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way in languages of the most diverse nature, origin, and development. The philological school tells us that it is wrong to compare non-Aryan with Aryan myths; but while such a rule may hold good for vocabularies, it seems here rather an avoidance than a solution of the difficulty.

The same difficulty that of widely diffused stories among different races -besets also, though in a less degree, the other chief theory, that of Benfey and Köhler, that our popular tales come from India, not in Aryan but in historic times, and that they have spread into Europe with every wave of influence circling from east to west. There are strong reasons for thinking that this diffusion of Eastern tales and legends, especially from the Pantchatantra and the Arabian Nights, was due to commercial intercourse with the Mussulmans, but especially to the Crusades. The leg end of Barlaam and Josaphat, saints of the Eastern church, came earlier, for it was written in the sixth or seventh century, and is clearly shown by Liebrecht and Veselofsky to be taken from the Indian legendary history of Buddha. Among the Mongols and some other races of Asia, where Buddhist missionaries have carried their religion, it is easy to understand the appearance of Indian tales and fables; but how can we account for similar stories in countries where contact has been almost impossible in historic times?

Mr. Andrew Lang, in his Custom and Myth, working on the anthropological method, has given still another theory,

that these concordances of usage and story are proofs of a certain early stage of development and culture through which all races pass, the Aryans as well as the Australians, and that they are therefore important to the psychological history of mankind. It must be admitted that his reasoning has great force.

1 Italian Popular Tales. By THOMAS FREDERICK CRANE, A. M., Professor of the Romance

All these theories may be partly true: some tales and legends may have been brought from the East, some may be degraded myths, and some may be part of that fund of imagination and fancy common to all mankind. The question of the diffusion of popular tales seems, however, just now to be more important than that of their origin. It is necessary to know not only the agencies by which tales were spread, but the directions they took. For instance, from the resemblance of the tales of the Siberian tribes to the Russian epic ballads, Mr. Stasof, contrary to previous writers, argues that his countrymen are of nonAryan race. It is to this question of diffusion that Mr. Crane has of late directed his studies, although he gives but few hints of them in the volume before us. In a paper in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for 1883, which has received very great and just praise and commendation in France and Germany, he gave some of the results of his researches among Mediæval Sermon-Books, an almost untrodden field of investigation, and showed the great part played by the preachers of the Middle Ages.

With the exception of two stories discovered by Mr. Crane in the Scala Cœli of Joannes Gobius, published in 1480 (see Germania, XVIII., New Series, page 203), variants of which may be found in the collection of Grimm, the first appearance of fairy tales in literature is, as has been already mentioned, in the books of Straparola and Basile. The former, Giovan Francesco Straparola of Caravaggio, is merely a name to us, except for his Facetious Nights. In these the author, in imitation of Boccaccio, represents that Francesca Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Milan, retires to Murano, and passes part of her exile in listening to stories told by the ladies and gentlemen of her court, some of Languages in Cornell University. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.

whom, like Casali, Bembo, and Cappello, are otherwise known to fame. Out of seventy-four stories, twenty-two are popular tales. This book had such wide popularity that there were sixteen Italian editions between 1550 and 1608, and of the French translation there were fourteen editions between 1560 and 1726. The best now attainable is the reprint of the old French translation by Jean Louveau and Pierre de Larivey in Jannet's Bibliothèque Elzevirienne of 1857. Very little more is known about Giambattista Basile, or, as he wrote his name in anagram, Gian Alesio Abbatutis. He had spent part of his early life in Crete, whence perhaps be brought some of his stories, and was the brother of the celebrated singer "la bella Adriana," whose daughter Leonora is praised in three of Milton's Latin epigrams. The fifty tales of his Pentamerone, all of them genuine popular tales, are written in the Neapolitan dialect, but are full of the conceits of that age of concetti. To us that heightens their flavor. One is at a loss at times to know if they are inserted for ornament or as satire. The book had an undoubted influence upon French literature. There is a good English translation of thirty of the best stories by John Edward Taylor, with charming illustrations by Cruikshank, still the best fairy-book that we know for children.

Notwithstanding the popularity of these two books at the time, they produced but one imitation, Mr. Crane tells us, La Posillecheata, five coarse stories in the Neapolitan dialect, by Pompeo Sarnelli, Bishop of Bisceglie, which was first published in 1684, and is now forgotten. Nearly two hundred years passed before other collections of popular tales were made in Italy, this time from the mouths of the people. De Gubernatis, Widter, Wolf, Knust, Laura Gonzenbach, Miss Busk, Comparetti, and Imbriani have all done their share, but the best work is due to Dr. Giu

seppe Pitrè, of Palermo, whose collection of Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti, is otherwise valuable to the student of language, as giving an excellent exposition of the Sicilian dialect. For that alone it is worth study. One interesting peculiarity of these recent collections is the care which has been taken to represent popular forms and terms of speech, for very many of the stories have been taken down in short-hand. Pitrè, in the preface to the work mentioned, gives an entertaining account of some of the old women from whom he heard the tales. One of these, Agata Messia, who had been heard by many interested in the lore, died only last June.

The Italian, and especially the Sicilian, stories are particularly interesting, because, owing to the constant relations of Italy with the East, we ought to catch many of them on their passage and in their earliest European forms. A remarkable example of such is the tale of the Parrot, in the book before us.

If we have dwelt chiefly on the scholarly merits of Mr. Crane's book, with its copious notes and bibliography, it is because the interest of the tales themselves, which he has translated for us, is such that they need no praise or explanation. It would be easy to catch, but hard to express, the enthusiasm of an audience of both old and young, who have already heard most of them twice. We miss, however, the local color found in the tales of some other peoples. Consisting, with the exception of the characteristic introductions and endings, in picturesque words of picturesque dialects, rather than in local details, it is necessarily lost in translation. It would seem as if the old women of Italy had inherited the logical lucidity of the old Latin, and had desired to give the facts of their wonderful stories without ex

traneous ornament.

For local color we must turn to the stories of a kindred people, the Roumanians, who have been subjected to quite

other influences. are rich in details which bring up even the physical aspect of the country, and in poetic and imaginative expressions which show the influence of the Slav upon the Latin race. It is this poetic

The tales themselves

side which makes the Roumanian tales different from those of the rest of Europe, and we are willing to agree with the Roumanian poet Alecsandri that it was the hearing of such stories that chiefly contributed to make him a poet.

TENNYSON: THE CONSERVATIVE.

NEARLY all the poems in Tennyson's new volume have been published separately in periodicals, and were from time to time greeted by the popular press as the Laureate's latest inanity. Yet a book of like finish and strength would bring any unknown poet into the front rank without a dissenting voice, and this one itself will adorn the company in which Tennyson's name will secure it a place for a period to which the criticism of our age can assign no limit. The art of the master, the perfect control of modulated language for poetic ends, pervades the whole; some great themes, so treated as to develop the wisdom of great ideas, are here; and, more conspicuous in the lesser verses, the grace, ease, and sureness of an exquisitely refined mind make an element of pleasant attraction. The lack of recognition of these things on the part of the public suggests that the decline of poetry is not wholly the fault of the singers. It is not without justice, however, that the rude general decision is recorded against Tennyson's old-age work; that the people refuse, and will continue to refuse, these latter-day poems, especially in America.

For one thing, it is exceptionally limited in its appeal, the outgrowth, in many parts, of his personal relations as a man and as an Englishman. It opens with a tribute to his friend, Mr. Fitzger

1 Roumanian Fairy Tales. Collected by MITE KREMNITZ. Adapted and arranged by J. M. PERCIVAL New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1885.

ald, a charmingly natural copy of epistolary verses, familiar, reminiscent, with a touch of humor and also of the sober

ness of life's closing day,- the greeting of an old man to the friend of his youth who has aged with him. It was sent by his son's hand, and inclosed the poem Tiresias, written long ago; but before the missive arrived the host was dead. And so a third copy of verses follows, memorial stanzas, appreciative, somewhat pathetic, calm, and mild. The whole is a threefold sheaf upon his friend's grave. The unfortunately entitled Charge of the Heavy Brigade has likewise its prologue of a rhymed note of dedication to General Hamley, commemorating a visit from him, and an apologetic epilogue replying to "girl-graduate" who would have the lyre struck only in praise of peace; and dangling from this is still another stanza, repelling the commonplace reproach that songs are not deeds. The group, taken together, is rambling matter. Then there are some prefatory stanzas for his brother's poems, not without a stroke or two on the higher chords, but how different from the childhood tablet in honor of the same love in In Memoriam ! And, later, there is the inscription written for Lord Dufferin's Tower, at his request. As one reads these various bits, the memory revives in him of the

2 Tiresias and other Poems. By ALFRED LORD TENNYSON, D. C. L., P. L. London: Macmillan & Co. 1885.

old-style days when the poet used his art in every-day intercourse with agree able acquaintances, and handed about the manuscripts: they belong to the lei sure moments of a cultivated life, and their place is with the personal records, the letters and acts of courtesy, of their author; they are the courtliness of literature. Others, besides those mentioned, have their source in the lettered life: the tribute to Catullus, a most graceful exercise; that to Virgil, with a Roman magnificence and amplitude, - a poem for whose perfection no critical praise suffices; and the concluding sonnet, in which Tennyson laments because the sacred poets are "swampt with themselves." The audience for such pieces as these must be small. They presuppose a special taste, a rarity even of modern culture. If the poet would take all hearts with him he must steer his lonely bark to other seas, where in the metaphor which our imagination cannot clarify - he will be in no danger of swamping from Virgil, Horace, and Catullus.

To be treated as a friend and a scholar by Tennyson is not a hard lot, though the public are barred out. To be treated as an Englishman is something which we have no shadow of right to object to. If the Princess and the Queen were nearer to us, the lines in which the residence of the young wife with her mother is turned into a curious astronomical vision might seem more than merely court business; and if the changes of English political life appeared more dangerously revolutionary than our experience of democracy allows, the ferment of popular distrust that disturbs some of the poems might be thought less unfortunate. Tennyson's patriotic verses hitherto have celebrated deeds and principles which touched us through their native nobility, or some community with our own civic life or our historical sympathy with England's past; but in the present volume he deals mainly with political

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moods, and now and then exhibits signs of irascibility with the young democracy, as if he were tempted to drop into plain, outright, denunciatory prose. The temper of this portion is most simply shown in the lines to the Duke of Argyll, who is idealized as representing the element of order in change, speak unpoetically, the brakes on the wheels when the curve of progress discloses a down grade; and this conservatism has been unthinkingly associated with the poet's elevation to the peerage. Tennyson, however, was always a conservative in this sense. His well-worn phrase about "the red fool-fury of the Seine" measures his English hatred of Celtic politics. The idea of Liberty, and of the people which is her charge, impresses his imagination, and the distress of the lot of the English poor has enlisted his sympathy; but he was never so full of the divine rage that he would pour out the Flood and make the past an antediluvian memory, nor of the divine hope that he would sing the New Song before the millennium was in fact established at Westminster without disturbance in Lombard Street. The past glory of England, which has been so largely the illumination of his genius, has a deeper hold upon him than modern ideas; and from early days he has exhibited the repugnance of a sensitive mind to the coarse thumb of the mobsee with what fierceness it breaks out here in the splendid vigor of The Dead Prophet—and the aristocratic temper of an idealizing nature. change of accent in his later utterances about Freedom that we can discern. The "dark ages of the popular press," as he calls our age in his prosiest line, were probably a topic of conversation years ago with his friend Carlyle. The only difference is that when he names Liberty now, he immediately begins to think about her sister Order, and he is very anxious that the latter should not be discriminated against. For him the

great civil principles seem to have descended from the ideal, and to have got confused with temporal measures; so that even when he sets out to write a sort of imperial chorus, Hands All Round, for the mother country, the conquered provinces, and the colonies to join in, it becomes, instead of a triumphal hymn of greatness, a plea for the integrity of the combination and no retreat on the frontiers. The secret of the weakness of poetry of this kind is that it springs from prudential considerations which lie in the region of the practical judgment and of shifting circumstance, too narrow and changeful to serve for ideal motives. These odes, or stanzas, or blank verse are as truly occasional pieces as if they were written for a banquet of the Whig peers. The four lines of General Gordon's admirable epitaph are worth whole octavos of these poems, which, whether they wander from the public good" or not, are in fact a "party-cry."

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The remainder of this volume is addressed really to the public, and to the whole of it on both sides of the water. Attention has been most attracted by the two poems which are concerned with questions or aspects of religious faith, Despair and The Ancient Sage. The latter is impaired by being cast in a duplex form, and consists of two poems in different measures, interrupting each other one in which the youthful disciple develops the pleasurelessness of life on an atheistic theory, the other in which the wise and metaphysical old man makes a running commentary on the first. In Despair the treatment is less didactic, and the ballad form, in which Tennyson has always exhibited his dramatic power most successfully, helps. In substance it is meant to light up in a lurid way the darkness of a sectcreed on the one hand, and of a sciencecreed on the other, and between the two the man goes crazy; under the circumstances it was the only sane thing for

him to do. In both of these pieces, and in detached passages elsewhere, the hostility of Tennyson to the materialistic tendencies in the science and speculation of the age is pronounced, and has been commented on not so much because of the thing said as of the temper of the saying. Here, too, as in the political verse, one feels that Tennyson would be a stern antagonist if he were in the arena instead of a crowned spectator by the inactive throne. His words have less the rush of poetry than the violence of controversy. But one must remark that, as in matters of state, so in matters of faith, this conservatism is no new thing; since he came to his belief, in In Memoriam, he has steadily become more settled in his reliance on a divine element in the universe in intimate relations of Providence to man. With this we are concerned only as it affects his poetry, and that is really a small matter; for the comparative failure of such work as Despair to take hold of the public is not due to its jealous attitude toward socalled modern thought, but to an artistic defect. The ballad, as has just been said, is Tennyson's best dramatic form. In it his force gets swing. In the present case, however, in order to justify the passion which was compelling expression, he was obliged to create exceptional incidents and a situation too plainly invented for set purposes. The imagination is not taken captive, does not believe the alleged basis of fact, but, on the contrary, the reason detects an artifice. If the supposed case be voluntarily accepted as real, the vehement declamation becomes natural, and the poem great; but for the public the imaginative acceptance must always be involuntary, and hence arises the tremendous power of passion in poetry when it is evolved from the common things of our experience. A similar reason is to be assigned for the weakness among the people of the two ballads which deal

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