of judicious minds both in Holland and in England, and in all other places visited by him. People have crowded to see him, talk with him, and hear from his lips these remarkable experiences.»

Roughing It, by Samuel L. Clemens.

Mark Twain's droll humor is constantly flashing out as he describes a long and eventful journey from St. Louis across the plains, in the early "sixties," to visit the mining camps of Nevada. He notes the incident of a barkeeper who was shot by an enemy, adding, "And the next moment he was one of the deadest men that ever lived.» Interesting incidents of Mormon life and customs are given. Brigham Young's sage advice to an Eastern visitor was,"Don't incumber yourself with a large family; . . . take my word, friend, ten or eleven wives are all you need never go over it." Mark Twain failed to meet the Indian as "viewed through the mellow moonshine of romance.

It was curious to see how quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous, filthy, and repulsive.» Describing an absurd adventure that happened to his party, the author says: "We actually went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight, in a storm, forlorn and helpless, within fifteen yards of a comfortable inn.»

He tells interesting stories of life in the mining camps, of the frenzied excitement, of great fortunes made and lost, of dire poverty, and of reckless extravagance; instancing a case when he refused to cross the street to receive a present of a block of stock, fearing he would be late to dinner. And that stock rose in value from a nominal sum to $70 per share within a week.

Going to San Francisco, the author witnesses the great earthquake, of which he relates amusing incidents. He then goes as a reporter to the Sandwich Islands, the land of cannibals, missionaries, and ship captains. He does not enjoy the native food, poi, which too frequently used is said to produce acrid humors; "a fact," says Twain, "that accounts for the humorous character of the Kanakas." Obtaining a large stock of rich material for stories, the author returns to San Francisco, and acquires notoriety and wealth in the lecture field. "Thus, said he, "after eleven years of

silver mines of Nevada, which I had originally intended to occupy only three months. However, I usually miss my calculations further than that.» The volume is a mine of the frontier slang, such as the author utilizes in 'Buck Fanshawe's Funeral.'

Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, The, by

Robert Henry Newell. The 'Let ters' composing this book appeared originally in the daily press during the Civil War. Narrating the history of a fictitious and comic "Mackerel Brigade" [Mackerel «Little Mac," McClellan's well-known popular nickname], they purported to be written from the scene of action; were devoted to the humors of the conflict; and were widely read at the time throughout the North. In a sense they are historic. Their gibes and bitterly humorous shafts were directed chiefly against the dishonest element of society that the upheaval of the war had brought to the surface,-the cheating contractors, the makers of shoddy cloth ing, imperfect arms, scant-weight ammu nition, and bad supplies for the army in the field, as well as towards the selfish and incompetent general officers and office-seekers. Much of the fun of the letters is to-day unintelligible, some of the satire seems coarse; but there is no doubt that the author did immense service in creating a better sentiment as to the offenses that he scored, and to open the way, among other benefits, for the improvement which was to be known as "civil-service reform.»

Mother Goose's Melodies. Few books

in the English language have had so wide-spread a circulation as the collection of nursery rhymes known as 'Mother Goose's Melodies. Indeed, the child whose earliest remembrance does not embrace pictures of 'Little Boy Blue,' 'The House that Jack Built,' (Who Killed Cock Robin,' (Baa, Baa Black Sheep,' and 'Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker's Man,' has sustained a loss of no small magnitude. In 1860 a story was started to the effect that "Mother Goose" was a Boston woman; and she was identified as Elizabeth Goose, widow of Isaac Vergoose, or Goose, and motherin-law of Thomas Fleet, a well-known Boston printer, said to have issued a collection of the Melodies' in 1719. There is an entire lack of evidence

however, to support this assumption; although Boston has a true claim upon the fame of "Mother Goose," because two Boston publishers issued the book in 1824. But it is now conceded that "Mother Goose" belongs to French folklore and not to English tradition; and some writers even connect her with Queen Goosefoot, said to be the mother of Charlemagne. Charles Perrault, born in Paris in 1628, was the first person to collect, reduce to writing, and publish the Contes de ma Mère l'Oye,' or (Tales of Mother Goose'; and there is no reason to think that "Mother Goose» was a term ever used in English literature until it was translated from the French equivalent, «Mère l'Oye." It is probable that her fame first reached England in 1729, when 'Mother Goose's Fairy Tales were translated by Robert Samber. The original 'Mother Goose's Melodies was not issued until 1760, when it was brought out by John Newbery of London. While "Mother Goose» herself is of French origin, many of the 'Melodies are purely of English extraction, some of them dating back to Shakespeare's time and earlier.

