So sad and slow, old age on man doth seize, Fraughted with evils, an Hydra of curs'd disease. Beside the real and vivid natural scenes of Thomson's Seasons, Farlie's descriptions appear marred by a cold and conventional classicism, both in phrase and idea. With this trite picture, for instance, the month of August is introduced: When Phoebus doth with chast Astrea meete, Crowning the fruits & fields with influence sweet, Then plants bring forth their fruits, after their kinde, Not all alike, some good, some bad we finde. To this last aptly chosen detail nothing by way of picture could possibly be added, and the author passes at once to moralizing: So man in Youth shewes by his conversation, His towardnesse, and former education. Youth is the time of passion's sway; and This passion as it is a whetting stone To goodnesse, so to evill it spurreth on. Farlie then contrasts the way of loose living and the steep and narrow road to Virtue's citadel. The monsters that are shown to lurk by the way remind one of Bunyan's wayfarer; but the refuge found at last by the faithful soul more closely resembles that won by the wise in the Tablet of Cebes. The poem ends with the prayer that the poet may be guided rightly, and with the thought that rounds off Thomson's Winter: These worldly crosses, last but for a day, Heav'ns thought-surpassing joy shall ever last. This poem on August, which may be taken as typical of all save the last, shows that Farlie never observed nature's changing manifestations, as Thomson did, and that his moralizing is confined to conventional themes, without the tincture of worldly wisdom that the later London poet had. Especially in the short poems that stand before the different seasons is the prevailing classicism noticeable. Such is the poem for summer: Aries was strong. Taurus did stronger prove, Doe rellish well the Farmers greedy feares. To Heav'n let ev'ry one most thankefull be. With such imagery as this the poems are filled. Only occasionally does one find reference to full barns, the new-made wine, the plough, or the harrow. And the few thoughts drawn from the world of affairs are apt to be as quaintly phrased as is this: Dog-dayes are past, when men were glad to weare Torne cloathes. The most natural description in the whole volume graces the introductory poem. There a real garden is described, with its flowers and its plants set trimly in checkered beds, with the dew of the night still fresh upon them. Spenser and Milton and other later poets have used flowers in the same poetic way. In neither volume, however, is there any free play of ideas to quicken the interest of the modern reader. Farlie in his misogynous pictures of the woman in the home and in his reflections on the burdens of matrimony seems almost to rival the notorious Francis Osborne in his Advice to a Son. Occasionally, too, he refers to the scientific ideas of his time and to the geographical discoveries that engrossed the interest of many of his contemporaries. A reference to "Londons Scholler-killing letter" as one of the many bearers of death to man, seems to carry a challenge for the annotator. But in both volumes, from the almost fulsome dedications to the Earl of Somerset to the closing woodcuts, there is almost nothing to reflect the author's experiences of life or his ideas on large questions. For that reason one must stress almost exclusively the historical significance of the poems. Of them, Farlie's relation to Spenser and Thomson seems of most importance. But his work possesses a certain metrical interest also. He wrote ordinarily in the rimed couplet, using it awkwardly to the frequent obscuring of the syntax. At times, however, in supplementary poems he tried the four-beat couplet, and used it more handily than the longer line, as Burns also did. Again, in one or two cases Farlie used the alternating five-beat and three-beat lines. But his English style is so heavy and cumbersome that one wonders if he did not first write the Latin versions of the poems. A Latinist might object that his syntax there is not impeccable; but he really seems to possess a greater ease and a more varied range of meters in the classical language than in his own. During Farlie's lifetime great interest was taken in Latin verse by the cultured classes in Scotland. This is evidenced by the two paraphrases added in a seventeenth-century hand to the introductory poem in my copy of the Kalendarium. Farlie gives the poem in English only. But someone has added as a translation of one couplet: Quam longa una dies, ætas tam longa rosarum est Parturit una dies, conficit una dies. In the same elegiac measure, with possibly a reminiscence of Ovid, the idea of another couplet is freely rendered: Collige, virgo, rosas dum flos novus, et nova pube Et mæmor esto ætum sic properare tuum. All through the volume, also, the Latin version of the poems, more frequently than the English, is marked in the faded ink of possibly the first possessor of