by hand-made paper, vellum binding, and a new type cut for this edition.* Our advice was against the employment of any of the usual "lives" if it were not feasible to reprint the only authoritative biography, cut off from the cumbersome notes upon notes in the two thick volumes in folio in which it is embedded, that of Halliwell-Phillipps. The edition was issued, accordingly, without the customary more or less fanciful Life of the Poet.' Mr. Wilder has now compiled a trustworthy Life' based upon the authoritative biography by Halliwell-Phillipps. He has released a clear and continuous narrative from its perplexing, sometimes exasperating, tangle of notes, illustrations, qualifying statements, and added vestiges of information, providing the public thus with a biographical manual that may be depended upon and commended. It is a pity that its value is not enhanced by a careful Index. We notice, also, in glancing through this serviceable little book that its citations of the lines bearing on Shakespeare from The Returne from Parnassus' has not been enriched by the additional allusions from, or by any mention of, the two preceding parts of the trilogy, The Pilgrimage to Parnassus,' first discovered by the Rev. W. D. Macray among the Hearne manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, and printed by him in the winter of 1886. This omission comes of following Halliwell-Phillipps too exclusively. The antiquarian himself possessed the rare manuscript of The Returne,' printed copies of which were well known, but in common with the rest of the world he did not know that the two preceding parts of The Pilgrimage' were still extant until Macray discovered and published them. It must be remembered that the strongest authority does not stay best in all respects for any length of time, and must be brought up to date with such discoveries as Mr. Macray's or such investigations as Mr. F. G. Fleay is continuously making. It happens that these additional allusions are peculiarly interesting, intimating as they do that Shakespeare was the "fad" with the man about town in 1600, but that he had not yet gained the unqualified approval of the critics; that is, of the scholars who had their own classic preconceptions of literary form, and who considered Shakespeare's popularity to be with a special class, and not of a sort to be desired. As it may interest some of our readers to know, the dialogue of Gullio with Ingenioso, who draws him out for the benefit of Studioso, Philomusus, and Luxurio, thus witnesses: Ingenioso. Nowe, gentlemen, youe may laughe if you will, for here comes a Gull. . . . (We shall have nothinge but pure

Printed by George Barrie, Philadelphia

Shakspeare and shreds of poetrie that he hath gathered at the theators!)

"Gullio. Pardon mee, moy mittressa, ast am a gentleman, the moone in comparison of thy bright hue a meere slutt, Anthonie's Cleopatra a blacke browde milkmaide, Hellen a dowdie.

"Ingen. (Marke, Romeo and Juliet! O monstrous theft!) Sweete Mr. Shakspeare! . . . Faith, gentleman! youre reading is wonderfull in our English poetts!

"Gull. But stay! . . . I had almoste forgotten the chiefe pointe. I cal'd thee out for New Year's day approcheth, and wheras other gallants bestowe jewells upon there mistresses . . . I will bestowe upon them the precious stons of my witt . . .; therefore, I will have thee, Ingenioso, to make them, and when thou hast done I will peruse, pollish, and correcte them.

"Ingen. . . . What vayne woulde it please you to have them in? "Gull. Not in a vaine veine (prettie, i' faith!): make mee them in two or three divers vayns, in Chaucer's, Gower's, and Spencer's and Mr. Shakspeare's. Marry, I thinke I shall entertaine those verses which run like these, 'Even as the sunn with purple coloured face Had tane his laste leave on the Weeping morne,' O, sweet Mr. Shakspeare! I'll have his picture in my study at the Courte."

Whereupon, we may be sure, such conceit of superiority and mirth arose in the minds of Gullio's hearers as is wont to arise now in the minds of certain Shakespearians over the foolish enthusiasm of a Browning lover. Times change, indeed, but not all of us change with them. Some of us will still be a little blunt of perception in matters of literary appreciation only, of course. It may be well to add to our commendation of Mr. Wilder's excellent and needed work that the publisher has given it clear type and a plain, durable cloth binding, and put it at a price ($1.00) which should insure its entrance on many public and private book-shelves. ('The Life of Shakespeare,' by Daniel W. Wilder. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1893.)

THE account of the English Religious Drama which has come to the public this autumn from the hand of Katharine Lee Bates of Wellesley College is more than a useful manual, much as that is to the student, when it compacts in one volume, as this does, an amount of information not elsewhere to be found so conveniently. It adds to utility the grace and allurement to knowledge of a fluent and picturesque style. Within its scope is gathered such an outline of Latin passion-plays and saint-plays, miracle

plays and moralities, together with well-selected quotations from them, as makes the reader catch a glimpse of their simpleminded audience and of the life of the time, and reflects light, also, upon the scarcely less simple-minded makers of these early plays and on the dramatic value rightly to be assigned to them in the critical history of literary art.

It is these qualities which make this book interesting to read as well as good for reference, for which latter purpose its value is augmented by an appendix giving titles of reference-books on the subject, and classified lists of extant English miracle-plays and moralities. (The English Religious Drama,' by Katharine Lee Bates. New York and London: Macmillan & Co. 1893. $1.50.)

