■■■■■ WW K ■ ■ ■ ■1 HB ■ 1 1 1 HBP «v» ■ •*, ■M09 EBB M UJg fflWHi LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Ex Libris i ► ISAAC FOOT ' 45c£ (WrlTL Z.iua,cL:lW( ECCE PUELLA AND OTHER PROSE IMAGININGS All rights reserved ECCE PUELLA AND OTHER PROSE IMAGININGS BY WILLIAM SHARP Fio *m macc&ob Cps* there was much questioning and heartburning Satan availed himself of the opportunity. He took man aside, and explained to him that wo- man had been reasonless and precipitate, that she had tempted him before she was ripe, and that he was a genial innocent and very much to be pitied. Further, he demonstrated that if she had only waited a little, all would have been well. But, as it was, the rose had a thorn, the lily had a tendency to be fragile, the dove had not lost its timidity, the serpent had re- tained its guile, its fangs, and its poison, the honey was apt to clog, the Dead Sea apple was almost entirely filled with dust, and the clay was of the tough, primeval kind, difficult to blend with advantage, and impossible to eliminate. From that day, says the Persian poet, whose name I have forgotten, man has been haunted by the idea that he was wheedled into a co- partnery. In a word, having taken woman to wife, he now regrets that he committed himself quite so early to a formal union. From his vague regrets and unsatisfied longings, and a profound egotism which got into his system during his bachelor days in Eden, he evolved the idea of Beauty. This idea would have remained a dream if Satan had not interfered 6 ECCE PUELLA with the suggestion that it was too good to be wasted as an abstraction. So the idea came to be realised. There was much hearty laughter in consequence, in " another place." Seeing what a perilous state man had brought himself into, Allah had pity. He took man's conception of Beauty — which to His surprise was in seve- ral respects much superior to Eve — and, having dissipated it with a breath, rewove it into a hundred lovely ideals. Then, making of the residue a many-coloured span in the heavens, He sent these back to Earth, each to gleam thenceforth with the glory of that first rainbow. It is a fantasy. But let us thank that Eastern poet. Perhaps, poor dreamer, he went home to learn that unpunctual spouses must expect reproaches in lieu of dinner, or even, it may be, to find that his soul's Sul- tana had eloped with a more worldly admirer of Eve. Zuleika, if he found her, perhaps he convinced. For us he has put into words, with some prolixity and awkwardness no doubt, what in a vague way we all feel about the beauty of women. For in truth there is no such abstraction as Womanly Beauty. Instead, there is the beauty of women. ECCE PUELLA 7 Every man can pick and choose. There are as many kinds of women as there are of flowers : and all are beautiful, for some quality, or by association. It is well to admire every type. Companionship with the individual will thus be rendered more pleasing ! As the late Maxime du Camp said somewhere : " In the matter of admiration, it is not bad to have several maladies." There are men who, in this way, are chronic invalids. Women are very patient with them. I do not agree with an acquaintance of mine who avers that his predilections are cli- matic in their nature. If he is in Italy he loves the Roman contadina, or the Sicilian with the lissom Greek figure ; if in Spain, he thinks flashing black eyes and coarse hair finer than the flax and sky-blue he admired so much in Germany ; if in Japan, he vows with Pierre Loti that Madame Chrysantheme is more win- some than the daintiest Parisienne ; if in Bar- bary, he forgets the wild-rose bloom and hill- wind freshness of the English girl, whom, when he roams through Britain, he makes the Helen to his Paris, forgets for the sake of shadowy gazelle-eyes, for languorous beauty like that of the lotus on warm moonlight nights. 8 ECCE PUELLA I wonder where he is now. He has been in many lands. I know he has loved a Lithua- nian, and passioned for a Swede : and when I last saw him, less than a year ago, he said his ideal was a Celtic maighdeann. Perhaps he is far distant, in that very Cathay which I re- member his saying was a country to be taken on trust, as one accepts the actuality of the North Pole : if so, I am convinced he is hum- ming blithely " She whom I love at present is in China: She dwells, with her aged parents, In a tower of fine porcelain, By the yellow stream where the cormorants are. "* This is too generously eclectic for me, who am a lover of moderation, and a monogamist by instinct. Nevertheless, I can appreciate this climatic variability. I am no stickler for the supremacy of any one type, of the civilised over the barbaric, of the deftly arrayed over the austerely ungarbed ! With one of the authors of Le Croix de Berny I can say : " Dress has very little weight with me. I once admired * " Celle que f aime a present, est en Chine ; Elle demeure, avec ses vieux parents, Dans tine tour de porcelaine fine, Au fieuve jaune ou sont Us cormorans." {Th&ophile Gautier.) ECCE PUELLA 9 a Granada gipsy whose sole costume consisted of blue slippers and a necklace of amber beads." Nowadays, we have to admire the nude only in sculpture, and that antique. M. Berenger in Paris, Mr. Horsley, R.A., and a Glasgow bailie have said so. Well, well, it may be so. But there are un- regenerate men among us. Perhaps this new madness of blindness will supersede the old intoxication. Truly, I am " Oft in doubt whether at all I shall again see Phcebus in the morning, Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream — " but I have no doubt whatever that others will. Meanwhile we can dream of youth : the youth of the past, the eternal youth, and the hour- long youth we have known ourselves. It is one of the sunbright words. These five letters have an alchemy that can transmute dust and ashes into blossoms and fruit. For those who know this, the beauty of the past is linked to the present tense : the most ancient things live again, and the more keenly. Antiquitas sceculi inventus mundi. Well, sufficient unto this present is the ques- tion of the nude ! Let those who will, ignore it. Whatever these may say, there is always IO ECCE PUELLA this conviction for loyal Pagans to fall back upon — in the words of George Meredith — " the visible fair form of a woman is hereditary queen of us." III What a blight upon ordered sequence in nar- rative, phrase dear to the grammarian, discur- siveness is ! Yet I cannot help it : to borrow from George Meredith on the subjecl of fair women, from Lucy Desborough and Rhoda Fleming to Clotilde von Riidiger and Diana Warwick and Aminta Ormont, is as seductive as the sound of the sea when one is panting on the inland side of a sand-dune. In sheer self- defence I must find an apothegm so good that it would be superfluous to go further. This is irrational perhaps : but then with Diana I find that " to be pointedly rational is a greater diffi- culty to me than a fine delirium." There are Fair Women, and fair sayings about fair women, in each of these ever delightful twelve novels. Epigrammatically, The Egoist and Beauckamp's Career would probably afford most spoil to the hunter : but here in Richard Feverel is the quin- ECCE PUELLA II tessential phrase for which we wait. " Each woman is Eve throughout the ages.'" This might be the motto for every Passionate Pilgrim. For, truly, to every lover the woman of his choice is another Eve. He sees in her the ideal prototype. It is well that this is so : otherwise there would be no poetry, no fiction, and scarce any emotional literature save pas- sionate Malthusian tractates ! But now let me be frank. Out of all the pictured fair women I have ever seen is there one who has embodied my ideal of womanly beauty ? This is a question that most of us put to ourselves, with the same apparent arro- gance, as if any one individual's opinion had the least value for others, or had anything to do with the Beauty of Woman. No. Though, in pictures, I have seen a few beautiful, and many lovely, and scores of comely and handsome women, in no instance did I encounter one of whom in any conceivable circumstances I could say " There: she is my Eve, past, present, and for ever!" " I am always waiting," wrote Amiel, " for the woman and the work which shall be capable of taking entire possession of my soul, and of becoming my end and aim." Yes, with Stendhal, 12 ECCE PUELLA we all wait : and one man in a million is re- warded with "the woman," to one man in a generation comes " the work." What is wanting? Must the glow of personal romance be present before a beautiful woman can embody for us the Beauty of Woman ? " Araminta's grand and shrill, Delia's passionate and frail, Doris drives an earnest quill, Athanasia takes the veil ; Wiser Phyllis o'er her pail, At the heart of all romance Reading, sings to Strephon's flail, ' Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance.' " Cannot Araminta and Delia be beautiful, though Strephon may prefer Phyllis ? Or is beauty in women as incalculable a quantity as the delight men take in women's names ? There are names that stir one like a trumpet, or like the sound of the sea, or like the ripple of leaves : names that have the magic of moonlight in them, that are sirens whose witchery can in a moment en- slave us. What good to give here this or that sweet name : each man has in him his own necromancy wherewith to conjure up vague but haunting-sweet visions. Equally, if all Fair Women of the Imagination or of Life have names we love, there are designations that seem ECCE PUELLA I 3 like sacrilege, that grate, that excruciate. There is a deep truth in Balzac's insistence on the correspondence between character and nomen- clature. Still, there are many debateable names. " Anna," for example, is not offensive, yet I 11 cannot away with it," though tolerant of " Annie." But hear what Mr. Henley has to say : — " Brown is for Lalage, Jones for Lelia, Robinson's bosom for Beatrice glows, Smith is a Hamlet before Ophelia. The glamour stays if the reason goes : Every lover the years disclose Is of a beautiful name made free. One befriends, and all others are foes : Anna's the name of names for me. * * * * " Fie upon Caroline, Jane, Amelia — These I reckon the essence of prose ! — Mystical Magdalen, cold Cornelia, Adelaide's attitudes, Mopsa's mowes, Maud's magnificence, Totty's toes, Poll and Bet with their twang of the sea, Nell's impertinence, Pamela's woes ! Anna's the name of names for me ! " But to return : everywhere pictured Ideala has evaded me. It has been a vain quest, though again and again I have caught just a glimpse of her, a vanishing gleam, a fugitive glance. The other day I was startled by the sud- 14 ECCE PUELLA den light in the face of Hoppner's " Miranda," though when I looked again I was no more than haunted by an impalpable suggestion. In the beauty of the flowing drapery, in the breath of that sea frothing at her feet, somewhere there was an evanescent grace which belonged to Ideala. Yet it was not quite hers after all, any more than the indwelling beauty, seen per- haps only for a moment, in the eyes, or revealed in a momentary