of Rhode Island Volunteers, preached a sermon before the R. I. Veterans' Association on July 21, 1895, — the 34th anniversary of Bull Run, on "The Illustration of a True Patriotism." It has been issued in pamphlet. Arthur W. Foote, '74, has edited the tunes of "Hymns for Church and Home," issued by the American Unitarian Association, Boston. The same Association has recently printed "The Postulates of Revelation and of Ethics," by the late Ex-Pres. Thomas Hill, '43. Bulletin No. 8 of the Harvard Medical Association contains a verbatim report of the annual meeting and dinner on June 25. Norman W. Bingham, Jr., '95, captain of last season's Mott Haven Team, has edited "The Book of Athletics," containing practical directions for out-of-door sports, by well-known experts and amateurs. (Lothrop Pub. Co.: Boston.) "A Madeira Party," two stories of the days of our fathers, by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, h '86, has been brought out by the Century Co., New York. Volume ix, 2d Series of the Proceedings of the Mass. Historical Society, contains memoirs of the following lately deceased Harvard men who were members of that Society: Edwin L. Bynner, l '65, by Barrett Wendell, '77; Henry W. Torrey, '33, by W. W. Goodwin, '51; Henry Wheatland, '32, by W. P. Upham, '56; Edward J. Lowell, '67, by A. L. Lowell, "77. Each memoir is accompanied by a portrait. Studies in Classical Philology." (Ginn: Boston.) "Frail Children of the Air," a book about butterflies, by Samuel H. Scudder, s '62, appeared this autumn. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.: Boston.) Moses King, '81, has brought out for 25 cents a new guide-book, "How to See Boston." "The Bachelor's Christmas, and Other Stories," and "The Art of Living," by Judge Robert Grant, '73, have been issued by Scribner. The Century Publishing Co. announce "Hero Tales from American History," by Theodore Roosevelt, '80, and Henry Cabot Lodge, '71. Prof. J. A. Tufts, '78, has edited Scott's "Lady of the Lake" for the Students' Series of English Classics published by Leach, Shewell & Sanborn. Rome G. Brown, '84, has issued in pamphlet a paper on "The Right to Take Water from Streams and Lakes for Public Water Supply," read at the 15th annual convention of the American Water Works Association, at Atlanta, Ga. George Santayana, '86, has in contemplation a new translation of "Don Quixote." To the United Service for September, O. G. Villard, '93, contributed an account of "The Army of the Khedive and the Present Military Situation in Egypt." M. A. Munson, '60, has prepared a voluminous Record of the Munson Family. C. G. Leland, h '67, has recently published "Legends of Florence: Collected from the People and Re-told." The first number of the American Historical Review was issued Oct. 1. Prof. A. B. Hart, '80, is the Harvard representative on its Board of Direc tors. H. C. Lea, h '90, contributed an article on "The First Castilian Inquisitor," and Henry Adams, '58, on "Count Edward de Crillon." Among the writers of book reviews were M. M. Bigelow, p '79, J. H. Robinson, '87, J. R. Brackett, '83, Charlemagne Tower, Jr., '72, S. E. Baldwin, h '91, Prof. W. J. Ashley, and Theodore Roosevelt, '80. The Review will be issued quarterly by Macmillan & Co., New York; subscription $3 a year. J. C. Fernald, '60, is editing an abridgment of the "Standard Dictionary." Bishop W. S. Perry, '54, of Iowa, has recently issued in pamphlet form "The Struggle of the Latin Peoples and the Roman Church with the English Church and the English-speaking Race for the Continent of North America ;" and Francis Fletcher, Explorer and Priest." He also announces for immediate publication by the Christian Literature Co., New York, "The Episcopate of America : Sketches, Biographical and Bibliographical of the Bishops of the American Church, with a Preliminary Essay on the Historic Episcopate and Documentary Annals of the Introduction of the Anglican Line of Succession into America." in Hampstead," Henry Van Dyke, h '94. -(Nov.) "The Issues of 1896," Theodore Roosevelt, '80, W. E. Russell, '77. American Magazine of Civics. (Sept.) "The Problem of the City," T. E. Will, '90. Charities Review. (June.) "The Charity Organization Movement," J. R. Brackett, '83; "The Economy of a Municipal Labor Test," Frederick Almy, '80. Character in Politics," A. B. Hart, '80; The Chautauquan. (Nov.) American "The March of Invention," N. S. Shaler, s '62. The Cosmopolitan. (Nov.) "Taking the New York Police out of Politics," Theodore Roosevelt, '80. Educational Review. (Sept.) "Evolution and Education," Joseph Le Comte, s '51.-(Oct.) "Representative Expression in Nature Study," W. S. Jackman, '84; "Physical Training in Childhood," Walter Channing, '72. Engineering Magazine. (Sept.) "Natural Science Training for Engineers,” N. S. Shaler, s '62. Forum. (Sept.) "The Enforcement of Law," Theodore Roosevelt, '80.