December 14, 1895] TtOl L ol&SEftVER [December u, NATIONA1890s.ca/PDFs/review_v7_national_observer.pdf · 2012. 8. 21. · sense of values J which save hie accidental and -i explicit
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TtOl NATIONAL ol&SEftVER [December u, degrees of merit. Mr. Baring Gould's introduction is delight- i fuL ! He refers cf course to a book which, is now becomirg i scarce, Mr. J. Ke-*s Archeology of Nursery Rhymes. It wai written to prove hat * Hey, diddle, diddle* and others were : corruptions, not translations, of Dutch rhymes directed against ' the friars, whoie notorious ill conduct, both here and on the » Continent, was or e of the proximate causes oi the Reformation. i Mr. Baring Goul J, it is needless to say, demolishes this far- l fetched theory; aut he would also like to demolish another , which has more \y in it. Such * sequences' as * The x Housi? that Jack Built,' the 'Bonny Bush of Blackberries' and * Cock Robin * are derived very closely from certain songs written by Portuguese Jews, and were employed on the Pass- over night to keep the children awakf. Some of them are in manuscript books of Passpver Services at the Britith 152. Museum, and are illustrated with small vignettes, contrary to thejefwish usage of never representing animated forms. They belonjg to the (fourteenth century—possibly some to the -- i-- * «_J nf. VT^ Rarintr oeiong it» me jiuui i<~~i>i.u .-_... —j f ------ f thirte]enth— and <io not deserve to be treated as Gould would ire:] takes them it*;-bs li 1, »y nt J.» !o at ty ed nd ad t them. In fact, when an enterprising peison WUU1U. l.iv~~ti L»IV.I... ._ , ^ _ iaKc*| the troub e of learning enough Hebrew to translate themj a rich min: of unknown nursery rhvmes may be offeied to the children. Mr. Baring Gould ridicules Mr. George'* theory that such rhymes are historical allegories. There can bs li(lle doubt that the Hebrew examples * portray eventful -• i«_t_.i_ lin ate we ou- lOf ind of -to- ded full I }n >nal oujs- trke ther nqit little US 11 HC uuuwi, tiiMv ...- » . periods' in the long tale of oppression and robbery which the medieval Jews bad to tell, but Mr. George probably went too far when he thought the English versions related to English histo ry. Mr. Bering Gould quotes this sentence : * The man all tattered and torn represents the Protestant Church under Hemy VIII. ... persecuted by baniahment, torture, spolia- tions *: and calls it * somewhat comical his'.ory, for it was rather the Romjan Catholic Cnurch which was despoiled by that monarch.'' Henry took his turn at both parties, and tDou.gh it is always easy to remember that the Abbu of \\\st- minster, from wjiom he took so many manors, was not a Pro- testant, his successive spoliations of the See of London seem to have been impartially divided between upholdtis of Papal and .Royal supremacy alike. By the way, Mr. Bering Gould is quite beside the| marl^ in thinking there is any analogy between Mr. George's took 4nd Mr. Ker*s. As to the collection itself so ne of the little songs hardly deserve the adjective 'nursery.' The first poem is very charm- ing but it jis not a nursery rh> me. This is entitled * The Task' and isiparjt of ajmuch longer North Countiy version known as 1 Wnitiingham Fair.' ' Come, I will sing to you, 1 and ' Little St. William,' are also too ' grown up' for moat children : but we need not wish to exclude them as there are plenty more. Among oM fa vouihes we find 'The Flex,' * Tne Little Man,' * Cnildier Sliding/ besides the late Lord Houghton's excellent * Good nii^ht and good morning.' Mr. Baring Gould's * Twinkle, twinkle/ would not have suited the caterpillar any better than thai of Alice : * When the traveller in the dark thanks you for M^ktny spark' is bad eveiy way, and e^en tho^e who love not Linaley Murray will object. The version of ' Pat a Cake ' is also peculiar: the third and fourih lines s»eem to miss the old point:— I Prick it and prick it and mark it with C, And that will do purely for Charlie and me. > say -d oj ions, tcted tdent ;o ;be here- that icter- .RING ming- uding arious This do< % away with the lively ' Tossj it in the oven,' and the accompanying action of ihiowing up the hands at the end. On the whole, however, the collection is a good one. We icgjret'to miss a rhyme which at least in London nut series and infint sc . —j — tools has been very popular, if wholly modern ;— One horse omnibus Two horse omnibus a bird upon a tree ; sit upon my knee, an<k so <U; it was and is very popular with the little ones. \nld wh< re is ' Little Billie,' the daring of all youth ? The book is beautifully primed, and mos^ of the borders, though sometimes too close to the text, are a criedit to their Birmingham designer s. The notes are really very (earned and characterised by so much impartiality of judgment that we can only wish they wei e longer. THE YELLOW BOOK The Yellow Book, Vol. VII. j London : Lane. E he Yellow Book has sadly fallen from that estate in which as qreated. We said so of the j volume which preceded Mr. Le •tween a ^^.VX--" -p- J • ** on sausages and Tintara. December 14, 1895] SUPP this, and we are not going to harp on the matter. Mr. Le Gallienne opens with something thaj: seems midway between a personal recollection and a fantas< »•*--—*.— It is written in a style well consid languor between the phrases as if his own diction. Mr. Le Gallienne not always at his best ; in what he he is halfway between his worst «m« »».