the proprietors of 
journals from paying able men to say what they think ? As has 
been already said it is what tells that sells, and a journalist must 
of necessity write in a more telling manner when he says what 
he personally thinks. It has been pointed out that there is no 
sound trade reason why the men who have in newspapers to do 
the procuring and arranging of news — ^reporters and sub- 
editors — should not form a Union or Guild to secure advance 
of salary or improvement in position. Critics and other writers 
are not so situated. But is there any good reason why they 
should not move in the direction of the abolition of that 
anonymity, which stands in the way of their personal recogni- 
tion at the hands of the general public ? It is at least possible 
that, owing to the rapidity of the rate at which newspaper 
development proceeds, they would be met half-way by their 
employers. At all events, there seems no hope for the 
genuine inclusion of journalists among the professions, by any 
other method. 



(373) 



SUMMARIES OF FOREIGN REVIEWS. 



GEBMANT. 

Theologisohb Studien und Kritiken (No: 4, 1896). — 
Dr. Hermann L. Strack, Professor of Old Testament Exegesis 
and Semitic Languages at Berlin University, has the first place 
in this number. with a short article, in which he discusses the 
literary relationship of the book of Job to the book of Proverbs, 
or rather to the first nine chapters of the latter work. The 
question may be called a vexed one. While scholars like Ewald 
and Ed. Riehm regarded Job as of earlier date than that section 
of the Proverbs, others, as Kuenen and Cheyne, assign the 
priority to Proverbs. It is generally admitted that the author of 
one of them was influenced by the work of the other ; and the 
point of dispute is which was earliest in point of date. Professor 
Strack has hitherto held and advocated the priority of Proverbs 
i.-ix., but a more thorough and minute study of both writings has 
led him to reverse that opinion, and he here marshals the evidence 
or considerations which have brought him to this conviction as to 
their relative age. Herr Pfarrer Brochert of Goeddeckenrode 
raises the question as to the original significance of the Divine 
Name Jahve Sabaoth. The various meanings attached to it by 
exegetes are here carefully considered, that Sabaoth, e.g., meant 
originally the armies of Israel, and that the title was given to 
God as the God of war ; (2) that Sabaoth did not refer to the 
armies of Israel but to the stars, the heavenly hosts, or to the 
elements and forces of Nature, and was applied to God because 
He was regarded as the God, or Lord, of the Universe ; and (3) 
that Sabaoth denoted the angels, those who formed the court of 
the Eternal in heaven, and were the messengers of His will. All 
these views are discussed here with critical minuteness, and the 
arguments by which their advocates have defended their positions 
are judicially weighed. Dr. Strack favours the last of these 
opinions, and presents a series of weighty considerations that tell 
in its favour. — Herr Pastor Koppel, of Manker, furnishes a 
lengthy dissertation on 'Inspiration and Authority,' which he 
sub- titles, * Eine biblische Studie mit Streitlichtern auf die 
Gegenwart.' There is, he says, a cry rising ever louder and 
louder on every side of us, from the family, from the State, from 
the Church, for some well-defined and indisputable authority on 
which to rest these institutions. Especially emphatic is this cry 
in connection with the Church. The need of an unimpeachable 



374 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

authority here is imperatively felt to inspire her members, and 
nerve them with an unflinching courage in their offensive and 
defensive work. The early Christians felt they had such an 
authority, and it was because of their invincible faith in it that 
they laboured with such zeal as they manifested, and accomplished 
80 much as they did. And what was the authority on which 
they rested, which they offered to others, and before which the 
thousands of their converts humbly bowed t It was none other 
than Jesus Christ Himself. Herr Koppel here takes us away 
back to the infancy of the Church, and asks us to observe the 
confidence and courage of the first Christian preachers, and see 
on what they based their confidence. It was not on the inspira- 
tion of the written word. It was on Christ, and on Him only. 
Christianity was to them not a matter of doctrine; it was to 
them a matter of life. That life came — could only come — through 
a living person. It came through Jesus the Christ. The life 
might be fed by doctrines, but it could not be generated by them. 
To all the first Christian missionaries Christ was the one subject 
of their preachinfr. He was * im Tode der Versohner, in Leben 
der Herr.' So Herr Koppel maintains that the one hope of the 
Christian Church to-day lies in the replacing of Jesus Christ 
into His true position in Christian preaching, in Christian 
thought, and in Christian life. — Professor Blatz follows with a 
short study on Luke's account of the institution of the Lord's 
Supper; Dr. Nestle has a couple of pages on T^eios^olKTipfjuav ; and 
Professor Hoffman closes the series with a brief * Ethical Study ' 
titled, ' Es geschah in guter Absicht.' — Dr. F. Haupt revi:^ 
two recent works on the Epistle of James. The one is Professor 
Spitta's book, and the other is Dr. Wandel's. 

EUSSIA. 

The seventh year of the VOPROSI, No; 2, begins with a 
paper on Herders 'Philosophy of History.' The author, Mr. 
Gerye, begins by telling us that to understand History is to 
make a science out of accumulated chronological data. 
The idea of progress or of advancing movement in a given 
direction is necessary. This idea was carried into history 
in the eighteenth century, and it was precisely in that age 
that the philosophy of history became born I The idea was 
wrought out rationally, and because from the beginning it had 
a purely rationalistic tendency, the aim of History was ad- 
mitted to be progress in enlightenment. But against this 
understanding of History a huge protest was raised, founded 
upon a doubt as to the advantages of enlightenment or civili- 
zation. The conception of enlightenment or civilization was 



Summariea of Foreign Reviews. 375 

'opposed to the conception of happiness, the conception of 
which was founded on the idea of an approximation to Nature. 
In order to emphasize this idea of progress in History, it was 
necessary to take the conception of it more broadly and to 
comprehend it in relation to the whole of humanity, not 
merely to the civilized part. The youthful development of 
Herder, like that of Bekkaria, falls together with the cele- 
brated idea of Rousseau. Herder became acquainted with him 
when a student in Konigsberg, at the lectures of Kant, who 
was then remarkably intei^ested in the author of ' Emile.' But 
the more serious and deeper culture which Herder enjoyed as 
compared with Rousseau, enabled him to stand high above 
the historical pessimism of Rousseau and lifted him above the 
idea of a contradiction between Nature and Culture. The 
poetical gift of Herder manifested itself not only in indepen- 
dent creation, but to a great extent in the singularly 
living apprehension of all that was truly poetical in Nature, 
as also in the productions of man. The poetical gift often 
controlled the scientific in Herder, filled up the gaps of 
his knowledge, and gave him a possibility of divining the truth. 
Subsequently, the author points out that Herder in his early 
views found himself under the influence of Leibnitz, whose 
Monadology was reflected in his views of nature. To the 
author of the Monadology, the world consisted in unending 
phases of individual forces according to his diflferent degrees 
of knowledge, from the most confused to the most enlightened 
and comprehensive. Herder appropriated this view — his con- 
ception of Nature dissolved into an aggregate of living, indi- 
vidual forces, acting on the organism, and substantially form- 
ing this organism by means of the attraction and assimilation 
of the necessary particles of matter. Herder added to his view, 
however, another, also borrowed by him from Leibnitz, that 
of uninterrupted development, and then the world of living 
forces was transformed for him into a world created and com- 
pleted by means of the progressive movement and develop- 
ment of these forces from the lowest to the highest forms. 
The historical principle was carried into Nature, and the com- 
pleted structure of the world was transformed into an eternally 
creative process 1 The philosophical thought of Herder, how- 
ever, did not remain at Leibnitz's point of view. In propor- 
tion, as he became acquainted with Spinoza, he gave way to 
the influence of that powerful spirit, and as he went more 
deeply into the views of Nature held by Spinoza, and his con- 
ceptions of physical processes, the philosophy of Spinoza pre- 
sented itself to him as the true key to the structure of the 
world 1 — Mr. D. G. Obolenskie completes, in the second paper. 



^IM 



376 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

his views of the * Autonomy of Man in its progress and 
varioos stadia.' As, however, he conjoins man and the 
lower animals, the result is a confusion which renders his 
ideas on the subject very difficult of presentation. We have 
the following resumi of the * Stadia of Autonomy,' which have 
been dealt with in the preceding parts of this article : — (1), 
The mechanical or physical ; (2), Vegetative stadia ; (3), Sub- 
jective, or physical stadia (animalia); (4), Such as altero- 
honorative ; (5), Ego-honorative ; (6), Synthetical. Each of 
the following includes in itself all the preceding. — The article 
following upon this, which is also a continuation from the 
preceding number, is by Prince Serge N. Teubetskoi, and is 
designated the * Grounds of Idealism.' The author pro- 
ceeds to notice the history of various abstract foundations 
of Idealism — in such terms as being^ substance^ cause^ 
action^ and reaction; and he maintains that the concrete 
idea of action and reaction presupposes the conception of 
cause, that the conception of essence or substance is found 
in the relation of action and reaction, and that the conception of 
the conditioned relatively supposes the idea of the uncondi- 
tioned or the being out of all relation. But each of these con- 
ceptions, taken separately, abstractly considered, is shown to 
be invalid, as has already often been shown by sceptics and 
critics. Before all, mutual action without cause and substan- 
tiality indicates a logical unthinkableness which constitutes the 
inner contradiction of all ' phenomenism.' The conception of 
substance, taken in and for itself, indicates a completely ab- 
stract non-content, including in itself an inner contradiction, 
under which laboured all human thought, beginning with pre- 
Socratic times and reaching up to the days of Locke and 
Kant. The writer proceeds to deal with other of these ab- 
stract conceptions in the same negative fashion. As these 
general conceptions or abstract conceptions are pretty much 
concerned or have very much to do with the ' grounds of 
Idealism,' it is clear that the author's critique is of a somewhat 
negative or destructive character as regards * Idealism ' as a 
philosophical doctrine. There is, however, to be a continua- 
tion of the article. — The next article is ' On the Conception of 
Soul or the Data of Inner Experience.' This is a paper read 
by the author, M. L. Lopatin, one of the co-editors of the 
journal, at a meeting of the Moscow Psychological Society. It 
takes the form of an enquiry into the question whether beyond 
the phenomena of the soul there be any substance save 
psychical phenomena. What is the soul in itself on the ground 
of experience, whether as the bearer of the spiritual process or 
substratum apart from the bodily and animal life? On this 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 377 

question, says the author, the metaphysician will be interested, 
but it is not the business of the psychologist. Perhaps there 
is no spiritual substance, and the only things existent are the 
purely psychical phenomena, as matters of occurrence follow- 
ing one another in order according to uniform laws, and 
forming by their course what we call the spirit. Perhaps we 
must admit the relation of these to each other in the spiritual, 
as follows: there are no phenomena without substance, as there 
is no substance without its properties, conditions, and action, 
the nature of substance is expressed in the laws and properties 
of its phenomena; and, on the contrary, it is impossible to 
speak of the nature of a substance that is not revealed by 
phenomena. In other words, substance is not transcendent but 
immanent in its phenomena. Every phenomena in its original 
activity is the very substance in the given peculiar moment of 
its being. The author pursues the subject through five 
sections in his paper. At the end he posits the unity of con- 
sciousness as bound up with the consciousness of the reality of 
time as transcendental facts of our inner experience. To these 
transcendental facts he adds another, the consciousness of our 
activity, which is closely connected with the two first, for if 
we in fact receive the substance of our spirits, we ought also 
to receive immediately their activity. Activity is the actual 
property of our consciousness which it is not possible 
to deny. — Professor Grote closes the leading papers of the 
journal with an obituary notice of M. N. N. Strachoff, in which 
he sketches the characteristics of his philosophical views. * A 
man many-sided and widely cultivated, a deep and powerful 
thinker, a remarkable psychologue and aesthete, firm in his 
convictions, never fearing to grapple with prevailing views in 
science and literature when he thought them wrong. As a 
writer he was clear in style, weighty in matter, powerful in 
utterance and in the logical concateution of his views. As a 
thinker he belonged to the left wing of the followers of Hegel, 
keen and accurate in logical analysis. Such was the man who 
has now left us after forty yeai's of activity. Perhaps the 
most important of his many writings were The World as a 
Whole^ The Fundamental Conceptions of Psychology and Physio- 
hgy^ both of which went to second editions. — The number 
contains the usual critical and bibliographical notices, and 
records of the work of the Moscow Psychological Society. 

KOOSKAHYAH MysL. — Russian Opinion — (April, May, June, 
July, and August). — Of complete tales in these five numbers 
we have — 1, ' A House with an Attic,' a story of an artist, by 
A. P. Tchekoff"; 2, * Trifles of Foreign Literature,' short tales 





878 SvfnmarleB of Foreign RemewB. 

from the French, by A. A, and N. K. ; 3/ Sakhar Stepanitch/ 
a tale of prison life, by N. Ya Mourinoff ; 4, * The Love of 
Henriques (Lyouboff Enrikesa) by Bret Harte, translated from 
the English by G. ; 5, • The Black Sea Siren,' by K. M. Stan- 
youkovitch ; 6, * A Ravisher,' bv Fr. Dana, translated from 
Harper^s Monthly Magazine by K. B. ; 7, * How the People 
Marry,' a tale of Siberian manners, by K. NosiloflF; and 8, 

* Klyatva ' (an oath, a vow, a curse), by J. G. Roni, translated 
from the French by M. N, R. — The incomplete tales comprise 
— 1, three further instalments and conclusion of *A Drama 
behind the Scene,' by V. I. Nemirovitch-Dantchenka ; 2, con- 
clusion in two instalments of * A Tragic Idyll,' a Monte Carlo 
romance by Paul Bourget, translated from the French by M. 
N. R. ; 3, commencement in three instalments of * Serge 
ShoumoflF,' a domestic tale by N. I. Timkofski ; 4, commence- 
ment in two instalments of ' Pasteli,' by Yana Lahdy, trans- 
lated from the Polish by V. M. LavroflF (editor of RooakaJiyah 
Mysl) ; and 5, a first moiety of * Lyalka,' from * Tales of 
Reality,' by V. I. Nemirovitch-Dantchenka. — Poetry is sparely 
represented by three contributions of V. Golikoff, three of 
K. D. Balmont, and one each of N. NikolaeflF and V. Poltuvteeflf. 
— General literature furnishes us with — 1, 'An Introduction 
to the Study of Housing .Questions,' by V. V. Svyatlofski ; 2, 

* On the working of Peasant Councils in the Government of 
Kalouga, under V. A. Artsimovitch,' * by P. N. Obninski ; 3, 
conclusion of M. N. RemezoflF's ' Judea and Rome,' pictures of 
the ancient world ; 4, * On Economic Materialism,' by V. A. 
Goltseflf ; 6, ' Outlines of Provincial Life,' five additional essays 
by I. I. Ivanyoukoff ; 6, * On the last Historical Romance of 
Senkevitch' — Quo Vadis? now complete, and published in 
separate form, nearly 800 pages for 1 rouble 50 kopeks (about 
3s. l^d.) — a review by M — na ; 7, * Macbeth,' by George 
Brandess, translated from the Danish by V. M. S. ; 8, * On 
the History of Contemporary Georgian Literature ' of Prince 
Vakhtang Vakhtangovitch, by A. A. KhakhauofiF; 9, *The 
Swedish War of 1788-90,' from new data in the French 
archives, by A. Brikner ; 10, * Outlines of general Biology,' a 
review of ' La structure du protoplasma et les theories sur 
rh6r^dit6 et les grands problSmes de la biologic gen^rale ' of 
Yves Delage, by M. G. ; 11, 'Observations on Literature,' by 
0. T. B ; 12, ' Contemporary Madagascar,' by M. VenyoukoflF; 
13, 'Popular Education in the Government of Saratoff,' by 
N. Th. Kazanski ; 14, * The Peasantry of Hungary until the 
Reforms of Joseph II.,' by E. V. Tarle ; 15, ' Robert Burns,' by 
Ivan Ivanoff, a paper in two instalments, of especial interest 

♦ From 1861 to 1863. 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 37& 

to Scotsmen ; 16, * Assyrian exorcisms, and Russian popular 
conjurations,' by V. Millar; 17, * John Milton,' by M. Sh., 
another strong proof of the interest taken by Russians in our 
literary celebrities ; 18, ' Traces in History of the enlighten- 
ment of Western Europe/ by V. V. Ivanofski; 19, *The Poesy 
of Yve Guyau, and his world-contemplative philosophy,' by 
Sophia Kavos-Dekhterevoi ; 20, * Pictures of Contemporary 
Manners,' by K. M. Stanyoukovitch ; and other papers. — 
' Home Review,' deals as usual with Russian current events, but 
all are dwarfed by the Coronation at Moscow, a ceremony of 
which we could say much, the present writer being privileged 
to assist thereat within the sacred walls of the Cathedral. — * The 
Foreign Review,' by V. A. Groltseff, embraces the whole of the 
exciting events which have occupied the attention of the 
world during the last few months. — * Contemporary Art,' has 
abundant material with which to deal in consequence of the 
national fetes, and, while doing justice to the musical and 
theatrical efforts, finds opportunity of discussing pictorial art 
also. — ' The Bibliographic Division,' occupying 245 pages^ 
gives short notices of 184 works, original and translated. 

ITALY. 

