unless we include a short but suggestive speare' (W. Satchell & Co. and Simpkin, analysis of 'British Men of the Time, by Sir Marshall & Co., 1884). In a prefatory note (then Dr.) Conan Doyle, in the Nineteenth he states that the paper was published in Century of August, 1888. The Garden, and a few copies reprinted for Mention is made of private circulation.

As bearing on the point of ST. SWITHIN'S note, I quote from Mr. Ellis's work :

"We may probably believe that the counties that have contributed most largely to the making of English men of genius are Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Dorsetshire, Oxfordshire, and Shropshire. To these we must certainly add Kent, since its total output more than compensates for its intellectual decadence during recent centuries."-Pp. 39, 40.

This is but one specimen of the interesting facts dealt with by Mr. Ellis in the first two or three chapters of his book.

'A Study of British Genius' deals with a group of men of genius, properly speaking, but a statistical record of less talented individuals, embracing as many of the 30,000 odd of the 'D.N.B.' as are duly mentioned by birthplace, would show most interesting results, though it is impossible to say how far these would tally with the results derived from a smaller selection of names.

In the volumes of The Gentleman's Magazine commencing in 1816 and ending in 1826 will be found a series of articles under the title 'Compendium of County History.' They consist of notes on the history, biography, &c., of each county, and were written with the idea of forming a statistical ground work to a proposed history of the English counties. Under each county will be found the total population (from the census of 1811); this again is divided into three items, viz. (1) those engaged in agriculture; (2) trade; (3) other occupations (not stated), and nonproductive. Following the statistics of population will be found full lists of eminent natives of the county, giving dates of birth and death, and occupation. It would be quite possible to get a fair idea of each county's output of talent, and its relation to the population, from a study of these lists, but, as regards "genius by counties," the results would not, of course, be comparable in interest and completeness to a similar deduction from the sixty-six volumes of the 'D.N.B.' F. S. SNELL.

Worcester, Cape Colony.

three legends connected with the flower-
those named in the penultimate paragraph
of the query-but the author was apparently
unacquainted with the one associated with
the daughter of Atlas and Pleione, and I
am in the same state of ignorance.
JOHN COLES, Jun.

Frome.

Canon Ellacombe's paper 'The Daisy' was reprinted as an appendix to 'The Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare' (1878), a book that is occasionally offered in the lists of second-hand dealers. It was printed for the author by William Pollard, of North Street, Exeter; and if Canon Ellacombe has no longer copies to dispose of, I dare say Mr. Commin, bookseller, Exeter, could help your correspondent to find one. I am sorry to hear that the British Museum lacks this ST. SWITHIN. useful work.

"SKERRICK" (10th S. iv. 408).-Halliwell, in his 'Archaic Dictionary,' enters this word in the form “scirrock,” and his definition is “a scrap; a fragment; anything of very small THOMAS BAYNE. value. North."

SUICIDES BURIED IN THE OPEN FIELDS (10th S. iv. 346, 397).—I quote the following from The States-General' of ErckmannThe passage relates to Chatrian, ch. xii.

Calvinists:

"God's creatures!' exclaimed he, extending his long arms. 'If they were God's creatures, would the curés refuse to register their births, marriages, and deaths? Would they be buried in the fields, far from consecrated ground, like beasts?' The reason generally accepted for burying suicides at cross-roads is that their lives in the grave may be rendered as intolerable as possible by the rumbling of the traffic above.

There is little room to doubt the information given by MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, who possessed such a detailed knowledge of the condition and customs of Alsace - Lorraine before 1789. We may take it, therefore, that suicides were sometimes buried in the open fields. The wording is too bold to admit of H. T. SMITH. any other interpretation.

FIRST RAILWAY ON THE CONTINENT (10th S. iv. 267).-Try 'An Historical, Statistical, and Scientific Account of the Railways of Belgium from 1834 to 1842,' translated and compiled from official documents by Edward Dobson, 1843.

