"This paper is yours, Mr. Greeley. The article is in type upstairs, and you can use it when you choose. Only this, Mr. Greeley: I know New York, and I hope and believe, before God, that there is so much virtue in New York that, if I had let that article go into this morning's paper, there would not be one brick upon another in the Tribune office now. Certainly, I should be sorry if there were."

Mr. Greeley was cowed. He said not a word, nor ever alluded to the subject again.

Lowell devoted much of his after life to steady business of editing periodicals, and there is many a pretty story of the encouragement which he gave to young writers at the very beginning of their career. Here is one:

When Thomas Bailey Aldrich, somewhat timidly, sent his first poem to the Atlantic, Lowell at once recognized its worth, and sent to him the most cordial thanks. Many years after, Aldrich found himself, in turn, editor of the Atlantic. Lowell, then at the height of his reputation, sent a poem to the magazine. Aldrich had the fun to copy, in acknowledging the manuscript, the very note which Lowell wrote to him, most kindly, 20 years before, in which, he recognized the value of his first contribution. Lowell came round to the office at once, and told Aldrich that he had almost determined him "to adopt a literary career."

"No one," says Hale, "who was present when his 'Commemoration Ode' was delivered at Cambridge can forget the occasion." It was produced in 1865, and was in every regard historical:

Peace was concluded, and the country drew a long breath with joy for the first time. An immense assembly of the graduates came together. As many of them as could, filed into the church for religious services. On such occasions at Cambridge the graduates entered the church in the order of their seniority. I remember that on that occasion the attendance was so large that my own class, 26 years out of college, were among the last persons who could enter the building. We stood in the aisles, because there were no seats for us.

After these services the whole body of the alumni sat at a Spartan college feast in that part of "the yard," as we say at Cambridge, which is between Harvard and Holden Halls. And there Lowell delivered his "Commemoration Ode." His own intense interest was evident enough; but it was reflected in what I might call the passionate interest with which people heard. It was said afterward, and I think this appears in his letters, that the final business of writing this wonderful poem had all been done in forty-eight hours before he delivered it. But then, as the reader sees, it had been more than four years in the writing. The inspiration had come from day to day, and he poured out here the expression of what he had been thinking and feeling, in joy and sorrow, in hope and fear, in learning and forgetting, for all that period of crisis and strain.

In this connection Mr. Hale quotes the following well authenticated story of sympathy and telepathy as related by the hero himself, one of Lowell's pupils, who says:

"I spent the night before Commemoration Day on a lounge in Hollis 21, the room of my class

mate Hudson, who was a tutor. I could not afterward remember dreaming of anything in particular; but as I woke I heard,

"And what they dare to dream of, dare to die for.' 'Rather a good sentiment,' I said to myself; 'and it seems to be appropriate to the day-then just dawning. And so I dropped off again.

"The dinner was spread, as you remember, in the green bounded by Harvard, Hollis and Holden. My seat was just about in the middle. Mr. Lowell was a few rods nearer Holden and a good deal nearer Hollis-about under the more southerly window of Hollis 21. When he rose, there was a prolonged closing of the ranks-I remember the rustle of many feet on the grass-and Mr. Lowell waited till all was quiet before he began reading. As he read, when he came to the words, ""Their higher instinct knew Those love her best

"I began to feel, not that I had heard this before, but that something familiar was coming. "Who to themselves are true,' went on the reader. 'Hullo!' said I to myself, 'I ought to know the next line.'

'And what they dare-'

"Yes, but it isn't going to rhyme,' and this without distinctly repeating the rest of the line." When my friend had observed that "die for" would not rhyme with "true," Lowell came to his relief by saying,

"And what they dare to dream, dare to do."

When the new Hayes administration came into power, it immediately made advances to Mr. Lowell to ask him if he would not represent us at one of the European courts. Four foreign missions were offered him. He declined all, but in declining said, without declining said, without much thought, that

if they had offered him the mission to Spain he would have gone. Mr. Evarts was Secretary of State, and it may readily be imagined that he was able "to manage it":

The sovereign then on the throne was Alfonso the Twelfth, and one of Lowell's earliest dispatches describes the ceremonies attending his marriage with his first wife, the young Princess Mercedes. When he was presented to the King he made his speech in English, the King answering him in Spanish, then came forward and exchanged a few compliments in French. But very soon it appears that he was determined not to be dependent on any interpreter, or on the accomplishment of any of the foreign officers with whom he had to do: "I am turned schoolboy again, and have a master over me once more-a most agreeable man, Don Herminegegildo Giner de los Rios, who comes to me every morning at 9 o'clock for an hour. We talk Spanish together (he doesn't understand a word of English), and I work hard at translation and the like." And again: "This morning I wrote a note to one of the papers here, in which my teacher found only a single word to change. Wasn't that pretty well for boy of my standing?" This he writes to his daughter and Miss Norton: "I am working now at Spanish as I used to work at old French, that is, all the time and with all my might. I mean to

