This is a thesis for a Columbian degree: it belongs, therefore, to a class of work very familiar in Germany, but almost unknown in our own country. Somewhat painfully and tediously written, it contains the results of genuine research, and should provide useful material for future historians of sixteenth-century literature. Mr. Underhill traces the history of Spanish influence upon English writers from the time of the Humanists to the close of Elizabeth's reign with the greatest minuteness, but he makes no attempt to magnify his office unduly. Indeed, he does not conceal his opinion that the extent of this influence as compared with that either of France or Italy was very slight. Three or four names sum up the most of it: there was Ludovicus, or Luis Vives, the Humanist, who began to lecture at Richard Foxe's fine new college of Corpus Christi, Oxford, early in the century; there was Antonio de Guevara, to the English translators of whose terribly "faked" historical writings we owe the beginnings of Euphuism; there was Montemayor, whose pastoral romance of "Diana" afforded a model for Sidney's "Arcadia," and provided Shakespeare with hints for plots; finally, there were the innumerable pamphleteers of adventure, whose artless chronicles formed the basis of Hakluyt's immortal "Voyages." To all of these Mr. Underhill does full justice, and earns the gratitude of the student with a bibliographical appendix which must have been truly laborious in the compiling. (Macmillan.)

THE "HAMPSTEAD ANNUAL."

EDITED BY G. E. MATHESON AND S. C. MAYLE.

This interesting" annual" has again descended from the heights into London, reporting Hampstead's beauty, Hampstead's culture, and Hampstead's pride in its notable inhabitants of old. Among this year's contributors are Prof. Hales, Dr. Garnett, Canon Ainger, and Mr. Arthur Waugh. Canon Ainger writes a biographical appreciation of Miss Margaret Gillies, who painted a miniature portrait of Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. She painted no fewer (we grieve to say that Canon Ainger says "no less") than five portraits of the poet, in two of which Mrs. Wordsworth appeared. Miss Gillies's residence in Church-row, Hampstead, during some of the later years of her life, brings her record within the scope of the Annual. Prof. Hales's paper on the sign of the King of Bohemia," which occurs on an old inn in the Hampstead High-street, is quite a solid historical essay. Dr. R. F. Horton discourses on "suburbanity"; after pointing out that Hampstead now contains as many free citizens as did Athens, and that "man for man they are as good or better," he inquires why Athens was "wreathed with beauty and genius and glory," while Hampstead has only villa culture and an Annual.

The most literary paper in the volume is Dr. Garnett's "Notes on Some Poets Connected with Hampstead," and the most interesting point in this paper is the author's attempt to identify the source of Keats's famous lines about "stout Cortez," and "a peak in Darien" in his sonnet on Chapman's Homer. Dr. Garnett thinks that Keats must have read a certain foot-note to Wordsworth's "Excursion "" in which Wordsworth refers in kindly terms to a crazed poet named William Gilbert, author of "The Hurricane." Wordsworth quotes a note appended by Gilbert to a passage in that poem. It is this note of

Gilbert's Dr. Garnett suspects to be the source from which Keats took his grand simile:

Like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific-and all bis men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent upon a peak in Darien.

Gilbert's passage is not unworthy to have inspired a poet. This is it:

A man is supposed to improve by going out into the world, by visiting London. Artificial man does; he extends with his sphere; but, alas! that sphere is microscopic; it is formed of minutiæ, and he surrenders his genuine vision to the artist, in order to embrace it in his ken. But, when he walks along the river of Amazons, when he rests his eye on the unrivalled Andes, when he measures the long and watered savannahs, or contemplates from a sudden promontory the distant, vast Pacific-and feels himself a freeman in this vast theatre, and commanding each ready produced fruit of this wilderness, and each progeny of this stream-his exaltation is not less than imperial.

Dr. Garnett's surmise is supported by the fact that the "Excursion" was published in 1814, three years before Keats's sonnet appeared.

Books of Travel.