light upon the face, was hers — the beauty, the momentary light in Miranda, in the gipsy-beauty of her of the Snake in the Grass, in one or two other portraits of a more delicately refined loveliness, or of the higher beauty, that of the beautiful mind visible through the fair mask of the flesh. Long ago, says Thoreau in Walden, " I lost a hound, a bay-horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail." I think She whom we seek rides afar on that fleet horse, espied for ever by that flying dove, for ever pursued by that tireless hound. No doubt it is absurd to expect to find Ideala, even among portraits of women who may have been her kindred in the eyes of one or two per- sons, who could discern not only the outward beauty, but the inner radiance. Moreover, the company is commonly not that amid which one ECCE PUELLA I 5 would pursue one's quest. Diane de Poitiers, Nell Gwynne, Mrs. Jane Middleton, the Countess of Grammont, the Comtesse de Parabere, " Per- dita," Lady Hamilton, Mile. Hillsberg, Lady Ellenborough, Mrs. Grace Dalrymple Elliot, and Elizabeth Foster, Duchess of Devonshire, were one and all charming as well as beautiful women. But presumably Charles did not dis- cern his soul's counterpart in Nell Gwynne, nor the Regent Philippe in " la belle Parabere," nor the amorous George in " Perdita," nor either Prince Schwartzenberg or the Arab Sheik in Lady Ellenborough. In order to judge, one must know. We, who do not know these Fair Women of the past, can- not judge. We must each seek an Ideala of our own. After all, as some one has said, women are like melons : it is only after having tasted them that we know whether they are good or not. We must be content with some one short of Perfecta. Unequal unions are deplorable. Moreover, it is very unsatisfactory to emulate the example of the celebrated Parisian bouquineur, who worried through life without a copy of Virgil, because he could not succeed in finding the ideal Virgil of his dreams. Ideala is as the wind that cometh and goeth where it listeth. I 6 ECCE PUELLA Rather, she may be likened to the Wind for ever fleeting along " that nameless but always discoverable road which leads the wayfarer to the forest of beautiful dreams." Moreover, She may appear anywhere, at any time. Remember Campion's " She's not to one form tied." Possibly, even, she may be called Nell Gwynne ; for to every Nell there will be a lover to whom she will be Helen. "Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. " Lo ! in yon brilliant window niche, How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand ! Ah, Psyche, Irom the regions which Are Holy Lan>1 ! " It is a pity that where a Helen is so evident to one passionate pilgrim, she should be merely Nell to the world in general. But so it is; and, alas ! the very last person to perceive the con- nection with Psyche is often Nell herself. Poets get little gratitude, as a rule, for the glorification they effect. Poor bards ! they are apt to address as Ideala those who would rather be called Nell, and dedicate their deepest life-music to a mis- ECCE PUELLA I J tress who, while flattered, really understands neither the poetry nor the poet, and can be more eloquent over a gift of gloves than over a work of genius. Thus hath it ever been ; doubtless thus it shall continue. As long as there are fair women, there will be strong men ready to lose their highest heritage for a mess of pottage. As among the innumerable kinds of flowers where the bee may roam and gather honey there is that flower of Trebizond whose fatal blooms allure the unwitting insect to mad- ness or death, so among women there are some who irresponsibly lure men to sure calamity. Who was the man who said that fair women are fair demons who make us enter hell through the door of paradise ? Doubtless he loved a flower of Trebizond. Idealists, ponder ! Nevertheless, though we would not naturally seek Ideala among the Nell Gwynnes, it would be a mistake to rise to the high remote air where dwell the saints who have not yet tran- scended mortality. A touch of sin must be in that man whom we hail as brother, that woman we greet as sister. There was shrewd worldly wisdom in the remark of a French prince, that, however virtuous a woman may be, a compli- ment on her virtue is what gives her the least c I 8 ECCE PUELLA pleasure. Concurrently we may take that instructive passage in Cunningham's British Painters where we learn how Hoppner com- plained of the painted ladies of Sir Thomas Lawrence ; that they showed "a gaudy disso- luteness of taste, and sometimes trespassed on moral as well as professional chastity," while by implication he claimed for his own portraits purity of look as well as purity of style : with this result—" Nor is it the least curious part of this story, that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of Hoppner, instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who ' trespassed on moral as well as on professional chastity.' " Women should not be wroth with men be- cause that each male, sound of heart and brain, is a Ponce da Leon. Parenthetically, let me add — on the authority of Arsene Houssaye ! — that all the energies of Creation do not succeed in producing throughout the whole world one hundred grandes dames yearly. And how many of these die as little girls — how few attain to " la beaute souveraine du corps et de Fame " ? " Voila," he adds — " voila pourquoi la grande dame est une oiseau rare. Ou est le merle ECCE PUELLA 1 9 blanc ? " " The Quest of the White Black- bird": fair women, ponder this significant phrase. We all