La Nuova Antglogia- (July 1). — E. Masi, reviewing Zola's 
Rome^ denies that it is a work of art, though containing 
several powerful and beautiful passages. Zola tells some plain 
truths about modern Italy, though his judgments are tinged 
with old and new French prejudices. His intention in the 
whole book is decidedly benevolent, and this fact has, more 
than any defect in the book, brought upon the author's head 
the furious criticism of those French writers who cannot bear 
to hear of any possible fraternity between iVance and Italy. — 
Madame Jessie White Mario commences the first instalment of 
her personal enquiry into the penitental system and estab- 
lishments of Italy, describing the prisons on the island of 
Favignano. — G. Monaldi in a paper on the late Italian 
tragedian, Ernesto Rossi, says that since his death and the 
retirement of Salviui, there remains on Italian boards no 
worthy interpreter of Shakspeare's characters. This may be 
doubted, because Giovanni Emanuel still lives and acts, and 
Salvini's son, Gustav, a rising artist, is acquiring fame, and may 
some day step into his father's shoes. — 0. Grandi's novel, 'The 
Cloud,' and Boglietti's ' Socialism in England' are continued. 
— C. del Lungo writes an essay on Goethe as a man of 
science. — (July 16) — One of the principal articles in this num- 
ber is by Signer Cottran on the * Crisis in tiie City of Naples,' 
examining the causes and results of the city's bad municipal 



380 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

^drDiDistration, the railway and operative questions, the 
isolation of Naples, and its too evident negleot by the Italian 
government. — -rrofessor Villari devotes a long article to the 
late Mrs. Salis Schwabe, whose benevolent career attained its 
chief success in the institute she established in Naples. Among 
the facts stated, it may be called to memory that Mrs. Schwabe 
obtained the first subscription for her purpose from Jenny 
Lind, to the amount of one thousand pounds. The first school 
under Mra Schwabe was founded in 1862. The present large 
institution is in a flourishing condition, and Professor Villari 
insists that it is the duty of the Italian Government and of the 
School Committee to faithfully carry out all the late founder's 
intentions and ideaa — A. Chiapelli continues his paper on 
* Philosophy and Socialism/ evidently resulting from his 
diligent study of German authora — In that portion of the 
paper on the luxury of Isabella d' Este, entitled * Jewels 
And Gems,' the authors give many curious descriptions 
of the ornaments worn by the above lady. The article 
bristles with dates and quotations in quaint Italian. — P. 
Scoy contributes a pleasant paper on * Voices of the Summer 
Night/ in which he describes the cries and noises made by 
many insects. — (August Ist). The most important papers in 
this number are by Professor Villari on the * Straw-plaiters of 
Tuscany ' and one on last year's situation in the East by L. 
Nocentini. — C. Caressai has a great deal of information to give 
about religious corporations; and the story, 'The Cloud/ 
is concluded. So also are the remarks on Italian enter- 
prise in Africa by G. G. — (August 16th). A. Luzio begins 
a discussion on Giuseppe Acerbi and the * Italian Library.* — 
P. Sabatier contributes a portion omitted in his * Life of St. 
Francis,' which he is now able to complete from having dis- 
<50vered at Florence, Aesisi and Rome, documents throwing 
light on the famous 'indulgence' called the ' Perdono di AssisV 
— F. Raccoppi gives an account of the constitution of Utah. — 
A new story, ' Elena,' is commenced by the novelist who has 
adopted the pseudonym of 'Tristam Shandy.' — L. R. Bricchetti 
^contributes a political article on Tripoli. — A. Paoli commences 
a paper on the bankruptcy of science at the time of Galileo, 
concluded in a following number. — ^F. de Simone Brouwer 
gives a full description of the newly excavated House of the 
Vettii at Pompei. — (September 1st). R. Bonfalini writes on 
Oandia. He does not think its situation such as to break the 
conservative union of the European Powers, but considers the 
Oriental question in general full of the possibility of great sur- 
prises, capable of producing the destniction of the Ottoman 
Empire at any moment, and concludes his article by saying 



k 



Summaries of Fbreign Remews. 381 

that Italy ought to be prepared to take the part imposed upon 
her by her interests and her cizilization. — Under the title of 
* Archduke Luigi Salvatore and the fable of Majorca,* Signor 
Mantegazza gives an account of an interview he had at Spezia 
with a gentleman calling himself L. Neudorf, owner of the 
yacht *Nixe,' who afterwards turned out to be the son of the 
last grand duke of Tuscany. Signor Mantegazza then tells 
the story of the Prince's Voyages. — E. Catellani contributes a 
thoughtful article on the institution of international law. — A. 
G. Barrili gives the story of A. G. Briguole and his family 
under the title of ' A plunge into the seventeenth century.' — 
A. Lauria sends an interesting article on Neapolitan songs and 
parodies, which in old times were most original, and which 
even now are produced in quantities with much of the old 
spirit. — (Sept. 16.) E. Masi contributes a paper on the late 
Signor E. Nencione, who was a veteran reviewer on the staff 
of this magrzine, but in consequence of a two year's illness his 
last contribution to its pages dates as far back as 1894. 
He was one of the principal introducers into Italy of Eng- 
lish literature, beginning with Browning. The famous Italian 
novelist, Gabriel d'Annunzio, said of him that he did not 
merely explain and comment on foreign poets but, himself a 
poet, he entered into the inmost thought and soul of the men 
he translated and criticized, and knew how to communicate 
their ideas to Italians. — V. Grossi has a long and instructive 
article about the Italian colony at Sao Paulo in Brazil. The 
chapters on the Luxury of Isabella d'Este, describe this time 
the furniture of palaces, etc. — 'Tristam Shandy's' novel, 
'Ellena,* is concluded. — Follows the second part of *The 
penitentiary system in Italy.' — F. Ponetti reviews Chearim's 
recent studies in Shakspeare. 

Rassegna Nazionale (July 1st). — G. Morando has a paper 
on an ' Unknown Critic ' of Rosmini. — V. di Giovanni describes 
the old memoirs of the Monastery of S. Maria del Bosco, and 
the corrections of the text by Tasso. — R, Mazzei studies the 
social question from the spiritual point of view, inquiring 
whether the supernatural has any eflScacy in solving the impor- 
tant problems of life. He concludes that in order to mitigate 
present evils, it will be necessary once more to take the Gospel 
for our codex. — R. Corniani deplores the publicity of criminal 
trials, which he says are a school of crime open to all comers, 
and most dangerous to the young, whom it is the duty of society 
to protect from all influences that can injure their morals. — The 
number closes with a paper on the Italian Conservative party, 
by A. d'Arzago, and one on Pierre de Nolhac's Study of Italian 



382 , Summariei of Foreign Reviews. 

literature. — (July 16th.) — P. Olacosa writes on various ancient 
and modern facts and notions concerning poisons. — ^Professor 
De Giorgi has an interesting paper on the ^ Cathedral of Nardo,' 
referring to recent studies and discoveries. — ^X.X.X. publishes 
a dissertation on the fundamental. questions of Catholicism and 
Protestantism. — M. J. de J. describes the lagoons of Venice and 
the port of the Lido, from a practical point of view. — P. L. D. Gr. 
has much to say on religious instruction in schools. The other 
portions of the number are continuations of previous papers. — 
(August Ist.) — A pleasant story by Elvira, entitled ' Diplomacy 
and Love,' varies the generally grave character of this review. — 
It is followed by the first part of an unsigned paper on the 

* Written and Spoken Word,' which is concluded in a following 
number. — Some translations from Juvenal, a paper by C. Rossi 
on the logic of abstaining from voting, on the part of the Italian 
clericals, and various continuations complete the number. — 
(August 16th.) — The deputy Signor Ricci continues his con- 
siderations on decentralization. — R. Farrini sends a paper on the 
Rontgen rays; — L. Biagi gives an account of the poems of G. B. 
Faguili, which were inspired by a long residence in Poland. — 
There is another instalment of the campaign of Prince Eugene, 
by P. Tea, and a paper by Senator Rossi on Sunday rest. — 
(Sept. 1st.) — The most interesting paper in this number is one 
on Leopardi's ' Ideal of Woman,' which the writer says he vainly 
sought on earth and was compelled to hope for in heaven. — The 
other articles are continuations, except one on Pope Gregory and 
the Sienese, compiled from original state documents kept in 
Siena. — (Sept. 16th.) — E. Cenni, in a long paper on the only 
remedy for the evils of the times, finds it in religion, that is to 
say, the Roman Catholic religion. — The paper on Pope Gregory 
is concluded ; and that on the * Spoken Word ' continued. — 
Guido Fortebraccio dedicates an appreciative article to the late 
distinguished Italian critic, E. Nencione. 

Reforma Sociale (July 10). — * Socialism and Pessimism,' 
by A. Chiappelli. — * Culture and the Development of the Masses 
in Great Britain,' by Professor Geddes. — * Peasants and Pel- 
lagra,' by Professor Sitta. — * The Problem of Strikes,' by C. 
Garibaldi. — ' The New Chain,' by Professor Contento. — ' Urgent 
Judicial Reforms,' by L. Mortara. — 'Labour Accidents before 
the Chamber of Deputies,' by G. Fusinato. — (July 25, August 
10, 25).—' Urgent Judicial Reforms' by L. Mortara.'—* Is the 
Social Organism a Super-organism?' by L. de Lilienfeld. — 

* The Labour Question in Portugal,' by J. T. de Medeiros.' — 

* The Florence Congress,' by A. Labriola.-^* An Arab Sociolo- 



Summaries of Poreigit Reviews! 2(83 

gist of the 14th Centttry/ by G. Ferrero. — * The Actual Phase 
of the Question of Tithes/ by Ulisse Papa. — * The Reform of 
Taxes on Rents,' by R. Delia Volta. 

La Cultura (July 1, 15) contain reviews of following 
works — Lewis's 'Some i?ages of the Four Gospels,' by J. Guidi. — 
Bertraux's * Question de morale et d'iducation,' by F. Tocco. — Cla- 
rette's ' The Painter Zuccano and his Residence in Piemonte,' by 
C. Manfrone. — Ricci's ' Dante Alighieri. An Apostolic Roman 
Catholic,' by B. Labanca. — Robinson's ' Euthaliana,' by J. Guidi. 
Park's 'Manual of Object Lessons,' by G. Fraccaroli, etc. — (Aug. 
1,15). — Labriola's ' Historic Materialism.' — Fornelli's 'Recent 
Attempts at University Reform in Italy.' — E, di Sant Artemo's 

* The Man Napoleon.' — Adolf Schulten's ' The Roman Proprie- 
tors.' — E. Legouv6's ' Moral History of Woman.' — Dupanloup's 
' The Studious Woman.' — L. Auzoletti's ' Woman in Christian 
Progress.' — Percy Gardner and Frank Byron Jevons's ' Manual 
of Greek Antiquities.' — H. A. Holden's 'The Oeconomicus of 
Xenophon.' — N. Vaccalluzzo's ' Galileo : Literary Man and 
Poet.' — U. Valcarenghi's 'The Apostles.* — ' G. Flamengo's 
' Contemporaneous Social Protectionism.' 

GiORNALE Degli Economisti (August). — 'Some obscure 
points in Demography.' — ' Valuation of Taxes.' — ' The Wool 
Production and Important Data.' 

Natura ED Arte (August). — 'Antonio Rosmini.' — 'Em^rita 
Augusta.' — 'Bacon's New Atlantis.' — 'The Saporetti Tunnel.' — 
' Sigismond Castrome.' — * Diano.' — ' Monleveirine.' — ' Historic 
Curiosities.' — ' An Excursion to Mantua.' — ' The Thirtieth Ex- 
hibition of Fine Arts at Naples.' — ' The Epiphany at the Great 
St. Bernard.' — 'The Eastern Drama.' — ' Antonio Dal Zotto.' — 
' Italian Literature.' — * The Sailor.' — ' Carducci's Military 
Poetry.' — ' At the Fort of Ampola.' 

Archivio Storico delle Province Napolitane (Year 21, 
Numbers I and 2,) contains: — 'Clement VI. and Johanna L 
of Naples,' by F. Cerasoli. — ^ The Patto di Arechi and the Ter- 
ziatori,' by G. Rocioppi. — Then follow various short historic 
papers, by B. Capasso and other learned writers. 

La Vita Italiana (August). — 'The Dissolution of Parlia- 
ment.' — 'Giuseppe Tartini.' — 'Paul Bourget's Last Romance.' — 

* Symbolism.' — * Claudio Loreneso at Rome.' — ' What is not in 
the " Memoirs " of Casanova.' — ' Diary of the Siege of Adigiat.' 
—« Italians Abroad.'— ' The Echo of a Mythic Night,' by G. 
Pascoli. — * In a Chapelle Ardente.' — ' Authors' Originality.' — 

* Contemporaneous Crime.' — ' The Tower of Silence.' 



884 5ifiiiifianM of Foreign lUtfiewt. 

GlORNALB Dantesoo ( Year 4, No. 3t) — ^^ Dante and Fran- 
ceaer de Bamberino/ by G. Melodia. — * Dante and Shakspeare/ 
by L. Mascetta, who shows that Shakspeare not only knew 
Italian bat loved its mnsical and limpid energy ; that he was 
even acquainted with different Italian aialects, and, that he freely 
borrowed or imitated thoughts and verses from Dante, Ariosto, 
Petrarch, Tasso, and others. — (No. 4). — * The Virgilian I^etters 
and the Defence of Dante/ by A. Torre. — * Ouido Ouinizelli and 
his Poetical Reform/ by A. Bongiovanni. — * The Interpretation 
of Verses 8-9 in Dante's Inferno/ by R. Murari. — ^ Quotations 
from Dante in some Foreign Writings,' by P. Bellezza. The 
writer shows many misprints and misapprehensions in various 
English authors. 

L'EoONOMiSTA (August 28th) contains: <The Financial 
Balance for 1896-97.' — The * Memorandum' of the Sicilian 
Socialists.' — * Strikes in Italv in 1894. — * The Economical Con- 
dition of Crete.* — * Mining Industry at Cagliari.' — ^'The Finances 
of the United States.' — (Sept. 13) contains: *The Sardinian 
Emigration.' — * Italian Agricultural Co-operation.' — * The Wine 
Harvest of 1895/ etc. 

La Riforma Sooiale (Sept. 10) contains : * The Hedonistic 
Problem in Financial Science/ bv Professor Puviani. — * Social 
and Economical Condition of the Workmen of a Suburb of 
Turin/ by G. Lombroso. — * Social Finance in Italy/ by A. 
Geisser, etc., etc. 

Emporium (July) contains : * Dante Gabriel Rossetti.' — 
*Max Nordau.' — *The German Army.' — *The Poets of the 
Caucasus.' — * Professor Laskowski and his Anatomical Prepara- 
tions.' — * The Legend of the Wandering Jew.' — ' The Triennial 
Exhibition at Turin.'—* The Tiara of Olbia.'— etc.— (August).— 
Continuation of *Dante Gabriel Rossetti.' — 'The great Capitals; 
Washington.' — * The Wandering Jew.' — * Andr^e's Voyage to 
the North Pole.' — ' Dr. Maragliana and the Tuberculosis Serum.' 
— German Exhibitions in 1896. — etc. 

Il Pensiero Italiano (July, August). — * The Slav Colonies 
in Greece.' — * Taine and the Origin of Psychological Criticism.' 
— * The Character of the Social Phenomenon and the Individual- 
ity of Socialism.' — * The Spirit of the German Language.' — 
' The Sentimentalism of a Poet.'— etc. 

RiviSTA Italiana di Filosofia — (July, August). — ^"The 
Biological Aspect of Conduct according to Spencer.' — 'Normal 
and Morbid Facts in Psychology.' — * Organic Education.'— 
' Neo-Criticism apropos of a New Edition.' — Reports, etc. 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews, 385 

FRANCE. 

Kevue des Deux Mondes — (July, August, September). — 
^ Une Vie de Savant,' which is contributed by M. George 
Gu^roult, and is amongst the most noticeable of the articles in 
either of the July numbers, is a most able sketch of the career 
of the German scientist, Hermann von Helmholtz. Not only 
does the writer show a thorough knowledge of his subject, in the 
lucid summary which he gives of Helmholtz's labours and their 
results ; but he displays a spirit far above all national jealousies 
and prejudices, in the praise which he bestows upon the man 
of whom he says that he is one of those who have shed the 
bricrhtest light on the most obscure points of science, and who 
have either realised or suggested the most interesting discoveries. 
— In ^ La Gauche F6ministe et le Mariaore,' M. Arvfede Barine, 
sets forth the views on marriage held by the most advanced 
section of those who have taken it upon themselves to claim for 
women absolutely equality with men. — 'The Story of an African 
Farm,' * A Yellow Aster,' ^ Discords,' * Dr. Janet of Harley 
Street,' ^ A Superfluous Woman,' * The Woman who Did,' and, 
above all, ' Jude the Obscure,' being, so to speak, the text-books 
used by the essayist, English readers will not find anything that 
is very new to them in her article ; it cannot, however, fail to 
interest them for the brilliant qualities of style, and for the 
critical acumen which characterize it. — * Le Gouvernement de 
la Defense Nationale,' of which the concluding instalment ap- 
pears in the number bearing date of the 15th of July, is a 
vigorous criticism, if not actually an impeachment, of the men 
who undertook to hold out against Germany after the fall of the 
Second Empire. It admits tlieir patriotism, but it censures 
their errors with unsparing severity, and blames them for having 
given the invaders the very pietext which they wanted for con- 
tinuing the struggle. — ' Wordsworth's works, admirably rich, 
ample, and profound as they are, are too often wanting in that 
perfection of form which — to mention only one of his country- 
men — has ensured the success of Byron. Perhaps, taking him 
altogether, the author of Don Juan is less truly a poet than the 
author of The Excursion; but, it is none the less true that Byron 
has been translated, imitated, plagiarised, throughout the whole 
of Europe; whilst, on the contrary, Wordsworth's doctrine, like 
the form of his work, retains a purely * exoteric' character. He 
tried to be, and often succeeded in being, a great artist; he tried 
to be more than this, and he succeeded in being a thinker. But, 
his poetical realism is of so peculiar a nature, that the indelible 
stamp of the national spirit appears in every page; and his 



386 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

ardent optimisin, besides being a rather artificial production, is 
manifestly opposed to the current of the continental ideas of his 
time.' Such, in substance, is the judgment which M. Joseph 
Texte passes on Wordsworth, in the very thoughtful and well* 
balanced article which he devotes to him, and in which he more 
particularly endeavours to account for the comparative indiffer- 
ence which, outside his own country, has hitherto been the poet's 
fate. At the same time, he seems to look forward to a closer 
sympathy with liim, and almost ventures to prophesy that the 
Europe of the 20th century will give him that admiration which 
the 19th refused him. — In continuation of the series of studies 
which he is devoting to Swedish fiction, M. de Heidenstam 
devotes an article to the novelist StrindberiX. Whilst recognising 
and fully doing justice to his eminent qualities, he is severe upon 
the bitter, combative, pessimistic and captious spirit which dis- 
figures some of his work. — The article which Th. Bentzon — or 
the lady who bears the masculine pseudonym — devotes to Miss 
Mary Wilkins, the New-England novelist, and author of ' A 
Humble iiomance,' * A Far Away Melody,' ' A New England 
Nun/ and * Pembroke,' is less a criticism than a summary, at 
times, indeed, a translation. It is, however, a most interesting 
production, and succeeds in conveying a very vivid idea both of 
the writer's manner and matter. — In the same number, the first 
of the two for Auo:ust, M. Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, contrasts the 
present condition of society and social institutions in Australia, 
with those of the mother country. Amongst the colonials, he 
finds a higher standard of life, and a more thoroughly democratic 
spirit, and above all, a nearer approach to that equality between 
the sexes, which has not yet gone very far beyond the theoretical 
stage in the old world. — In the mid-monthly number, M. de 
Heidenstam concludes his Swedish studies with a cursory analysis 
of the works of Mme. LeflBier, of Geijerstam, of Levertin, and of 
Veniier de Heidenstam. The article is interesting, but rather 
cursory, and scarcely up to the standard of the earlier instalments 
— a peculiarity which may, however, be as much due to the 
lesser importance of the novelists here dealt with as to the 
writer's treatment of them. — As pure literature and criticism, 
there is nothing in any one of the six numbers for the quarter 
that is more deserving of notice than the article which M. Reni 
Doumic devotes to the brothers Goncourt. Even he has seldom 
been more caustic and uncompromising than he here shows him- 
self in his treatment of the leaders of the ' naturalist ' school. — 
In the September numbers a further instalment of M. Rod's 
essay on * Goethe ' is the most important contribution. Of 
lighter articles, that by M. Ren6 Doumic on * The Statues of 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 387 

Paris/ and that by M. Talmeyr on ' The Age of Posters/ are the 
most readable. 