No one who read and enjoyed Three in Norway is likely to need incitement to buy Peaks and Pines (Longmans). Mr. J. A. Lees is as sprightly and entertaining as ever. The humours of "roughing it" and his love of Nature race for the reader's attention, and his drawings are amusing where they are not intentionally artistic. Another excellent book on roughing it, in grim earnest this time, is Mr. Harold Bindloss's A Wide Dominion (Fisher Unwin), which describes the experiences of those who are yearly opening up the undeveloped corners of Canada. A journey undertaken

under far more comfortable conditions is Miss Phibbs's Visit to the Russians in Central Asia (Kegan Paul). With a party of English ladies and gentlemen, under a special permit from General Kuropatkin and the escort of courteous Russian officers, she and her companions travelled as far as Samarkand. Her pictures of the sights of Central Asia, her deft allusions to their old-world glories and heroes, and her friendly view of Russia's mission in those parts, combine to make her little volume most interesting. The photographs are well chosen and admirably reproduced. Equal praise may be bestowed on the excellent photographs contained in Dr. Arthur Neve's Picturesque Kashmir (Sands & Co.). The author has spent eighteen years in Kashmir, and here gives an itinerary of various trips within and beyond its borders to Thibet, into which he and his friends penetrated so far as to Ladak. As a medical missionary he has much knowledge of the human nature of Kashmiris and Dogras, Chitralis and Tibetans: but it is of the beauties of Nature in that land of magnificent mountains that he has most to tell us. Similarly Mr. Jozef Israels, in his Spain (John C. Nimmo), has found most suitable material for his sketch-book, and some thirty-nine of his sketches are reproduced. The veteran Dutch painter he is over seventy-six depicts with vivid brush and agreeable garrulity what took his eye in his tour through Spain. Illustrations abound also in the account of the Victoria Nyanza (Swan Sonnenschein & Co.), by Lieutenant Paul Kollman. But their interest is ethnographical rather than artistic, for they are mostly sketches of the various native utensils, weapons, &c., which the author has brought home with him from German East Africa. His accounts of the various tribes are conscientiously complete, and likely to prove useful to students in the future.

-

THIS novel, of which one of the chief scenes is the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, brings to mind that great neglected historical novel of Balzac's, Sur Catherine de Medici, the first part of which gives a superb picture of the same Mary and the tragic close of her brief idyll as the wife of Francis II. of France. Mr. Mathew has young this in common with Balzac, that his principal concern is with character rather than event. He can draw a great character on great lines. His Elizabeth, the principal person in the book, is well done. She is no ventional swaggering Bess, but a woman of true overmastering force, imposing herself upon you as an authentic creation. Mr. Mathew's sense of style helps him to render her "royal" speeches extremely effective:

"You speak despairingly," she said smiling.

con

"You

are free. You would do well to leave England. Sail tomorrow, if you like, but return. You will forget this brief fancy. Remember how the philosopher Thales was asked when a man should marry, and answered, 'A young man not yet, an older one not at all.' These fooleries will please you less when you hear creeping Time at your gate. I am past my relish for them. I am glad of it. I was not moulded to dandle babies, croon lullabies to them, and please them with idiotical talk; no, nor to woo a man's tenderness and be a toy for his leisure. Cherish your freedom. When you are unfit for toil it will be time to enfeeble yourself with amorous dallying. Here comes the dainty witch," she went on, as Mistress Winifred entered. "Child, the still moonlight has a home in your heart through all the troubled day. In this February dusk you are April, with cheeks heralding the dawn of the roses.'

There is no fustian about this. Mary is not so good, possibly because in her case Mr. Mathew has too much tried to be subtle. But the narrative of her execution is noble.

The book is episodically so good that one closes it with a sense of keen disappointment, for Mr. Mathew, though he has gifts, does not know how to use them fully. What he lacks is constructive power, a feeling for cumulative effect. One's idea is that, through some failure of technical equipment, he is continually missing fire. We are inclined to urge that Mr. A. E. W. Mason should give him a few lessons in the savoir faire of fiction. He plans his intrigue so clumsily that at the back of the reader's mind is always the lurking fear: "Has some important point escaped me?" He also allows himself sometimes to be pretty in a feeble, unoriginal manner. The sugary close of the novel, and the constant employment of the "Nut-Brown Maid" song, and the vaticinatory use of the "Morte d'Arthur are instances of this.

She Walks in Beauty. By Katharine Tynan.
(Smith, Elder & Co. 6s.)