seek the Fountain of Youth, the Golden Isles, Avalon, Woman (as distinct from the fairest of women), Ideala, or whatever sunbright word or words we cap our quest with. If wives could but know it, they have more cause to be jealous of women who have never lived than of any rival " young i' the white and red." Yet, paradoxically, with a true man, a wife, if she be a true woman, need never turn her back upon the impalpable Dream ; for, after all, it is her counterpart, a rainbow-phantom. Fair women, all men are not travailing with love of you ! There are Galileos who would say e pur se muove, though Woman suddenly became passee, nay, though she became a by no means indispensable adjunct. It is even possible there are base ones among us who may envy the Australian god Pundjel, who has a wife whom he may not see ! Alas, Fair Women only laugh when they behold Man going solitary to the tune of " O ! were there an island, Though ever so wild, Where women might smile, and No man be beguiled I " C — 2 20 ECCE PUELLA IV It is not often that pi(fture-gallery catalogues contain either humour or philosophy. There is a naive humour, a genial philosophy, in the prefatory note to that of a recent Exhibition. " As," so the note runs, " there are indeed cer- tain pictures of Women, possibly more celebra- ted for their historical interest, their influence, or their wit, than for their beauty, some excep- tion has been taken to the title of the Exhibition. The directors, however, do not know of any fixed standard by which such pictures can be judged, and, further, they believe that in the eyes of some one person, at least, every woman has been considered fair." Whereupon I hum to myself the quatrain from the old north-country nursery-ballad of " Rashin Coatie"— "There was a king and a queen, As mony ane's been ; Few have we seen, As few may we see." Alas ! there are so many queens of beauty on the walls of piclure galleries, and yet one's heart stays secure from any one of them ! But, suddenly, I remember a favourite couplet, by Campion, ECCE PUELLA 2 1 " Beauty must be scorned in none, Though but truly served in one " — and, having thought of and quoted that sweet singer, must needs go right through three stan- zas of his, memorable even in the ever-new wealth of Elizabethan love-songs. " Give beauty all her right ! She's not to one form tied; Each shape yields fair delight, Where her perfections bide : Helen, I grant, might pleasing be, And Ros'mond was as sweet as she. " Some the quick eye commends, Some swelling lips and red ; Pale looks have many friends, Through sacred sweetness bred : Meadows have flowers that pleasures move, Though roses are the flower of love. " Free beauty is not bound To one unmoved clime ; She visits every ground, And favours every time. Let the old lords with mine compare; My Sovereign is as sweet and fair." There; all that is to be said about Fair Women, or the Beauty of Women, is com- pressed into six short lines. This intangible beauty is a citizen of the world, and has her home in Cathay as well as Europe. No one age 22 ECCE PUELLA claims her, and Helen of Troy takes hands with Aspasia, and they smile across the years to Lucrezia Borgia and Diane de Poitiers, who, looking forward, see the lovely light reflected in la belle Hamilton ; and so down to our own day. And then, once more, Eve individualised for ever and ever ; a challenge to all the world to bring forward one sweeter and fairer than " my Sovereign." In other words, " each woman is Eve through- out the ages." There are many Audreys, alas — indeed sometimes, within a square mile even, there seems to be an epidemic of Audreys ! — but a far-seeing Providence has created many Touchstones. So we will believe that in the eyes of at least one person each woman has been considered fair : though, to be truthful, " a man may, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger in this attempt," as saith the blithe fool of Arden himself. After all, these clowns and wenches in As You Like It are nearer the poetry of truth than that cynical prose of fin-de-siecle sentiment, of which this is an example : — Lady (looking at a sketch, then at the Artist)* *' So : — this is your ideal woman ? " Artist. " It was." ECCE PUELLA 23 Lady. " Then you have changed ? " Artist. " Yes. I met her." As a matter of fact, men who have nothing of the ideal in them are, in the eyes of true women, as a sunless summer. These women, like Clara Middleton of " the fine-pointed brain," have a contempt for the male brain " chewing the cud in the happy pastures of unawakedness." Women, plain or fair, do not readily forgive. Man should remember this, when he acts upon what he considers his hereditary right to joke upon the frailties of his enslaved goddess. He is apt to think that they are reasonless in the matter of their looks, forgetful that marriage is a salve to all prenuptial display ! They do not mind back-handed compliments : they will smile at Victor Hugo when he says that woman is a perfected devil ; they have a caress in their heart for Gavarni when he whispers that one of the sweetest pleasures of a woman is to cause regret ; and they take a malicious enter- tainment in the declaration of a man of the world like Langree, that modesty in a woman is a virtue most deserving, since we men do all we can to cure her of it. But they will not forgive Montaigne himself when he affirms that 24 ECCE PUELLA there is no torture a woman would not suffer to enhance her beauty. "Unfolded only out of the illimitable poem of Woman can come the poems of man." Thus Walt Whitman. But he