"Day before yesterday I was startled with a cipher telegram. My first thought was 'Row in Cuba! I shall have no end of bother!' It turned out to be this: 'President has nominated you to England. He regards it as essential to the public service that you should accept and make your personal arrangements to repair to London as early as may be. Your friends, whom I have conferred with, concur in this view.'

Then Lowell says he was afraid of the effect of the news on Mrs. Lowell, who was recovering from a long and desperate illness; but she was pleased, and began to contrive how he might accept. He goes on: "I answered: 'Feel highly honored by President's confidence. Could accept if allowed two months' delay. Impossible to move or leave my wife sooner.'"

When Mr. Hale was in Madrid he heard this story of how it happened that the two months' delay did not prove necessary:

Just at this juncture poor Mrs. Lowell was confined to her bed, and had been for some time. It happened that a candle set fire to the bed-curtains and the attendants present fell on their knees to implore the assistance of the Holy Mother, but Mrs. Lowell sprang up and herself took the direction of the best methods for extinguishing the flames. So soon as nurses and others could be brought into shape, it proved that the adventure had not been an injury to their mistress, but rather an advantage. The doctor was summoned at once, and within a very short time was able to say that Mrs. Lowell could be removed with care and sent by steamer to England. Mr. Lowell was said to have telegraphed at once to Washington that he could transfer his residence immediately, as he was asked to do. Accordingly, by a wellcontrived and convenient arrangement, the invalid was taken by rail to the sea, thence by rail to England, with no unfavorable results to her health.

In England, Lowell was a great favorite in private society, as he was everywhere:

In 1882 somebody told me in London the story of an invitation which Lord Granville, the Foreign Minister, had sent him. Lord Granville, in a friendly note, asked him to dinner, saying at the same time that he knew how foolish it was to give such short notice "to the most engaged man in London." Lowell replied that "the most engaged man is glad to dine with the most engaging."

His stay in England lasted until June 10, 1885. Mrs. Lowell had died in February of that year. When Lowell landed in America it was nearly seven years since he had left our shores on his way to Spain. And these were seven years which had changed in a thousand ways the conditions of his old American home. Elmwood, and Cambridge, and Harvard College, and New Eng

had been. And he, almost without a vocation, was obliged to establish his new avocations. After his return he took great pleasure in snubbing the Anglomaniacs who wanted to show by their pronunciation or the choice of their words that they had crossed the ocean. Mr. Hale instances one

case:

I think that every one who is still living of the little dinner-party, where he tortured one of these younger men, will remember the fun of his attacks. This was one of the men whom you run against every now and then, who thought he must say "Brummagem" because Englishmen said so a hundred years ago; and on this occasion he was taking pains to pronounce the word "clerk" as if it rhymed with "lark"-"as she is spoken in England, you know!" Lowell just pounced upon him as an eagle might pounce on a lark, to ask why he did so; why, if it were our fashion to pronounce the word "as she is spelled," we ought not to do so; whether on the whole this were not the old pronunciation, and so on, and so on.

He died in August, 1891, six years after his return. Of these years we have in his letters a record of pathetic interest, "and every one who knew him and who loved him will say that of the seven decades of his life-to which more than once he alludes-he never seemed more cheerful, and companionable, and cordial, and wise than in the seventh."

Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; Boston; price, $3.

A BOOK-LOVER'S WISH. If I stray woodward, not for me The loudest warbler in the tree, But rather one that sings apart The simple songs that touch the heart. And so, although I may aspire, Be mine the temperate desireNot for the missal-marvel old Illumed with mediæval gold, Not for the rare black-letter text, O'er which his soul a Caxton vext, Nor what some seek through shine and snow, A priceless Shakespeare folio!

But only this- one little book

Where through do bird and bee and brook,
In their melodious employ,
Sing on and on and on of joy;

And where, amid the Maytime flowers,
Love, without rival, rules the hours.
One little book--whose title date
Reads quaintly, 1648;

In Saint Paul's churchyard, we are told,
Sold at the Crown and Marygold.
One little book-if fortune please-
Herrick, a "first" Hesperides!