PRESUMABLY this novel is meant for "girls of all ages." It is constructed according to a recipe with which Mrs. Hinkson has made us familiar, and which, though she by no means originated it, has been greatly improved under her accomplished hands. If the novel for girls must be written at all, it could not easily be better than this. For Mrs. Hinkson has not only grace, she has humour, Irish humour. The characters and scenes are usually Irish, and she can contrive a scintillation of sparkling wit as well as any Irishwoman that ever wrote. It is on that account that we are inclined to pardon the too-saccharine quality of much of the novel, and the conventionality of many of the people in it. We can even parde the scene in which

Mr. Graydon, impecunious heir to a title and wealth, goes to see the stern "old lord" in the aristocratic square, and chats with the man-servant (who had married the housekeeper), "Why, it is Master Archie!' he said, quavering. 'Master Archie after all those years!" We can even pardon the final scene in which the sister of the heroine (so that all may be duly happy) herself proposes to that other old lord whom the heroine had jilted in favour of "Sir Anthony," her first love.

The humour-unfortunately it cannot be cut out in sections for quotation-saves the book, and indeed almost lifts it into the category of literature; but we doubt if it is the humour which will chiefly appeal to the book's It is rather the sweetness which will special audience.

captivate. As thus:

"After to-day I will not call you darling till I have the right before all the world. After to-day. I meant to have held my tongue, but you bewildered me, Pamela. You are not augry with me?

"No," came almost in a whisper.

"Lift up your eyes to me and say it. That is right. How beautiful your eyes are, Pamela! Say "Tony' now." "Tony."

"Dear Tony."

"Dear Tony."

66

How sweetly you say it! It is like silver in your voice. But, come now, we will go home. I have to be wise, you know. Ah, Pamela, Pamela, why did you bring me to the Wishing Well?"

Mrs. Hinkson has a tact, a "touch," an "indefinable something," which carry her through these impossibly ideal episodes of girlish and boyish love with positive brilliance. A single slip, one error of literary discretion, and the scene might be either mawkish or ludicrous, or both. But that error is never committed. We regard She Walks in Beauty as a most adroit and successful essay in a branch of fiction full of peculiar and special difficulties.

There is almost a sense of loss in a book by Mr. Cutcliffe Hyne where Captain Kettle does not figure; but as this work tells of the splendour and the disappearance of the mythical continent of Atlantis a place could not well be found for the redoubtable Captain. Those who like a story crowded with adventures, where mammoth beasts and priests with occult powers over the forces of nature jostle one another, will like The Lost Continent. In the end Atlantis is submerged by the sea. Only two people survive. They sail away in an ark to repopulate the world. A spirited, incredible yarn. (Hutchinson. 6s.) ONORA.

BY ROSA MULHOLLAND.

Paris Letter.

(From our French Correspondent.)

L'Agonie de l'Amour, by Edmond Jaloux, is a brilliant and an artistic novel, which, in its own form, casts upon the wearisome wave of decadent literature words of wisdom and truth. The writer has the greatest defect of the hourtoo much style, and he abuses metaphor. When clouds blot the sun, he compares them to a crowd of dwarfs grouped on the breast of an assassinated god. His phrases are too bejewelled, his prose is too perfumed, too tufted, if I may borrow a French word. With a larger manner, less brilliance and more simplicity, M. Jaloux might aspire to become a great novelist, for this remarkable book contains all the essential elements of literature. Ideas of solid value abound, the satire is forcible and arresting, the characterisation admirable, the lesson penetrating and convincing. Dialogue is always more sparingly used in French fiction than in ours, and here it serves but to reveal the character and temperament of each figure in the book. Of course there is the usual charge of indiscretion to be brought against M. Jaloux. He follows his miscreant hero too faithfully, and shows him to us in places and in moods, knowledge of which we would infinitely prefer to dispense with. But this is part of French sincerity. While English novelists depict all their heroes as saints or inoffensive sages, and suppress all indication of the brute which slumbers in every man, the French prefer to tell the truth about themselves. They are apt to go too far, we know, for on this ground the reader gains by the writer's reticence. Still, as the object of L'Agonie de l'Amour is to show us what a vile and heartless and futile thing the mere man of literature may become, M. Jaloux' indiscretion is part of the pungent lesson of his satire. Luc d'Hermony is a poet, a brilliant young man of letters, with all the modern and contemptible taint of his calling. All life for him is literature, and consumed by this shallow and miserable mania of words, he has ceased to be capable of an honest or virile sentiment. His single quality is the sincerity with which he values himself. "Is it my fault," he bitterly asks, "if I belong to a race unquiet and suffering, impoverished and powerless, which has no passions?" and the last line is a still bitterer cry, when he falls most infamously: "Am I then a crapulous beast?" and recognising the fact, adds: "Very well, then, I am a crapulous beast, and I can't change myself."