Kevue Oeltique (Avril-Juillet, 1896). — In this double 
number, the first place is given to a somewhat brief article by 
M. L. Duvau with the title ' Les poetes de cour irlandais et 
scandinaves/ in which he sets forth the theory maintained by 
Professor Bugge in his recent ^ Bidrag til den seldste Skaldedigt- 
nings Historie/ that the Court Poetry of the Norsemen is of 
Irish origin. M. Duvau accepts the theory, but fails to notice 
the arguments which have been advanced against it by Finnar 
Jonsson and others. — Dr. Whitley Stokes continues his articles 
on the * Annals of Tigernach.' He gives the corresponding dates 
in the Annals of Ulster, the Chronicon Scotorum, the Four 
Masters, the Annals of Loch C6, and the Annals of Inisf alien. 
The annalists seldom agree in their dates, but the amount of 
error in each case is seldom of importance. Many of the qua- 
trains cited by Tigernach are corrupt, and the versions here 
given of them are only tentative. As usual, explanatory notes 
are added by Dr. Stokes. — M. A. le Braz follows with a number 
of Gwerzion Breiz-izel, and accompanies them with a version in 
French. — M. Chr. Sarauw discusses the v&rh jiL * This verb fil 
{fail^feily feV)^ he remarks, 'is, in the older monuments, used 
only as what seems to be the 3rd. sg. pres. of an impersonal verb, 
meaning '* %l y a." Nouns and pronouns, when connected with 
it, are put in the accusative. The latter circumstance seems to 
show that fil did not originally mean " to be." ' He concludes 
that the forms fel and fell and fil are used indiscriminately, for 
the indicative as well as for the conjunctive, in relative as well 
as in non-relative sentences, and that the word is an impera- 
tive from the root Fa/, ' to see.' — Under the title, * Le Poime de 
Torna-Eices sur le Cimetiere de Oroghan,' the learned editor of 
the Revue discusses the list of names contained in these verses, 
attributed to Torna, surnamed Eices or the Learned. They 
profess to be the names of individuals who were buried in the 
burying-ground of Rath Croghan, in the parish of Kilkorkey, 
Roscommon. Some of the names M. D'Arbois de Jubainville 
points out are those of purely mythological individuals, such as 
Midir, the three kings, Mac Cuill, Mac Oecht, Mac Grene, and 
their wives, Erin, Fotla, and Banba. The others he believes 
belong to the legendary history of Ireland. — The 'Chronique' 
and * P6riodiques ' are as usual full of news and notes interesting 
to Celtic students ; the former noticing, among other matters, 
the new edition of the Annals of Clonmacnoise and Mr, Mac- 
bain's Gaelic Dictionary, 

xxviii. 26 




390 Summaries of Foreign Revietoe. 

* The people are becoming engrossed with philosophical specula- 
tions of an agnostic or atheistic character.' Still there are 
50,000 Catholics, with 92 missionaries and 22 native priests at 
work there. There is an Archbishop over the Church, and there 
are three bishops. There are schools, hospitals, and various other 
organizations under Papal authority. There are several Protes- 
tant missions, too, chiefly of the Methodist Church. The Protes- 
tants number about 20,000; they are, however, sadly divided 
among themselves, and do not look on each other with a friendly 
eye. Our author does not regard the future prospects of the 
Roman Church with a very hopeful spirit. It will be, he thinks, 
at best, the Church of a small minority. But of the Protestant 
missions he has just as little hope. The native religions, it is 
true, are discredited ; but the Christian dogmas do not appeal to 
a people so given over, as the modem Japs are, to crass mate- 
rialism and worldliness. The recent military successes of the 
Japanese ajrms have fired the populace with a fever of self- 
conceit, and national vanity, which is likely to lead to a growing 
dislike to the presence of foreigners, and to extravagant measures 
being again taken against them. — The Abbi Loisy carries over 
to these pages the continuance of a work on the Synoptic 
Gospels, which has been appearing in the columns of L^Enseign^ 
ment Biblique* It opens here with Section XLV., but no indi- 
dication is given, by prefatory or footnote, of the object the 
author has in view in his treatise. It would seem, judging from 
what is here given of it, that he is comparing the Synoptic 
Gospels with a view of constructing from them a consecutive 
Life of Jesus. The Second Gospel forms for him evidently the 
norm by which to judge of the others. Th3 others are supple- 
mentary to it. 

Revue de l'Histoirk des Religions (No. 3, 1896). — M. 

Louis Leger has the first place here with another of his studies 
in Slav Mythology. But here he takes us back, not as in former 
studies to that mythology itself, but to the sources of what 
knowledge of it we may yet obtain. *Les sources de la Myth- 
ologie Slav/ is the title of this paper, or series of papers ; for 
only the first part of the study is given here. The sources are 
nunierous enough, it seems ; but none of them, nor all of them 
together, are sufficient to enable us to form a complete idea of it. 
We learn from them something of the deities worshipped, and 
something of the cult that was paid them ; but beyond that, and 
some of the superstitions cherished by the people as a whole, we 
have little or no information. And besides, the sources while 
numerous, are not always trustworthy, if indeed any are so. We 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 389 

tablets which he gave five years ago in this Revue. Discoveries 
made since then, and progress made by Assyriologists in the 
mastery of the language, render it necessary to revise already the 
translations then given, and some of the conclusions drawn from 
them. He deals also here with the structure and parallelism of 
the poem. — M. Castonnet des Fosses continues and concludes his 
very interesting and instructive series of papers on * Japan, from 
the religious point of view.' He tells us here the story of the 
introduction of Christianity into Japan in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and of its early successes there ; also of what led to its loss 
of official or Court favour, and finally to its prohibition and prac- 
tical extinction. In 1 549 a young Jap, who had fled his coun- 
try, and landed at Goa, a Portugese settlement on the Indian 
coast, south of Bombay, came under Catholic influence, and was 
baptized. He represented to the Portugese there the advantages 
to be got by opening trade with Japan, and the likelihood of 
converting his countrymen to Christianity. An expedition was 
fltted out, and several priests of the Society of Jesus accom- 
panied it. Both merchants and priests were well received. 
Japanese ports were opened to Portugese vessels and a ready 
market was found for the merchandise offered. Churches and 
religious houses of different kinds were speedily founded in many 
centres. The rapid success of the Jesuit Fathers soon gave 
occasion, however, for alarm on the part of the native priests, and 
also of the civil authorities. Their success too unduly elated the 
priests of the Catholic Church, and made them arrogant in their 
treatment of native officials and of native customs. They studi- 
ously violated the sacred laws of official etiquette. One offence 
of this kind given to a chief dignitary of the State formed the 
turning point of Christian propagandisra in Japan. At once 
severe measures were taken against all converts to the new faith, 
and against all who were of Portugese blood. They were now 
represented as the enemies of the country, and were ordered to 
quit it at once, and for ever. A violent persecution was insti- 
tuted against all professing the Christian Faith. All its institu- 
tions and churches were suppressed, and to profess the Faith was 
punishable with death. M. C. des Fosses asserts, however, that 
it was not altogether extinguished, but continued to be secretly 
held and practised by a considerable number of the population. 
When religious toleration was again proclaimed in 1858, and 
Christian missions set to work there. Christians were found, and 
much success consequently attended these first missions. M. C. 
des Fosses laments that the Japan of to-day is not so ready to 
welcome the Gospel as it was in the sixteenth century. ' The 
minds of the people are now honey-combed with free-thought.' 




392 Summaries of Foreign lUviews. 

with one male. This combination is not explained, as in other 
cases, hv genealogical myths. So M. Zeitlin sets himself here to 
find out the reason for this sin^lar combination. He discosses first, 
however, the origin of the cmt that was practised in the temple of 
the Capitol. Passing then to the divinities worshipped there, he 
reminds as that neither Jupiter nor Juno are proper or personal 
names. The names are common nouns denoting merely god and 
coddess. Juno » Juvino, the feminine of Jovis. What denotes 
her personality is the epithet Lucina, or.Quiritis, or Lanuvina, 
or Coelestis. These are all different Juiios, different persons, 
different goddesses. It was the place where they were wor- 
shipped that gave them their distinctive character. In the 
Roman religion, as contra-distinguished from the Greek, the 
female deities were peculiarly the object of worship on the part 
of the women, while the male were paid homage to by the men. 
As Jupiter was the protector of the latter, so Juno was the pro- 
tector of the former. And she came gradually to be the repre- 
sentative of all the divine personages in the female pantheon. 
Minerva represented the Etruscan, or foreign, elements in the 
State, and was their protector, as Juno was that of the purely 
Eoman, or native element. Combined, the three were the 
guardians of the whole populace, and the recipients of the State 
worship, in the State temple, par excellence, the Capitol. 

Revue de l*Histoire des Religions (No. 4, 1896). — M. 
A. Foucher, the head of a scientific mission to India, has sent 
recently to the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 
squeezes and photographs of the Chinese inscriptions that were 
discovered some years ago in the Buddhist temple at Buddha- 
Gaya. Two or three of them have occupied the attention of 
Chinese scholars, and translations of them have been offered, 
which, however, have been only tentative for the most part, as 
the decipherment has been extremely difficult owing to the small- 
ness and f aultiness of the texts or inscriptions themselves. These 
new squeezes and photographs have induced M. Chavannes to 
venture, in co-operation with M. Foucher, a new examination 
and translation of them, and he gives us here the results of his 
patient and learned labours. — M. L. Knappert follows with an 
article on Christianity and Paganism in the ecclesiastical history 
of the Venerable Bede, ' Le Christianisme et le Paganisme dans 
THistoire ecclesiastique de Bide le V6n6rable.' He first calls 
attention to the caution necessary to be observed in the study of 
the writers to whom we owe what knowledge is now possible of 
the Celtic and Teutonic Paganism. These writers were either 
Christian missionaries or converts from Paganism. In the eyes 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 393 

of the former, the beliefs and practices of the people to whom 
they preached the Gospel were all inventions of the Evil One, 
and were not worthy of notice. The converts from Paganism 
were not one whit behind their spiritual fathers in their abhor- 
rence of their old faiths and rites. It is only incidentally, there- 
fore, that they ever mention any details regarding them, and 
their accounts of them are coloured by their scorn for and loath- 
ing of them. They could not describe without exaggerating. 
With their ideas of the pit from which they had been mercifully 
delivered, it was not possible for them to be just in their allu- 
sions to it, or accurate in their descriptions of it. M. Ohavannes, 
has devoted, nevertheless, a very considerable amount of 
time and patience to the study of these works, and some of the 
fruits of his researches have appeared from time to time in the 
pages of the Theologish Tijdschrift Here he takes up Bede's 
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, and endeavours to bring 
out what light it sheds on the Paganism of Bede's compatriots 
and contemporaries, and on the nature of the Christianity that 
was taught to them. In doing this, he leaves Bede's work to 
speak as much as possible for itself. — The book reviews are 
numerous in both these numbers, as are also the shorter notices 
of less important works. — The summaries of periodicals and the 
' Chronique ' are comprehensive and valuable. 

Revue des Etudes Jutves (No. 1, 1896). — In the number 
of this Revue, which was issued last year, shortly after the death 
of M. Joseph Derenbourg, we were promised a fuller account 
than was then given of the life and literary work of that distin- 
guished and venerable scholar. He died on July 29, at the ripe 
age of 84. In the number referred to there was but a brief 
announcement of his death, and an expression of the regret with 
which the announcement of his loss was made, and would be 
received by all who knew him or were acquainted with his writ- 
ings. This was followed by some of the addresses which were 
delivered at the grave, on the occasion of his funeral, by 
representatives of several learned societies of which he had been 
a revered member. The promise made at that time M. W. 
Bacher here worthily fulfils. He outlines for us in this number 
the history of the man, the scholar, and the writer. M. Deren- 
bourg's life was seemingly an uneventful one, so far as its scenic 
side was concerned. He took little or no part in the public 
affairs of his time. He was from first to last a student. His 
passion was to learn, and his life's work to impart to others the 
ripest and surest fruits of his researches. He was constantly 
absorbed in a variety of literary problems that were likely to 




394 Summaries of Foreign Reviews, 

suggest themselves only to a scholar whose training and tastes 
led him into regions visited but by a few rare spirits no^ and 
then. He was an Arabic scholar of the first rank, was deeply 
versed in Talmudic lore, and every branch of Jewish literatare 
had for him an irresistible attraction. In the course of Iiis long 
and fruitful life he rescued from the unmerited oblivioo into 
which they were falling the works of several Arabic ^wrriters, 
patiently copying the texts from decaying MSS., collating them, 
wherever they were to be found, with a care that may be 
described as loving, and furnishing translations of those he 
thought likely to prove helpful to a wider circle than that 
familiar with the original tongue. M. Bacher details these 
labours, following them in chronological order, interweaving here 
and there the incidents as they occurred of Derenbourg's social 
and literary career. M. Bacher speaks in glowing terms of his 
friend's high talents, of his lofty aims, of his genial disposition, 
unassuming manners, and patient industry, and of the sterling 
and lasting value of his work. — ^M. S. Krauss, in ^ Encore un 
mot sur la fete de Hanoucca,' returns to the controversy between 
him and M. Israel Levi as to the period in which the part which 
women take in the celebration of the feast took its origin. — JVf . 
Krauss dates it from the institution of the feast itself, after the 
death of Antiochus Epiphanes. M. Levi contends for a much 
later date, viz., the Boman period. M. Levi contends that there 
is no trustworthy evidence that the Syrians or Greeks under 
Antiochus ever sought to impose on Jewish women the jus 
primes noctis ; it was under the Boman rule that that form of 
persecution took its rise. In a note appended to M. Krauss's 
article here by M. Levi, the latter refuses to continue the con- 
troversy, saying he has submitted the evidence for his view of 
the matter, and he now leaves the reader to decide for himself 
as to the point in dispute. — M. L. Bank continues his ^ Etudes 
Talmudiques/ discussing here ^ nne Agada provenant de Tentou- 
rage du Kesch Galoute Houna bar Nathan.' — M. S. Mendelssohn 
seeks to define the exact meaning of * scheel,' * scheelta/ and 
* scheeltot,' in Talmudic writers. — M. I. Levi furnishes an article 
entitled ' Clement VII. et les Juifs du Comtat Venaissin.' The 
policy of the Popes, he says, has never with respect to the Jews 
been consistent. Now they have favoured them, and now 
harrassed them. This has been the case not only with different 
Popes, but sometimes with one and the same Pope. M. Levi 
produces the evidence that this was the case under the rule of 
Clement VII. — M. M. Kayserling briefly describes the Jewish 
community in Amsterdam, which was formed chiefly of Marranes 
of Spain and Portugal, and prints, as an appendix, a little work 



Summariea of Foreign Reviews, 395 

by one of them, a literary history, or rather, * a history of 
Jewish literature,' which he regards as of considerable merit. — 
M. A. Danon gives a *Recueil de romances jud6e-espagnoles 
chantees en Turquie.* — Of the minor articles we may note M. 
Jastrow's * Les Juifs et les Jeux Olympiques/ — In the * Biblio- 
graphic * there is a lengthy notice of Mr. A. Neubauer's recent 
work, Anecdota Oxoniensis : Mediceval Jewish Chronicles and 
Chronological Notes, edited from Printed Books and Manuscripts. 