does not tell us how variously the poets scan that Poem. What would be the result of a plebiscite among civilised women themselves : if they were given by the Powers that Be the option to be beauti- ful, to be fascinating, or to be winsome ? The woman who believes herself predestined to be a wife and a mother will prefer the third : the born adventuress will choose the second : the least domestic will select the first. On the other hand, it might be the other way round. Who can tell ? Woman is still the Dark Continent of man. If one were to live to the age of Methuselah, and act on the principle of nulla dies sine linea, with every line devoted to the chronicle of woman's nature, the volume would be behindhand even on the day of publication. A copiously margined and footnoted edition would be called for immediately. Even if by that time only one woman were left, there would be prompt need of an appendix. There would also, as a matter of fact, always be a ECCE PUELLA 25 St. Bernard to grumble : " Woman is the organ of the Devil "—a Michelet to say with a smile that she is the Sunday of man — a cynic to hint that love of her might be the dawn of marriage, but that marriage with her would be sunset of love — a poet to exclaim that she was the last priestess of the unknown. " Feed me with metaphors," says a poet in a recent romance ; " and above all with metaphors of Woman. I know none that do not make me love women more and more." Did he know his Balzac ? Somewhere in that vast repository of thoughts on men and women I recollect this : " La Mort est femme, — mariee au genre humain, et fidele. Ou est l'homme qu'elle a trompe ?" Some day a woman will compile a little volume of women's thoughts about men. These will be interesting. Men will read some of them with the same amazed pain wherewith recently ennobled brewers and the like peruse articles on the abolition of hereditary aristocracy. Here, for example, is one — " The greatest merit of some men is their wife." It was Poincelot, a man, who said this: but let a woman speak — 26 ECCE PUELLA " Physical beauty in man has become as rare as his moral beauty has always been." Once more — " It is not the weathercock that changes : it is the wind." Since the days of Troy — or of Lilith — men have delighted in calling women weathercocks. After all, we have been told many times that one of the principal occupations of men is to divine women : but it was a wise philosopher who added that women prefer us to say a little evil of them rather than say nothing of them at all. V We are all agreed now, let us say, that there is no such thing as an universally accepted standard of beauty. There is not even an accepted standard of beauty among those who admire the same type. To the most favoured dreamer Ideala will still come in at least three- fold guise, as those three lovely sisters of the Rushout family whom, not Cosway, but, like him, one of the finest of miniaturists has pre- served for our delight. There are a million villages as fair as the one in which we were ECCE PUELLA 2 1 ] born, but for us there is only one village. When we quote " Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain," we have one particular locality in our mental vision, as no doubt the poet of the Song of Solomon had when he sang, " Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields ; let us lodge in the villages." Doubtless, too, he had one particular beloved in view, veiled behind his bardic rhapsody. Each of us has a particular Eve behind the phantom of an ideal type. Of course there are both "villages" and "Eves" that exist only in the mind. There are dreamers who prefer either when most un- substantial. " Ma contree de dilection," says the Flemish novelist Eekhoud, " n'existe pour aucun touriste, et jamais guide ou medecin ne la recommandera." Some, too, having found an Eve, will crave for her isolation from the rough usage of the common day, lest she fall from her high estate. They are not altogether foolish who can do so, and can say with a young living poet : — " I fear lest time or toil should mar — I fear lest passion should debase The delicacy of thy grace. Depart ; and I will throne thee far, 28 ECCE PUELLA Will hide thee in a halcyon place That hath an angel populace ; And ever in dreams will find thy face, Where all things pure and perfect are, Smiling upon me like a star." This is a temper beyond most of us, who are all hedonists by instinct, and in the bodily not the spiritual sense. Flaubert the man was not representative of us, his weaker fellows. " Je n'ai jamais pu emboiter Venus avec Apollon," as he wrote to George Sand, when she advised him to try domestic happiness or at least a little flirtation. Besides, there are men to whom the element of strangeness, of something bizarre perhaps, even of something barbaric, is of primary appeal. The very quintessence, the crown, the aloe- bloom of this kind of art, is it not Leonardo's Monna Lisa del' Gioconda ? Perhaps, even more convincingly, in that drawing of his in the Accademia delle belle Arti, in Venice, of a beautiful girl, with sidelong rippling hair, delicately crowned with vine leaves, with that enigmatical smile on her face and still more enigmatical smile in her eyes — a type finer even than this Milanese beauty? It is a type that does not appeal to many men, but, where its appeal is felt at all, it is irresistible. There is ECCE PUELLA 29 all the seduction of nameless peril in these mysterious faces which apparently tell nothing and yet are so full of subtle meaning and re- pressed intensity. How else, again, are we