- , _ Harland has a long rigmarole called 'The Queen's Pleasures,' which we read with bewilderment. w*» 'dirf not. however, find it very interesting, and we certainl} *" -"• *"->• •* t^*\n\T\\T TO THE NATIONALO :red, deft ie rather] is alway calls * A and his neat, with a little liked the taste of readable, though Seventh Heaven' best. Mr. Henry We 'did not, however, find ng, an we cer did not t inderstand what it was all about. It may be a compliment to Mr. Harland, or it may only be the damning evidence of our own stupidity when we say that we did not know as we read whjethcr Mr. Harland was writing fiction or history. If it is a littjle of both, then in all humility we cannot profess to admire j his mixture. The Yellow Dwarf is a reviewer who falls foul of his brethren of the quill pen and tries to write * s; .rkastic.1 | He says his soul panteth after Criticism, and he onlyr gets reviews and resume's, and slatings and praisings: Criticism he | never gets. Poor Yellow Dwarf! He had to get through a gpod deal of review- ing himself before he finished his article, anjd he began to feel frightened lest the reviewers whom he had been slating might turn orinitn and ask, ' Is this, thtn, what you call criticism, Mr. Yellow Dwarf?' and forths-ith tell him he was only a reviewer himself. So bt excused I imself from writing criticism, and said he would give usr his viev rs on a few books which were reviewed so long ago that we lad forgotten all about them. He doesn't like Hall Caine, which shows he has read some i «. reviews to good purpose, but reviews to gooa purpose, uu«. uv. -^—T .., _ Monochromes. As the authoress of Monochromes has a con- tribution in the volume in whi<h this apology for criticism by the Yellow Dwarf appears, we turned in ha^te to read it. It is quite a clever little study in the beginnings of madness. A man dreams he has killed a rr an whom he hates. . There- after slowly his hate dwindles awiy, and tie feels sorry. Then he learns it was only a dream, and his! hate returns. Mr. Kenneth Grahame has an article onj *The Iniquity of Oblivion,1 marked with all that w riter's admirable qualities of style and happiness of invention Vf - ^-«>»am»» rives eood promise of blossoming into the e: vacated by him who died at Sam MIRACLE Mr. j. *^4. ^ gives good [sayist wto shall fill the place >a, ; PLAYs| Miracle Plays: Our Lord's Coming adft Childhood. By V.-T-UITDINTF TYNAN HINKSON. Condon: Lane. KATHERINE TYNAJ? It was a very difficult underta! to write and bring out a * miracl< date. It wanted daring and con thing—a rarer quality which - - «- -» f— »v*. ling—. ...w. n , false rhymes, but for these thjere is the excuse that falser still were made long ago, and when all is said slight falseness of -« *- »^- to.trh of noetrv. And rhyme is a small thing compare* we do not hesitate to say that i1 we do not hesitate 10 say umv i.» *».- ..*,-- - true breath of poetry as of religious feeling. Let us take, for . . ~-.—..., .ui ^.^ ^f Mclchior : instance, from the ' Nativity' We arc three Icings from farthest Ind, .. . . ^ weeks to find _„ ^-.LA Travelled these ma' The greatest king o And since the Stat rvu«a»^ That this most precibus Babe is He. We worship Him o he does. love Gallia and London: Lane, ing on the part of an author play,1 or! rather plays, at this jriction. bur auth _ it wanted some jr has. There are excuse that falser to the tpuch of poetry. And this little book there is the speech of all mankind, has showji >U5 oau^ « ••* bended knee, With silk and spice of Araby And gold to build His throne. Now, all this is in character admirably ac apted to the situation, the place, and the people More than tha:, the writer has caught the old and simple tone which L mysterr play must, before all things, possess. There must b : in such a production a perfect simplicity of belief and a perfect simplicity of expression without a hint of affected simplicity. These qualities are difficult of combination, and it is very jmuch to the author's credit to have combined them. It wouli not be a wearisome task to illustrate by further quotation how well the work has been done, but that work is contained in! a small volume, and we prefer to leave readers to discover for! themselves how much of chirm and of fiae thought has beeri compressed into. aj\g reproduction of Hedonistic Theorii WATSO Professor Watso sophy. This is an worse for that. 1 Hume at a beginn method. The old the half-hearted o it also choked off with a little nursii of philosophy. I himself up to ptt deserted the mori mark. It would fessorial work in confine such a we more than a pass has great gifts fo than the gift of < language* which sense of values J which save hie accidental and -i explicit criticism temptations to t the popular lee better than to h< philosophers, arj generally tries t ever his faults E And we have style is genera more than slove State was thus 1 what we find i each independ common ties c ungrammatical 1 The Sophists be said to be at as also are ' Tl *same thing as (p. 131), and ' idea that what (p. 153)- 0th piges 36 and self of the fall prevalent in It has not so - general posit fairly call the various forms for Green's pb but it is absui from the failu idealism. Tt quite so com given on p. 4 not prepared the absolute we have not faith,1 Wee sophy whict consideratioi called &o£a» philosophy a calibre of carries guns English stuc tail of pages of Green, quite uninte form of the reason itself judgment th does not ter
TtOlNATIONAL ol&SEftVER [December u,degrees of merit. Mr.