L. L. K.

JAMES V.'S POEMS (10th S. iv. 368).-When 'Gaberlunzie Man' and 'The Jolly Beggar' it is said that certain poems have been to James V., apparently concurring in the attributed to James V. there is practically ascription given to them by Lord Orford in nothing to be added. All else is either his 'Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,' courageous surmise or argument. Tradition ii. 203. Ritson, in his acute and occasionally makes the king a poet, and Drummond of acrid introduction to Scottish Songs, Hawthornden, in his 'History of Scotland,' follows Percy's example, and seems satisfied 346, indicates familiarity with his writings. with Orford's assumption without raising James V.," he observes, 66 was naturally any question of evidence. He includes both given to poesie; as many of his works, yet lyrics in his anthology, while Percy, who extant, testifie." What these "works gives only The Gaberlunzie Man,' seems to exactly were has not been discovered to the think it quite likely that James V., from his present day, and the efforts made to identify reputation for promiscuous wooing, was the them, and definitely name even some of them, author. "He was noted," he says, "for have been productive of much controversy. strolling about his dominions in disguise and Peblis to the Play' and 'Christis Kirk of for his frequent gallantries with country the Grene' have been assigned both to girls." While this is undeniable, it is not James I. and James V., and external evidence, conclusive proof that the king wrote the as far as it goes, seems to favour the author- ballads, and tradition is the only witness that ship of the earlier monarch. The Peebles Percy adduces in support of his contention. poem begins with the lines, As James I. also went to various places of his kingdom incognito, he might well have written these two pieces if he was the author of the longer poems on country life. Their comparatively modern style, however, seems to favour the authorship of the later monarch, if, indeed, it does not militate against the claims of both. It would be perfectly relevant to argue that an unknown poet produced the two ballads with reference to escapades characteristic of the King of the Commons. THOMAS BAYNE.

At Beltane when each body bownis
To Peblis to the play;

and to this opening strain there seems to be
a reference in John Major's 'De Gestis
Scotorum,' which was published at Paris in
1521. Speaking of James I. on p. 135, Major
credits the king with "that blithe and in-
genious song 'At Beltayne," which, of course,
may not be the poem in question, although it
is just possible that it is. In one of the
Maitland MSS. of Magdalene College, Cam-
bridge, Bishop Percy discovered the only
ancient copy of 'Peblis to the Play'known to
be in existence, and although this is anony-
mous, it may be assumed to be the lyric
eulogized by Major until other evidence is
forthcoming. Percy, Ritson, and other
eminent compilers and critics have agreed in
assigning Peblis to the Play' to James I.,
although there are others who would claim
it along with 'Christis Kirk of the Grene'
for James V. The latter poem seems to have
been first attributed to the King of the
Commons, as James V.
was called, by
Dempster in his 'Hist. Ecclesiast. Gent. Sco-
torum,' p. 382. Although he wrote at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, and was
manifestly inaccurate in his reference to the
poem, his lead has been followed by Gibson,
Tanner, Warton, Percy, Ritson, and others,
down to the present day. The whole subject
is fully discussed, and both poems claimed
for James I., by Dr. David Irving in his
'Lives of the Scotish_Poets,' i. 304, and his
History of Scotish Poetry,' p. 142 et seq.
Till Irving's arguments are refuted his con-
clusions will have to be regarded as at least
constructively true.

Bishop Percy in the 'Reliques' assigns the

Mr. T. F. Henderson, in his excellent History of Scottish Vernacular Literature,' says:

attributed to James I. True, a later tradition "In the Bannatyne MSS. 'Christis Kirk' is assigned to him by Bishop Gibson and by Watson; grew up that it was written by James V., and it is but if we trace back that tradition we find that it derives solely from the fabling Dempster (1627)."P. 107.

The writer also states at p. 236 of the same volume that,

although James V. enjoyed some repute in his day as a poet, no verses with his colophon survive, and his title to the authorship of The Gaberlunzie unverified tradition." Man' and The Jolly Beggar' is based on mere W. E. WILSON.

of those to whom the secret has descended to
regret the disappearance of a most palatable
and wholesome beverage.
T. F. D.

I have not got the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, but I think that the word punch is in a song in one of them. If so, the date of it must be earlier than what is supposed to be "the first notice of the English word" by Ligon about 1647. The following are the verses as I remember them :—

become as much a lost art as the famous Some additions are now made to our know"heather ale" brewed of old by the Picts, it ledge of Greene, yet what we learn concerning may perhaps be permitted to one of the few him is not much. One of the most turbulent and, survivors-if indeed not the only survivor-pestilent crowd, he was always in hot water, and in a sense, "pestilent" spirits of a turbulent and his prose works at least are as polemical as they are autobiographical. A great question, indeed, which is treated by the latest editor with commendable sanity, is how much personal significance is to be attached to the revelations made in his romances. The only case in which we fail to follow him is when a suggestion that the mention of a that of the performance finds a kind of half date in a play has the slightest value as fixing approval. The period covered by Greene's dramatic production is short, being easily comprised in the last decade of the sixteenth century. His imitation of Marlowe is at times servile, but his improvement in style is remarkable. It is difficult to believe that the 'Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay' and James the Fovrth' are by the same hand that wrote 'Alphonsus' and Orlando Furioso.' Prof. Collins regards James the give the preference to the Honorable Historie.' Fovrth' as Greene's masterpiece. Individually we It seems a curious freak on the part of Greene to give a name such as 'James the Fovrth' to a piece which virtually has no connexion with that monarch. The suggestion in the loves of Lacie and Margaret in the 'Honorable Historie' of the story of the Earl of Burleigh is interesting. Very quaint, too, in the same play, is the use of Skeltonian forms of verse. The foundation of 'James the Fovrth is seen in a novella of Giraldi Cinthio, which is given in full in the introduction to that play. It is apropos of this work that Prof. Collins says that when we compare it with the novel we not only see how and to what extent he [Greene] was one of the masters of Shakespeare, but how near he came to being a really efficient dramatist.' The use of "skipjack as a term of contempt appears in 'Alphonsus' and elsewhere. In the same play occurs the saying, subsequently familiar, He that will not when he may,

