the true relations of its parts. Each of the first twelve chapters of the Professor's book No. 2. is a study of the corresponding portion of the Homer B. RIVINGTONS' SCHOOL CLAS- clearer light, by diagrams, Milton's concep- tion of the topography of universal space, and particularly of the topography of the infernal world. We heartily thank Professor Himes for his bold yet modest Study of. Paradise Lost, and we rise from its perusal with a more vivid realization of the massive- BEAM."* "Milton assumed the triple task: first, of And so, in the plan of the poem, the Pro- fessor finds three things united that are log- ically distinct: first, "the literal and obvious meaning, which can be represented to the eye by painting and to some extent by sculpture;" secondly, the spiritual element, sometimes sensible to mortal sight, but often elusive, "spirits of the cold and spirits of the heat," spirits of light and spirits of darkness, those wondrous beings identified with the angels and demons of the Hebrews on the one hand, and with the deities and creatures of pagan mythology on the other; thirdly, a profound philosophical meaning HEN a consummate poet, scholar, and penetrating all, the heart of an allegory, re- thinker, after "long choosing and be-sembling both in temper and substance the ginning late," has sat down at the age of immortal story of Bunyan about the city fifty to compose his greatest work, and has of Mansoul. "The spiritual and the alle- been diligently occupied upon it for seven gorical appear to underlie the natural all or eight years, his book may fairly be pre- through the poem." Some of the corre- sumed worthy to be approached with candor, spondences and resemblances on which Pro- sympathy, and even reverence. Such is the fessor Himes insists may seem fanciful; but spirit which Professor Himes brings to the the greater part are strikingly just. Satan study of Paradise Lost. The occasional is sometimes the counterpart of Prometheus, hostility of Johnson and the flippancy of and sometimes of Apollo. Adam reminds of Taine find no response in him. Gladly ac- Epimetheus; Eve, of course, of Pandora; cepting light from all sources, he yet boldly Moloch, of Mars; Belial, of Paris; Beelze- railway contractor, who died in 1870, and of whom a most interesting memoir was writ- rejects the conventional common-places and bub, of Ulysses and Artemis combined; head in a bo'son's chair, and courage to land shores of a South Sea Island. She seems to be a typical English woman of the best the fashionable criticisms of those who take Sin, of the Hydra; Death, of Tisiphone; have never read the poem through. "It is Persephone; Raphael, of Mercury. The unreasonable [he says in his preface] to im- Limbo of Vanity is Hades; Pandemonium agine that a work upon which England's is the great archetype of the Pantheon, the greatest scholar spent seven of the ripest mythical battles of the Titans and giants with years of his life, may be exhausted in a few gods are faint reminiscences of the great war weeks of desultory study." And among his in heaven; and, with a kind of Swedenborgian concluding reflections on the twelfth book insight, natural phenomena are continually literature of travel and observation. self, but we gather from the narrative, from he affirms: "There is no other work in vitalized into spiritual forms and activities, tween the lines, that she was a large steam- thus drawing nearer to the very heart of English literature, or perhaps in any litera- tive. Of any purely scientific interest there At Port Durban the African journey The route followed by the "Sunbeam" and an infinite variety of other details, that he is an Englishman, and the unpleascorresponded in some degree to that of the make up an exceedingly entertaining narra- antness soon wears away. "Challenger;" varying from it, however, in important particulars, and aiming of is no trace, but everywhere there was a close proper began. It proved to be one of great course at very different results. This was and intelligent observation of nature and expense and hardship, and no little peril. a pleasure trip entirely, with possibly a pass-humanity, and the record of what was seen The ship of the South African desert is the ing eye to some business interests in South is minute and satisfactory. Mrs. Brassey bullock-team, and our author's adventures America, in behalf of certain London boards writes with well-bred ease and simplicity; on the way from the coast inland, across of direction. The excellent map of the speaks to us of her lord and master by the Natal, the Orange River Free State, and the world upon Mercator's Projection, folded in endearing name of "Tom"; chats plainly Transvaal. were of a quite unique descripthe volume with exceptional convenience for and familiarly about her children and their tion. A journey like it could hardly be taken ready and constant examination, shows at a pets; in fact, takes the reader along with anywhere else in the world. Indeed, its glance the direction and progress of the her in the very confidence of the cabin. progress was so slow, and its incidents were voyage. Leaving England, the course lay And we close her book with a wish that, as so varied and curious, that the account first to the Madeiras and Cape de Verde Alexander sighed for other worlds to con- thereof forms the bulk of the work, "the Islands; thence to Rio and Buenos Ayres; quer, so there were other worlds for the Great Thirst Land" itself getting but a few thence by way of the Straits of Terra del "Sunbeam" to circumnavigate. chapters at the end. Capt. Gillmore's English companion early fell sick, and was Fuego and Magellan to Valparaiso; and obliged to return, leaving the other to prosfrom this point across the Pacific, touching ecute the trip with only his black servants at the Society and Sandwich Islands, to for company. The roads were horrible. The Japan and China; through the China Sea to Boers were not always hospitable, and someSingapore and Ceylon; across the Indian times were even suspicious and hostile. Ocean and up the Red Sea; through the THE GREAT THIRST LAND.