-CLINTON SCOLLARD.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND.* Of this book, as the author himself says, a "Literary History of Irish Ireland" would be a more appropriate title. In it no reference is made to the works of “Anglicised Irishmen," or to those of Farquhar, of Swift, of Goldsmith, or of Burke, because these authors "find their true and natural place in every history of English literature." Dr. Hyde, therefore, divides literary Ireland into two parts, the line of cleavage being the language spoken, and confines himself to those Irish writers. who have used the Celtic tongue.

Disadvantages attend this course. If Scott, Burns, Hume, and Carlyle were tabooed in a literary history of Scotland simply on the score of their occupying an honored place in English literature, the true proportions of the Scotch genius would be destroyed. In the same way Dr. Hyde seems by his plan to do injustice to the real magnitude of the contribution to literature of the Irish people. His excuse is that appeal is made in this volume to the student of Celtic. The spirit of the book is revealed in its dedication, which runs: "To the members of the Gaelic league, the only body in Ireland which appears to realize the fact that Ireland has a past, has a history, has a literature, and the only body in Ireland which seeks to render the present a rational continuation of the past, I dedicate this attempt at a review of that literature which, despite its present neglected position, they feel and know to be a true possession of national importance."

Dr. Brinkley of Trinity College, Dublin, once uttered the remark, "Surely you do not mean to tell us that there exists the slightest evidence to prove that the Irish had any acquaintance with the arts of civilized life anterior to the arrival in Ireland of the English!" In justice to Dr. Hyde it must be granted that one has merely to glance through the first two hundred pages of his volume, devoted rather to the history of Irish civilization than to the history of Irish literature, to conclude that Dr. Brinkley was not only a prejudiced but an ignorant critic. When the author does at last reach the earliest saga and romance, "in which the very essence of the national life of Erin was embodied," he gives proof not only of having read Windisch, Zimmer, D'Arbois de Tubainville, and other authorities, but also of having everywhere made investigations on his own account. Of special charm in this section are the elaborate tales of Deirdre and Cuchulain.

Two-thirds of the entire work are concerned with Ireland previous to the Norman invasion in May, 1169. "It is not too much to say," writes. Dr. Hyde, "that for three centuries after the Norman Conquest, Ireland produced nothing in art literature or scholarship even faintly comparable to what she achieved before. With the Nor

mans came collapse." At the close of these three centuries there was a revival of Irish letters, but soon came Aughrim and the Boyne, which "put an end to the dream that the Irish would ever again bear sway in their own land;" and "the poets fell back into lamentations over the past and impotent prophecies of the return to the Stuarts and the resurrection of Erin." The author does not at this point prevent the reader from suspecting that he, in thus himself dismembering Ireland, fails to give the complete message of its literature.

Of Irish poetry, whose literary form Dr. Hyde holds in great esteem, he gives a number of curious and interesting examples, which, as he adds, hardly, if at all, lend themselves to translation. To the famous "Ossianic" poems he gives the too short space of fifteen pages, although, to the English ear at least, no other translated Celtic poetry is able to vie with them. Of the king of the Fenians it is written in a translation very true to the original:

The warbling of blackbirds in Letter Lee,

The strand where the billows of Ruree fall,
The bellowing ox upon wild Moy-mee,
The lowing of calves upon Glen-da-vaul,
The wash of the waves on his bark afar,
The yelp of the pack as they round Drum-liss,
The baying of Bran upon Knock-in-ar,

The murmur of fountains below Slievemis. Again Ossian writes of the song of the blackbird which greeted his ear in the morning and of the sounds he heard at night:

The tuneful tumult of that bird,
The belling deer on ferny steep:
This welcome in the dawn he heard,
These soothed at eve his sleep.

No one, shut up though he is to a translation, needs to be told that this is poetry.-Lit. World.

*Literary History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to the Present Day. By Douglas Hyde, LL. D., M. R. I. A. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1899. $4.00.

HE HAD PRAYED.

A writer in the Rochester Post Express tells a good story abont an English bookseller of whom a lady inquired for one of Browning's works. The bookseller answered that he had given up keeping Browning, and, what was more, he had tried to read him and could make nothing out of any of his poems. "Indeed!" the lady answered; and then, being in search of another poet, she added, "But you have Praed?" "Yes, indeed, ma'am. I have prayed over it, but still I got no light."

Publisher: Can you turn out another book in three weeks? Author: Why so soon? Publisher: It will never do to let the public forget you.