Three jolly postboys drinking at the Dragon; And they determined to push about the flagon. Punch cures the gout, the colic, and the phthisic, And is allowed to be the very best of physic. Is punch the word in the song? Is the song Fletcher's? In trusting to memory, as I am doing, I may make a mistake. But what can the word be if not punch? Is the song an interpolation? E. YARDLEY.

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. Edited,
with Introduction and Notes, by J. Churton
Collins, Litt.D. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)
AN important and appetizing addition is made in
this edition of Greene to the fine series of dramatic
reprints undertaken by the Clarendon Press. The
poems and plays only are given, and it would
indeed be too much to hope for the inclusion in
such a work of the prose romances, now barely ac-
cessible in Grosart's very limited "Huth Library."
So far as regards the plays and poems-which after
all constitute the most important portion of Greene's
literary baggage, and that in which alone any large
section of the public is interested-Prof. Churton
Collins's aspiration to make the edition final and
definitive may well be gratified. Possessor of
unsurpassable taste and animated by a rigid con-
servatism, he has gone in every instance to the
oldest quartoes, permitting such change only as is
indispensable, and enclosing in brackets all variations
or additions, even when such consist in supplying
the acts and scenes-matters in which the early
quartoes are not seldom remiss. Should no further
discovery await research into Tudor literature (and
discovery in Greene's case is improbable, though of
course not wholly impossible), the edition may well
prove to be lastingly authoritative. Dyce, to whom
the existing editions of Greene are due, is in many
respects an ideal editor. His views, however,
which he more than once communicated to us viva
voce, were the opposite to those scholarship now
entertains, and his aim was to supply a text legible
and accceptable rather than exact. Such views
may again be held, but at present the impulse is in
the other direction. It is pleasant, however, to
read the recognition awarded by Prof. Collins to a
predecessor whose services to Tudor literature are
not easily overrated.

In

·

When he desires shall surely purchase nay.

A Looking Glasse' we have, Act I. sc. iii. 1. 197, an interesting reference to a "dog whipper." In Orlando Furioso' are given, in the original, lines from Ariosto which Milton imitated in 'Samson Agonistes.' Prof. Collins's task is admirably accomplished, and we can but hope that his labours in regard to the Elizabethan dramatists will be continued. Peele awaits him. In appearance and in all respects the edition is ideal, and the lover of fine books and fine editions is equally interested in a series such as that to which the volume belongs.

The Secret of the Totem. By Andrew Lang. (Longmans & Co.)

RECENT observations in Australia made by authorities such as Spencer and Gillen, Howitt, and others have had far-reaching influences on the study of primitive religion, have led to the reconsideration of many questions by anthropologists such as Mr. Frazer and Mr. Lang, and may be held to cast some gleam of light-or, at least, of suggestioneven upon Eleusinian rites. With the question of totemism Mr. Lang has long been concerned, and though he concedes to another the first place in the study, we place him, necessarily, in the first rank

of writers on the subject. At the close of his new and profoundly interesting work, a great portion of which is occupied with disputing the conclusions of others, we fail fully to grasp the secret of the totem. On questions of exogamous marriage; on the Phratries, Pirraru, and Piraungaru ; on orgiastic revels; on the value of myths; and on the practices of initiation, we hear him with pleasure and admiration, and we accept with respect the conjecture he supplies. Conjecture, as he confesses, however, it all remains. We claim no such special knowledge as constitutes us judges or enables us to balance the probability of conflicting theories, and we can but thank Mr. Lang for a stimulating and suggestive work, which forms a worthy companion to his Social Origins.' The handsome cover of the volume is curious and even illuminatory. On p. 41 Mr. Lang is responsible for a rather sad misquotation from Milton's 'Il Penseroso.'

matters are noted. Madame Geoffrin was in the habit, it appears, of taking for her health two large tumblers of hot water every morning and every evening. This remedial or protective measure has sprung again into fashion. Among the numerous illustrations, some of them quaint, is one which might almost pass for a powdering closet, with which our columns have been occupied. The work is interesting, and conveys a bright idea of French life in the midst of the eighteenth century. Many matters concerning which uncertain or erroneous ideas prevail are pleasantly and exactly explained.

title of a publication by Mr. Thomas Foley, issued The Nelson Centenary: Lest We Forget, is the from Norwich by the East of England Newspaper Company. It has a few illustrations, and gives a rendering of a poem by Campbell widely different from anything we recall.