to account for the fascination of such an one as Lady Ellenborough, for instance, "the impe- rious Jane," immortalised by Sir Thomas Law- rence ? Surely it must be admitted that even his art does not bestow beauty upon "that witch." Doubtless she had a smile that could unlock prison doors, eyes that could melt a Marat or Danton, a mien and manner, an expression and charm, that made her irresistible to most men. But, on canvas, one can see no more than that she looks like a woman who had immense vitality. The lady's story is certainly a remarkable one. Miss Jane Elizabeth Digby must have been a vivacious damsel, even while still a school-girl, and, in the manner of her time, learning to spell execrably. She was one of the fortunate women born with the invisible sceptre. If she had been an actress, she would have been the empress of the stage ; if she had been a demi- mondaine, she would have been the Aspasia of her day : if she had been a queen, she would have been a Catherine of Russia. Again, she 30 ECCE PUELLA was one of those impetuous people who have no time to be virtuous. We know next to nothing of her girlhood, yet we may be sure that she set her nursemaid a bad example in flirtation, and shocked her governess, if she had one, by many abortive intrigues. No doubt her friends thought that she would settle down and be good when she became the wife of the Earl of Ellenborough. They argued that what a high-spirited Miss Digby would do, a proud-spirited Countess of Ellen- borough would disdain. But Miss Jane Eliza- beth had, she considered, come into the world to enjoy herself in her own way. Not long after her marriage she permitted the too marked attention of Prince Schwartzenberg, and this brought about a duel between that gentleman and Lord Ellenborough. Neither duellist was killed : and the only result was that not long afterwards the lady made up her mind to go off with Prince Schwartzenberg. After a time Lord Ellenborough died, and then his widow married the Prime Minister of Bavaria. That a genuine passion for this strange woman ani- mated the Bavarian noble is clear, not only from his having offered marriage to a lady of such doubtful reputation, but from the tragic ECCE PUELLA 3 I circumstance that, when she tired of him in turn, and set forth once more on her dauntless quest of man, he committed suicide. She had several episodes between this date and that when she found herself in Syria, and espoused to an Arab Sheik of Damascus. It would be incredible that she died in his arms in the desert, were it not for the additional fact that she was at that moment contemplating an elopement with her handsome dragoman. Miss Digby was, certainly, not one of those " beau- ties" towards whom — as Gautier advises — one should go straight as a bullet. Instead of our seizing "her by the tip of the wing, politely but firmly like a gendarme," she would be much more likely to seize us. She was un- reasonable, we will admit, but then, with Mme. de Girardin, she might exclaim " Be reason- able ! which means : No longer hope to be happy." Obviously she was of those essen- tially feline women of whom Edgar de Meilhan speaks when he says that "tigers, whatever you may say, are bad companions." " With regard to tigers," he adds, "we tolerate only cats, and then they must have velvet paws." Neither Lord Ellenborough, nor the Bavarian Prime Minister, nor the Arab Sheik, nor any 32 ECCE PUELLA other of her special friends, would deny that a little more velvet on the paws of the sprightly Jane Elizabeth would have been an advan- tage. There are always women of this kind, who exercise an imperious and inexplicable sway over the male imagination, or, to be more exact, over the imagination of certain males. It is no use to reason with the bondager. With the King in Love's Labours Lost he can but reply "Yet still she is the moon, and I the man. The music plays . . ." We are fortunate, possibly, who never hear this music, a bewildering strain from the heart of the Venusberg. Rather that "silver chiming," which is "the music of the bells of wedded love." Poets are terrible romanticists in the matter of the affections. They are the most faithful of lovers to some impossible She : but they are apt to have wandering eyes in the ordinary way of life. Too many behave, even on the threshold of the Ideal, in the reprehensible manner of Samuel Pepys when that famous chronicler and incurable old pagan found him- self in church one fine day. " Being wearied," ECCE PUELLA 33 he writes, " turned into St. Dunstan's Church, where I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place ; and stood by a pretty modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand ; but she would not, but got further and further from me ; and, at last, I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again — which, seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design. And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid in a pew close to me, and she on me ; and I did go about to take her by the hand, which she suffered a little and then withdrew. So the sermon ended." It is to be feared that Pepys had not realised that counsel of perfection, which may be given in the guise of a phrase remembered from Evan Harrington, — " Both Ale and Eve seem to speak imperiously to the love of man. See that they be good, see that they come in season." VI " But how to know beauty in woman when one sees it, that is the question," said to me a disappointed bachelor friend the other day. D 34 E CCE PUELLA " If there is no absolute beauty, and if the type is