ACQUISITIONS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

Dr. Garnett, in his annual report of the British Museum, states that in the department of printed books there has been an accession of some 114,050. Among the rarites the most notable acquisitions have been the purchase of three Caxtons. With "The Doctrinal of Sapience," bought in 1897 at the first Ashburnham sale, during the last two years the library has obtained more Caxtons than from 1851 to 1896. Strange to say, two of the Caxtons were found in the library, and had formed part of the collection of Maurice Spalding, an antiquary of the last century. Spalding was known to have had not less then seven Caxtons. Five of these the library now has. The two new ones are the "Parvus et magnus Chato," third edition, and "Ke curta Sapientiae," both printed about 1481. Of each of these works only two copies are known, apart from those now in the museum. The third acquisition of a Caxton made during the year is the "Proffytes of Tribulacyon," purchased at the sale of the third portion of the library of the Earl of Ashburnham. This is the second of three tracts printed by Caxton in 1490, and generally, although without the authority of Caxton himself, described as "A Booke of Divers Ghostly Matters" a portion, therefor, of a collection, but complete in itself.

Ten rare Wynkyn de Wordes have also been pur. chased. Dr. Garnett tells of two exceedingly rare books now in the library. One was privately printed at Naples in 1487 and 1488; the proceeding against Antonello Petrucci and others for partici pation in the conspiracy of the Barons against Ferdinand, King of Naples, in 1486, and the inquisition into the conspiracy itself. These, perhaps the first instances of the authorized publication of judicial proceedings, appear to have been circulated among the Courts of Europe in vindication of Ferdinand's action against the conspirators. Few books of equal historical interest are so rare. Three copies of the first and two of the second part, including those now acquired, are known to be in existence, but no library except the museum possesses both.

Among the new literary matter lately acquired are the poems of Arthur Henry Hallam, printed. to accompany Tennyson's own poems, but suppressed and apparently inaccessible to the editors of Hallam's literary remains, since it includes many pieces not to be found there. The acquisiThe acquisition has also been made of the first American edition of Tennyson, 1846; of Sheridan's presentation copy of his "Monody on Garrick" to Boswell, and of a copy of the privately printed edition of T. L. Peacock's "Paper Money Lyrics," 1837, which have not been completely reproduced in his collected works. Among curiosities may be especially mentioned a presentation copy, with auto

graph, of Voltaire's "Refutation d'un ecrit anonime contre la memoire de fue M. Joseph Saurin," 1758, a remarkable tract, whose existence as a separate publication seems to have been unknown; Harris's "Life of Cromwell," 1772 with manuscript notes by W. Squire, the fabricator of the forged documents relating to Cromwell, which imposed upon Carlyle testimonials given to Robert Louis Stevenson on his candidature for the Professor

ship of Modern History at the University of Edinburgh, and the late Gen. Gordon's memorandum on the Treaties of Berlin and San Stefano, privately printed, 1880.

*

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

The matinee Alfred de Musset, recently given. by the Bodiniere, was a great success. The poet par excellence of "l'amour, les femmes, et les fleurs" is still a living voice to the present generation. For over forty years the annual pilgrimage of his disciples to his tomb at Pere Lachaise in the beginning of "le joli mois de mai" has been piously continued, and this year the tomb of the great Hugo is reported to have been honored with less than half the number of the floral tributes deposited on that of Alfred de Musset. But Hugo died more than a quarter of a century later; so his admirers are content to read his works and temporarily forget his anniversary until Time's mellow aureole has gilded his fame. Though Alfred de Musset's last days were troubled by pecuniary cares (including the expenses of his own interment), the only thing he asked of his friends was "a light shade" over his grave; and the willow which now casts over his last resting-place the "light shade" so pathetically requested was brought from Parana by a South American. poet-Hilarip Escasuba by name-who cheerfully undertook the long voyage in order personally to fulfill the desire of the poet whose works he revered. Apropos of this fact may be mentioned the assertion that the poems of De Musset and the memoirs recently published by his old housekeeper, Adele Colin, are reported to have had almost as wide a circulation among foreigners as among the poet's own compatriots.

*

"But devious oft, from ev'ry classic muse,
The keen collector meaner paths will choose;
And first the margin's breadth his soul employs,
Pure, snowy, broad, the type of nobler joys.
In vain might Homer roll the tide of song,
Or Horace smile, or Tully charm the throng;
If crost by Pallas' ire, the trenchant blade,
Or too oblique, or near the edge, invade,
The Bibliomane exclaims, with haggard eye,
'No margin!' turns in haste, and scorns to buy."
FERRIAR'S BIBLIOMANIA,