OF special interest to the student of literature are the following volumes, published this autumn by Ginn & Co., - The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement,' by William Lyon Phelps, Instructor in English Literature at Yale University, which confines its investigation to the period, 17251765, germinal of English romanticism, and discusses, with references and illustrations, the various causes that brought about the transition of taste from classicism to romanticism; The Classic Myths in English Literature,' edited by Charles Mills Gayley, Professor of Literature in the University of California; and A Plot-Book of Some Elizabethan Plays,' by George Pierce Baker, Instructor in English in Harvard University, giving the sources of plots of plays by Greene, Peele, Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher and others. The material for this book existing, for the most part, only in rare and costly editions, or unique pamphlets, the work promises to be of uncommon value. A First Book in Old English' by Albert S. Cook, Professor of the English Language and Literature in Yale University, and author of Cook's Sievers' Grammar of Old English, The Phonological Investigation of Old English' is published this autumn by the same firm. This book is intended to be at once simple and scientific. It will contain an outline of grammar, selections for reading, notes, and a glossary, in a single volume all that the beginner needs. The grammatical sketch will include only essentials, but under all the main heads,phonology, inflection, word-formation, syntax, and prosody. The selections will be as easy and interesting as practicable, and the texts, with the exception of the poetry, will be normalized carefully to an Early West Saxon basis. The notes will consist of grammatical references and brief explanations, and the glossary will be wrought out with care. The elementary yet comprehensive

character of the book will be a recommendation to those who have found existing works on the subject too difficult or too superficial.

THE little book of Old World Lyrics' and its twin in size and daintiness, Songs of Adieu,' are rare issues in contents and form, made up as they are of choice bits of old-world poesy set off in odd type and binding irresistible to the holiday purse, and yet considerate of the many demands upon it, for the price of each is $1.00 only. (The Bibelot Series. Portland: Thos. B. Mosher.)

THE pleasure the writer of The Trial of Sir John Falstaff' has taken in the Fat Knight will not increase in any way, we believe, the pleasure of any one else therein. The few earlier pages of the book, taken up with various opinions of Falstaff, are mainly repetitions of passages more conveniently found, for example, in Dr. Rolfe's edition of the plays, which is, in fact, a Variorum of the best character-criticism. The many remaining pages made up of diluted Shakespeare and irrelevant slang stirred into a very tedious yarn of a descendant of Sir Robert Shallow whose death by a cyclone in Kansas is supposed to have put the world in possession of a manuscript describing a free and easy trial of Falstaff by Justices Shallow and Silence constitute somewhat more of an affront than a tribute to Shakespeare's own temperate and artistic use of the "trunk of humors" whom he, like Prince Hal, did only for "a while uphold." (The Trial of Sir John Falstaff,' by A. M. F. Randolph. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1893.)

NOTES AND NEWS.

HAMLIN GARLAND wields a vigorous pen in defence of the "Literary West" in the October Forum. He is quite right in saying that no one city should lay claim in this great land to be the sole purveyor of taste in literary matters; but he is unnecessarily fierce in his strictures on culture, and the ordinary helps to knowledge in the way of libraries and colleges. The latter are, too often, it is true, hot beds of conservatism, and may hamper. more than aid the genius; but what great poet ever lacked a library? It is all very well to say, "Go like Shakespeare to your fellow-beings, observe them, and then write;" but if ever a writer

owed a debt to books, that writer was Shakespeare, with hardly a character for which he did not get a hint, and sometimes much more than a hint, in some old history, play, or chronicle, with such various and special knowledge freighting every page that no human being could have known it except at second-hand. His art resulted from his omnivorous digestion of other people's knowledge combined with keen observation of his neighbors. If the "Literary West" would ape Shakespeare, let it not in its studies from life forget that the life of the past without which the full portent of the life of the present may not be grasped is to be found only in books, histories, plays, and poems, romances, and even philosophies.

6

THE "pound of flesh" story, which Shakespeare got perhaps from the Italian and used in his 'Merchant of Venice,' seems to have been almost as popular a folk-tale as the "I love thee as well as salt" story apotheosized in Lear.' Our readers will remember a Persian version of the Shylock story which we gave in 'Notes and News' of January, 1890, and they may be interested in the following German variant called 'The Judgment of Schemjaka,' taken from the old German of the Villingen State paper in Freiburg University and given in the Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Litteratur Geschichte. The Villingen version is derived from 'Der Meistergesang' of 1493. We avail ourselves of the translation of The Literary Digest:

"A poor fellow was once reduced to such absolute poverty that he knew not how he should, could, or might pay his way, either in body or in soul. He took counsel with himself as to what were best to be done, and then went to a Jew and prayed him to make him a loan, which he promised to refund after a reasonably short time. The Jew said: 'Good friend, thou art welcome (that is, 'here comes the Devil'). You know very well, if you want to borrow, that we Jews never lend without security.' The poor fellow had no security, and could offer nothing but his honor, his piety, and his faith. The Jew said: 'I don't want that sort of security, but I will lend you forty gulden on the security of one pound of fat from your body, to be cut out by me, if you fail to make repayment at the appointed