so much distributed in various guises, how is a man who cares only for dark women to see the insignia of beauty in those who have red hair or yellow, and blue eyes, and in the matter of complexion are like curds and cream stained with roses ? " Alas for these uncertain ones, there is nothing for it but a steady course of gratifying and ed- ucating the Appreciative Faculties ! To my querist I replied in the words of Gautier as Edgar de Meilhan : " Go straight as a bullet towards your beauty ; seize her by the tip of her wing, politely but firmly, like a gendarme." But is there for you, for me, a fundamental charm ? That charm, surely, must be dis- tinction. With the Egoist, " my thoughts come to this conclusion, that, especially in women, distinction is the thing to be aimed at." This, alone, is what survives, perhaps all that ever lived, in the portraits of the "beauties" of a bygone day. Then, too, it must be kept in mind that the painter, even more than the poet, is a born sycophant. He loves the sweet insincerities of the plausibly impossible. Most of us are apt to be deceived by the inuendoes of anecdote, the flatteries of rumour, the glamour ECCE PUELLA 35 of the Past, the mirage of history. Take, for example, Botticelli's well-known " La Bella Simonetta," the lady whom Giuliano de Medici made his mistress because of her winsome beauty. " La Bella Simonetta : " there is magic in the name : it is a sweet sound echoing down the corridors of memory. Alessandro Filipepi painted her before the greater name of Sandro Botticelli became a mockery among the ungodly who railed at Savonarola and his teachings. Angelo Politian and Pulci wedded her loveli- ness to lovely words, and . . . whose pulse, now, would quicken because of la bella Simon- etta ? Even through the ingenuity of Sandro's art, a quite ordinary damsel confronts us. Again, take the acknowledged Fair Women of our own country and of a time nearer our own : two types so popular as Lely's Countess of Grammont and Van Dyck's Countess of Sutherland. While it is easy to understand how Elizabeth Hamilton became " la belle Hamilton" at the Court of Charles II., and had more offers of marriage than the number of years she had lived, till, in the third year of the Restoration, she gave her hand to the celebrated wit and courtier, the Comte Philiberte de Grammont, d — 2 36 ECCE PUELLA most of us doubtless would find it difficult to discover that " fundamental charm " we hoped to see. I could believe all that her brother Anthony could tell of her beauty and winsome- ness, and have no doubt that Count Philibert was a very lucky man. But, for myself, I realise that even had I been a member of that wicked, laughing, delightful, reprehensible Cavalier Court, and a favourite of fortune in the matter of advantages, I doubt if I would have been one of the five-and-twenty suitors of " la belle Hamilton." Certainly, as things are, one might be Japhet in search of a wife and still not be allured, even in random fancy, by this particu- lar Fair Woman.* Alas, there is yet another charm which allures men when Beauty is only an impossible star ; in the words of the anony- mous poet of " Tibbie Fowler o' the Glen," " Gin a lass be e'er sae black, An' she hae the pennysiller, Set her up on Tinto tap, The win'll blaw a man 'till her." It was not the fair Elizabeth's " pennysiller," however, that was the attraction, though she did have what the Scots slyly call " advantages." * Marryat's Japhet sought a father, but this is not a mis» application to boggle at ! ECCE PUELLA T>7 Nevertheless, it is clear she must have in her beauty something that appeals to many minds and in different epochs. The fastidious nobles and wits of the Restoration admired her ; Sir Peter Lely expended his highest powers in painting her ; his portrait of her has long been the gem of the famous series known as the " Windsor Beauties," and at Hampton Court she is ever one of the most popular of the ladies of the Stuart regime. Probably the Countess of Sutherland, of whom Van Dyck, it is thought, so much enjoyed the painting, must have been more winsome in looks, as she was certainly superior in graces of mind and spirit. This is the famous Lady Dorothy Sidney, daughter of the second Earl of Leicester and wife of that Lord Sunderland, the first of his title, who fell fighting under the Royalist flag at the Battle of Newbury ; not to be remembered for this now, however, but as the " Sacharissa " of Edmund Waller's love- poems. True, Waller, who was for generations one of the most popular, and for a few decades the most popular of all English poets, is now almost as little read as the least notable of his contemporaries. He aspired to be England's Petrarch, and like Lovelace with one flawless 38 ECCE PUELLA lyric, or like Blanco White, or the French poet, Felix Arvers, with a single sonnet, is now among the immortals by virtue only of one little song. Possibly Laura had as good reason for dis- counting the passion of her Petrarco as Dorothy Sidney had for qualification of the prolonged homage of Waller. Both " My deathless Laura " and "My divine Sacharissa " married another person than the lover who gave immortality in verse ; married, and had children, and occa- sionally perhaps glanced at the Sonnets to Laura, or the Poems addressed to Sacharissa. Not only, indeed, did Lady Dorothy choose Lord Sunderland in preference to Waller, but as a widow she even preferred the practical poetry of a Mr. Robert Smythe's wooing to that which in her youth she had had so much experience of in verse. Fair and comely she seems in Van