Baring Gould's introduction is delight-
i fuL ! He refers cf course to a book which, is now becomirgi
scarce, Mr. J. Ke-*s Archeology of Nursery Rhymes. It wai
written to prove hat * Hey, diddle, diddle* and others were:
corruptions, not translations, of Dutch rhymes directed against'
the friars, whoie notorious ill conduct, both here and on the»
Continent, was or e of the proximate causes oi the Reformation.i
Mr. Baring Goul J, it is needless to say, demolishes this far-l
fetched theory; aut he would also like to demolish another, which
has more \y in it. Such * sequences' as * Thex Housi? that Jack
Built,' the 'Bonny Bush of Blackberries'
and * Cock Robin * are derived very closely from certain
songswritten by Portuguese Jews, and were employed on the Pass-over
night to keep the children awakf. Some of them are inmanuscript
books of Passpver Services at the Britith
152.
Museum, and are illustrated with small vignettes, contrary
tothejefwish usage of never representing animated forms.
Theybelonjg to the (fourteenth century—possibly some to the
-- i-- * «_J nf. VT^ Rarintroeiong it» me j i u u i i < ~ ~ i
> i . u .-_... — j f ------ fthirte]enth— and me. This is
entitled * The Task'and isiparjt of ajmuch longer North Countiy
version known as1 Wnitiingham Fair.' ' Come, I will sing to you,1
and ' LittleSt. William,' are also too ' grown up ' for moat
children : butwe need not wish to exclude them as there are plenty
more.Among oM fa vouihes we find 'The Flex,' * Tne Little Man,'*
Cnildier Sliding/ besides the late Lord Houghton's excellent* Good
nii^ht and good morning.' Mr. Baring Gould's * Twinkle,twinkle/
would not have suited the caterpillar any better thanthai of Alice
: * When the traveller in the dark thanks you forM^ktny spark' is
bad eveiy way, and e^en tho^e who love notLinaley Murray will
object. The version of ' Pat a Cake ' isalso peculiar: the third
and fourih lines s»eem to miss the oldpoint:— I
Prick it and prick it and mark it with C,And that will do purely
for Charlie and me.
> say-d ojions,tctedtdent;o ;behere-that
icter-
.RINGming-
udingarious
This do< % away with the lively ' Tossj it in the oven,' and
theaccompanying action of ihiowing up the hands at the end.
On the whole, however, the collection is a good one.
Weicgjret'to miss a rhyme which at least in London nut series
andinfint sc
. — j —tools has been very popular, if wholly modern ;—
One horse omnibusTwo horse omnibus
a bird upon a tree ;sit upon my knee,
an• •* t^*\n\T\\T TO THE NATIONAL O
:red, deftie rather]is alwaycalls * Aand his
neat, with a littleliked the taste ofreadable, though
Seventh Heaven'best. Mr. Henry
We 'did not, however, findng, an we cer did not t inderstand
what it
was all about. It may be a compliment to Mr. Harland, or itmay
only be the damning evidence of our own stupidity whenwe say that
we did not know as we read whjethcr Mr. Harlandwas writing fiction
or history. If it is a littjle of both, then inall humility we
cannot profess to admire j his mixture. TheYellow Dwarf is a
reviewer who falls foul of his brethren ofthe quill pen and tries
to write * s; .rkastic.1 | He says his soulpanteth after Criticism,
and he onlyr gets reviews and resume's,and slatings and praisings:
Criticism he | never gets. PoorYellow Dwarf! He had to get through
a gpod deal of review-ing himself before he finished his article,
anjd he began to feelfrightened lest the reviewers whom he had been
slating mightturn orinitn and ask, ' Is this, thtn, what you call
criticism,Mr. Yellow Dwarf?' and forths-ith tell him he was only
areviewer himself. So bt excused I imself from writing
criticism,and said he would give usr his viev rs on a few books
which werereviewed so long ago that we lad forgotten all about
them.He doesn't like Hall Caine, which shows he has read some
i «.reviews to good purpose, butreviews to gooa purpose, uu«.
uv. -^—T . . , _Monochromes. As the authoress of Monochromes has a
con-tribution in the volume in whi