Famous writers of fiction "may flourish and may fade," great poets pass into distant perspective; but until time has ceased to be, it is certain that 'Mother

Goose' will reign in the hearts. and murmur in the ears, of each succeeding generation.

Reynard the Fox. This is one of the

cycle of animal-legends which are generally supposed by scholars to be of Oriental origin, and which have been adopted into most of the Germanic languages. The group of stories clustering about the fox as hero, and illustrating his superiority over his fellows, as cunning is superior to strength, first appeared in Germany as Latin productions of the monks in cloisters along the banks of the Mosel and Maas. This was as early as the tenth century, and France knew them by the end of the twelfth under the name of 'Le Roman du Renard.'

In 1170 the material took definite shape among the secular poems of Germany in the hands of Heinrich der Glichesäre, who composed an epic of twelve "adventares» in Middle High German, on the theme. In all the old versions there is a tendency toward satirical allusions to

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the ecclesiastical body, and toward pointing a moral for society through the mouths or the behavior of the animals. After traveling into the Flemish tongue, the adventures of the fox came back into German speech; this time to appear in Low German as the famous Reinke de Vos, printed in Lübeck in 1498.

Nearly three hundred years later, 1793, Goethe turned his attention to the longpopular subject, and gave the animal epic its most perfect form in his 'Reinecke Fuchs. In the twelve cantos of the Reinecke Fuchs,' which is written in hexameters, Goethe gives an amusing allegory of human life and passions, telling the story of the fox and his tricks in a more refined tone than his early predecessors, but losing something of their charm of naïve simplicity.

The drawings of the noted German artist, Wilhelm Kaulbach, which illustrated an edition de luxe of recent years, have renewed the interest of the reading public in Goethe's poem. Perhaps the most familiar trick of Reynard is the story of how he induced the bear to put his head in the crotch of a tree in search of honey, and then removed the wedge which held the crotch open, leaving the bear a prisoner, caught by the neck.

Pearl, a poem of the fourteenth cen

tury, a link between the 'Canterbury Tales' and the work of the early Saxon poets, Cædmon and Cynewulf, was written by a contemporary of Chaucer, whose name is unknown. Hidden from the world of letters for many centuries, this jewel of old-English verse appeared in modern setting in 1891. The edition is the work of Israel Gollancz, of Christ's College, Cambridge. Prefixed to it is the following quatrain by Tennyson:

"We lost you for how long a time-
True pearl of our poetic prime!
We found you, and you gleam reset
In Britain's lyric coronet."

A manuscript of the Cottonian collection at Oxford contains Pearl,' with three other poems,-'Gawain,' 'Cleanness,' and 'Patience,'- each a gateway into the visionary or romantic world of the fourteenth century. In the opinion of the editor, all four poems are by the same unknown author, and antedate Chaucer's work. The intervening centuries have swept away every evidence

of this author's name and place; but his works reflect a vivid personality, making himself seen even through the abstractions of mediæval allegory. The editor endeavors to trace the outlines of this personality, guided, as he says, by "mere conjecture and inference.» He supposes the author of 'Pearl' to have been born about 1330, somewhere in Lancashire, and reared amid the natural beauties of Wordsworth's country, probably in a nobleman's household. There is no decisive evidence whether 'Gawain' or 'Pearl' was the first written of the four poems; the editor believes, however, that 'Gawain' was first. Its date is approximately determined by the connection the editor traces between the Gawain romances, so popular in the fourteenth century, and the origin of the Order of the Garter. In the poem 'Gawain,' a fair young knight of Arthur's Round Table is protected in a combat with the Green Knight by a mystic girdle, the gift of his hostess, the wife of the Green Knight. In the three days preceding the combat, she had tempted him three times, and three times he had resisted the temptation. To reward him for his chastity, the Green Knight permits him to keep the mystic circlet, and to wear it as an honorable badge, as well as a protection from injury. In the editor's opinion, these incidents of the poem refer directly to the adventure of King Edward III. with the Countess of Salisbury, and to the subsequent founding of the Order of the Garter. The contemporary poets thus sought to honor the King by comparing him with Gawain, the very flower of courtesy and purity; the conception of Gawain as a false knight "light in life" belonging to a later day.

To pass from Gawain' to 'Pearl' is to pass from earthly to heavenly romance. 'Gawain' reflects the gay chivalry of the fourteenth century, 'Pearl' its disposition to see visions and to dream dreams. Before Chaucer, the

a gem too fair to be hidden in earth, and partly of a Vision of the child's bliss with God. Throughout, the symbol of the Pearl is used, the type of Margaret, the type also of perfect holiness. The Vision' is rich in gorgeous imagery, as if the poet had drawn his inspiration from the Apocalypse. He is carried in spirit to a land of unearthly beauty, where he beholds his daughter clothed in shining garments sown with pearls. She tells him of her happiness, reveals to him the heavenly Jerusalem, and so comforts him that he becomes resigned to his loss. The poem reflects the mystical devotion of a painting by an early master.

