NOTES AND NEWS.

THAT was a taking Browning story which Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton told the Boston Browning Society at one of its recent meetings. The story was Browning's own; and he set off the little incident whimsically, and in high glee, for Mrs. Moulton's benefit, at a London dinner, à propos of a story in The Atlantic called A Browning Courtship.' "Perhaps it was founded on the real Browning Courtship," said Browning, "for there really was a Browning Courtship once."

At our request Mrs. Moulton has kindly written down for us this true story, which Browning told to her: —

"There was a girl in London, well-descended, well-bred, welldowered, and born to charm. A suitor for her hand presented himself, — a man of title, of fortune, and of all sorts of personal gifts and graces. Above all, he was deeply and romantically in love with the girl. He proposed for her hand, and she told him that while she liked him very much, she felt that it would be absolutely fatal to her happiness to marry a man who could not sympathize fully with her intellectual tastes. 'Do you love the poetry of Robert Browning?' she asked him, very seriously. Alas! Prince Charming had never read it. He had fancied, somehow, that he was not up to it, and had not experimented. The lady's beautiful eyes looked at him with sad astonishment.

"Ah, it is of no use to talk about our marriage,' she said. 'I adore Browning- simply adore him and I could never be happy with a man who did not share the strongest intellectual interest of my life.'

"Prince Charming sighed, in despair. Then his face brightened. 'I see a hope,' he said. 'What if you should put me on probation? I think I'm not so dull but I could learn; and surely no man ever had such strong reason for trying.'

"So it was settled, at last, that he should have three months in which to prove his power to understand Browning. The Death in the Desert' was the poem selected as the test of his ability. I wonder if anybody coached him. I half think Dr. Furnivall did.

"At any rate, after three months he came up for examination and passed triumphantly. He knew not only the poem, but all the side-lights that could be thrown upon it. He was penetrated with

its grandeur and its beauty. In short, if he had belonged to a Browning Club he could not have understood it better.

"Up to this time Browning had never heard of the young lady; but now she wrote to her adored poet, and told him of her happiness, of which she seemed to consider him the author, and begged him to be present at the wedding which was soon to take place. And Browning went. And he kissed the bride, too; and as she was a very pretty bride, he did not mind this part of his duty."

IT is with great pleasure that we learn of the projected literary weekly in Philadelphia. Since the dissolution of that excellent journal, The American, several years ago, Philadelphia has been without a representative in the choice American coterie of weekly and bi-monthly literary reviews. It stands to reason, therefore, that the children of her brain receive somewhat scant courtesy at times, since left to go forth into the world alone and unprotected by the approving and encouraging smiles of their own mother.

The names upon the editorial staff of The Citizen for so the new weekly is christened — will be quite sufficient to insure it an immediate welcome among its confrères. We note among the purely literary names, Mr. Francis Howard Williams, Mr. Harrison S. Morris, Miss Agnes Repplier, Miss Anne H. Wharton, a gentle band of apostles of beauty, whose influence will be exercised to foster a race of mellifluous and honey-tongued writers. And if at times the reader would fain hear something of other virtues than beauty, he will no doubt find it in the sturdy economic trend of Prof. Edmund J. James, whose editorial duties will be, we presume, to see that sociology is not neglected.

AFTER some years spent in looking into the sources of the drama, Mr. F. M. Warren, of Adelbert College, expresses the opinion (see Modern Language Notes, January, 1893) that prose fiction has had nothing to do with the development of the drama. On the other hand, the drama has often been found at the birth of fiction, and has even presented certain kinds of novels with their plots. "As a general rule conceding the usual number of exceptions, I find that a period of novel writing follows a period of dramatic excellence, and repeats in manuscripts or in print the leading themes of the plays of the previous generation."

SOCIETIES.

the sudden the fact that

The Boston Browning Society held its fifty-eighth regular meeting on Tuesday, January 24. President Hornbrooke, in opening the meeting, dwelt on the thought uppermost in all minds, death of Bishop Brooks on the day before, and referred to he had intended to be present with the Society at this time. Mrs. Richard Arnold read selections from 'Balaustion's Adventure.' Rev. Philip S. Moxom prefaced the reading of his paper on 'Balaustion's Opinion of Euripides' with further tribute of sorrow and affection for the leader who had passed away, and explained the necessarily unfinished condition of his essay, promising its completion at an early date. He related the story of this "beautiful dramatic poem, the centre of which is the 'Alkestis.'" Miss Helen Leah Reed read a paper on Aristophanes' Philosophy of Poetry.' (This paper will appear in full in POET-LORE.)