the book. Robert Farlie, as a poet, richly deserves the oblivion into which his name has fallen. His two volumes, however, are historically very interesting, and possess, in addition, the charm that lies in many of the old books of their time. In the eighteenth century the reading public in London enjoyed much the same sort of books that we now have the newspaper, the magazine, the novel. The seventeenth century knew quainter books that we no longer enjoy. To that class of forgotten books Farlie's belong. HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE'S TREATMENT OF TURNER AND BURSCHENSCHAFTER By STARR WILLARD CUTTING On reading in the second volume of von Treitschke's Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, the chapter devoted to the Burschenschaft, I was struck by what seemed to me sundry distortions that are incompatible with a true picture of the movement. A later examination of the archive material in Berlin and Weimar touching this whole matter, which must have been studied by von Treitschke, convinced me that the historian could not have written that chapter without the use of other material, the value of which as independent evidence would bear careful examination. For securing an independent control of the sources, I have taken pains to read the sworn statements of very many former Turner and Burschenschafter, as they appear in the records of their trials for treason in connection with their membership in an absurd revolutionary organization of a later date, the so-called Jünglingsbund. I have read many letters of such men written during their membership in the Burschenschaft. I have had direct access to the full records of the meetings and transactions of the Jena Burschenschaft, as they took shape in the years 1815-1819, when in 1904 I was a guest of the modern chapter of the Burschenschaft in Jena, called Arminia auf dem Burgkeller, and I have studied a large number of books, pamphlets, and journal articles, written by contemporaries of the movement and by later students of the same subject.1 Now the main and controlling purpose of von Treitschke in writing his Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert was to show his own day and generation how the whole earlier history, the achievements, and the ideals of Prussia had eminently pre 1 Invaluable for the student of this subject is the Bibliographie der deutschen Universitäten . . . bearbeitet von Wilhelm Erman und Ewald Horn, Leipzig und Berlin, 1904, Th. I und Th. II. pared her for the political and economic leadership of the German states. He wished to make clear the vagaries of small-state judgment and of small-state action that had unreasonably delayed the realization of this foreordained leadership. While earlier and later chapters of his work gave him varying opportunity to do this, he found the story of the Turner-Burschenschaft movement especially adapted to this purpose. For this story could, by adroit manipulation of incidents and by judicious use of sources, be so told as to make the Turner and the Burschenschafter appear as having precipitated in large part the Prussian-Austrian Reaction. that had delayed by more than fifty years the union of the German states into a single commonwealth. He begins by belittling and caricaturing the founder of the Turner movement, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. He speaks of him condescendingly and at times sneeringly as of a well-meaning, ignorant, and patriotic clodhopper, whose popularity with old and young in his day was undeniable, although regrettable, and whose services to Germany in preparation for the campaign of 1813 had been vastly overestimated. He underlines as the outstanding feature of Jahn's work as an awakener of the German national spirit the coarsening and brutalizing influence of the man upon his pupils. This vain, shallow, loud-mouthed, and incompetent innovator, who recognized in his treatment of his pupils no differences of rank, and who recommended to them the general use of Duzen in their intercourse with each other is the central figure of von Treitschke's cartoon in the first part of his chapter. The cartoon as a whole is intended to show how the overweening conceit of Germany's young volunteers in the Napoleonic campaign had upon the return of peace created and emphasized the fiction of the great importance of the volunteer service of the people in the struggle just ended. Von Treitschke says, "The young men who had at one and the same moment enjoyed the dawn of their own conscious life and the dawn of the life of the fatherland or who as school-boys had with bated breath heard the marvels of the holy war were still intoxicated with the recollections of those unique days. In spirit they continued the struggle against French influence and against despotism and felt themselves tied hand and foot upon the return of the prosaic work of peace. How were they to understand what torturing economic cares burdened the |