* Suez Canal into the Mediterranean; and so public on the east toward the Atlantic Ocean From an occasional English settler he had home; the entire voyage occupying about eleven months. on the west, along the Tropic of Capricorn; the heartiest welcome, and his treatment at known also sometimes by the name of the the hands of the few missionaries he visited Kalahari Desert. To this remote and inac- receives his most grateful praise. At Rio, Buenos Ayres, and Valparaiso, cessible region Capt. Parker Gillmore made and at Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands, as also in Japan, China, and Ceylon, and at a tedious and difficult journey some three Aden, considerable pauses were made, and years since, the narrative of which is preopportunity was taken to penetrate inland for sented in this large and inviting volume. study of the country and the people. The His ostensible object was the pleasure of On passing the Limpopo River Capt. Gillmore found himself in the midst of the hunting country which was his destination; and of antelopes, ostriches, partridges, giraffes, zebras, leopards, lions, elephants, and buffa accounts of these digressions in South Amer-hunting the large game which there abounds, loes he had his fill. The latter beast he ac ica and the islands of the Pacific have been though in one of his later pages, in a burst The counts the most dangerous of all. hunting in this region is carefully preserved by the King of the Bechuanas, whose license the Englishman had first to obtain. The privilege he seems to have sparingly improved, and we must give him praise for the humaneness of his sportsman's habit. A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals could hardly ask more than he voluntarily rendered. The great peril, while in this God-forsaken The story of the voyage proper is less which we wish he had; but with his story wilderness, was a nightly one from lions; marked, but is saved from monotony by the domestic tone which pleasantly pervades it, and at one or two points is really thrilling. Once an unexpected sea boarded the yacht from the stern, and nearly washed a handful or two of little Brasseys overboard. Again a deserted wreck was fallen in with, loaded with port wine. In the South Atlantic was found a ship on fire, and the crew were res He is a and the great hardship a constant one, the lack of water. The sufferings of men and oxen from this latter cause were often extreme. With the oxen of South Africa, great, strong, intelligent, patient beasts that before us we can easily sketch it. Mountains. In what he has here written this acquaintance. Poonah, Ackerman, Buffle, Swartland, become heroes in our eyes; quite sharing the honors of the trip with cued, with true British pluck, just in the nick that he embarked upon this African exped Ruby, the Captain's clever little hunting of time. In the Straits of Terra del Fuego tion, accompanied only by a single friend. The The Great Thirst Land. By Parker Gillmore. Cassell, pony. Here was Gordon Cumming's old little is said. Capt. Gillmore's style is remarkable for its colloquialisms, and for the native terms introduced without a word of explanation. A consultation is a "confab;" hearty eating is "tall-feeding;" driving coach horses is 'tooling;" to arouse for an effort is to "pull them as such. Here, at the outset, our task would have been lightened had he given the title or first line of each in its original. Of the limited time we have been able to give to the examination of the dainty volume, very much has been spent in the search for these particulars. Where the poems are not broken up into stanzas, we notice a tendency to be diffuse and to paraphrase; even to insert at length what the original only distantly hints at. To quote the most glaring example, in the "Ruins of Italica," the lines himself together;" getting ready for a start is "licking things into shape," out of breath is having a "case of bellows to mend." Far less intelligible even than these are the native terms, South Africanisms we may call them; which are so numerous, and often at first so obscure, that a glossary would have been a good prefix to the work. We note the following: dissel-boom, treck and trecktow, outspanning and inspanning, forelope and foreloper, velt, skimmel-pin, scones, kloof, jambocks, spruits, mealies, fatches, assegai, carosses, beltong, coppy, numnah, and fachey. Spoor and reim also occur, but these are words of dictionary interpretation. Not so, we fear, any of the others, though many are rendered thus: of them are of