- (Oct.) "The Present Aspect of the Silver Question," ," C. S. Fairchild, '63; "Well Meant but Futile Endowments," C. F. Thwing, '76. — (Nov.) The Navy as a Career," A. T. Mahan, h '95; “Stamboloff," S. K. Vatralsky, '94. Godey's Magazine. (Nov.) "A Tourney at Truth-Telling," R. J. Whitehouse, '91; "In Front of the Fire," R. B. Hale, '91. Harper's Magazine. (Oct.) "At the Sign of the Balsam Bough," Henry Van Dyke, h '94; "The Future in Relation to American Naval Power," A. T. Mahan, h '95. - (Nov.) "Literary Boston Thirty Years Ago," W. D. Howells, h '67. International Journal of Ethics. (Oct.) "Is Life Worth Living?" William James, m '65; "The Referendum and Initiative," A. L. Lowell, '77. Journal of Political Economy. (Sept.) "Notes on the History of the 'Unemployed' and Relief Measures in the United States," C. C. Closson, '92. Ladies' Home Journal. (Nov.) "A Young Girl's Library," T. W. Higginson, '41. New England Magazine. (Sept.) "Titles of Honor," Wm. Everett, '59.- (Nov.) Nineteenth Century. (Oct.) 'A Great University for London," Lord Playfair, h'86. North American Review. (April.) “Does Fire Insurance Cost too much?" G. N. Crocker, '84. — (July.) "Kidd's Social Evolution," Theodore Roosevelt, '80. Poet-Lore. (August.) "Notes on Tennyson's 'In Memoriam,'" W. J. Rolfe, riched by frequent quotations from Genung, Davidson, and other commentators, whose remarks are not, however, more valuable than those of Dr. Rolfe himself. It would be easy to cite instances of that tendency to overelucidation which few editors resist, but this would not give a fair impression of the commentary as a whole. Readers mature enough to understand National Review. (Aug.) Sir James Fitz-James Stephen," Sir Frederick Pol- In Memoriam at all need hardly be lock, h '95. told that water kept perfectly still may be cooled below the freezingpoint, "but that, if shaken, it becomes ice at once (p. 174); but editors of classics labor under the disadvantage of not knowing just what their readers' calibre will be, and of dreading to incur the blame of saying too little. It is earnestly to be hoped that this popular edition of In Memoriam may have a wide circulation among students, as an antidote for the decadent jingles and doctrines which are now in vogue. It will teach them that the Supreme master of rhythmic music in the English poetry of our age was also a profound thinker. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.: Boston.) h '59. Political Science Quarterly. (Sept.) "The Gold Standard in Recent Theory," J. B. Clark, '55; "The Tennis Court Oath," J. H. Robinson, '87. Quarterly Journal of Economics. (Sept.) "Industrial Arbitration in the U. S.," E. Cummings, '83; The Quantity Theory of Money," F. A. Walker, h '83; "Effect of an Eight Hours' Day on Wages," C. Beardsley, '92. Review of Reviews. (Oct.) "Religious Journalism and Journalists," G. P. Morris, '83. Revue Scientifique. (August.) "The Change of the Seasons on the Planet Mars," Percival Lowell, '76. Sanitarian. (Sept.) Proper Teaching of Physiology in the Public Schools," De Lancey Rochester, '81. Scribner's Magazine. "The Art of Liv · Word Formation in the Roman Sermo Plebeius, by Frederic Taber Cooper, '86, really contains in its more than 300 pages less than we should naturally expect from the title, especially since we see that the title-page calls the work "an historical study of the development of vocabulary in vulgar and late Latin, with special reference to the Romance languages." For these later Latin vulgar formations, which were distinctly different from those used by classic Latin authors, we get little help from this work. This does not necessarily mean that it is a piece of work that was not worth doing, but only that the title does not indicate the real extent of the work. ... The author has "gathered [his] material from literary sources, and relied mainly upon writers . . . whose style approaches the border-line between the classical and [the] popular speech," as he says in his preface. In this feature lies a weakness of the author's plan; his collections are from authors who, almost if not quite without exception, did not write the real sermo plebeius, butand this is especially true of the later writers he uses, always tried to avoid it as vulgar and incorrect, and achieved a very creditable measure of success in this attempt. For a complete study of the author's subject, it is necessary to take into account not only the usual spellings of Latin words, but the vulgar pronunciations and the vulgar words which in the later stages of Latin may be ill indicated by the common spellings. As material for the study of vulgar Latin, this work, submitted for the degree of Ph. D. at Columbia College, is welcome, incomplete though it is. Its word-lists are evidently the result of long and careful collection, and the author has used some of the best works of reference in making his comparisons with the forms of the Romance languages. -The Elizabethan Hamlet. A Study of the Sources, and of Shakspere's Environment, to show that the Mad Scenes had a Comic Aspect now Ignored. By John Corbin, '92. Elkin Mathews, London. -Writing of the character of Edgar in King Lear, Professor Wendell says in his recently published "William Shakspere " (pp. 294, 295): "The character of Edgar, at least so faras his feigned madness went, was intended to be broadly comic.... Once for all, the ravings of actual madness were conventionally accepted as comic by an Elizabethan audience, ... just as drunkenness is so accepted