BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 15906, 11 September 1915, Page 3

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

'The Second Phase.' By A. Billiard Atteridge. London : H odder and'Stoughton. The above interesting and _ attractively - presented literary and pictorial summary of the early weeks of the war includes narratives of "the victory of the Marne, the battle of the Aisno, the war in Eastern Europe, the fall of Antwerp, and the tragedy of Belgium. ' Quinneys'' (cheap reprint). By Horace A. Vachell. London: John Murray. " Mr Vachell is the author of more than one human story, but he has possibly never written one with such lovable and attractive qualities as 'Quinneys'.' It is a novel certain to make real and lasting friends. Its characterisation is clear and strong, ami its interest one to appeal to a widecircle of readers." GRAY'S ARMCHAIR. There are so many relics of the stirring times in which we live that for the time being there seems .to be little interest in those of the past. In the last few years Burns's Bible and writing desk, Goldsmith's chair, Louis Stevenson's bureau, and many Bronte relics have fetched considerable sums. Even Bunyan's anvil resounded with bidding some time ago. But the war market was cold at Sotheby's on July 8, when the poet Gray's armchair and other articles appeared. Although Mr Tom Hodge avowed that the ' Elegy' was written in the chair, even if the rough draft were made bv the poet sitting on a tombstone, he could charm only £8 out of the company, and a roughly-made sloping writing desk fell at £5. There were a number ot Gray letters. Describing an aunt (Mrs Oliffe, 'The Spawn of Cerberus') he said : " She is never good for anything but when she is laid up and can do nothing. As she recovers she recovers her tantrums.'' This amiabie effusion brought £ll ss. 6 In the general sale was Tennyson's proof copy, with corrections throughout, of the first edition of ' Ballads and Other Poems,' £79 (Sabin). GERMANY 117 YEARS AGO. Coleridge visited Germany in 1798, and his description of Hamburg is not without interest at the present time. ''The ladies all in English dresses," he writes, "all rouged, and all with bad teethj which yon notice instantly from their contrast to the almost animal, too glossy mother-of-pearl whiteness and regularity of the teeth of the laughing, loud-talking countrywomen and servant girls who, with their clean white stockings and with slippers without heel-quarters, tripped along the dirty streets as if they were secured by a charm from the dirt. . . . The streets narrow; to my English nose sufficiently offensive. ... A conflagration would, I fear, bo the previous requisite to the production of any architectural beauty in Hamburg, for verily it is a filthy town. ... It might have been the rival of Venice, and it is huddle and ugliness, stench and stagnation." During this visit Coleridge writes to a whom hs addresses as " Meine liebe Freundinn," adding: "See how natural the German comes from me, thougli I have not yet been in the country six weeks [—almost as fluently as English from ray neighbor the Amts"schrieber (or Public Secretary), who as often as we meet, though it should be half a dozen times in the day, never fails to greet me with ' Goddam your ploot unt eyes, my dearest Englander, vhee goes it ?' which is certainly a proof of great generosity on his part, these words being his whole stock of English." There is also in these letters of Coleridge an entertaining picture of the German post chaises of that period. "Of my return," he writes, " I have nothing worth communicating, except that I took extra post, which answers to posting in England. These North German post chaises are uncovered wicker carts. An, English dust-cart is a piece of finery, a chef d'eeuvre of mechanism, compared with them; and the horses—a savage might use their ribs instead of his fingers for a numeration table. Wherever we stopped the postilion fed his cattle with the brown rye bread of which he ate himself, all breakfasting together; only the horses had no gin to their water, and the postilion no water to his gin."

THE LATE G. C. MACAULAY. __ George Campbell Macauiay., lecturer in English, literature at Cambridge, and one of the editors of the 'Modern Language Review,' is dead.' A great-nephew ot the historian, and a- Fellow of the same Cambridge (Trinity). Macauiay won distinction within a few years of graduation by his volume on 'Francis Beaumont,' an acute, critical essay in the problem of discriminating that poet's share in the 50 dramas which have come down to us under the inscrutable title of " Beaumont and Fletcher." One of his most definite results was to raako probable the exclusively Bwiumontian authorship of ' The Knight of the Burning Pestle,' the wit and fun of which have since.become familiar to the Manchester public on the boards of the Gaiety, and the first known reflection of the fame of 'Don Quixote' outside Spain. Macaulay's most se.'isational.achievement, however, was the discovery, some 20 years ago, of one of the three famous works of Chaucer's contemporary, John Gower, the 'Miroir de l'Homme,' a vast ethical poem in old French, of which only the title and the general purport were known. Finds of such magnitude are now necessarily rare. He followed tip the discovery by editing the MS., and later by a. complete edition of Gower's works in Latin, French, and English. WTien the University of Cambridge, some years ago, established, taTdily enough, a lectureship in English literature, 'Macauiay, at great pecuniary sacrifice, resigned his chair at the University College of Wales to take up its duties. In •addition to them he undertook the editorship of tlio English, section of the ' Modern Language Review,' the single organ of the scientific literary study of modern languages in England. This arduous and altogether gratuitous, labor he carried on to the end. No one has done more, -whether as editor or as teacher, to maintain trie st-mdairds of a severe scholarship in this- department of study. He served for several years as external examiner to the University of Manchester.