such frequent occurrence that an approximation to their meaning is forced into them after a time. Still, clear definitions at the outset, or in course, would have been a great help. Furthermore, to send out such 66 "Aqui ya de laurel, ya de jasmines "These gardens often saw the champions crowned Mr. Strong's first volume of verse was given high praise by the Literary World of December, 1876 (p. 102). His new volume contains a single poem founded upon tradi a volume as this without a map of the region Of these seven lines, the third, fourth, and RECENT POETRY. tions of the eastern shore of Lake Cham plain. There, in a valley which still bears the name, the La Moille family settled in the middle of the last century. And there Du Bois, a French noble who had betrothed a daughter of the family in France, found his sweetheart again, and deserted from Dieskau's army that he might still be with her. An Indian guide concealed him in a cave where the young girl daily visited him, until at last she returned no more to her father's cabin; and a necklace, found years after in the cave, was the only clue to her departure. The story has been changed in the author's hands, and is pleasantly told, though the finely the quaint style of the Old Ballads, while the best of his serious poetry is “Carçamon," which appeared first in one of the magazines, Scribner's, we think. “Charles Quiet's" pieces vary widely in merit, but are for the most part free from the common vices of modern verse-makers - forced feeling and an unreal style. By far the best of his efforts are "To a Firefly," "Heine," and "Moonrise." From the latter we take these stanzas: "See where above the hill serene, White as new snow, she tranquilly appears, The haughty stars grow meek before their queen, And droop their golden spears. "So even at their fiery noon, Ambition's stars, that light my life's wild skies, Do worship, and fall down, when, like the moon, Thy image there doth rise." Emily Seaver's volume is in two parts. The first consists of a series of meditations on the Christian Year, while the second has a more varied scope. Her style is pure and devotional, and her religious verse reminds one pleasantly alike of Keble and Bishop Coxe; but it has, as well, a native grace and thoughtfulness. Of her secular pieces, that on the "Battle of Lexington" is decidedly the best. If And now we come to five more volumes, of which we cannot say whether they are tokens of returning poetical prosperity, or signs of yet "harder times" to come. the former, we welcome them, poor as they are; and if the latter, while we pity these M R. LONGFELLOW'S volume1 is full bondsmen in the field of poetry, driven to of his sunniest and most genial and make bricks without straw, we shall still glowing verse. We have considered the find comfort in the old proverb: "When Kéramos," with which it opens, one of the tale of bricks is doubled, then Moses his most brilliant poems, and "The Herons appears." Mr. Harding,' an English bookof Elmwood," which follows it, one of his keeper in New York, is certainly the most loftiest, tenderest, and sweetest; but there ambitious author of the five, and, on the are other pieces in the slender volume whole, perhaps the most unpromising. But well worthy of the companionship. We his faults are clearly marked, and his excelcount some fifty, long and short, many verse is not perfect. lences rather in promise than in performance. of which have already found their way to The next three volumes upon our list, His chief effort is a drama, whose hero is the public heart through the magazines; but bearing the names of H. A. Beers," Charles an English squire, betrothed to a young girl, not all. New to us are the translations from Quiet," and Emily Seaver," are small collec- and a slave to the opium habit. the first of the "Eclogues" and from Ovid's tions of simple poems, such as the singer tempts to overcome the practice, and, failing "Tristia;" of the several French and Ger- oftenest sings to himself for his own pleas- in this, his suicide with the full consent of man songs; and of the eight sonnets of ure, and ventures presently to print with a his fiancée, form the plot. But the best Michael Angelo. Taking the collection as timid hope that they may not unpleasantly specimen of his verse is an expansion of a whole, we have been struck with the protouch other ears. Such offerings the public Milton's scene between Samson and Delilah. portion of what may be called "poems of is always disposed graciously to receive. The Odes, which follow this, remind one, by place," as if Mr. Longfellow's well-known avo- Mr. Beers, who graduated at Yale, in 1869, their selfishness and sensuality alone, of the cation the last year or two, in gathering the gives us what was written during his college worst parts of Horace. Mr. Harding's style Poems of Places, had exercised a silent influ-life, first as student and then as instructor. is a curious mélange of bombast and slang, ence upon his own thought and expression. He has a ready pen, and his verse, though Nearly one half of the poems are landscapes without especial poetic merit, is marked by with souls in them. But they are none the less delicious for that. careful taste and a smooth and pleasant 3 Poke O'Moonshine. By Latham Cornell Strong. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 4 Odds and Ends. By Henry A. Beers. Houghton, Osgood & Co. His at the result, as the prologue leads us to suspect, of an overdose of Browning read backwards. Mr. Spencer, on the other hand, seems a gentleman of some taste and intelligence, and in his prose prefaces grows quite charming. His subjects, too, in his better pieces are drawn from interesting 7 Cothurnus and Lyre. By Edward J. Harding. Au 5 Studies in Verse. By Charles Quiet. J. B. Lippin- thors' Publishing Company. cott & Co. 6 Poems. By Emily Seaver. A. Williams & Co. 8 The Viking, Guy, Etc. By Charles E. Spencer. J. B. Lippincott & Co. sources, such as the Norse legends, and Indian and frontier life. But his verse lacks BELL'S CHAUCER.* wanders from the truth, and especially to both in strength and grace, and he has beenUR readers are probably familiar with notice the kindly affection which prompted wrecked upon Wordsworth's shoal-the to "Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man, A mighty maze,' to him, at least, "without a plan." His lines are irregular and disjointed, not very unlike those of Mr. Daniel Pratt, while his ideas, like Mr. Pratt's also, lack clearness and arrangement. Much the same remark will apply to Mr. Logan's thoughts," while his sentences are long, clumsy, and involved. "The Image of Air," we might inform any curious reader, is a wraith, which when questioned writes sphinx-like answers, with some combination of magic lantern and planchette, upon a marble tombstone. Many of Mr. Logan's In speaking metaphors are hard to trace. of flowers, for example (p. 35), he says: 66 and shines through the whole work. 1. Chaucer's A. B. C. 2. Compleynte to Pitie. 3. Deth of Blaunche. 4. The Parlement of Foules. 5. The Complaint of Mars. Anelida and Arcite. 7. Bothius. (Prose.) 6. the edition of the poetical works of Chaucer published by Bell & Daldy, in eight volumes, some years ago. It was edited by Mr. Robert Bell, from the Harleian MS. No. 7334 (so far as the Canterbury Tales were concerned), before the Chaucer Society had begun the reprint of the six-text edition, which must be the source to which all future editors must apply themselves. Among the former editions was the "Aldine," which Mr. Lowell calls "one of the very worst;' which followed Tyrwhitt's text until it was edited by the Rev. Richard Morris, in 1866, when he substituted another, "based upon manuscripts, where such are known to exist." A new edition of this was made in 1869, just as the Chaucer Society was getting under way, and the opportunity was embraced to add three appendices of value. The life, by Sir Harris Nicholas, written in 1845, was included in both of these editions. Concerning it the interested reader will find some remarks in Professor Lounsbury's articles on Fictitious Lives of Chaucer," in the Atlantic Monthly for September and November last. based upon a careful study of the official 13. 14. record, and showed that much fiction had always been included in previous biographies of the poet. The chief of these were written by Leland (who first related the apocry-18. We regret that, despite all chivalrous feel-phal story of his having beaten a friar in ings, we must put last among these all in Fleet Street-which a late encyclopedia says point of merit a volume written by a woman." is "the only particular of Chaucer's youth We have tried in the above to follow a de- to which an anxious posterity can be certiscending scale, and here we reach the region fied!"); by Thomas Speght, in 1598; "John of pure doggerel a little below the average Urry," in 1791; Thomas Tyrwhitt, in 1775Sunday school hymn-book, for which many 8; and William Godwin, in 1803. Of these of these pieces seem otherwise adapted. the first three and the last are untrustworthy, Here are four hundred and eighty pages of from the carelessness with which they treat verses, written during more than forty years, facts, and the generosity with which they add and, on a critic's conscience, the last are conjectural matter to them. worse than the first. The subjects are of all kinds, domestic, religious, political; now on a pet child, "a little lump of love" she calls it, now on "Lost Souls," and now in praise of Vallandigham and Jefferson Davis. We leave the book to its author's admiring friends. John Urry died before the edition bearing his name was printed, and the life included in it was prepared by another hand. His was the eighth edition printed since the first Mr. Skeat is one of the best known of by William Thynne, in 1532, and it is valua- the English Chaucerians, and his brief esble rather as one of the curiosities of liter- say and notes add materially to the value ature than as a reproduction of the poet's of this reprint of Bell's edition. At the end The five books last named would furnish, works. It gives, indeed, an erroneous im- of the Canterbury Tales he presents Mr. we feel sure, illustrations of every rhetorical pression of Chaucer's grammar and orthogra- Furnivall's conjectural order of them, showvice and every poetical fault, but we cannot phy, and includes as many titles that are not ing the groups into which they are naturally go on to give a manual of composition. Chaucer's as it contains of his authentic divided, and the days to which it seems probPoetry, however, has its degrees of lati-productions. Still, one likes to turn its able that the poet designed to assign them. tude and longitude, we mean- and these pages, yellowed with age, to admire its an- It is evident that Chaucer had a plan in his verses, as useless to us as the Indian astro-tiquated but exact typography, to examine mind and that he had partially carried it out, nomical tables to the Chinese conquerors, the copper-plate engravings with which it is and there is no doubt as to which tales he may perhaps be calculated for a different adorned, to notice how far the biography intended to have begin and close the series. The trouble is with those occupying interPoetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. With Poems mediate places, and they are for the most Formerly Printed with his or Attributed to him. Edited, part united by "head-links" and "end-links," with a Memoir, by Robert Bell. Revised Edition, in four which make the "groups" distinct enough. It may be thought unimportant to know this order of the Tales or even the order in which meridian. 9 Creation. By M. Warren. A. Williams & Co. 10 The Image of Air. By Algernon S. Logan. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 11 Heart Histories and Spirit Longings, Etc. Published by the Author. For sale by Lockwood, Brooks & Co. With a Preliminary Essay by Rev. W. W. Volumes. Chaucer composed all of his works. With regard to the former, it may be said that it would be interesting, at least, to know exactly what the poet's plan was, and as to the latter, it is best to study any author's works in the order of their production. In the one case we look into his mind and see its mode of working; in the other we look at his productions and see the growth of his genius. In studying Chaucer many pursue the opposite method. They determine in their own minds how the works ought to have been produced, and then arrange them after that plan. This has been done also with Shakespeare and other poets. Another dangerous proceeding is the founding of biographical incidents upon passages in a poet's works. This, too, as has been already remarked, has been done in the case of Chaucer. One of the latest offenders is Mr. Furnivall himself, who finds that "old Dan Geoffrey" had been a sufferer from the pains of unrequited love for eight years, in his youth, because he wrote in the "Deth of Blaunche:" "Trewly, as I gesse, I hold it be a sickenes That I have suffred this eight yere; It is upon this point, chiefly, that Mr. Fur- It only remains to say that scholars are now not satisfied with the text of the Harleian MS., and that the work of the Chaucer Society must in the course of time become the foundation for a new and more perfect presentation of our first great poet. ARTHUR GILMAN. and learned them well; of Shakespeare share in his rare and sacred memories. He Another group of the worthies here passed Preeminently, is this book one to be read. There is enjoyment to be had from it, and, what is more, edification. We ought to make extracts from it, but we know not where to begin or to end. THE "CHALLENGER" IN THE AT A LANTIC.* POPULAR narrative of the voyage of the "Challenger was published a year ago, by Mr. W. J. J. Spry, a junior officer of the ship. (See Literary World for September, 1877, p. 57.) In the work before us the "director of the civilian scientific staff" of the expedition presents a first official account, with considerable technical detail, of the general results accomplished within the area of the Atlantic Ocean. The voyage entire, as the reader may remember, was nothing less than a complete circumnavigation of the globe, occupying the three years and a half from December, 1872, to May, 1876, extending upwards of 40,000 miles, and crossing The individuals who remain upon the list the equator six times. It is only a fragment were the author's friends indeed: John of it-the Atlantic fragment — which is Albion Andrew, the great "War Governor" covered by Sir Wyville Thomson's two volof Massachusetts during the Rebellion; umes. The outward voyage breaks off sudCharles Sumner; Theodore Parker; Dr. denly at the Cape of Good Hope, in NovemSamuel G. Howe, the humanitarian; Dr. ber, 1873; and the return voyage begins as Channing, the clergyman, and Dr. Walter suddenly at the Strait of Magellan, in JanuChanning, the physician; Dr. Gannett; Rev. ary, 1876. Historical continuity is thus not Samuel J. May; and -one woman among aimed at; we have geographical unity the many men — Dr. Susan Dimock, who instead. This plan doubtless secures greatwas lost at sea only a short time since. The er value to the scientific student, while it brief sketch of this lady should have been involves a sacrifice of interest to the general provided with a note giving the particulars reader. The wants of the latter, however, concern Sir Wyville Thomson very little. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE AND HIS of her sad fate. All these were Dr. Clarke's own familiar To them Engineer Spry attended, and did THE papers composing this volume are * Memorial and Biographical Sketches. By James Freeman Clarke. Houghton, Osgood & Co. and admire generous, brave, and honest qualities, Sit tibi terra levis." The Atlantic. A Preliminary Account of the General Results of the Exploring Voyage of H. M. S. "Challen ger." By Sir C. Wyville Thomson. 2 Vols. Illustrated. |