Punch's Amanack appears in a brilliant cover. The illustrations, both plain and coloured, are comic, but Punch himself has changed remarkably in physiognomy.

·

G.

Madame Geoffrin: her Salon and her Times, 17501777. By Janet Aldis. (Methuen & Co.) Or the salonnières-to employ an ugly word, which saves a periphrasis and commends itself warmly in use to our author-of the eighteenth century Marie reproduction of Richard Wilson's 'Aquæ Albulæ.' The Burlington Magazine has as frontispiece a Thérèse Rodet, known after her marriage as Madame Other plates of the same great artist, of George Geoffrin, is in all respects the most interesting, and Morland, and J. Crome follow. Prof. in some respects the most considerable. Her career Baldwin Brown supplies the first of two attractive is like a fairy tale. Of humble extraction-her articles on How Greek Women Dressed,' accomfather was valet de chambre to the late Dauphin -possessor of no special beauty or talent, married the female dress of the Greeks was only distinpanied by illustrative plates. In classical times when fourteen years of age to a bourgeois of forty-guishable from male by minor additions, such as eight, Madame Geoffrin began her public life at an veils. Lina Eckenstein shows the purpose and value age when the femme du monde is not seldom sub- of ancient Egyptian art. Views of the Nativity, in a siding into the dévote. In the twenty-seven years sadly impaired condition. and of the Trinity from which followed the death of her husband, who left the Santo Spirito at Florence, accompany an her a considerable fortune, she became a woman of European reputation; the chosen associate of interior of the Cathedral Church of Amiens is. account of II Graffione. A view of the lovely monarchs; the friend and patron of whatever was also among the designs reproduced. most brilliant in French letters; a woman against whom malice could find nothing just to breathe; whose home was the chosen resort of Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Marmontel, and the Encyclopædists generally; the friend or hostess of Hume, Gibbon, and Horace Walpole; a woman whom the last King of Poland called affectionately mother, addressed in the most endearing language, and entertained in Warsaw in a house he had built expressly for her, so as to be indistinguishable from that she occupied in the Rue St. Honoré; with whom the Empress Catherine corresponded for years; and who was received with distinction by the Court of Vienna. To students of French history and life these things are well known. They are told afresh with much vivacity in the present volume, the work of a lady who, though her French is not impeccable, is superior in nearly all respects to most English writers on eighteenth-century France. Her most serious mistake occurs on p. 234, where Horace Walpole is quoted as writing. "Madame du Deffand says I have le fou mocquer," a wholly unintelligible phrase, which a reference to Walpole's correspondence proves should be le feu moqueur. A slip like this is, of course, unique, and errors of any kind are infrequent. One or two of the worst appear, however, early in the book A French picture can scarcely have been called "L'Ecole d'Athens" (sic), and a phrase on p. 11, rendering into English a wellknown locution, conveys, we fancy, exactly the contrary of what is meant. We will not dwell upon slips such as blonde et blanc, and the like. Some curious

IN almost all the reviews the custom of signing articles seems in course of being abandoned, and the contributions concerning which it is of most interest to know what is the value and what are the oppor-tunities of obtaining correct information of the writer are pseudonymous or unsigned. With the alarmist views of such we may not concern ourselves. Messrs. Thomas Seccombe and L. M. Brandin are jointly responsible for an essay in The Fortnightly upon 'José-Maria de Heredia.' 'No very extravagant eulogy upon the sonneteer is pronounced by our critics, who declare Heredia not to be one of the dii majores of poetry. Included in a just and thoughtful article is an account of the origin in France of the sonnet. A not less interesting contribution is that of M. André Turquet upon René Bazin, between whom and Wordsworth au interesting comparison is drawn. Mr. Stephen Paget writes on The Revival of Phrenology.' Rather less alarming than its title is this, which deals with recent books of Dr. Bernard Holländer on The Mental Functions of the Brain.' Sir Oliver Lodge replies to Mr. Mallock on ⚫ Religion and Belief." 'Sister Benvenuta and the Christ Child,' by Vernon Lee, is quaint and beautiful.-In The Nineteenth Century Prince Kropotkin takes naturally a sanguine view of The Revolution in Russia.' In the paper by the Gresham Lecturer on 'The Sun and the Recent Total Eclipse,' it embarrasses somewhat the ignorant to be told that the ninety-three millions of miles which the sun is distant from the earth is in some senses an