Revue Des Etudes Juives (No. 2, 1896). — ' Les dix-huit 
Benedictions et les Psaumes de Salomon,' is the subject of the 
first article here. It is from the pen of M. Israel Levi. The 
eighteen Benedictions, or the ' Schemon^-Esr6,' have naturally 
excited the interest, and exercised the wit of many Jewish 
scholars. Their origin and history are veiled in some obscurity, 
and several attempts have been made to lift the veil. That they 
were not all written at one time, or by one author, is admitted by 
all who have studied them. But as to when they were composed 
and under what circumstances, there is little agreement. M. 
Levi is of opinion that the so called Psalms of Solomon shed 
considerable light on the problem. Though we have these 
Psalms only in Greek there is no doubt that they were written 
first in the Hebrew. Their special value lies in this, that they 
are dated with a precision which leaves nothing to be desired, 
and are characterised by a unity of spirit which is perfect. 
They form, therefore, one of the most important documents we 
have for getting at the ideas which were cherished by the Jews 
on religious matters in the century prior to the Christian era. 
The spirit which breathes through them is that of the Pharasaic 
party of that century, and they furnish a complete commentary 
on the Schemon^-Esre. The very same ideas are reflected in 
both, the same tendencies are manifest, and the same state of 
mind is seen throughout them. The resemblance enters even 
into their phraseology, so much so that each paragraph of the 
Schemon^-Esre has its pendent and parallel in these Psalms. 
M. Levi shows this by a wealth of quotations, and seems to prove 
his point completely. The Psalms and the Benedictions belong 
to that century ; — the majority of the Benedictions preceding the 
Psalms, but both composed by the same party, reflecting the 
same thoughts, and breathing the same hopes and desires. — M. 
A. Buchler gives the first instalment of a paper in which he pro- 
poses to examine the sources from which Josephus drew the data 
of Bks. XII. and XIII. of his Antiquities. That he made use 
of the first Book of the Maccabees is admitted by everybody, and 
by most scholars that he was dependent for many of his state- 




896 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

ments on one or more non-Jewish works. Bat what was it, or 
what were theyf MM. Bloch and Nassbaam regard his narratiTes 
concerning Syria as having been inspired by Posidonins of 
Apamea, and by Polybias, whose work Posidonins continued. 
Destinon maintains that Josephns did not make use of their 
works directly, but found their histories incorporated in a Jewihs 
work, and that he merely added some details, not very accorate 
for the most part, and easily distinguished from the rest. M. 
Buchler proceeds to examine minutdy the incidents narrated by 
Josephus seriatim in the hope of showing both how the history 
has been composed, and what sources were made use of by 
Josephus. — ^M. D. Gaubart enters into an elaborate examination 
of the Question of the authorship of the Tractate, * Kelim.* — M. 
D. Eauf mann furnishes a historical paper, of considerable interest 
and showing much minute research, entitled ' Contributions a 
rhistoire des Juifs de Corfou.' — M. Jules Bauer writes on * Lea 
Juifs de la principaut^ d'Orange/ and gives as an appendix the 
documents from which he has taken his information. — ^M. Q. A. 
Kohut contributes an article on ^ Les victimes de I'lnquisition a 
Lisbonne k la fin du XYIIe si&cle ; ' and M. A. Danon continues 
his ' Recueil de romances juddo-espagnoles chant^s en Turqaie.' 

Revue Semitique d'Epigraphie et d'Histoire Angienne 
(No. 3, 1896.) — The section of Genesis covered by M. Halevy 
in this number is from chapter xxxii. 3 to xxxvii. 1. It embraces 
the history of Jacob from his leaving Mount Gilead on to the 
death of his father Isaac at Hebron, and the Toledoth^ or Gene- 
rations, of Esau, and the list of kings of Edom. An outline 
summary of the story contained in the section is first given, and 
then the Hebrew text is examined, and some of the details are 
commented on, as they seem to demand it. No emendations 
of the text are seemingly here called for, or offered, that are of 
much importance. But every point is nevertheless carefully 
noticed. The masculine form of the numeral one^ e.g.y in xxxii. 
8— one company — ^is recommended, as it is in the Samaritan 
Version, because machanehy * camp,' is in reality masculine. Vav 
is substitued for yod in Peniel, for reasons given, and so becomes 
Penuel. Horites, in the text where it appears, it is maintained, 
does not mean, as is generally held, * dwellers in caves,' * Troglo- 
dytes, but * free-men.' Its root, M. Halevy asserts, is not cAiir, 

* hollow,' but chor^ * white,' * noble.' Again, the verb in xxxiii. 
15, ^ he kissed him,' which so perplexed some of the rabbins of 
old, M. Halevy regards as correct, but he would place it after 

* embraced him.' The exegetical notes are often interesting. 
Why, e.g.j did the angel at Penuel refuse to give his name to 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 397 

Jacob t M. Halevy answers that, previous to the Greek Period 
the angels, in Israelitic belief, had no names. They were re- 
garded as only the temporary agents of Jahv6. During the 
Greek Period, however, they came to be looked upon as old 
Pagan deities relegated to their proper places, and a kind of wor- 
ship was paid to them. They then came to bear personal names. 
Daniel gives us the names of two. The book of Enoch names 
several. The Sadducees alone retained the old Biblical idea as 
to the ephemeral and anonymous nature of angels. There are 
other points here touched on which will greatly interest all 
readers of these notes. The chief interest, however, of these 
papers centres in M. Halevy's defence of the unity of the text of 
Genesis ; that it is not a conglomerate, as critics of the Modern 
School maintain, but is essentially the work of one author, mis- 
takes of copyists and the alterations of would be wise editors 
being admitted. Dillmann's arguments in favour of the attribu- 
tion of this and that verse, or clause, or section, to this or that 
writer, are those which M. Halevy here chiefly examines and sets 
himself to refute. His explanations of the difficulties which have 
perplexed the Modern Critics are always at least pljausible, and 
deserve, as they are sure to receive, the respectful attention of 
those interested in these questions. The Psalms dealt with in 
the second part of these ^Recherches Bibliques' are Psalms Iviii. 
to Ixv., inclusive. The text of each is minutely examined, and 
corrections suggested where they are thought to be necessary. 
All the difficulties that present themselves, to the scholarly 
reader are discussed, and what light can be thrown on them by 
our improved acquaintance with the Semitic tongues and Semitic 
customs, etc., is given. A new translation of each Psalm is fur- 
nished according to the improved text offered by our author. M. 
Halevy continues next his transcription and translation of the 
cuneiform text, the first part of which was given in last number 
of this Revue, It is accompanied with a series of very valuable 
notes, chiefly philological. Dr. J. B. Ohabot furnishes a series 
of ' notes on some points in connection with the history of Syriac 
literature/ M. Halevy gives us another learned study on 
' Traces of Indian and Parsi influence in Abyssinia.' — M. E. 
Blochet deals with the * Arabisation of Persian Words.' — M. J. 
Perruchon continues his ' Notes pour I'histoire d'Ethiopie.' — M. 
Halevy extracts from the Journal ojfficiel de la Ripublique fran- 
gaise of March 25. M. Mispoulet's compte rendu of M. Clermont 
Ganneau's paper read before the Academie des Inscriptions, on 
March 13, and makes some observations on it. They are also 
of a philological nature. He furnishes, too, a short study, titled 
' Israel dans une inscription ^gyptienne,' and the *Bibliographie.' 



398 SummarisM of Foreign Beviewt. 

Revue Philosophique (October, 1896).— M. Egger resomes 
hia ooomderation of the * Self of the Dying/ which he first dis- 
cussed in the January number. He examines several criti- 
cisms and communications which he has received since thea 
The principal conclusion at which he arrives is that a 
conviction that death is at hand is essential to evoke the rapid 
survey of events observed in cases of drowning, etc., or the 
succinct and characteristic * last words ' recorded in so many 
instancea — M. H. Lachelier treats of the ^ Logical Formula of 
Inductive Reasoning.' Induction designates * a complex 
aggregate of processes by which the scientist on the one hand 
discovers the nypothetical causal laws to which he endeavonrB 
to reduce empirical laws, and on the other verifies the conse- 
quences which logically result from these hypothetical laws. 
But none of these processes can constitute a new form of 
reasoning. Scientific certainty, in fine, is always obtained 
deductively.' — Professor Lombroso in * The Instinct of Preser- 
vation in Children/ shows how this instinct dominates their 
whole physical, mental, and moral activity. All their peculi- 
arities are due to the desire to avoid effort — The remaioing 
?ages are occupied with a verv full account of the International 
'sychological Congress, and book-reviewa 

SPAIN. 

La Espana Modebna (August, September, and October, 
1896). — ^In the first of these numbers Juan Ochoa begins a new 
story entitled ' Los Senores de Hermida.' It is continued in 
the number for September, and ends in the October number. — 
The Marquess de Valmai contributes two interesting papers under 
the title ' An unknown Historical Painter/ The artist referred 
to was Don Jos6 de M^ndez, who devoted himself to his art and 
cared little for popular fame. The articles contain a list, though 
incomplete of his works. Interspersed through the articles is a 
number of interesting remarks respecting the art of the present, 
and the estimation in which it is held by the public. — Among 
the most attractive contents of these numbers are three papers 
contributed by * An Old Soldier,' in which he relates his experi- 
ences in war. His adventures were not always pleasant, and be 
has many particulars to give respecting the Spanish wars on the 
African continent and elsewhere, and as to the way in which Span- 
ish armies, and some other matters in Spain, are managed. — Jose 
Echegaray begins a story in the August number with the title 
' Recuerdos.' — The translation of Wolfs work on the Poetry of 
the Spanish Romances is continued in all the numbers. — The 
* Cr6nica Internacional ' in the September number is contributed 



u 



I. 



> 






V 






Summaries of Foreign Reviews, 399 

by E. Castelar, who takes for his text Li Hung Chang's visit to 
Europe, and discourses pleasantly about the Chinese and their 
ways. — ^The same writer contributes the Cr6nica to the October 
number, and deals in it with a variety of topics ; among others, 
with the Czar's visit to Paris, closure in the British Parliament, 
recent land legislation for Ireland, the Armenian question, and 

• Sir Balfour,' under which designation we recognize the present 
leader of the House of Commons, to whom Senor Castellar pays 
several high compliments. — The last number contains an inter- 
esting and informing article from the pen of Ernesto L6pez on 

* Matrimony in the Middle Class.' — As usual there are numerous 
translations. 

HOLLAND. 

De Gids. — A large space of the August and September 
numbers is occupied by a translation of George Meredith s 
Amazing Marriage^ the intention being to introduce this novel- 
ist who is little known by the Dutch public. — (Aug.) — * From 
Canton,' an impressionist sketch, by Henri Borel, portrays 
scenes in that city and on its river. — An admirable analysis of 
the Mimes of Herodas, accompanied by translations of several 
of them, the Schoolmaster; Women in the temple of Asklepios ; 
The two female Friends ; The Shoemaker, is the work of N. J. 
Singels, who also traces the origin and history of this species 
of composition. — ' A Freethinker of the Sixteenth Century,' by 
Max Rooses, gives a fascinating account of the life of Christoffel 
PlantiJD, a printer. A few years ago in the Leiden Library 
Dre. Nippold and Tiele discovered records about Plantiju in 
the manuscript chronicles of the ' Family of Love/ a small 
sect of the time. From these it appeared that Plantijn, al- 
though commissioned by Philip II. to bring out the famous 
Polyglot Bible, and though his trade was chiefly printing 
missals and breviaries for the Catholic Church, yet secretly be- 
longed to an Anabaptist sect, and was in close and constant 
correspondence with Hendrik Niclaes, and printed for him The 
Mirror of Righteousness^ and other smaller works. This was 
before 1555. Plantijn stood high in favour with such diverse 
people as William of Orange, the Archduke Matthias, Alen9on 
and Philip IL While ostensibly he was, till his death, in 1589, 
the great Catholic printer favoured by the Pope and King, and 
ever increasing his large business, his inner life was entirely 
out of sympathy with his public repute. His close friend was 
Barrefelt, a sort of anarchist of a peaceful and mystic type, 
only a working man, the untaught author of nebulous dreams, 
and head of a sect which forbade all formal worship, and 
sought in spirituality and self-denial union with God. Plantijn, 




400 SummarUi of Foreign Reviews. 

with bis dear bead and sound UDderstanding oombiQed, 
strangely enoogb, a tendency to mysticism, and was so devoted 
to barrefelt tbat he translated and at the same time improved 
his books and printed them. Mnch to the amazement of his 
Catholic frienas he migprated in 1583 to Leiden and became 
printer to that heretical university, but again when Parma 
conquered Antwerp he returned to bis business there and died 
apparently a good Catholia All along he kept his inner life 
and thought free, and was'on the side of tolerance pursuing 
his way to use his own watchword * Lahore et constantia.' 
Though very rich he lived simply, and in the best sense re- 
ligiously, for there is nothing in his life or writings that 
shows him in the least demoralised by the strange contradic- 
tion of his inner and outward life. On the contrary in all 
respects, except this, which he must in some way have justified 
to nimself, his life was a pattern of humanity, charity, aud 
integrity. — Another strange inner life, but of modern date, is 
unfolded in G. A. E. Cort's paper on the Norwegian novelist 
• Arne Garborg,' whose life and works are reviewed. Rejecting 
every optimistic system be is a pessimist who fully recognises 
that human life thoroughly protests against pessimism, so that 
he is almost persuaded to accept the optimist view of life if he 
could honestly do so. His strangely weird and vivid pictures 
of humble life are illustrated by quotations. — (September) — 
'Egidius and the Stranger,' by W. G. van Nonhuys, is a sort 
of mystic dialogue full of the poetry of life and death, the 
stars and moonlight, but rather wanting in perspicuousness. — 
An article ' Netherland and the Ci)nvention of Bern ' en- 
deavours to rouse Dutch authors, publishers, and booksellers 
to take steps along with other countries for protecting their 
own interests which it seems they have been backward in 
doing. — *The Hongi-Expeditions* treats of various expeditions 
to the Moluccas from early times onwards. — (October) — ^Mar- 
cellus Emants gives in * A Day in Benares ' a vivid and lifelike 
picture of that teeming city, as well as some instructive side 
glances at its religious life. — ' Perfide Albion ' consists of notes 
of English character by L. Simon, a resident in our country. 
The English he divides into two types constantly acting and 
reacting on each other. The one is characterised by devotion 
to physical force, independence, manifested in the uncultivated 
as hardness and cruelty, hence the enormous number of con- 
victions for wife-beating, cruelty to children, etc. In the cul- 
tivated this type shows itself in self-sufficiency, self-esteem, 
hence their fitness to go out into the world as adventurers 
caring for nobody's interests but their own. This too is the 
High Church aristocratic type. The other type is the nervous. 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 401 

sentimental, easily and lightly moved, but, when moved, 
fanatical, as on such subjects as slavery, drink traffic, vivi- 
section, but this type has also its good side manifested in ex- 
treme self-sacrifice. In religion the Nonconformists and wilder 
sects like the Salvation Army are examples. In art, England, 
so long far behind the continental nations, has only reached 
mediocrity. Its best productions are to be found in the archi- 
tecture of country mansions and in blaok and white. Art and 
music are taken up passionately, but only as a hobby or 
fashion, and in real merit the Scotch and Irish are first. 
Democracy is not in England hostile to aristocracy ; it is its 
stay, hence the phenomenon of democratic conservatism. The 
occurrences in South Africa are taken up to show how Im- 
perial England is decadent and may possibly soon go to pieces. 
— ' Lodewyk van Deyssel ' and his collected essays and other 
pieces forms the subject of a lightly written and amusing 
article by J. M. Acket. It is as a litterateur and critic that 
Van Deyssel is famous — a sort of Dutch Carlyle, sardonic, a 
creator of phrases, and with a prophetic vein piercing to the 
heart of things disregarding conventionalities, and a devoted 
admirer of Zola. — Next follows 'John Burns,' socialist and 
organiser of unskilled labour, by Tex. — A charmingly written 
paper by H. Pyttersen Iz, * A Queen,' gives the story of Desired 
Clary, wife of Bernadotte, King of Sweden. — ' The Ideas of 
Karl Lamprecht * is a review not too favourable of that Leipzig 
professor's views on how to write history and on how he has 
written it in his History of Germany so far as it goes. 

GREECE, 

Journal of the Historical and Ethnological Society 
OF Greece (Vol. V., Pt. 17, June, 1896).— The k Sp. P. 
Lambros publishes a number of MSS. The first is a sixteenth 
century version of Aesop by George Aitolos from an Athos MS., 
interesting both for the study of the fables, and of the develop- 
ment of the language. — The next is the didactic poem of Alexios 
Komnenos (Spaneas), of which other MSS. have been published. 
One of the present versions, from the Docheiarian Monastery on 
Athos, is given in a corrected form, the other, a fragment from 
the Iberian Monastery is so full of errors that it has been thought 
worth while to give it as it stands. The k. Lambros also pub- 
lishes a lease of the fourteenth centurv from a Paris MS. 
Symeon, a monk of the Monastery of St. Kontostephanos, under 
Monemvasia, lets a parcel of ground to two farmers for three 
years, which they are t(x occupy and crop for that time. At 
harvest time they are to retain two-thirds of the produce, and 




402 Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 

pay the other to the monastery. The monastery is to give them 
fonr monzouria of com and six measures of wine for the first, bat 
not for the remaining years, except in the event of war, in which 
case it will receive one-half of the produce. — ^The k. DassarStos 
discusses the situation of Eoritsa, which he assignes to Epeiros 
and not to Macedonia as some recent geographers have done. 

DENMARK. 