The question, "Is the Divergence between Aristophanes and Euripides more apparent than real?" was discussed by Mr. Thomas Sergeant Perry. He did not believe in the theory that these two dramatists were really in friendly relations with each other. All the evidence is against the supposition. Aristophanes never mentioned Euripides except to abuse him, and it is difficult to imagine all these diatribes to have been intended in a Pickwickian sense. With equally good reason might we believe him also a devoted ally of Cleon and the sophists. Nor is there anything novel in the supposition that he was really a good hater, since, although now a classic, Aristophanes was once a man. Comic writers are the most serious people in the world, and no one attempts to deny his sincerity of purpose. Hatred of what one considers contemporaneous error is not uncommon; and why should the Athenian conservative not have distrusted the most brilliant representative of the new spirit?

No discussion was held further on this subject, as Rev. Julius H. Ward rose to relate reminiscences of Bishop Brooks, and was followed by Mrs. Crosby on the event that filled all hearts.

Emma Endicott Marean.

O portions of Roman history seem so real to us as those which Shakespeare has made the subjects of his plays. History merely calls up the ghost of the dead past, and

the impression it makes upon us is shadowy and insubstantial; poetry makes it live again before our eyes, and we feel that we are looking upon men and women like ourselves, not their misty semblances. It might seem at first that the poet, by giving us fancies instead of facts, or fancies mingled with facts, only distorts and confuses our conceptions of historical verities; but if he be a true poet he sees the past with a clearer vision than other men, and reproduces it more truthfully as well as more vividly. He sees it indeed with the eye of imagination, not as it actually was; but there are truths of the imagination no less than of the senses and the reason. Two descriptions may be alike imaginative, but one may be true and the other false. The one, though not a statement of facts, is consistent with the facts and impresses us as

It is proper to say that some portions of this paper were printed, several years ago, in England, without the author's name. If they should possibly fall under the eye of some reader of POET-LORE, I wish it understood that they are mine and not another's.

the reality would impress us; the other is neither true nor in keeping with the truth, and can only deceive and mislead us. Ben Jonson wrote Roman plays which, in minute attention to the details of the manners and customs of the time, are far more scholarly than Shakespeare's. He accompanies them with copious notes giving classical quotations to illustrate the accuracy of the language and the action. The work evinces genuine poetic power as well as laborious research, and yet the effect is far inferior to that of Shakespeare's less pedantic treatment of Roman subjects. The latter does not know so much of classical history and archæology, but he has a deeper insight into human nature, which is the same in all ages. Jonson has given us skilfully modelled and admirably sculptured statues, but Shakespeare living men and

women.

THE DATE OF THE PLAY. Of the three Roman plays 'Julius Cæsar' is the earliest in the order of composition, though second in the historical series. It is quite certain that it was written as early as 1601, while Antony and Cleopatra' was not produced until 1608, and 'Coriolanus,' in all probability, not until 1609 or 1610. Malone believed that 'Julius Cæsar' "could not have appeared before 1607;" and Chalmers, Drake, and the early commentators generally, were unanimous in accepting his conclusions. Among the more recent editors, Knight is the only one worth mentioning who considers it "one of the latest works of Shakespeare." HalliwellPhillipps, in his folio edition (1865), fixes the date as "in or before the year 1601" by the following lines in Weever's 'Mirror of Martyrs,' printed in that year :

"The many-headed multitude were drawne

By Brutus' speech, that Cæsar was ambitious;
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne

His virtues, who but Brutus then was vicious?"

No editor since 1865, so far as I am aware, has hesitated to agree with Halliwell-Phillipps that these lines "unquestionably are to be traced to a recollection of Shakespeare's drama, not to that of the history as given by Plutarch; " but the eminent critic himself subsequently modified his opinion on this point. In his 'Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare' (6th ed. 1886, vol. ii. p. 257), he says: