existence; whether I should prefer winter or summer to begin the trial; or whether I should be a Scotchman, Irishman, or Englishman; or even whether I should be man or woman born;' each of these alternatives involving to me most important consequences. What a good John Bull I would have made! what a rattling, roaring Irishman! what a capital mother or wife! what a jolly abbess! But you doomed me to be born in a tenth rate provincial town, half Scotch, half Highland, and sealed my doom as to sex and country. Was that fair? Would you like me to have done that to you? Suppose through my fault you had been born a wild Spanish papist, what would you have said on your fifty-seventh birthday, with all your Protestant convictions? Not one Maxwell or Buntroon related to you! you, yourself a nun called St. Agnese!-and all, forsooth because I had willed that you should be born at Toledo on June 3, 1812! Think of it mother, seriously, and say, have you done to me as you would have had me do to you?" We stop here with our quotation, though the best part of the letter is yet to come.

We will quote again from a letter of Richard Harris Barham: "I must tell you one of Moore's stories, because as Sir Walter Scott is the hero of it I know it will not be unacceptable to you. When George IV. went to Ireland, one of the 'pisintry,' delighted with his affability to the crowd on landing, said to the toll-keeper as the king passed through, 'Och, now! and his Majesty, God bless him, never paid the turnpike! an' how's that?" 'Oh! kings never does; we let 'em go free' was the answer. "Then there's the dirty money for ye,' says Pat. 'It shall never be said that the king came here and found nobody to pay the turnpike for him.' Moore, on his visit to Abbotsford, told this story to Sir Walter, when they were comparing notes as to the two royal visits. 'Now, Mr. Moore,' replied Scott, 'there ye have just the advantage of us. There was no want of enthusiasm here; the Scotch folks would have done anything in the world for his Majesty, but-pay the turnpike !'"

"Lady Morgan, an Irish lady, writing to a friend, says:

I have seen the best and worst of English society; I have dined at the table of a city trader, taken tea with the family of a London merchant, and supped at Devonshire House, all in one day, and I must say that if there is a people upon earth that understands the science of conversation LESS than another, it is the English. The quickthe variety, the rapidity of perception and impression, which is

ness,

indispensable to render conversation delightful, is constitutionally denied to them; like all people of slowly operating mental faculties, and of business pursuits, they depend upon memory more than upon spontaneous thought. When the power of, and time for, cultivating that retentive faculty is denied, they are then hébête and tiresome, and when it is granted (as among the higher circles), the omnipotence of the ton is so great that every one fears to risk himself. In Ireland it is quite different; our physique, which renders us ardent, restless, and fond of change, bids defiance to the cultivation of memory; and, therefore, though we produce men of genius, we never have boasted of any man of learning-and so we excel in conversation, because, of necessity we are obliged to do the honors of the amour-propre of others; we are obliged to give and take, for thrown upon excitement, we only respond in proportion to the quantity of stimulus received. In England, conversation is a game of chess-the result of judgment, memory, and deliberation; with us, it is a game of battledore, and our ideas, like our shuttlecocks, are thrown lightly one to the other, bounding and rebounding, played more for amusement than conquest, and leaving the players equally animated by the game and careless of its results.

There is a term in England applied to persons popular in society, which illustrates what I have said; it is "he (or she) is very amusing," that is, they tell stories of a ghost, or an actor. They recite verses, or play tricks, all of which must exclude conversation, and it is, in my opinion, the very bane of good society. An Englishman will declaim, or he will narrate, or he will be silent; but it is very difficult to get him to converse, especially if he is a suprême bon ton, or labors under the reputation of being a rising man; but even all this, dull as it is, is better than a man who, struck by some fatal analogy in what he is saying, immediately chimes in with the eternal "that puts me in mind,” and then gives you, not an anecdote, but an absolute history of something his uncle did, or his grandfather said, and then, by some lucky association, goes on with stories which have his own obscure friends for his heroes or heroines, but have neither point, bût, humor, nor even moral (usually tagged to the end of old ballads). Oh, save me from this, good heaven, and I will sustain all else beside !"

One more quotation we will make-for the benefit of tobacco smokers-from the letter of an English celebrity, who shall be nameless, who is urging an old friend to visit him in his country home. He says: "I am alone. . . . I am wasting my sweetness on the desert air-I say my sweetness, for I have given up smoking and smell no more!"

WILLIAM L. KINGSLEY.

MORRIS'S ATALANTA'S RACE, ETC.*-In a study of the Greek myths Ruskin says, "You may obtain a more truthful idea of the nature of Greek religion and legend from the poems of Keats and the nearly as beautiful and, in general grasp of subject, far more powerful recent work of Morris, than from frigid scholarship, however extensive." Independent of the influence of Ruskin's opinion, for a course in English to be followed by young students of a Greek or Latin classic, who could overlook judicious selections from Morris? The student really needs something of the kind in his own language to teach him that there is more than grammar and vocabulary in his Homer or Vergil. The methods of to-day, perhaps, do not deserve the criticism which one of the greatest poets of this century gave of his own education :

"I abhorred

Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,

The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word

To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,

To comprehend, but never love thy verse."

But none the less one feels like pleading earnestly for the extensive use of such books as the one under review. Every one who has the good fortune to study this book with his Iliad ought to be a far better Greek scholar, with an increased power to get the best out of all that he reads. A large number of college students hardly know how to read because of the way they have been led to treat literature in the preparatory course.

Mr. Adams, the poet and scholar, whose classes in Morris were so deservedly successful in Boston a year or so ago, has done his work admirably. The notes are sufficient without being intrusive, and are designed to foster a taste for literature rather than for pedantry. The book, like those of Dr. Rolfe's series, is most attractive in form, with clear type and appropriate illustrations.

ERNEST WHITNEY.

MASTER VIRGIL.-There is no need of the somewhat elaborate apology which prefaces this work. The author says that he supposed himself to be "one of the few among men of letters who * Morris's Atalanta's Race, Etc. Edited by OSCAR FAY ADAMS, with the cooperation of W. J. ROLFE, Litt. D. Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1888.

+ Master Virgil. The author of the Aeneid as he seemed in the middle ages. By J. S. TUNISON. pp. 7+230. Cincinnati, O., Robert Clarke & Co., 1888.

lacked knowledge" concerning the curious legends of all kinds attributed to Vergil during the middle ages, and therefore fell to studying the subject. The conclusion which he might soon have reached is that there are very few who do not lack this knowledge. So we have to thank what he is pleased to call his "inexcusable" ignorance for a book which will probably not be financially profitable to its author, but which can hardly fail to interest all students of the middle ages.

The study of folk-lore seems now to be going through a sort of Renaissance, and its real importance in the study of man is being better appreciated. Nothing throws more light on the character and customs of times and countries than the tales and legends current among the mass of the population. No writer of antiquity enjoyed so great popularity during the middle ages and was so thoroughly brought into both student and folk-lore as Vergil, and the legends connected with his name add not a little vividness to our appreciation of the credulity and superstition of the learned and unlearned of that period.

The bulk of the book before us is made up of eight chapters, each a complete essay, on Virgil and the Devil, Virgil in Literary Tradition, Virgil's Book of Magic, Virgil, the Man of Science, Virgil, the Saviour of Rome, Virgil, the Lover, Virgil, the Prophet, and Virgil in Later Literature. In each of these chapters the author has outlined a careful and well arranged analysis of the principal legends falling under that particular head. The result is that we get a clearer idea of the different aspects of the subject, than is possible by any other arrangement, although this method has certain minor disadvantages. Many exceedingly interesting stories and notes are found in all these chapters, but perhaps the most interesting and best worked-out essay is the eighth, on Vergil, the Prophet. There is no better illustration of the absurd method of strained allegorical interpretation so often resorted to in times past, particularly by the theologians, than the manner in which the fourth eclogue of Vergil was made over into a clear case of Messianic prophecy. But then, even that is not much worse than the modern fashionable method of interpretation so vigorously denounced by Andrew Lang in a recent paper. So far, then, as the principal part of this volume is concerned, we can commend it highly, but something must be said about the author's main thesis. This is stated on page 191. "The Virgilian legends so far as they concerned the poet himself, had only a secondary connection with what is scientifically known as folk

lore. They were the product throughout of the literary spirit of times clouded by superstition. The popular element in them is the element which antedated their relation to Virgil." The author on reading Comparetti's Virgilio nel Medio Evo came to the conclusion that the Italian professor overdrew "the indebtedness of the literature of the twelfth century to Neapolitan folk-lore," and himself asserts that the "facts point to a literary rather than a popular genesis for the special fiction in which the name of Virgil figures." Comparetti, to whom Mr. Tunison acknowledges that he is indebted for most of his material, argued with great learning and acuteness for the opposite thesis, that the basis of the Vergilian legend was found in Neapolitan folk-lore, although this original germ was taken up and elaborated by the scholars and chroniclers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Mr. Tunison expressly "disclaims all pretensions to learning or to a scientific method in the treatment of this subject" but still casts aside Comparetti's theory as wholly untenable and claims to have proved his own. We think that one who reads the two books at all carefully, will hardly grant this claim. It would be too long a task to reproduce here the arguments on both sides with any degree of completeness. Suffice it to say that no sufficient evidence is produced to show that there were no traces of Vergilian folk-lore in Naples until after they had appeared in the learned literature of Western Europe. On the contrary, we think Comparetti has shown that there were such traces. Even if there were no mention of such folk-lore in Italian literature before the close of the twelfth century, this could not justify one in maintaining that it did not exist among the people, as Comparetti is careful to point out. No one would question the fact that a large part of the Vergilian legend was the work of scholars inspired by a certain kind of superstition, but to cast out the basis of real folk-lore is too rash a proceeding, contrary to precedent and antecedent probabilty. Mr. Tunison's error lies in confusing the two elements of the legends. This view, however, does not materially detract from the value of the rest of the book as an excellent presentation of the curious stories which clustered around the poet's memory during that strange period. It is published in attractive form, and we have noticed only one misprint,-virtutibis, on page 167. It is a pity that the modern spelling of the poet's name was not adopted, and that no index is provided, so that one is compelled to get along as well as may be with only the table of con

tents.

S. B. PLATNER.