Year-book fob Old Northern Archeology and History 

(Vol XL.Part 2, 1896). — In this part are two articles, both of some 
historical value. The first, by Kr. Kaalund, of the Copenhagen 
University Library, deals with the authorship of the Frofectio 
Danorum in terram aanctamy * A history of a Danish Crusade in 
the year 1191-92.* The work existed only in one MS., found at 
Liibeck by J. Kirchmann about 1620, and now lost. The 
author's name is not given, but Dr. Kaalund makes out a good 
case for assigning it to the monk Theodoric, author of the His- 
toria NorvegicB. The two treatises were found in the same MS. 
(where they were appended to a copy of Joseph us), both of them 
display an acquaintance with Norse rather than with Danish 
forms of words and names, and the style in the two works has 
many points of resemblance, so that a common authorship is a 
very natural supposition. — The article by P. Lauridsen on * Old 
Danish Villages,' is an extremely suggestive study of a somewhat 
difficult subject The old village life in Denmark was broken 
up about a century ago, and the accounts preserved of its original 
forms are not at all satisfactory. The author deals only with 
the older villages, which are distinguished from later formations 
by their endings (inge, by, sted, etc., over against rup, rod, bolt, 
etc.) Among these older settlements he distinguishes three 
classes, the closed or round village, the long village, and the 
single-line village, whose form is determined bv its situation. A 
number of plans, showing these different types, make the author's 
views very clear and convincing. Of especial interest is his 
treatment of the common pasture, and his explanation of the 
mysterious * forta,' spoken of in old Swedish and Danish law. 
To the student of agiarian history and economics the whole 
article ought to be very interesting and instructive. 

SWITZERLAND. 
BiBLIOTHEQUE UnIVERSELLE ET ReVUE SUISSE (July, 

August, September). — Merely mentioning M. Numa Droz's 
* Geneva and Zurich,* which, being a pomparison between the 
Swiss exhibitions of 1883 and of 1896, is not of very general 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 403 

interest, we come to a contribution which will appeal to most 
readers. It is entitled ^ Under the Walls of Plevna,' and is 
based on the letters of Sergius Botkine, who accompanied 
Alexander 11. as his private physician. These letters go far 
towards explaining how it happened that the Russians were kept 
in check for some six months by a comparatively insignificant 
fortress. There were in the Russian army too many people who 
thought of nothing but turning the war to their own pecuniary 
profit. In the Turco-Russian campaign corruption reached even 
more fearful proportions than during the Crimean War; and to 
that must be ascribed the failure of the Russian army the last 
time it faced an adversary whom the Powers of Europe are too 
accustomed to look upon as of no account. — The * Irish Idylls ' 
of Miss Jane Barlow are reviewed and summarised in an in- 
teresting article by M. Aug. Glardon. He describes the author 
as being an exponent of ' photographic realism.' She writes, ha 
says, with absolute simplicity, noting, by preference those slight 
and insignificant details which, when taken together, convey the 
impression of reality. The art of contrasts, of antitheses, of 
vigorous contrasts between light and shade, in short, the art of 
* effects,' is unknown to her. All conventionality has disappeared 
to give place to a conscientious search after truth. — In both the 
July and the August numbers M. Maurice Muret gives an 
account of Slatin Pasha's captivity with the Mahdi. The article 
is most interesting, but, being based on Slatin's own work, ' Fire 
and Sword in the Soudan,' cannot, of course, lay claim to 
originality. — 'The Causes of a Great War,' that is, of the 
Franco- German War, are set forth by M. Edmond Rossier in 
the numbers for August and September. In his opinion, the 
events which took place in July, 1870, did not cause the war, but 
were only the occasion of it. The war, he says, was the result of 
the whole political evolution of Prussia and of France since 
1860, and even prior to that date. To justify this assertion he 
enters into a detailed exposition of the condition of both countries 
prior to the fateful candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohen- 
zollern. — The impotency of the European powers, which M. Ed. 
Talichet discusses, refers, it scarcely needs to be said, to their 
Armenian policy. The author not only censures them vigorously, 
but also shows them how they may bring the Sultan to his 
senses. That is, by confiscating Crete at once, and threatening 
to lay hands on further slices of territory whenever there is a 
renewal of atrocities. — The September number opens with an 
article in which M. Michel Delines begins an account of the 
three great reforms introduced by the Emperor Alexander EL. of 
Russia — the emancipation of the serfs, the abolition of corporal 
xxviii. 27 




404 SummariiM of Foreign Eeviewi. 

panishment, and the institution of the jury. — ^ Cleg Kelly/ by 
S. R Crockett, supplies M. Glardon with material for a rery 
readable essay, of wnich the chief pdnt is a comparison between 
the Scottish Arab and Victor Hugo's Gavroche — an honour of 
which some may think the Edinburgh urchin was scarcely 
worthy. 

ICELAND. 

EiMRElDiN (Vol. II., 1896). — ^The success of this new perio- 
dical has induced the editor to issue three parts of it this year in 
place of two, and all three are quite up to the level of the earlier 
ones. The contents are very varied, and include a number of 
interesting items of prose and verse. Among the more serious 
articles may be mentioned the long dissertation by the editor, 
Dr. Valtyr Oudmundsson, (in the political relations of Iceland 
and Denmark ; ' The old Parliament in the Isle of Man,' and 

• Bismarck on Iceland,' by J6n Stefdnson — ' Life in Copenhagen * 
(continued), by J6n Jdnsson, giving glimpses of the Universitv 
and the Elections. — *Peat and Coal* (continued), by Hegli 
Pjetursson. — * Potato Disease,' by Hegli J6nsson. — * Fowling in 
the Vestmannaeyar ' (with an illustration), by Thorstein J6ns- 
son, — and * Goethe and Schiller,' by Steingrim Thorsteinsson. 
Even the new photography is described and illustrated in a short 
article. In light literature are two original stories, ^ Sigrun,' by 
Gudmund Fridjonsson, a pathetic tale of servant life in Iceland, 
and * The Bridge,' by Einar Hjorleifsson, a well written story, 
with a moral attached to it, viz., the necessity for increasing the 
means of communication in the country. — ' Old Gunnhild,' is a 
translation from L. Dilling by the editor. — A good part of the 
poetry in the volume consists of translations, but there are also 
original verses by Steingrim Thorsteinsson and Valdimar Briem, 
and the continuation of a longer poem (a love-tale) by Thorstein 
Erlingsson. — The translations from the Norse poets Wergeland 
and Welhaven, by Matthias Jochumsson, are executed with his 
usual skill, and no less successful are the renderings of Goethe's 

* Bride of Corinth ' and * Elf-king,' by Steingrim Thorsteinsson, 
Eimreidin is evidently supplying a felt want among the reading 
public of Iceland, and is a remarkable product for so small a 
nation. 

AMERICA. 

The American Historical Review (July.) — Cast on the 

lines of the ' English Historical,* this review is making a place 
for itself, and contributing, so far excellently, to the elucidation 
of problems connected with the History of the United States of 



Summaries of Foreign Reviews. 405 

America. Under the title * Hotman and the " Franco-Gallia," ' 
W. H. M. Baird contributes an article bearing on the Huguenot 
movement in France. The particular point to which attention 
is called is the attitude of the French Protestants to the doctrine 
of passive obedience, with special reference to the opinions of 
the jurist, F. Hotman, as set forth in his work, Franco- Gallia* 
Mr. Baird, it need hardly be said, differs widely in his estimate 
of that work from Viceron, by whom it was condemned as un- 
worthy of a French jurisconsult. — Mr. Melville M. Bigelow con- 
tinues his valuable and interestinor articles on the Bohun wills. — 
Over the sionature of Mr. C. F. Adams we have a graphic 
description of the Long Island campaign in 1776, a campaign in 
which, * in spite of what historians have since asserted,' remarks 
the author, Washington's ' prestige at the time was greatly dim- 
inished, and his control of the situation imperilled.' — In an article 
on President Witherspoon Mr. M. Coit Tyler gives a biographi- 
cal sketch of this great Scotsman who, landing in America after 
he had passed middle-life, managed to raise himself to the Presi- 
dent's chair. — The last article in the number is by Mr. J. S. 
Murdock on the ^ First National Nominating Convention.' — 
Under the section of Documents are the draft of an address of 
the Continental Congress to the people of the United States, 
1776; papers connected with the surrender of Fort Charlotte, 
Mobile, 1780 ; and a letter of John Page to Madison, 1801. — 
Among the books reviewed are Mahaffy's Empire of the 
Ptolemies, Harrisse's John and Sebastian Cabot, Seeley's Groxoth 
of Biitish Policy^ Sayce's Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotus, 
and the third volume of Wy lie's England under Henry IV. 

Quarterly Journal of Economics. — In the July number 

of this journal, which issues from the Harvard University, is a 
notable article by Mr. W. J. Ashley, the Professor of Econo- 
mics there, and well known on this side of the Atlantic through 
his two admirable volumes on Economic History and Theory. 
The article we refer to is on * The Beginnings of Town Life 
in the Middle Ages.' What mediaeval town life was when 
fully developed, say in the fifteenth century, is, as the author 
observes, very evident; but the two questions, whence did 
towns acquire their characteristic constitutions and their char- 
acteristic population ? are, as he further observes, among the 
most obscure and perplexing. Professor Ashley has no new 
theory of his own to propound ; his aim in the article is simply 
expository. Passing by the older literature, he takes the 
theories which have been propounded during the present 
decade by M. Jacques Flach in the section 'La Commune 
Urbaine' in his Origines de CAncienne France; by Dr. Willi 



J 



406 Sumnutries of Foreign Reviews. 

Yarger in his three articles entitled * Zur Entstehnng der dent- 
Bchen StadtverfaAsnng^ ' contribnted to Conrad's JuhrbUcher in 
1893-94-95 ; by M. H. Pirenne in three articles which appeared 
in the Bevue Historiqtie^ 1893 and 1895, on •L'Origine des 
Constitutions Urbaines; ' and by Dr. F. Kentgen in his • Unter- 
suchun^en fiber den Ursprung der deutschen Stadtverfa^sung.' 
These theories Professor Ashley analyses in a roost lucid and 
attractive way, pointing out in passing their differences, and 
interspersing notes of criticism. Speaking of von Below, he 
observes that it is one of his chief services 'that he has 
impressed upon us the necessity of separating the question of 
the forces which led to constitutional change — one often of 
economic history — from the question of the structure and 
derivation of the constitutional forms themselves, which is one 
of legal or constitutional history/ *But/ he adds, *we must 
go further and distinguish provisionally between the town 
(Stadt^ ville) as a legal conception and the town as an economic 
conception. Usually the two meet. What was economically 
a town was, as a rule, legally (or constitutionally) a town. But 
it was not necessarily nor universally so. And the discussion 
on both issues really turns, in large measure, on a question of 
definition. What shall we agree to call a *town ' economically? 
what constitutionally ? Until we have come to some common 
understanding on these points, there is always the danger of 
arguing in a circle.' 



(407) 



CONTEMPORAEY LITERATURE. 



Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler, By the 
Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. Oxford : At the Clarendon 
Press. 1896. 

This volume of Essays, some of which have, in part, seen the light be- 
fore, was necessary in order to complete the presentation of Mr. Gladstone's 
Studies on Bishop Butler and his works. It is questionable whether the 
writings of any other Eno^lish theological author have ever been subjected 
to so careful a scrutiny. Certainly those of Bishop Butler, notwithstanding 
the number and ability of his editors, have never before been so acutely 
analysed or expounded or defended with such elaborate care or with such 
manifest skill. Mr. Gladstone's edition of the Aiialogy and Sermons may 
almost be called definitive and will doubtless hold its own as the standard 
edition for many a day, while his Essays Subsidiary are likely to take a 
permanent place in the theological literature of the country, and to become 
an abiding source of assistance to all serious students of Butler and to all 
who wish to appreciate to the full the value of his work. The * Studies ' 
are divided into two classes, entitled respectively * Butler ' and ' Subsi- 
diary. ' Among the first we have essays on Butler's method, on his Censors, 
on his mental qualities, on various points of his positive teaching, and on his 
theology, celebrity and influence. The essays under the second division 
are mainly taken up with discussions in connection with the doctrine of 
the life hereafter. Others of them are devoted to discussions on Necessity 
or Determinism, Theology, Miracles and Probability as the guide to life. 
The main. point insisted upon throughout is the enduring character of 
Butler's argument. The direct value of the argument of the Analogy, 
Mr. Gladstone maintains, is, notwithstanding the lapse of time, unabated, 
and is not likely to be abated as the years run on. But great as is the 
value of Butler's argument in his largest work, the value of his method is, in 
the estimation of Mr. Gladstone, greater still. Its principal and distinguish- 
ing feature is that it is an inductive method. * Butler was a collector of 
facts and a reasoner upon them. ' He * chose for his whole argument the sure 
and immovable basis of human experience, from his earliest tracings of 
natural government, up to his final development of the scheme of revealed 
religion.' In this, Mr. Gladstone finds the probable explanation of the 
Analogy*s success. ' It is probable,' he says, * that this great feature 
of Butler's method supplies the explanation of the singular fact, that a 
work, rarely presenting to us the graces of style, not produced in connec- 
tion with any academic institution or learned class, singularly difficult to 
master from the nature of the subject, and running directly counter to the 
fashionable currents of opinion, should at once have taken hold upon the 
educated mind of the country, and should, as will appear from the lan- 
guage of Hume, very rapidly have acquired for its author a high position 
in the literary and philosophic world. Among other features exhibited 
by Butler's method which are pointed out are the author's habit of self- 
suppression, the frank and often surprising concessions which he makes to 
his opponents, and the powerful tendency of his method * to create in his 
reader a certain habit of mind which is usually far from common, and 
which at the present day, and amidst the present tendencies, both of the 
average and even of the more active mind, may justly be termed rare.' 
This mental habit Mr. Gladstone describes as that * which, in all questions 
lying within the scope of Butler's, arguments, suits and adapts itself with 



408 Contemporary Literature. 

gradually inoroMing precition to the deme of evidence adapted to the 
tnbjeet-matter ; where that ia mnoh, thankfully rejoices in the abandance; 
where it it Manty, reoogniiee the absolute daty of accepting the limitation ; 
hacked by the consciousness that, in each and every case, it is aafficient.' 
* The student of Butler,* he further remarks, * will, onless it be his own 
fault, learn candour in sll its breadth, and not to tamper with the truth ; 
will neither grudge admissions nor fret under even cumbrous reserves.' 
And to know whst kinds and degrees of evidence to expect or to ask in 
matters of belief and conduct, and to be in possession of an habitual pres- 
ence of mind built upon that knowledge is, in Mr. Gladstone's view, the 
master gift which the works of Butler are calculated to impart. I>ealiiig 
with the indeterminate, Mr. Gladstone recommends the study of Sutler's 
method to those in whose pursuits the indeterminate largely prevails, and 
especiaUy to the politician, inasmuch as of all sciences politics is that 
which, according to Lord Bacon, is most deeply immersed in matter, or as 
Mr. Gladstone phrases it 'most closely kneaded up with human action.' 
'Undoubtedly,' he says, 'if my counsel were asked, I should advise the 
intending politician, if of masculine and serious mind, to give to Butler's 
works, and especially to the Analogy^ a high place among the apparatus of 
his mental training.' Reverting in words which are not without a pathetic 
interest, to Butler's argument, Mr. Gladstone maintains that it was pro- 
bably greater than Butler himself was aware, and that he has accomplished 
more by it than he engaged to do. The chapter bearing the title ' The 
Censors of Bishop Butler,' is perhaps the most attractive, as it is the most 
obviously skilful in the volume. Mr. Gladstone is here on his own ground 
as a dialectician and disposes of the allegations which have been brought 
against Butler's arguments with ease. The Censors with whose opinions 
he chiefly deals, are Mr. Bagehot, Miss Hennell, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mr. 
Matthew Arnold. At less length he refers to those of Professor Maurice, 
X)r. Mark Pattison and Gold win Smith. Incidentally he drops the remark, 
the truth of which most mature students of Butler will feel, that ' there is 
no preparation for a satisfactory study of Butler so good as to have been 
widely conversant with the disappointing character of human affairs,' and 
adds, ' with touching simplicity he [Butler] says : " Indeed the unsatisfac- 
tory nature of the evidence, with which we are obliged to take up, in the 
daily course of life, is scarce to be expressed."' In the section dealing 
with Miss Hennel's opinion on Butler's argument, Mr. Gladstone refers to 
the reported remark of Mr. Pitt on the Analogy ^ to the effect that it sug- 
gested more doubts than it solved, and after examining all that can be 
said in favour of its authenticity, comes to the conclusion that it is not, as 
it stands, entitled to credit. Here, however, it is altogether impossible 
to refer to the numerous points of interest in this very exceptional volume. 
There is not a chapter or a section in it which is not of much more than 
ordinary value, and which will not amply repay the most careful study. 
Among the chapters which may be specially pointed out are those under 
the titles * Comparison with the Ancients,' 'Points of his positive Teach- 
ing,' 'Celebrity and Influence,' *A Future Life,* 'Probability as the 
Guide of Life,' all of which have their own peculiar values and are often 
marked by passages of great eloquence. 

XPISTIANIKH AriOrPA*IA TON BNNBA HPOTfiN AIONON. (Christian 

Sacred Art of the Jirst Nine Centuries, 1-842, or from the 
Beginning of Christianity to the Restoration of the Sacred 
Images.) By GEORGE Lambakes, Licentiate in Theology, 
etc. Athens. 1896. 




V 



Contemporary Literature. 409 

In this work the author, who is a director of the Museum of Christian 
Archaeology and Lecturer on the same subject in the National University at 
Athens, sketches the growth and decline of Byzantine art. He begins with 
the purely symbolic forms of the catacombs, of which he gives a very com- 
plete catalogue, and shows how these were afterwards combined in symbolic 
representations of sacred events, which in turn gave way to pictorial ones. 
The purely classical character which these works exhibit gradually vanished 
in the second period, from Constantine to Justinian, yet even in the 
mosaics of S. Sophia the antique spirit is still manifest. With this period 
too. Christian forms, our Lord, the Theotokos, the Archangel, S. Deme- 
trios, S. George, and others, in some hundred different types are figured 
on the coins of the empire. Christian art thus attained a definite national 
form : but it had entered on a path of decline. A spirit of formalism had 
already manifested itself. KedrSnos records how about 463 a.d. a certain 
artist who presumed to represent Jesus under the form of Zeus had his 
hand withered. Similar stories are recorded by other writers. The 
insistence on accepted forms, which gave rise to these traditions 
— no doubt closely connected with the theological troubles of the 
time — became more disastrous than ever for art when the Iconoclast 
struggle began in the eighth century. This part of the k. Lambakds' 
work is mainly occupied with a discussion of the question of images, a list 
of passages of Scripture symbolised in art, and the traditional descriptions 
of Our Lord's and the Theotokos' appearance. The triumph of the Image- 
worshippers was the death-knell of Byzantine art ; which was henceforth 
made subservient to the dogma and teaching of the church. At Mount 
Athos, which is now its seat, there is no scope for originality. The artists 
there simply follow slavishly the directions of the Ermeneia Z6graph6n or 
Paint&rs^ iTistrxictor. In a compass of less than a hundred pages the author 
gives an excellent view of his subject. His lists should be exceedingly 
valuable. Among the very numerous references to Western writers on 
Christian Art, we notice none to Lethaby and Swainson's work in the 
pages devoted to the church of S. Sophia. 