The tragedy lies in the fact that the poor wretch honestly aspires to rise to better things. In the first chapter we find him at war with his books, bored and unhappy. "Books," he cries, "are like men. Few have a soul." He stamps on them, and kicks them furiously about his study. Modern novels, he laments, have ruined life for him. He has been the servant of a desolating and subtilised literature, which has only procured him disgust and apathy. He cannot love nor burst the shackles of a "moi" that has become his prison. When he thinks of Byron, Shelley, and Chateaubriand with envy, he says: "Ah, they suffered, but their sufferings were profound and superb. Their lives were full to overflowing, whereas I have come too late into a world without the unexpected, where there are no longer even Red Indians." symposium of choice decadent spirits, he bursts out against the absurd legend of love. "Love is but the awakening of all that slumbers in us of barbarous, animal and primitive. The day it enters our life we become stupid, vain and jealous; we betray our friends, our time is passed in the most mediocre occupations, we endure humiliations, outrages, dishonour even.' This is where M. Jaloux inserts his excellent sermon. Among all these cynical and blighted youths, with nothing to live for except art and literature, which have utterly demoralised and unmanned them, is a grave and earnest fellow, a doctor, Apremont. Somebody

At a

has defined love as a microbe, the element of fermentation and dissolution in society; and Apremont breaks out in a just and eloquent indignation. Love he calls "the terrible and mysterious breath which comes from the depth of the centuries, from the brazier wherein Troy was burnt and Dido killed." What have their mere sensual experiences to do with love? he asks, and forces them to admit that they know nothing about the mighty passion. Debauch was all they understood; they were cowards, retreating before the intensity of life, frightened of loving, frightened of suffering, frightened of responsibility. Under the mask of youth were lines and wrinkles of premature age. Wrapped up in themselves, full of envy and the thirst of success and money and luxury, they were incapable of sacrifice, of devotion, of generosity: their thoughts, their speech were simply bad literature. And then when Luc, in his moral distress, consults him, Apremont continues his sermon in still more eloquent tones. The entire chapter is admirable. Love, he preaches from illimitable experience, is not the gross, sensual affair Luc regards it, but the eternal need of the human heart. To be lifted above the animals we must live for somebody, devote ourselves, find our centre of existence in another soul; our vocation should be to love, to console, to help another. Happiness consists in making the happiness of another. Instead of marrying two fresh young lives, full of illusions, to-day the rule is to marry an ignorant, delicate, and sensitive girl, with ardent heart and an immense desire to devote herself, to a man morally aged, abominably selfish, tired of life, surfeited with experience, disillusioned, with heart as wrinkled as his visage, sometimes cruel, ever jeering against sentiment, worn by pleasures and deceptions. Is it wonderful, he asks, if, under such circumstances, the wife should seek a warmer and fresher sentiment elsewhere? and are not such unions made exclusively in the interest of adultery? The fault lies with men, he bitterly adds. Ennui is the mortal disease of the hour; the only cure is to return to purer, holier, and more natural sentiments. "Love simply," he abjures Luc; "devote yourself, give up this eternal mania of analysis, and make a young woman the aim and end of your existence." Wishful to profit by this excellent advice, Luc looks round inquiringly. He stumbles upon a celebrated Norwegian with extreme hope. But the delightful Norwegian only cares for rum and brandy. Then, in despair, he goes off to his native Provence, and here he fondly believes he has found the word of his destiny. He persuades himself that he has fallen in love with an exquisite young girl, and that he is redeemed. It proved but a radiant illusion. He soon perceived that his romantic love was only literary reminiscences. He was too saturated with literature for an honest emotion. Not even this cultivated love can lift him out of the old state of powerless and bitter egoism. Geneviève dies of a gallopping consumption. Then her lover discovers the nothingness of his sentiment for her. His behaviour is monstrous. He is stupefied by his own want of feeling. "Drunk with unsatisfied anger, he flung invectives at the Deity, whom he only remembered in his hours of fury, and then merely to cast upon somebody the burden of his suffering." In telling himself that he could not possibly survive Geneviève he had almost a physical impression of his falsehood. He felt it was not true, he knew himself so well. This is the tragedy of this powerful study. The hero is a humbug and a blackguard, who would, if he could, be a hero and a sage; and he is horribly conscious of the fact. His sense of bereavement, in the face of the death of his betrothed, is, he knows quite well, artificial. He loathes himself, because he understands how differently Geneviève would have mourned his death; and returning from her funeral, he is placidly running after an unknown woman. "I am a blackguard," he moans, and continues

his course.

H. L.