to-day. . . . Only when we understand that King Lear, for all his marvelous pathos, was meant, in scene after scene, to impress an audience as comic, can we begin to understand the theatrical intention of Shakspere's tragedy." To Mr. Corbin, listening to these ideas when Professor Wendell stated them in the lectures afterwards made into his book, came the thought that Hamlet's madness, too, might have had a comic aspect for an Elizabethan audience. The irst result of investigation by him of this idea was an essay, which in 1893 took half of the Sohier Prize. This essay Mr. Corbin, after research at the Bodleian Library, has revised carefully and issued in a daintily bound book, The Elizabethan Hamlet. was The Mr. Corbin states as follows: "The purpose and plan of the essay discussion will fall into five chief divisions. I shall consider first the Elizabethan sources of Shakspere's story. From these I shall hope to show not only that Hamlet originally a crude tragedy of blood; but also that certain phases of the story — notably Hamlet's madness versions preceding Shakspere's Hamwere treated more comically in the let than This will suggest my second considerwe can readily conceive. ation, a study of the comic sense of Elizabethan audiences, the actual public for which Shakspere wrote. This consideration will, I hope, confirm the first: it will show that to Shakspere's contemporaries many things — insanity, torture, and the like repulsive or even tragic, were connow held ventionally amusing; and that consequently in the pre-Shaksperean play Hamlet's madness must have been an actual source of mirth. Thirdly, I shall consider certain peculiar features of Shakspere's environment and methods in writing which make it unlikely that he effaced wholly the habitual comic treatment of Hamlet's madness. This will lead to my fourth division, an exposition of certain of the most important scenes in old plays where madness is treated as a source of mirth, and of similar scenes in Shakspere. In my fifth and final division I shall present whatever evidence I shall have gathered, showing that there are distinct traces in the Hamlet familiar to modern readers of the comic treatment of madness, even in some of those scenes which from a modern point of view are most deeply tragic." On the first division, the second, with the exception of the last sentence, and the fourth, Mr. Corbin writes not only interestingly, but as a whole convincingly. The only criticism that suggests itself in regard to these parts of the work is that in places Mr. Corbin does not for two reasons make his material so convincing as he might. At times he assumes in his reader a knowledge of the relations one to another of the original Hamlet story, the lost play, the German Version and the first Shaksperean Hamlet, which only a few of his possible readers are likely to have; in places he fails to name the writers on whom he is obviously depending as his authorities for important statements. It is in the treatment of the last words of the second division, in the development of the third and the fifth divisions, that a reader may not be entirely satisfied that Mr. Corbin's evidence proves all that he hopes it does, or may not be willing to accept his deductions from his evidence as the only possible interpretations of it. Mr. Corbin expounds his theory in a way that steadily holds a reader's attention, impresses upon him ideas he is far too likely to forget in his reading, not merely of Hamlet, but of all the Elizabethan drama, and stimulates him to much thought as to the nature and the methods of the comic in Elizabeth's time. This is an essay that all careful students of the Elizabethan period should read, even if they do not at the end of their reading grant all Mr. Corbin's conclusions.—G. P. B. BOOKS RECEIVED. Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans. Edited by A. B. Nichols. (Holt: New York.) Metaphor and Simile in the Minor Elizabethan Drama. By Frederic I. Carpenter, '85. (Univ. of Chicago Press: Chicago.) The Law of Investment. By Albert Hale, '93. (Published by the author, 86 Beacon St., Boston.) Baldwin Wiley. (Sever: Cambridge.) The Harvard Guide-Book. By Franklin Stenotypy; or, Shorthand by the Typewriter. Whereby 120 words per minute can be struck off by an ordinary and 300 words per minute by an expert typewriter. By Rev. D. A. Quinn. (Continental Print ing Co. Providence, R. I.) Washington Irving's Tales of a Trav eller. With an Introduction by Brander Matthews; notes by G. R. Carpenter, '86. (Longmans, Green & Co.: New York.) Lessing's Emilia Galotti. Edited by Max Poll, Instructor in German in Harvard University. (Ginn: Boston.) Last Poems. James Russell Lowell, '38. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.: Boston.) The Bibelot. 10. A Book of Airs from Dr. Campion. (Mosher: Portland, Me.) Edited with an Introduction by G. R. Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year. Carpenter, '86. (Longmans, Green & Co. New York.) Eight Orations of Lysias. Edited by M. H. Morgan, '81. (Ginn: Boston.) Bible and arranged under Subjects for Responsive Readings. Selected from the Common Worship. By Henry Van Dyke, h '94. (Ginn: Boston.) |