Schopenhauer^ s System in its Philosophical Significance, By 
WiLLUM Caldwell, D.So., Professor of Moral Philosophy 
in Northwestern University, U.S.A. Edinburgh and 
London : William Blackwood & Sons. 1896. 

It may very well be an open question whether the time for a final treatise 
on Schopenhauer has yet arrived, but there can be little doubt that need 
existed for a systematic account of his philosophy in English. Previous 
writers have confined themselves to translations, to fugitive essays, to 
Schopenhauer's life, or to aspects of his system in their connection with 
similar thought in previous ages and other civilizations. Some of them 
have certainly presented their reflections with a brilliancy and literary 
finish to which Professor Caldwell can lay no claim. But his purpose is 
different, and in supplying a complete analysis of the protagonist of pessi- 
mism in his relation to previous and subsequent philosophers, in his 
ethical, artistic, metaphysical, and religious doctrines, he has laid all 
students under heavy obligation. The striking feature of the book is the 
steady balance that it holds, or tries to hold, between adulation of 
Schopenhauer and that supreme contempt with which many affect to treat 
him. Professor Caldwell falls into the error of being too lenient towards 
the subject of his theme, but at the same time, he fully realizes Schopen- 
hauer's importance, and strives, with large measure of success, to estimate 
luB legacy. The extreme care he has bestowed is everywhere evident \ 



i'Mr» l.iltmlHi 









Contemporary Literature. 411 

what, so to say, the raw material of Ireland was, while the latter is in- 
structive as describing the beginning of evils — the seed-time during which 
the seed was sown which afterwards, in various ways, sprung up and 
proved more or less the cause of Ireland's sorrows. With his third chapter 
Mr. O'Connor Morris fairly launches upon his subject. The chief figures 
in it are, of course, Poynings and Kildare. Poyning's measures are aptly 
likened to those of one of the great Viceroy's in the early days of British 
rule in India. While Henry VII. 's Irish policy is regarded as weak, that 
of his son is regarded as judicious and attended with promising results. 
[Elizabeth's treatment of Ireland Mr. O'Connor Morris is dijsposed to some 
extent to excuse. ' All that is worst,' he says, speaking of this period, 
* had its parallel in contemporary event. If rebellion in Ireland was mer- 
cilessly crushed and the island was strewn with ashes and blood, Alva did 
the very same things in the Netherlands and was more pitiless than Sussex 
and Mountjoy. . . . The sixteenth century, in fact, was an age of 
violence, when Christendom was torn in pieces in a deadly strife ; and 
Ireland had but a share in the conflict.' The good as well as the evil of 
Stafford's administration is pointed out. To Cromwell's conquest but 
brief space is given. * The fanaticism of his men ' it is said, * was no 
doubt quickened by the prospect of a rich spoil of Irish land.* Of Crom- 
well himself, we read, * he had always shown himself to be a great soldier, 
if humanity shudders at Wexford and Drogheda.' Coming down to later 
times, Mr. O'Connor Morris sketches briefly, but with sufficient fulness 
for his purpose, the policy of Pitt and the rebellion by which the partial 
carrying out of it was preceded. He admits the use of bribery and cor- 
ruption for the purpose of securing the Union, and agrees with Mr. Lecky 
that Pitt's policy would have been more successful had it been carried out 
as he originally conceived it. The story which our author has to tell is, 
as need hardly be said, distressful. The perpetual feuds, so characteristic 
of Irish history, are of course alluded to, as well as the part which race 
hatred and personal ambition have played in the history of the country, 
but Mr. O'Connor Morris is more intent on showing the influence they 
have had on the general trend of affairs than in describing them in detail. 
Here and there he indulges in speculations as to what might have been ; 
but his main theme is constantly kept before the reader, even at the ex- 
pense of an occasional repetition. Here and there the work suffers from 
overmuch condensation and would gain in impressiveness by expansion. 

Annals of Garelochside : being an Account Historical and TopO" 
graphical of the Parishes of Row^ Rosneath^ and Cardross. 
By W. E. Maughan. Illustrated. Paisley and London : 
Alex. Gardner. 1896. 

Some time ago we had the pleasure of noticing in the pages of this 
Remew Mr. Maughan's Bosneath : As it wds and is, and spoke of it as one 
of the best local histories with which we were acquainted. In his present 
volume Mr. Maughan has surpassed himself, and produced a work fuller, 
more graphic, and in every respect superior to his earlier performance. 
He has evidently gone further afield in his search for information, and 
besides consulting aged inhabitants of the district, and using his own 
faculties of observation, he has made use of a large amount of printed 
material, and apparently spared no effort to make his Annals of one of the 
most beautiful districts of Scotland as complete as possible. The use of 
the word * Annals ' on the title-pa&:e may perhaps prove somewhat mis- 
leading. Certainly it does not sufficiently indicate the richness of the 
contents it covers. For the work contains not merely the annals of the 



41* Cont'mp&rary T^H^ratitre. 

I iiw^iii ml iiiwiii r tij alMig tb« aborMs of Um GwdodLtei | 

nM^Ml mar* W tWhl» o* M»lirtk«, funily mod cUn lustoiT, bioeivb 
MHMn isd nMoMk, tmk othir nMU«n pertaimng to faanian Uk daix 
wrt«I cntBnak, Mr. llugban't plan is to kit* in tba fintpUci 
.YunJ oMtnptKia ol tka oiantr of DnntMrton, mud then to dnmbe c^ 

I n* r«ruiM >if Ro*, RdaoMth, ud CardroMB, ew^ of whicli a nn^ 
!■' •□;» i« a dOkmil waj, in tha hiatoiyof S<90tlAiid. In dealing <x 
!><• n u> tt Mr. Maafkan Ki^M maajr dataili re«pectuig tfae Ufe and [t- 
•j.u ..' ■:* ir.hatittaaU during thii and earlier oonturiea, and fanmb>! 
n.nir i-i<n>«--n; pwuentan n«pecting their oocap*tiona and indoBOiA 
iSt • < .k. : >: .u kif tb* landovnnr* and pBaaanfciT-, mnd the many chu^ 
t .M h.ir «-4rTTd in Un ovnenhip of diETerent aatmt^s, *a also reapMon: 
■r.r ^>. . ,- .-tJ f.-rauUiMi o( the diitrict, ita fauna mud flora and other pn- 
tv.i.ta. > tr. ,1* hutiiriM rsoMTe, at might btt expeoted, a large ahjR't 
Mr. M&.-i^uit aiirau>« id the other chapters of liia Tolume. In il>^ 
•rti-D .ip>. l.'i lo Ibf pariah trf Rov va hare aummaHea of the hiBWr^a 
"* tV.» Ur.n 'I an.^ •'..!. [uhnan (amiljea, and exoeUent aketchea of Benr; 
H.::. ..f ti.ii'.^i ivar, and of Robert Napier of West Sfasndon, liu 
n— inv I'.i.. :.'r Mr Maii^-han'i aooonnt in the same section of ll< 
K.t J h:i M-L<-.J CampU-U i« brief, bat au&icient. He bat «ue|.' 
a>i!»,i!si i;\>o a.iit^niuniu! upon the ooDtrover*; which Mr. CampbeUi 
)>n'.>,-..:' .• ,ti ,' n*r !'>. anii has nm&ned himielf to a bare narrative of tw 
fioifc T.i- fATii..!. b*lti« of Ulanfruin ii, of course, noticed, and lie 
■'.auchtor >.* 1 .f C. :.]uhouna and tha barbaritiea perpotrsted by the Mk- 
ir<'-.'"n arr d.-A-r Si\l with sufficient fnlnaaa. To the town of Helensburgt, 
»> iiA-iirM \'.u r ll<-:rn. a erand-daughter of John, Earl of SutherZand, mi) 
wifo lit > r Jtiim t'.iliiuhoiin, ita fuunder, conuderablu space ia doToied- 

II w.v»fM:.,l,i, ii wiild appear, in 1777, and could then boast of onlvi 
•in.-ir rv> .•( h.iiii.>ie (hiiioht'd or led-tiled cottages runuing^ along the 
•h..rt> whtTB irhai i« no» known as Clyde Street stands, and for twenli 
jpuT* niA h- init riTj alow, if any progreaa. The tide of prosperity Be' '" 
t>i It in 17-V''. auiov ahen it ha* gone on increasing till it now namben i 
P->;ii;a[; >n nl over ton thi>ii!i»nil, and daimi with one or two other plwM 

■ ■n i.i.' c:>.i.- to W' the *Bnj;hton' of Scotland. Mr. Maiighan'a ue* 
»!n('UT» nil li.«noaih are an itiiproveuenton thoseof hia previous rolome. 
I'tiv sKitie topic* are n«v»aariiy Iroaled, but their treatment is fullet- 
In the BPci;oii on the parish of Cardross among other family historws, 
that of tlie Sin'illolta i* sketched. Mr. Msughan has made good UBe ol 
the parochial rt-ont* of each pariah, and has much to «ay abont tneu 
miniiiora. The district is less rich in archieological remains than i° 
hia(uric.\l and bi>>^raphical associations. &[r. Maughan does not om» 
tu notice how the ornithology of the district has been impoverisbed dDni>E 
■vcent yean. Among the most notable habits of past generations io ^ 
districts waa that of tmiiguling. As an indication of the social condition 
of the {leople at the time, he iiientions that in a pariah of shout 2000 sonli 
thtre were no fewer than thirty placta fur the sola of intoxicating liqi"''^ 
most of which, if not the whole, had never paid duty. The volume i> 
filled with interesting and instructive matter. Several awkward sl'P" 
occur in it, and the index ia neither full nor always correct. 

MemoriaU—Pari I.— Family and Pertonal, 1766-1865. By 
RouNDELL Palmer, Earl op Selbobne. 2 vols. Lon- 
don aud New York : Maomillan & Co. 1896. 
Public feeling cannot but be grati6ed that the intention long cherished 

by the late Lord Selbome to commit to writing, with a view to its luUe- 



rfshed 1 
lubse- ) 



Contemporarif TAtrraivre, 413 

quent publication, some account of his personal history, private and public^ 
\7as, at the instance of his daughter, Lady Sophia M. Palmer, by whom 
these volumes have been carefully edited, successfully attempted while 
there was yet time for its completion. The present volumes are but an in- 
stalment, and covering only what was practically but the first half of their 
author's career, they deal, as might be expected, for the most part with 
his private and family life. Some part of his public career is narrated, but 
the greater portion of the narrative of that is yet to come, and will doubt- 
less prove of not less, if not of more, interest than the more important 
passages in it, which are related here. The hand of Lord Selborne is 
everywhere apparent in the volumes, and that calm, restrained, and 
judicial temper which formed so large a feature in his character, is mani- 
fest on every one of their pages. Not less manifest is his intense moral 
earnestness, which at times becomes exceedingly impressive, and though 
always restrained, reveals a depth and fervour of religious feeling which, 
for some reason or other, is seldom associated or expected with great legal 
attainments. The prevailing tone of the volumes, indeed, is somewhat 
sombre. The style is grave and stately, unrelieved by a single flash of 
humour — an element which seems to have been altogether wanting in the 
author's character. All the same the narrative is far from unattractive. 
Both the character and position of its author invest it with an exceptional 
interest, and few * Memorials ' will be read with equal pleasure and in- 
struction. The future Lord High Chancellor of England came, on his 
father's side, of an old Yorkshire family, and was not very distantly con- 
nected with the famous Dr. Samuel Horsley, successively Bishop of St. 
Davids, Rochester, and St. Asaph, distinguished as a mathematician and 
editor of Newton's works, but best known, perhaps, through his contro- 
versy with Priestley. Yorkshire was also the native country of his mother, 
a daughter of Richard Roundell of Gledstone, in the parish of East Marton, 
situated in the district of the West Riding of Yorkshire which is known as 
Craven. A college friendship brought the Palmers and Roundells together, 
and in 1810 W. J. Palmer, who was then rector of Mixbury in Oxford- 
shire, to which he had been presented by his uncle, the Bishop of Roches- 
ter, married Dorothea Richardson Roundell. Roundell Palmer, born Nov. 
27, 1812, was the second son of the marriage. At first he was educated at 
home along with his elder brother, William. In 1823 the two were sent 
to Rugby, then under Dr. WooU. After remaining two years Roundell 
was sent to Winchester, while his elder brother remained at Rugby a year 
longer. Leaving Winchester, of which we have a minute description, and 
for which he always entertained a profound affection, Roundell Palmer 
was sent to join his brother at Oxford, and matriculated as a Commoner at 
Christ Church in the spring of 1830, but gaining an open scholarship at 
Trinity, after the long vacation he began residence there. At Trinity he 
met with several of his schoolfellows, and became intimate with Charles 
Wordsworth, Thomas Legh Claughton, and John Thomas. Others with 
whom he formed friendships ' to be dissolved only by death * were Nut- 
combe Oxenham and George Kettiby Richards. The * Union * was then 
in its zenith. ' William Ewart Gladstone,' he says, * was President. He 
was a student of Christ Church, prince of the Etonians of his time, and at 
the head of the literary society of his ** house." He must have been then 
in the third year of his University course. He had been a frequent speaker 
at the ** Union " since the beginning of 1830, always on the Tory side, but 
attached to the memory of Canning and opposed to the Duke of Wellington 
and his government.' Speaking of the meetings at the Union in May, 1831, 
during the crisis of the first Reform Bill, he says : — * We had a three 
nights' debate on a motion of want of confidence in Lord Grey's Ministry, 



414 Contemporary Literature, 

to which Gladstone moTed and carried by ninety-four to thirty- eight, this 
rider : — '' That the Ministry has unwisely introduced and most unscrupn- 
lously forwarded, a measure, which threatens not only to change the form 
of Goyemment, but ultimately to break up the very foundations of social 
order, as well as eventually to forward the views of those who are pursuing 
this project throughout the civilised world."' The speech Mr. Gladstone 
delivered in support of this proposition is said to have been one of ' extra- 
ordinary power and eloquence.' George A. Denison, *the redoubted Arch- 
deacon,' then fellow of Oriel and a Liberal according to Mr. Mozley's i2e- 
miniscences^ prophesied, from the nature of the arguments, that the speaker 
was on the high road to Liberalism. Lord Selbome somewhat caustibally re- 
marks upon the speech, that it ' might perhaps have been repeated without 
change of a word by those who dissented from his own Irish measure of 1886.' 
Beyond the hereditary Toryism of his family Lord Selbome when he went 
up to Oxford, had no politics ; but in the company of Oardwell, Lowe, and 
Tait, he began to interest himself in them on the Conservative side. He 
became a member of the short-lived ' Rambler ' Club, and with the rest of 
its members ran the risk of expulsion from the Union. To the Oxford 
Univeriity Magazine, which was started under the editorship of Wall in 
1834 and lived on till the summer of the following year, he was a frequent 
contributor. He confirms what has frequently been said as to the pro- 
phecy contained in the poem entitled 'Seaton Beach,' published by a dis- 
senting minister of Seaton while he and four or five others, among whom 
was Tait afterwards Archbishop, were residing there as a reading party. 
In 1834 he obtained a fellowship in Magdalen, and for some time acted as 
tutor to Lord Maidstone. Two years prior to this^ his mother's health had 
begun to fail, and from that illness he says, ' I date the awakening within 
me of higher and more lasting spiritual aspirations than I had known 
before.' From the last of his undergraduate years (1834) he traces the 
beginning of his interest in public affairs. At the time Oxford was the 
centre of political emotion, owing to the death of Lord Grenville, the 
Chancellor, and the opposition, in which Mr. Gladstone took a prominent 
part, to the election of the Duke of Wellington as his successor. Leaving 
Oxford Mr. Palmer took up his legal studies at Lincoln's Inn, and was 
called to the Bar in 1837. Though keeping up his interest in Oxford and 
all that concerned it, he was not drawn into the Tractarian movement. 
Most of his spare time was devoted to writing articles for the Times, to 
which he became a regular contributor, and to reading. Among other 
authors he made the acquaintance at this time with the writings of 
Oarlyle, * but not,' as he says, * to become one of his worshippers.' * The 
style, even of his Freiick Revolution,^ he goes on to say, * unlike anything 
that I had before read, was too much like chopped straw to satisfy my 
taste, notwithstanding the passages of splendid pictorial and dramatic 
power which relieved and lighted it up all the more vividly, perhaps, on 
account of the spasmodic sententiousness of his general manner. Nor was 
I able to discover in him any light for the formation or direction of 
positive, as well as negative, moral judgments. My nature was not so 
constituted as to be satisfied with mere iconoclasm (though I allow the 
reasonableness of destroying idols), nor with the substitution of an idolatry 
of strength for spiritual forms of belief and Christian morality.' Well 
connected and having brought with him a high reputation, business soon 
began to come in to the young barrister, and before long his success at the 
Chancery Bar was assured. Among his contemporaries were Campbell, 
Pollock, Follett and Rolfe, Bethell and Turner, John Romilly and W. 
Page Wood. In 1847 he was returned in the Liberal interest for Ply- 
mouth, and in the same year married Lady Laura Waldegrave. From 



K 




Contemporary Literature. 415 

this year the life of the author becomes more and more mixed up with 
public affairs, and the interest of the Memorials deepens. To follow the 
Memorials further here is impossible. We hope to return to the volumes 
when those which are to follow are published. In the meantime it must 
be said that the reader will form a far from inadequate conception of the 
contents of the two volumes now issued if he supposes that the author has 
confined his attention simply to a narration of the story of his own life. 
Chapters of considerable length are devoted to his relatives and friends, 
and to various subjects^ literary and ecclesiastical. The Jerusalem 
bishopric is treated of at great length as is also the career of William 
Palmer, the author's eldest brother, while not the least valuable among 
the chapters of the first volume are those bearing upon the * Oxford 
Movement. ' 

A Cameronian Apostle, Being some A ccount of John Macmillan 
of Balmaghie. By the Rev. H. M. B. Reid, B.D. Illus- 
trated. Paisley and London : Alex. Gardner. 1896. 

