of Charlot, but is exiled by Charlemagne, whom Ogier would have killed but for the protection afforded by the barons. Ogier flies to Italy, and Charlemagne declares war against his harborer. Ogier shuts himself up in Castelfort, and withstands a siege of seven years; at the end of which time, all his followers having died, he makes his way to the camp of Charlemagne and enters the tent of Charlot. Throwing his spear at the bed where he supposes Charlot to be asleep, he escapes into the darkness, crying defiance to Charlemagne. Afterwards he is captured while sleeping, but by the entreaties of Charlot the sentence of death is changed to that of imprisonment. The country is invaded by Brahier, a Saracen giant, seventeen feet tall and of great strength. Ogier is the only man fit to cope with him, and he refuses to leave his prison unless Charlot is delivered up to his vengeance. Charlemagne accedes, but Charlot's life is saved by the miraculous interposition of Saint Michael. The poem ends with Ogier's combat with the giant, who is conquered and put to death. Among the tales in which Ogier figures there is a romance called 'Roger le Danois,' the 'Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, and the Earthly Paradise of William Morris. ( Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the He roic in History, On, by Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle's Hero-Worship' made its first appearance as a series of lectures delivered orally in 1840. They were well attended, and were so popular that in book form they had considerable success when published in 1841. There are five lectures in all, each dealing with some one type of hero. In the first, it is the Hero as Divinity, and in this the heroic divinities of Norse mythology are especially considered. Carlyle finds this type earnest and sternly impressive. The second considers the Hero as Prophet, with especial reference to Mahomet and Islam. He chose Mahomet, he himself says, because he was the prophet whom he felt the freest to speak of. As types of the Poet Hero in his third lecture, he brings forward Dante and Shakespeare. "As in Homer we may still construe old Greece; so in Shakespeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe was in faith and in practice will still be legible.» In the fourth lecture he considered the Hero as Priest, singling out Luther and the Reformation, and Knox and Puritanism. "These two men we will account our best priests, inasmuch as they were our best reformers.» The Hero as Man of Letters, with Johnson, Rousseau, and Burns as his types, forms the subject of Carlyle's fifth lecture. "I call them all three genuine Men, more or less; faithfully, for the most part unconsciously, struggling to be genuine, and plant themselves on the everlasting truth of things.» Finally, for the Hero as King he selects as the subject of his sixth lecture Cromwell and Napoleon, together with the modern Revolutionism which they typify. "The commander over men - he is practically the summary for us of all the various figures of Heroism; Priest, Teacher, whatever of earthly or of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here.» Carlyle eulogizes his heroes for the work that they have done in the world. His tone, however, is that of fraternizing with them rather than of adoring them. He holds up his typical heroes as patterns for other men of heroic mold to imitate, and he makes it clear that he expects the unheroic masses to adore them. The style of Hero-Worship' is clearer than that in most of the other masterpieces of Carlyle, and on this account is much more agreeable to the average reader. There is less exaggeration, less straining after epigram. Cr romwell's Letters and Speeches, Oliver: With Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle. These elucidations amount to an ex-parte favorable rearrangement of Cromwell's case before the world, supported by the documentary evidence of the Protector's public speeches and his correspondence of every sort, from communications on formal State affairs to private and familiar letters to his family. For almost two hundred years, till Carlyle's work came out in 1845, the memory of Cromwell had suffered under defamation cast upon it through the influence of Charles the Second's court. When the truncheon of the "Constable for the people of England»-as Cromwell (deprecating the title of king) called himselfproved too heavy for his son Richard after Oliver's death, and the Stuarts reascended the throne and assumed the old power, all means were used to destroy the good name of Cromwell. While to the present day opinion widely differs concerning Cromwell's actual conduct, and his character and motives, the prophetic zeal and enthusiasm of Carlyle has done much to reverse the judgment that had long been practically unanimous against him. Cromwell's Place in History. Founded Lectures delivered at Oxford. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. (1897.) Among scholarly estimates of Cromwell's true rank as a statesman and stature as a man, Mr. Gardiner's may perhaps take the first place. It interprets him as the greatest of Englishmen, in respect especially of both the powers of his mind and the grandeur of his character: "in the world of action what Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the most typical Englishman of all time," yet not "the masterful saint of Carlyle's "peculiar Valhalla.» It explains, but does not deny, "the errors of Cromwell in dealing with Ireland"; admits that "Ireland's evils were enormously increased by his drastic treatment," and consents to a verdict of "guilty of the slaughters of Drogheda and Wexford." But it refers the errors and the crime to "his profound ignorance of Irish social history prior to 1641," "his hopeless ignorance of the past and the present" of Ireland. In this, and in every respect, the volume, though small, is of great weight for the study of a period of English history second in interest to no other. Good Thoughts in Bad Times, by Thomas Fuller (1645), is the first of a trio of volumes whose titles were inspired by the troublous days of Charles and Cromwell, when Fuller was an ardent loyalist. Good Thoughts in Worse Times' (1649), and-after the restoration of Charles II.-Mixed Contemplations in Better Times,' followed, completing the trilogy. The present volume, like its two successors, is packed with wise and pithy aphorisms, often humorous, but never trivial; and is pervaded by that "sound, shrewd good sense, and freedom of intellect," which Coleridge found there. moralist, rather than an exponent of spiritual religion, the cavalier chaplain devotes more attention to a well-fed philosophy than to the claims of the soul. Though A read to-day mainly by students of the author's style and times, this sententious volume has attractions for all lovers of quaint and pleasing English. Dialogues of the Dead, by Lucian. These dialogues, written at Athens during the latter half of the second century, are among the author's most pop ular and familiar works. They have been translated by many hands, from the days of Erasmus to the present; an excellent modern translation being that by Howard Williams in Bohn's Classical Library. They are filled with satire, bitter or delicate according to the subject, and illustrate admirably Lucian's ready wit, and light, skillful touch. The scene is laid in Hades; and the only persons appearing to advantage are the Cynics Menippus and Diogenes, who are distinguished by their scorn of falsehood and pretense. The Sophists are mercilessly treated; and even Aristotle is accused of corrupting the youthful Alexander by his flatteries. Socrates is well spoken of, but is said to have dreaded death, the Cynics being the only ones to seek it willingly. The decadent Olympian religion and the old Homeric heroes are exposed to ridicule, and it is twice demonstrated that the conception of Destiny logically destroys moral responsibility. There are several dialogues that hold up to scorn the parasites and legacy-hunters so abundant at Athens and Rome; and Alexander and Croesus make themselves ridiculous by boasting of their former prowess and wealth. The futility of riches and fame is shown in the dialogue of the boat-load of people who have to discard all their cherished belongings and attributes before Charon will give them passage; only sterling moral qualities avail in the shadowy land of Hades, and only the Cynics are happy, for they have nothing left behind to regret, but have brought their treasure with them in an upright and fearless character. Dunciad, The, by Alexander Pope. This mock-heroic poem, the Iliad of the Dunces, was written in 1727, to gratify the spite of the author against the enemies his success and his malice had aroused. It contains some of the bitterest satire in the language, and as Pope foresaw, has rescued from oblivion the very names that he vituperates. The poem is divided into four books, in the first of which Dulness, daughter of chaos and eternal night, chooses a favorite to reign over her kingdom. In the early editions this prominence is assigned to Theobald, but in 1743 Pope substituted Colley Cibber. In the second book, which contains passages as virulent and as nauseating as anything of Swift, the goddess institutes a series of games in honor of the new monarch. First the booksellers race for a phantom poet, and then the poets contend in tickling and in braying, and end by diving into the mud of Fleet Ditch. Lastly there is a trial of patience, in which all have to listen to the works of two voluminous writers, and are overcome by slumber. In the third book the goddess transports the sleeping king to the Elysian shades, where he beholds the past, present, and future triumphs of Dulness, and especially her coming conquest of Great Britain. The fourth book represents the goddess coming with majesty to establish her universal dominion. Arts and sciences are led captive, and the youth drinks of the cup of Magus, which causes oblivion of all moral or intellectual obligations. Finally the goddess gives a mighty yawn, which paralyzes mental activity everywhere, and restores the reign of night and chaos over all the earth. Chaldean MS., The. (1817.) This pro duction, in its day pronounced one of the most extraordinary satires in the language, is now almost forgotten save by students of literature. It was a skit at the expense of the publisher Consta scathing and many of them mean. The joke was perpetrated by James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd," whose original paper was greatly enlarged and modified by Wilson and Lockhart, and who himself declared that "the young lions in Edinboro' interlarded it with a good deal of devilry of their own." To escape detection, the Blackwood men described themselves as well as their rivals: Wilson was "the beautiful leopard from the valley of the palm-trees, whose going forth was comely as the greyhound and his eyes like the lighting of fiery flame. And he called from a far country the scorpion [Lockhart] which delighteth to sting the faces of men.» Hogg was "the great wild boar from the forests of Lebanon, who roused up his spirit, and whetted his dreadful tusks for the battle.» The satire which now seems so harmless shook the old city to its foundations, and produced not only the bitterest exasperation in the Constable set, but a plentiful crop of lawsuits; one of these being brought by an advocate who had figured as a "beast." As it originally appeared, the satire was headed Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript,' and pretended to be derived by an eminent Orientalist from an original preserved in the great Library of Paris. The publication of the original, said the editor of Blackwood, "will be prefaced by an Inquiry into the Age when it was written, and the name of the writer." In after years both Wilson and Lockhart repented the cruelty of this early prank. ble, and of the Edinburgh notables spe- MeFingal, by John Trumbull. cially interested in the Whig Edinburgh Review; prepared by the editors for the seventh number of the new Tory Blackwood's Magazine, October 1817. In form it was a Biblical narrative in four chapters, attacking Constable, and describing many of the Constable clientage with more or less felicitous phrases. Scott was "that great magician which hath his dwelling in the old fastness." man is who "shook the dust from his feet, and said, 'Beloved I have given this magician much money, yet see, now, he hath utterly deserted me.>>> Francis Jeffrey was "a familiar spirit unto whom the man which was crafty had sold himself, and the spirit was a wicked and a cruel.» Many of the characterizations cannot be identified at this day, but they were all The author of 'McFingal,' "the American epic," was a distinguished Connecticut jurist and writer. The poem aims to give in Hudibrastic verse a general account of the Revolutionary War, and a humorous description of the manners and customs of the time, satirizing the follies and extravagances of the author's own Whig party as well as those of the British and Loyalists. McFingal is a Scotchman who represents the Tories; Honorius being the representative and champion of the patriotic Whigs. Fingal is of course out-argued and defeated; and he suffers disgrace and ignominy to the extent of being hoisted to the top of a flag-pole, and afterwards treated to a coat of tar and feathers. The first canto was published in 1774, and the poem finally appeared complete Mc in four cantos in 1782. The work is now unread and comparatively unknown, but - its popularity at the time of its issue was very great; and more than thirty pirated editions in pamphlet and other forms were printed, which were circulated by "the newsmongers, hawkers, peddlers, and petty chapmen» of the day. It contains many couplets that were famous at the time, some of which are still quoted. The two that are perhaps the most famous, and which are often attributed to Samuel Butler, the author of 'Hudibras,' are jected Addresses' were widely commended "The firemen terrified are slow To bid the pumping torrent flow, 'McFingal was considered by many Glass fully equal in wit and humor to its great prototype 'Hudibras'; and its subsequent decadence in popularity is thought not to be owing to any deficiency in these respects, but to a lack of picturesqueness in the story and of the elements of personal interest in its heroes. Rejected Addresses, by James Smith and Horace Smith. This volume of poetical parodies was issued anonymously in 1812, and met with great success, both the critics and the public being delighted with the clever imitations; though, strange to say, the authors had much difficulty in finding a publisher for the book. The 'Rejected Addresses' were the joint work of the brothers James and Horace Smith, who wrote them as a burlesque upon the many prominent and unsuccessful competitors for the reward offered by the management of the Drury Lane for an address to be delivered at the opening of the new theatre. The 'Rejected Addresses› were begun at this time, and were completed in imitations set forth in the volume, the following are the work of James Smith: 'The Baby's Début' (Wordsworth), The Hampshire Farmer's Address (Cobbett), (The Rebuilding' (Southey), 'Play-House Musings' (Colerådge), 'The Theatre' (Crabbe), the first stanza of 'Cui Bono (Lord Byron); the song entitled 'Drury Lane Hustings'; and "The Theatrical Alarm-Bell,' an imitation of the Morning Post; also travesties on 'Macbeth,' 'George Barnwell,' and 'The Stranger.' The rest of the imitations are by Horace Smith. The 'Re lasse of Time in the First Age, The, 'Divinely Handled by Thomas Peyton, of Lincolnes Inne, Gent. Seene and Allowed, London: Printed by Bernard Alsop, for Lawrence Chapman, and are to be sold at his Shop over against Staple Inne, 1620,' runs the title-page of this ao count, in sonorous heroic couplets, of the fall of man and the progress of humanity down to the time of Noah. Peyton died soon after its completion, at the age of thirty-one; and there is no record of him outside of this work, which was not itself known till eighty years ago. A copy, bound in vellum, ornamented with gold, illustrated with curious cuts and quaintly printed, was found in a chest; and there is a copy in the British Museum. In 1860 an article on it appeared in the North American Review, pointing out that it appeared forty years before 'Paradise Lost,' but that the similarity of its plan was not disparaging to Milton, as it merely gave him certain suggestions, and had individual but inferior merit. It was reprinted in 1886. a few weeks. Among the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first appeared in The Sibylline Leaves, in 1817. It is one of the most fantastic and original poems in the English lan guage. An attempt at analysis is diffi cult; for, as has been happily said: "The very music of its words is like the melancholy, mysterious breath of something sung to the sleeping ear; its images have the beauty, the grandeur, the incoherence, of some mighty vision. The loveliness and the terror glide before us in turns, with, at one moment, the awful shadowy dimness, at another the yet more awful distinctness, of a majestic dream.» A wedding guest is on his way to the bridal festivities. He hears the merry minstrelsy, and sees the lights in the distance. An old gray-bearded man -the Ancient Mariner-stops him to tell him a story, and although the wedding guest refuses to listen, he is held by the fixed glance of the mysterious stranger. The Ancient Mariner describes his voyage, how his ship was locked in the ice, and how he shot with his crossbow the tame Albatross, the bird of good omen which perched upon the vessel. The Second Series of The Golden Treasury' appeared in 1897, soon after Mr. Palgrave's death. Perfection of form, one of the main tests of the first volume, holds a subordinate place in the second; and here the commonplace has encroached upon the simple. The chief value of this collection lies in its serving as a kind of shrine for masterpieces like Arnold's 'Scholar Gipsy,' Patmore's 'The Toys,' the 'Christmas Hymn' of Alfred Domett, and The Crimson Thread' of F. H. Doyle. The entire universe seemed stunned by Iphigenia, a drama, by Euripides, this wanton act of cruelty: the sea and sky sicken, the sun becomes withered and bloody, no winds move the ship, idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean"; slimy things creep upon the slimy sea, death-fires dance about the vessel; and the Albatross hangs around the neck of the Ancient Mariner. A spectre ship appears, and the crew die, leaving the graybeard alone. After a time he is moved to prayer, whereupon the evil spell is removed. The Albatross sinks into the sea, and the Mariner's heart is once again a part of the universal spirit of love. After hearing this story, the wedding guest "turns from the bridegroom's door," and "A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn." The weird ballad is capable of many interpretations; for the Ancient Mariner is nameless, there is no name for the ship, and her destination is vague. In its small compass it contains a tragedy of remorse, and of redemption through repentance. The imagery is wonderful, and the poem is pervaded by a noble mystery. Wordsworth, Coleridge affirms, wrote the last two lines of the first stanza of Part iv. Golden Treasury, The, of Songs and Lyrics, by Francis Turner Palgrave. A volume attempting to bring together all the best lyrics in the language, by singers not living. In his selection Mr. Palgrave was aided by the taste and judgment of Tennyson as to the period between 1520 and 1850. The book has four divisions, informally designated as the books of Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, and Wordsworth, though hardly less space is given to Herrick or Shelley. The preface and notes are of great value. 407 B. C. The third and latest, and altogether the most modern, of the great masters of Greek drama, twice used the Iphigenia story,-once in the fine masterpiece which was represented during his life, and again in a drama brought out after his death. The latter represented the time and scene of the bringing of the heroine to the altar of sacrifice, and the climax of the play was her readiness to accept a divine behest by giving up her life. The other and the finer play represented a time twenty years later. It told how she was snatched from under the knife of sacrifice by divine intervention, and carried away to the land of the Tauri, (where is now the Crimea,) to live in honor as a priestess of Artemis, a feature of whose Taurian worship was the sacrificial immolation of any luckless strangers cast on shore by shipwreck. Twenty years had passed, and the Greek passion of Iphigenia to return to her own land, to at least hear of her people, was at its height, when two strangers from a wreck were taken, and it was her duty to preside at their sacrifice. They were Orestes and Pylades, the former her own brother. The climax of the play is in her recognition of Orestes, and in the means employed by her for her own and their escape. A singularly fine soliloquy of Iphigenia, upon hearing of the capture of two strangers, is followed by a dialogue between her and Orestes, unsurpassed, if not unequaled, by anything in Greek dramatic poetry. Her proposal to spare one to be the bearer of a letter to her Greek home, brings on a contest of self-devotion between Orestes and Pylades of wonderful dramatic power. The whole play shows Euripides at his best in ingenuity of construction and depth of feeling; and all the odes of the |