The

The poems Cleanness' and 'Patience' are, in the opinion of the editor, pendants to 'Pearl.' 'Cleanness' relates in epic style the Scriptural stories of the Marriage Feast, the Fall of the Angels from Heaven, the Flood, the Visit of the Angels to Abraham, Belshazzar's Feast, and Nebuchadnezzar's Fall. poem 'Patience relates episodes in the life of Jonah. A vivid, childlike description is given of Jonah's entrance into the whale's belly and his abode there. The artistic form of these poems represents a compromise between two schools: the East Midland school which produced Chaucer and looked to French literature for inspiration, and the Saxon school of the West-Midland poets, "whose literary ancestors were Cædmon and Cynewulf." It would seem "that there arose a third class of poets during this period of formation, whose avowed endeavor was to harmonize these diverse elements of Old and New, to blend the archaic alliterative rhythm with the measures of Romance song. 'Pearl' is a singularly successful instance of the reconciliation of these two widely diverse forms of poetry. It is a large bead in the rosary of English verse, marking a transition from the mediæval to the modern.

haucer, Studies in: HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS, by Thomas R. Lounsbury, LL. D. (3 vols., 1892.) One of the most interesting and valuable books, both in matter and treatment, which recent research in letters has produced; alike admirable in learning and singularly sagacious and lucid in criticism. The first design of the work was that of a compendious and easily accessible account

of the results of recent investigation; | but examination showed that many of these were questionable or worthless, and that the field of Chaucer interest presented a range of problems not half of which had been treated adequately, and many of which had not been touched at

genius at its best,-the "facetious grace» which was noted in Shakespeare, and which the Baconians have ignorantly made to mean comic instead of finished, elegant, witty,-Dr. Lounsbury's pages are very rich.

work were therefore changed, not only from what was at first contemplated, but to attempt a task far larger and more thorough than anything yet undertaken. The conception, happily, was not beyond the powers and the resources of the author. No clearer, more effective, or more interesting work of learning and study of culture, whether for the scholar or for the general reader and student, has been added to the modern library. Nor are its honors modern only: they are those of universal literature, of the few books whose quality raises them to the highest line of their class.

work, in three volumes and sixteen hundred pages, as "eight chapters bearing upon the life and writings of Chaucer; eight distinct essays, or rather monographs"; but the Chaucer unity and the unity of masterly treatment hardly permit any such distinction of parts. The life of Chaucer, the Chaucer legend, the text of Chaucer, and what exactly are the true writings of Chaucer, are the topics of Vol. i., and of a third of Vol. ii.; and the study is as nearly complete and conclusive as we can ever hope to have it. The chapter on the Chaucer legend is a study of legend as a substitute for history, where it would seem impossible, which altogether surpasses any study of the kind yet made. But the two double chapters which follow, to the end of Vol. ii., on the learning of Chaucer, first in works still known, and second in works and authors now hardly known at all; and on Chaucer's relations to, first the English language, and second the religion of his time,-carry Dr. Lounsbury over fields of learning and scholarly penetration in which he stands alone. Yet the. succeeding chapters, which fill the third volume, on Chaucer in Literary History and Chaucer as a Literary Artist, even increase our grateful and delighted estimate of the author's wealth of knowledge and mastery of exposition; not to speak of a refinement and charm of style rarely found in English prose. In the felicitous wit which is a note of English

lowe. This play, written about the year 1589, is remarkable both as the chief work of the founder of English tragedy, and as the first play based on the Faust legend. At the time of the Reformation, when chemistry was in its infancy, any skill in this science was attributed to a compact with the Evil One. Hence wandering scholars who performed tricks and wonders were considered magicians, their achievements were grossly exaggerated, and they were supposed to have surrendered their souls to the Devil. The last of these traveling magicians to gain notoriety was John Faustus, whose public career lasted from 1510 to 1540; and to him were ascribed all the feats of his predecessors. In 1587 the Faustbuch was printed, giving the story of his life and exploits. An English translation, made soon after, was doubtless the source of Marlowe's plot. The theme was afterwards variously elaborated in Germany, and there were many puppet plays on the subject; but it remained for Goethe's master-hand to ennoble the popular legend, and make it symbolic of the struggles and aspirations of the whole human race. Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus is rather a tragic poem than a drama, consisting of only fourteen scenes without any grouping into acts. It is remarkable for singleness of aim and simplicity of construction, though there is plenty of variety and incident. The passionate and solemn scenes are very