Mr. Reid has exercised a praiseworthy industry in searching out and 
presenting in a readable way all that appears to be known about one who 
is perhaps the most famous of his predecessors in the ministry of the parish 
of Balmaghie. Outside Scotland, and perhaps outside the small denomi- 
nation known as the Cameronians, Macmillan , who is here designated the 
Apostle of the Cameronians, is now in all probability remembered by few. 
The part which he played was not a great one ; still, he has left his mark 
upon religious Scotland, and his biography, as here told by Mr. Reid, is 
worth perusing for the not inconsiderable light which it throws not only 
upon the history of a religious denomination, but also upon the ecclesiasti- 
cal affairs of Scotland during the first half of the eighteenth century. 
According to all accounts John Macmillan, afterwards minister of Balma- 
ghie, was bom in the parish of Minnigaff, in Kirkcudbrightshire, in 1669. 
There is some doubt as to the parish in which he was born, and even as to 
the exact year. His parents belonged to the strictest party of the 
Covenanters, and were members of what was known as the United 
Societies, whose principles were separation from all Presbyterians who 
accepted the Indulgencies or in any way held communion with the 
Indulged, and separation from the State. Every member of the Societies 
were forbidden to appear in a court of law, and was prohibited from having 
any dealings of any kind, either personally or through an agent, with any 
of the existing powers, either of Church or State. In his early days 
Macmillan must have had large experience of the 'hill-meetings,' and 
most of his acquaintances at the time must have been numbered among 
the *Hill Folks.' Among his relatives was Macmillan of Caldow, a Cove- 
nanting preacher, and Mr. Reid is probably right when he says : ' The very 
blood in his veins was Covenanting blood.' For a number of years Mac- 
millan seems to have been engaged in farm labour, but in 1695, when he 
was probably about 26 years of age, he matriculated in the University of 
Edinburgh, and graduated there in 1697. For some reason or other, he 
then entered the Divinity Hall of the Established Church, and so gave great 
offence to the * Godly Remnant.' Among his fellow-students in Divinity 
was Thomas Boston, author of the onco widely-read Fourfold State. On 
the conclusion of his studies, Macmillan returned to Kirkcudbrightshire, 
where he received an appointment as chaplain or tutor in the family of the 
Laird of Broughton. In 1700 he was licensed to preach the Gospel, and 
in April of the following year was chosen minister of Balmaghie, and was 
shortly afterwards settled in charge of the parish. For a time all went 



416 Contemporary Literature, 

well with him, though his ordination had not taken place without a certain 
amount of distrust on the part of some of the members of the Presbytery, 
foremost amonp^ whom was Cameron, minister of Kirkcudbright, brother 
of Richard Cameron who was slain at Airdmoss. The fact is that Mac- 
millan's separatist tendencies dung to him, and Cameron was probably not 
far wrong when he called him a ' bom separatist.' Still, as a minister and 
pastor, there is every reason to believe that he was in every way exem- 
plary. He continued in the quiet and indefatigable discharge of his duties 
until the beginning of 1703, when the Privy Council sent down an order 
for all ministers to 'swear Allegiance and subscribe the Assurance to 
Queen Anne's Government.' This was the beginning of troubles. Mac- 
millan protested against the evils in the Church, and refused to take the 
oath. Negotiations were tried on the part of the Presbytery, but in 
vain. Macmillan was deposed, but though deposed, continued for twenty 
years to occupy the manse and glebe, and in possession of the church. In 
the end, however, he found a home among the United Societies, and 
became the founder of the denomination known both as the Cameronians 
and the Macmillanites, most of the congregations of which were, some years 
ago, joined to the Free Church. Such is an outline of Macmillaii's life. 
Mr. Reid, however, has filled in the sketch with many picturesque details. 
By Macmillan's time the troopers had ceased to be used against the Cove- 
nanters. Still, Mr. Reid has several times to tell how the Sheriff came to 
Balmaghie to eject Macmillan and take possession of the church and its 
appurtenances, and how on each occasion he was prevented either by 
armed men or crowds of women. He has much to tell also of the religious 
habits of the time, and of the way in which the ecclesiastical courts of the 
period did their business. Altogether, there is much in his volume both to 
attract and to repay the reader. 

Deux maniereft dUecrire Vhistoire, Par H. D'Arbois DB 
JUBAINVILLB. Paris : E. Bouillon. 1896. 

Celtic philology has apparently so very little connection with the methods 
writers of history may choose to adopt in the composition of their works, 
that one is at first sight not a little surprised to see the name of M. 
D*Arbois de Jubainville on the title-page of this volume as its author. On 
the other hand, the learned Professor of Celtic at the College of France is 
a man of such consummate energy, and his activities are so many-sided, 
that it is almost impossible to say in what line of literary authorship one 
may not find him. And, after all, from the study of Celtic literature and 
philology to the methods of historical writers, is not so far a cry as one 
might at first suppoae. The histories of France, Ireland, and Scotland, 
at least in their early periods, cannot now be adequately written without 
a very considerable acquaintance with Celtic literature and Celtic philo- 
logy, while as to the methods of writing history there is no reason whatever 
why a Professor of Celtic should not equally well with any other learned Pro- 
fessor, be quite as competent as any one else to deliver a sound opinion up- 
on them. The little volume before us has been suggested by the perusal of 
M. Julien Havet's Questions MSrovingiennes and the works of M. Fustel 
de Coulanges, particularly of his La CiU Antiqiie and his Histoire des in- 
stitutions politiques de Vandenne France, La Monarchie franqiie. This 
perusal has convinced M. D'Arbois de Jubainville that M. Fustel de 
Coulanges has attached far too little importance to the arguments and 
liscoveries of M. J. Havet in respect to many of the charters and docu- 
nents which have hitherto been assigned to the period of the Mero vin- 
ous. And this a^ain has set him thinking about the two methods of 
ndting history. One of these he terms the a priori and the other the a 



Contemporary Literature, 417 

posteriori. As samples of the two, he takes Bossuet's celebrafced Discov/rse 
and Tilleraont's History of St, Louis, and then proceeds to show that in 
his work, La Cite Antique, M. Fustel de Ooulanges follows precisely the 
same method as Bossuet, basing his narrative not on a careful induction 
from facts, but writing from a preconception, and selecting and using such 
facts only as support or corroborate it. In the second half of the volume, 
M. D'Arbois de Jubainville criticises very keenly a number of statements 
advanced by M. Fustel de Ooulanges in the second of his volumes named 
• above, and cites against them the testimony of the original records. The 
volume, though small, is of manifold interest. Here and there the author 
diverges into politics. In the preface be gives an account of his family 
and of his own position in regard to politics. Scattered through the 
volume are references to English history, as well as to such writers as 
Guizot, Thierry, and Sir Walter Scott. Though controverting many of 
M. Fustel de Ooulanges' positions, M. D'Arbois de Jubainville pays a high 
tribute to his learning and character. 

Etudes 8ur le droit celtique. Par H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, 
avec la collaboration de Paul Collinet. Tome Second. 
Paris : Albert Fontemoing. 1895. 

With the assistance of M. Oollinet, M. D'Arbois de Jubainville here 
completes for the present his learned studies on the ancient laws of Ireland. 
This, the second volume he has devoted to the subject, forms one of the 
series which has now for some time been appearing under the general title 
Cours de litUrature celtique, and of which he is the editor. It divides itself 
into two parts which form the third and fourth of the whole work. In the 
first we have a translation of the first section of the treatise contained in 
the Senchus Mor, dealing with the law of seizure, together with an elabor- 
ate commentary, philological and explanatory, upon it ; and in the second 
the original text of the same forty-eight articles of the Senchus Mor, as 
corrected by Dr. Whitley Stokes, accompanied by an interlinear and word 
for word translation. The volume in fact contains two translations of this 
part of the text of the ancient laws. The first, however, is regarded by 
its author as for the most part tentative, being in many places more para- 
phrastic than literal. The second is followed by an elaborate glossarial 
index which has been prepared by the skilful hand of M. Collinet. By 
the student it will be found exceedingly useful. M. Collinet has called to 
his aid all the resources of Celtic philology, and has thus placed the student 
in a position to check the freer translation given in the earlier part of the 
volume. M. D'Arbois de Jubainville's commentary is, as it is almost un- 
necessary to say, highly instructive, and goes far to justify the renderings 
he has given to what is confessedly a difficult text. The indices which 
have been prepared for the volumes are, in addition to M. Oollinet's, 
eleven in number, and like that are remarkably elaborate, and deserve to 
stand as models to be followed. 

A Primer of Burns. By William A. Craigie, B.A., Assistant 
and Lecturer in the University of St. Andrews. Methuen 
& Co. 1896. 

This little book is not the least noteworthy of the many contributions 
which this year has added to the literature of Burns. As the title implies, 
it is meant as an introduction to the study of the poet. Its aim is not to 
present any theory of Burns, but simply to take up his work as it stands 
and point out its characteristics and its worth as poetry. Perhaps this is 



418 Contemporary Literature, 

the senrioe which Bums moat needs at the present time. It is becoming 
harder and harder to look on him fairly and judge him as we might judge 
any other poet. We are in dauj^er of feeling that we uiight lose our ad- 
miration if we examined too closely into his actual work. Mr. Graigie has 
tried to show us that Burns can speak for himself. The book deals 
successively with the life, the poems, the songs, and the letters of Bums. 
A chapter, not the least valuable, is added on the language. Mr. Craigie 
has been best known hitherto as an expert in Scottish language. He 
might have been tempted to give a disproportionate treatment to this 
aspect of his subject, but has wisely limited himself to this short and ad- 
mirably lucid chapter. At the end of the book there is a bibliography, 
brought down to the present year. In dealing with the life Mr. Craigie 
does not write either as an advocate or a judge. His method is simply to 
recount the facts as they happened, without apology or criticism. This 
treatment may not be ethical enough for some readers, but we do not think 
that anything is lost by it. Most of us are getting tired of contemplating 
Burns unde,r the morid dissecting knife. Mr. Craigie proceeds to examine 
the poems in the light reflected on tbem by the life. He takes up the 
principal poems one by one, and gives a few lines of explanation and criti- 
cism upon them. Tiie result, however, is no mere catalogue, but a clear, 
connected story of how Burns gradually attained to mastery in his art and 
gave expression to his genius on its varied sides. In this section there is 
much to be said about Burns*s obligations to the Scottish poets before him. 
These obligations have often been over-rated, and Mr. Craigie has done 
good service in examining into the matter thoroughly and disposiiig of it 
once for all. *If it is unjust to Ramsay and Fergnsson,' he says, in 
summing up, ' to ignore their share in the making of Burns, — an injustice 
that he was never guilty of, — it is equally unfair to suggest that his repu- 
tation is any way stolen from theirs. No borrowing of ideas will ever 
explain why Bums is an English classic in a way that the others can never 
be. Here it is that Homer borrows from Virgil ; the broad original mind 
from the narrow and more artificial.' From the poems Mr. Craigie passes 
to the songs. This section is perhaps the most suggestive and valuable in 
the book. There is nothing that tests so well the real insight of a critic, 
his sympathy with what is most intimate and essential in poetry, as his 
power of analysing a song. Mr. Craigie has done this for Bums with re- 
markable delicacy and success. He holds that in the songs we have the 
ripest and most individual expression of Burns's genius. ' Bis poems,* he 
says, * raised him from the obscurity of his native parish and gave him a 
place in the literature of Britain. His songs have entitled him to rank 
among the great poets of the world.* We cannot leave Mr. Craigie*s book 
with any other words than those of unqualified praise. In a small compass 
he has said all that needs to be said in order to put a reader in the way of 
understanding Burns, and of enjoying him with a true critical feeling of 
his peculiar worth as a poet. We rise from the book with a new sense that 
Bums can take care of his own fame. When all deductions have been 
made, and he is judged, as he must be judged in the end, on his own in- 
alienable merits, he is still one of the poets for all time. In making us 
feel this in his Primer, Mr. Craigie has done the truest service to our 
poet. 

The Scenery of Switzerland and the Causes to which it is due. 
By the Eight Hon. Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., 
D.C.L., etc. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 
1896. 



Contemporary Literature, 419 

Readers who take up this yolume with the expectation of finding in it 
glowing descriptions of scenery in Switzerland will be disappointed ; but 
he who wishes to learn how the scenery of Switzerland has come to be 
what it is, and to know something of the causes to which it is due^ will 
find it both interesting and instructive. The book is written throughout 
from the point of view of science, and tries, with the aid of the most re- 
cent scientific theories, to explain the many interesting problems which 
the physical geography of the country presents. After an introductory 
chapter on the geology of Switzerland, in which it is pointed out that the 
principal axis of the Alps follows a curved line from the Maritime Alps to- 
wards the north-east, by Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and St. Gotthard, to the 
mountains overlooking the Engadine, and the prevailing rocks are described, 
another follows on the origin of mountains, in which the non-geological 
reader will find much to entertain and instruct him. In the next chapter 
the author fairly enters upon his subject, and begins with an elaborate de- 
scription of the mountains of Switzerland. Subsequent chapters deal with 
the snow-fields and glaciers of the country, describing the formation and 
movements of the latter, their present and former extension, l^he erosive 
action of water, the agencies at work in the formation of valleys and the 
effects which weathering, climate, and the character and inclination of the 
rocks have upon scenery, are described. The difficult problems presented 
by the Swiss and Italian lakes are discussed and many interesting parti- 
culars both as to the formation of their beds and the colour of their waters 
are pointed out. In the remaining chapters Sir John Lubbock turns his 
attention to the various districts of the country, such as the Jura district^ 
the Central plain, the Outer Alps, the district around Mont Blanc, the 
Rhine Valley, the Yalais and the Bernese Oberland, the Ticino and Enga- 
dine, and enters into an elaborate account of their geological structure. 
The work takes in the whole of the surface of Switzerland and forms an 
admirable introduction to the geology of the country. It is supplied with 
a map and bibliography but lacks an index. 

The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. Edited by William 
Knight. Vol. VII. London and New York : Macmillan 
&Co. 1896. 

This volume of Professor Knight's edition of Wordsworth contains the 
poems written during the years 1821-34. Among them are some of the 
best known of the poet's verses. The volume opens, of course, with the 
long series of Ecclesiastical Sonnets. To these the editor has added a con- 
siderable number of useful notes, though from the list of Cambridge 
Platonists given on page 76 the name of Benjamin Whichcote, the chief 
of the School, to whom Smith and the rest owed, for the most part, their 
inspiration, is, strangely enough, omitted. Among the other pieces 
written during the same decade as the series just mentioned are ' The 
Skylark,* * To the Cuckoo,' * Incident in Bruges.' * The Power of Sound,' 
'Humanity,' 'The Egyptian Maid.' The second year of the following 
decade brings us to the group of poems written during a tour in Scotland and 
on the English border in the autumn of 1831, and published in 1835 in the 
volume entitled Yarrow Bevisited and Other Poems, Following these is a 
number of pieces originally issued in the same volume, such as the poems 
suggested during a tour in the Western Highlands and Islands during the 
summer of 1833, ' Devotional Incitements,' written in 1832, the 
'Labourer's Noonday Hymn,' and 'The Redbreast.* The volume gives 
evidence of great care in the editing, and the edition bids fair to be the 
best yet issued. 

XXVIII. 28 



420 Contemporary Literature. 

The Poetical Works of Robert Bumsy with Notes^ Glossary^ Index 
to first LineSy and Chronological List Edited by J. Logie 
Robertson, M. A. London and New York : Henry Frowde. 
1896. 

The Poetical Works of Lord Byron. Same Publisher. 

These two volumes belong to the Oxford Series of the Poets, now in course 
of publication by Mr. Henry Frowde. Among recent editions of his works 
the ' Oxford Bums ' will take a high place both on account of the form in 
which it is issued and the cheapness of its popular edition, and not less on 
the careful manner in which it has been edited. The pieces are divided 
into two classes : Poems, Epistles, etc., and Songs and Ballads ; and these 
again are arranged, not according to their chronology, but according to the 
order of their popularity, which, as Mr. Robertson observes, ' pretty well 
corresponds with the order of merit.' The text has been carefully collated, 
and that reading has been adopted which, in the editor's judgment, seemed 
the best. The notes which are given at the end of the volume are brief, 
but sufficient for the ordinary reader, while now and again they show to 
some extent what was the source of Bums's inspiration, and his indebted- 
ness to contemporary poets. In addition to a carefully compiled glossary 
an index to the first lines and a chronological index are given. The work 
is published in three forms : one on ordinary paper, another on the Oxford 
India paper, and the third on the same paper, but in bold type, in three 
dainty little volumes with case. Of minature editions this last is the 
prince. Nothing like it has appeared. — Byron's works are published in 
the same sizes and on the same paper. No editor's name is attached to 
the edition, but the text is that of Mr. Murray's edition of 1867, and con- 
taining the copyright matter of that edition, is, like it, complete. 

Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, vnth Extracts from his Letters 
and Remarks on his Writings. By William Sloane 
E[£NN£DT. Paisley and London : Alex. Gardner. 1896. 

Among admirers of Walt Whitman and his poetry this little volume, 
like most others that contain information about him, is sure to meet with 
a cordial welcome. It cannot be said that it contains anything of great im- 
portance either in connection with the poet or his poetry, yet it contains a 
number of personal details as also of particulars regarding his works 
which, as they serve to give a fuller idea of his methods and habits those 
who esteem his writings will be glad to become acquainted with. Mr. 
Kennedy seems for some time to have been on intimate terms with the 
poet, and to have had frequent intercourse with him both by correspondence 
and personally. In the first of the three sections into which his volume 
is divided he records the impressions made upon him by his visits to the 
poet from the year 1880 up to the time of his death, together with similar 
reminiscences communicated to him by others, or extracted from various 
publications. The insight which these afford into the private life of Whit- 
man is, as may readily be inferred, very considerable. Among the fullest 
and most interesting of the last kind are those written by Colonel Scovel 
and a Mr. Johnson, both of whom, besides describing the poet and his 
dwelling, give a number of pieces of information respecting the publication 
of his works. In this section Mr. Kennedy prints a number of letters and 
post-cards received by him from Whitman during the years 1881-91. Some 
of them are very slight, consisting of but a few words, of no particular im- 
portance, while others of them run to considerable length. In the second 



Contemporary Literature. 421 

section of his volume Mr. Keiinedy designates Whitman ^ the evangelist 
of the human heart, the poet of universal humanity,' and proceeds to dis- 
cuss what seem to him the characteristics and merits of his poetry. The 
last section is taken up with an essay on Whitman's style of writing, and 
an attempt to justify his rejection of the ordinary forms of versi- 
fication. Mr. Kennedy is full of his subject, and, as need hardly be said, 
writes in a somewhat exalted vein. 

Sir George Tressady. By Mrs. HUMPHREY WARD, London: 
Smith, Elder & Co. 1896. 

This is unquestionably a very clever performance, and a book which will 
be widely read and admired. It is characterized by most, if not by all, of 
the excellencies of its author's previous productions, and will possibly in- 
crease the estimation in which she is already held as a writer and novelist. 
Whether it will live or add to her permanent fame, are questions it is at 
present impossible to answer. There are passages in it which are at least 
equal, and probably superior, to anything she has yet written. At the 
same time it is scarcely possible to give the work one's unqualified admira- 
tion. There are points about it which tell decidedly against it. The con- 
versations have a general tendency to become tedious. Instead of contri- 
buting to the development of the plot, they as often as not retard it. The 
feeling grows upon one that those who take part in them have a fatal 
fluency of speech and are possessed by an inappeasible desire to hear them- 
selves speak. As for the individuals to whom we are introduced, most of 
them are little if anything better than lay figures. The exceptiens are the 
principal characters, and even here the delineation is wanting in fulness. 
With the exception of Lord Maxwell, Marcella's husband, who is mostly 
in the background though constantly hovering about the story, they are 
all very intense, very decided, and, to a certain extent, very explicit ; all 
the same nothing is seen of them save that particular side of their life 
which it is necessary for them to show for the development of the story. 
Those luminous touches by which the great masters of fiction show that 
the character with which they are dealing have another or higher or deeper 
life than that which they are directly depicting, are here for the most part 
wanting. The hero of the story is Sir George Tressady, a Mercian land- 
owner and coal master ; but whether intentionally or not, the apparent 
aim of the story is the glorification of Marcella and her Socialism. Discus- 
sions on Socialism and its theories are all very well in their way, but one 
may have too much of them. Socialism, again, may certainly be intro- 
duced into fiction without violating any of its canons ; but the real subject 
of fiction is not the passing fashions of opinion or of Society, but that which 
is eternal in human nature, and of that, while there is much in it which 
is superficial and temporary, there is extremely little in Sir George Tres- 
sady. Letty, who subsequently marries Sir George Tressady, is pretty 
nearly a social adventuress. Her chief desire is to get into London Society 
to be admired and enjoy herself. She has no liking for politics, falls into 
questionable company, and, though living with her husband, becomes 
estranged from him. Sir George, on the other hand, comes under the in- 
fluence of Marcella, becomes converted to her theories, throws over his 
political leader at a critical moment, is infatuated about Marcella and 
estranged from his wife. The main interest of the story lies in the for- 
tunes of ^ the Bill ' which is to realise . some of Marcella's reforms, Sir 
George's passion for Marcella, the estrangement between him and his wife, 
and the attempts made to bring about a reconciliation. The plot betrays 
no facility of invention. It is a kind of plot which is greatly in use and 



422 Contemporafy lAterature. 

appareoUy in great favour. All the same it is high time that for the sake 
of art, if not for the sake of something higher, some other were tried. 
There is nothing heroic in falling in love with another man's wife ; nor is 
there anything womanly, or anting that a man would like his danghtem 
to admire in a married woman taking up with questionable characters and 
preferring their company to her husband's or her home. Of course the terri- 
ble domestic infelicities which usually follow are depicted ; but art has other 
methods of teaching and is more concerned, and always has been, except 
in its periods of decadence, in revealing the charms of goodness than in 
giving prominence to wickedness. Sir George Tressady has excellent 
points about him, but his character is unformed. It is in process of for- 
mation, but Mrs. Ward makes the mistake of killing him off before her story 
is completed, and while the reconciliation between him and his wife is appa- 
rently being brought about. If Letiy is the real heroine of the story and is 
to appear again^ made wise by her terrible experience, an excuse for the 
termination may be found ; otherwise, the ending is most unsatisfactory. 
The mission by which Sir George meets with his death was, to say the 
least, foolhardy ; but perhaps that is the way intense people act. Marcella 
is, of course, so far as her character is revealed in the story, all that can be 
desired, whatever may be thought of her theories, and forms a good con- 
trast to Letty as well as to her mother-in-law, the dowager Lady Tressady. 
Towards the close Letty gives evidence of having something at least of a 
higher and better nature than she exhibited during the firat months of 
her marriage, but the sudden ending of the story, leaves one in doubt as 
to the truth of the evidence. Tet after all, it must be admitted that, like 
the rest of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's work, Sir George Tressady is, in spite of 
its defects, a remarkable piece of literary workmanship. It wants the 
notes of greatness, but it is far beyond the work of the ordinary novelist. 

The Murder of Delida, By Marie Corelll London : Skef- 
fington & Co. 1896. 

The preface to this book has evidently been written with the intention 
that it should be read, and it deserves to be read. Some things in it are 
true ; one or two strike us as almost amusing. Miss Corelli has come 
across that brilliant set of people who imagine that women have no brains 
or that if they have they must necessarily be ugly or ' unsexed ' or both, 
and has made up her mind to have her say about them. The inanity of 
their notion deserves to be exposed, but is it worth while to be angry 
with them, or to take the trouble of writing a dozen or more pages in 
denouncin^r the silly chatterers who entertain it. Most people who know 
the world would say it is not. No amount of writing will silence them or 
put sense into them. Miss Corelli has also come across a number of men 
who live on their wives' brains and do not hesitate to squander the earn- 
ings they have never won, upon their own whims and caprices, and some- 
times upon their vices. That such creatures exist there can be no doubt. 
Some might say their number is increasing ; but it is doubtful, exceedingly 
doubtful, we should say, that their number is such, or that the temper of 
men in general is such, as to justify the sweeping assertion of the follow- 
ing sentence : ' To put it bluntly and plainly a great majority of men of 
the present day want women to keep them.' There may be a large num- 
ber in a certain class, or they may form a class, and a pretty numerous 
class by themselves, but that does not warrant the assertion that * the 
great majority of men ' in the present want women to keep them. The 
complaint is usually the other way. It may be, however, that Miss Corelli 
has made a discovery ; but whether or not, and without denying the truth 



Contemporary Literature. 423 

of the assertion^ we should require before accepting it as an article of be- 
lief grounds more relevant than any produced either in the preface or in 
the body of the volume. Our respect for Miss Corelli as a novelist is 
much greater than it is for her as an inductive philosopher. The Mwrder 
of Delicia is beyond question a powerful story. It has all the enthusiasm 
and skill and straightforwardness and hard-hitting at social vices which is 
characteristic of most of her other stories. The subject of it will have 
been gathered from what we have said. Delicia is a novelist, highly 
popular, and making immense sums of money by her books. She is neither 
ugly nor ' unsexed,' but charming in appearance, and altogether a beauti- 
ful type of womanhood. She is also a good business woman, prompt to 
act, and withal sagacious and prudent. She meets with Carlyon, after- 
wards Lord Carlyon, an ex-officer of the Guards, and is married to him. 
The only thing he has to recommend him is his form and good-looks. 
' Beauty ' Carlyon he was wont to be called. For the rest he is vain, 
ignorant, and stupid^ and has not a couple of ideas in his head. Half 
of what she makes by her books Delicia pays into his bank account. 
In return he pays her little attention^ becomes enamoured of La 
Marina, alias Miss de Gascon, but known to her father in Eastcheap as 
' my gal, Jewlia Muggins,' a favourite ballet-dancer, coarse, and fond of 
champagne, able to touch her nose with her toe^ and capable of other 
artistic effects of a similar kind, yet not without a touch of rough honesty 
about her. Upon her Carlyon squanders his wife's earnings. Hints are 
dropped to Delicia of what he is about, but they are resented. Her love 
for him is of the thoroughly ideal sort, and she will hear nothing against 
him. At last, while purchasing a birthday present for him, she is acci- 
dentally undeceived in a jeweller's shop. Then comes the end. She is 
killed by his ingratitude, leaves £40,000 for the poor, and * Beauty' 
Carlyon £250 a year. The story of all this is wonderfully well told, the 
characters live, the plot is managed with skill, and some of the scenes are 
intensely dramatic. The difficulty all through the story, however, is to 
understand how Delicia ever came to have so intense an affection for so 
poor a specimen of humanity as ' Beauty ' Carlyon proves himself to be. 
Of course there is the fable of Cupid's blindness. But we can scarcely 
imagine that one so well versed in human nature as we are forced to sup- 
pose Delicia to have been, and withal so practical, notwithstanding her 
idealism, could fail to see through so shallow an individual, who has, 
besides, nothing whatever in common with her. She is thoroughly cul- 
tured, open eyed and swift to understand other matters, and yet she gives 
herself away to a man whose only recommendation is his physical form, 
and whose inanity one would have thought would have been repellent to 
her. There is, as it seems to us, a want of consistency in her character 
and doings in connection with him. When the proofs of his ingratitude 
are before her, she is a changed being, and one wonders how her better 
sense could have been so completely set aside as to allow of her marrying 
him. At bottom Carlyon is a fool, and is perfectly consistent throughout 
the story. All the same, one would be sorry to think that * the majority 
of the men of the present day ' are like him. 

SHORT NOTICES, 

A Most Provoking Girl (Oliphant Anderson), by Margaret Moyes Black, 
though by no means sensational, is, to say the least, a very readable 
story. The locality of it is the East of Scotland, probably between 
Arbroath and Montrose. The plot is simple, but effective and worked out 
with care. Among the individuals to whom we are introduced is the 



424 Contemporary Literature. 

inevitable minister, but fortunately there is no rillain. The story for the 
most part is of simple Scottish life, and several touching scenes occur. 
But why call the heroine * A most provoking girl 7 ' Considering her 
character and early training she must at times have felt very bitterly pro- 
voked by the things she had to endure and the restraints put upon her. 

My Bagdad (T. Fisher Unwin) by Elliott Dickson, begins with visions 
and ends with visions. The story between them — a well-told story of 
Scottish life — might have stood alone, and would have been better without 
these somewhat fantastical impedimenta. In the final vision the author 
proclaims the immortality of his book. 

Hie Carritford Tablets (Elliot Stock) by John Wilson, M. A., professes to 
be a translation of a number of Cuneiform tablets discovered at Carrisford 
recording the voyages and adventures of Simran, a Babylonian commis- 
sioned some 1300 years before our era to make inquiries respecting the tin 
mines in the South of England. Mr. Wilson has read widely for the 
materials for his story and gives a graphic account of what life may be 
supposed to have been at the remote period of Simran's adventures both in 
the East and in the South of Britain. Simran's adventures are numerous 
and often exciting ; and Mr. Wilson's account of them is instructive as 
well as entertaining. 

The Christian Tiiheritance (Bums & Oates) is a volume of sermona by 
the Bishop of Newport. Most of them appear to have been preached on 
special occasions. Among them is the remarkable discourse which the 
author delivered at Cardiff during the meetings of the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science there in 1891, and which at the time of 
its delivery attracted considerable attention. Similar in tone and character 
to this are most of the sermons, particularly the two singularly eloquent 
discourses on Bevelation and Mystery. A vein of controversy, in the 
present perhaps more than in most periods unavoidable in preaching, runs 
throughout the volume. Bishop Hedley appears to be quite as much a 
philosopher as a theologian. At anyrate, he is quite aware of the 
antagonism there is between the philosophy of the day and Catholic theo- 
logy, and seeks to vindicate the latter oy a series of well chosen and 
forcible arguments. Not the least remarkable characteristic of these 
sermons is their eloquence. There are passages in them of great brilliancy, 
which, if well delivered, must have been profoundly impressive. 

In a Far Country (Alex. Gardner) is a volume of sermons on the Para- 
ble of the Prodigal Son by the Rev. Thomas Cook, M.A., minister of 
Levem. If their burden of thought is somewhat slight, the language in 
which Mr. Cook expresses himself in them is at least picturesque, if not 
eloquent. He has certainly seized the main thoughts of the parable, but 
beyond expanding them and applying them in the ordinary way he has 
not gone. The exhortation, ' Place your ear against your own heart,' 
is somewhat difficult to obey. 

In his ' Modern Reader's Bible ' Dr. Moulton has now placed the Book 
of Deuteronomy (Macmillan & Co.), which he claims as affording a speci- 
ally clear illustration of the principles of treatment underlying the series. 
As the reader will remember, Dr. Moulton's aim is to treat each book of 
the Bible simply as literature, and altogether apart from theological ques- 
tions, religious dogma, and historic criticism, in the belief that the master- 
pieces of literature carry within themselves sufficient light for their own 
interpretation, and that they ean be best enjoyed when studied by their own 
light alone. In his introduction Dr. Moulton emphasizes this belief, and 
then proceeds to analyse the book, pointing out its literary excellencies. 



Contemporary Literature. 425 

The text is divided into four orations, followed by the Song of Moses and 
the last words of the Lawgiver. As usual the voliune concludes with an 
adequate amount of notes. 

An ArehfBological Survey of Hhe United Kingdom (MacLehose). This 
scholarly and in every way admirable address was delivered by Dr. D. 
Murray at the opening of the last session of the Archfeological Society of 
Glasgow, as its President. It is a temperate but strong plea for the in- 
stitution by the government of an archsBological survey of the United 
Kingdom with a view not merely to the enumeration of the ancient 
monuments scattered over the country, but also to their protection and 
preservation. The plea is opportune, and the work might without diffi- 
culty be started and carried on at the present moment, if not in England 
and Ireland, in Scotland at least, where the government is busy with the 
revision of the Ordinance Survey. The expense of that revision would, no 
doubt, be increased, but surely the work deserves to be done, and to be 
done at once. Dr. Murray gives an account of what is being done in other 
countries in this direction, and the marvel is that so little has been done 
in this. 

Messrs. Macmillan have completed the issue of their new edition of the 
late Mr. J. &. Green's History of the English People by sending out the 
eighth volume. It covers the period from the outbreak of the American 
War of Independence to the Peace of 1815, and contains an index to the 
whole work of a very full and complete kiujd. As we have more than once 
remarked, this edition of Mr. Green's great work belongs to the publishers' 
' Eversley Series.' Like all the other works in that series, it is hand- 
somely printed on excellent paper. The very moderate price at which it 
is issued ought to secure for it an abundance of readers. 

In their ' Famous Scots Series/ Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson, & Fenier 
have included the B<Uladists by John Geddie. The * Balladists ' are known 
by their works if not by their names ; still, they scarcely come under what 
is usually understood by the phrase ' Famous Scots.' However, be that 
as it may, Mr. Geddie shows a considerable acquaintance with the ballad 
literature of the country, and has written an essay about it which to many 
will be pleasant and instructive reading. 

The Condition of Working Women (Elliot Stock) is a joint production. 
The two names which appear on the title-page are Jessie Boucherett and 
Helen Blackburn. Other writers also have had a hand in the writing of 
the volume. Their work may be commended. It is written with great 
clearness, and, brief as it is, it is full of information and sound sense. 
The authors point out very distinctly the hardships which have been 
inflicted upon numbers of working women by recent Acts of Parliament, 
and advocate the cause of the sufferers with tack and judgment. ' 



$4.00 a Year. Single Copies, $1.25' 

Vol. XXVIIL 19 Nu ^8r No. LVL 



THE 



SCOTTISH REVIEW 



OCTOBER, 1896. 



CONTENTS, 

Art. I.— the ANNANDALE FAMILY BOOK. By A. H. Millar. 

II. —VICTOR HUGO, THE POET. By Esmb Stuart. 

III.— SUTHERLAND FOLKLORE. Br Frank Rindbr. 

IV. —MUSIC IN OLD ENGLAND. By J. Cuthbekt Hadden. 

V.^THE CORONATION OF JAMES I. OF ENGLA5^D. 
By Guy lb Strange. 

VI.— ST. MARK'S INDEBTEDNESS TO ST. MATTHEW. 
By F. p. Badham. 

VII.— THE POETRY OF THE SiCALDS. By W. A. Craiqie. 

Vlli.— A LIBERAL EDUCATION: THE FUNCTION OF A 
UNIVERSITY. By G. W. Prothbro. 
IX.— JOURNALISM FROM THE INTERIOR. 
X.— SUMMARIES OF FOREIGN REVIEWS. 
XL— CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 



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