Dyck's portrait of her, though not the Sacharissa of whom one had dreamed. Was it this attractive English lady who was the inspirer of "Go, lovely Rose?" The thought suggests the strange revelation it would be, if we were to be entertained with a series of authentic likenesses of all the beautiful women we have loved or dreamed of across the ages. " A Dream of Fair Women ; " what would Helen ECCE PUELLA 39 say to it, or Cleopatra, or Guenevere, or, for that matter, Eve herself? What a desert of dis- illusion would exist between the catalogue-entry, " Helen, daughter of Leda queen to King Tyn- darus, who became the wife of Menelaus, and subsequently went abroad with Paris : com- monly known as Helen of Troy," and the quoted motto-lines from Marlowe : — " Is this the face that launched a thousand ships And burned the topless towers of Ilium?" Again, fancy the astonishment and chagrin of Mr. Swinburne, if he passed one by one the actual counterparts of the ladies of the " Masque of Queen Bersabe," from Herodias to that Ala- ciel whose eyes " were as a grey-green sea," and found that he could not recognise one of those vignettes in red or white flame which he wrought so wondrously in the days of his youth ! Semir- amis, in truth, may have been but a handsome woman with a temper, the Queen of Sheba nothing more than distinctly pretty, and Sappho passionate but plain. But there is a difference between the praisers of Royal beauty and those who hymn ladies whom they can also approach when the lyre is laid aside. We believe in Laura and Sacharissa 40 ECCE PUELLA and Castara, and many other fair dames beloved of the sons of Apollo. If for nothing else than because she inspired the loveliest of all Waller's songs, we would look with homage at this Fair Woman whom the genius of Vandyck has given us a glimpse of : — " Go, lovely Rose, Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows When I resemble her to thee How sweet and fair she seems to be. "Tell her that's young, And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died. "Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired ; Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired. " Then die, that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee, How small a part of time they share Who are so wondrous sweet and fair." After all, perhaps the secret of our delight in these Ladies of " the glowing picture and the living word" is this: that, even of the fairest, ECCE PUELLA 4 I the true lover can say, with the poet of " The Moonstar " — "Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness, Because my lady is more lovely still." VII To return to the Fair Women of Painting. Here, alas, there remain always one or two unfor- givable disillusions. To begin with, there is the inevitable Eve ; generally either a matronly per- son discomfortably garbless, or a self-conscious studio model. There is Helen of Troy, gloriously immortal in the hexameters of Homer and the heroics of Marlowe, but made ridiculous by in- numerable painters. And, to come home, there is our own Helen : Mary of Scotland. Is there indeed a portrait of the Queen of Scots in exist- ence which any Mariolater could have pleasure in looking at ? There are certain women we never wish to see except in mental vision. Some readers may recollect the Sapphic fragment preserved by Hephaestion, which tells us simply that " Mnasidica is more shapely than the tender Gyrinno." Fortunate Mnasidica, who has haunted the minds of men ever since, 42 ECCE PUELLA through never once having been enslaved by sculptor or painter of any period ! Beautiful Shapeliness, that none can gainsay ! Painters who give us Helens and Cleopatras and Queen Maries seem to be quite unaware of the heavy handicap they put upon their productions. And so it goes without saying, that all portraits of Mary of Scotland are disappointing, from that of the earliest anonymous limner to that of Mr. Lavery. There is not one of us blase enough to with stand the cruel disillusion of what, by way of adding insult to injury, is called " authentic likeness." Poor Mary ! She has paid bitterly in innumerable portraits for the wonderful rumour of her beauty in her own day. No man who respects himself should commit Use majeste by ungracious comment before any canvas of this pictorially much misrepresented Queen. It does indeed make one glad that a few others world-famous for their beauty were spared the ignominy of pictorial immortality. If all Fair Women of Picture-world were brought together, it would be made quite clear that the one thing which in a thousand instances escapes the painter is expression. Expression is the morning glory of beauty. A few men in all ages have understood this, Leonardo and ECCE PUELLA 43 the great Italians pre-eminently. It is to the credit of many of the most eccentric "impres- sionists " that they have wearied of conventional similitude, and striven to give something of the real self of the person whose likeness is being transferred to canvas. These, with Bastien Lepage, have realised that " we must change our ways if any of our work is to live." " We must try," adds that notable artist of whom Mrs. Julia Cartwright has recently given us so excellent a biography, "we must try to see and reproduce that inmost radiance which lies at the heart of things, and is the only true beauty, because it is the life." That inmost radiance ! To discern it, to apprehend it, to reveal it to others, that is indeed the quintessential thing in all art. But the spectator must not only make allow- ances for the painter of a portrait ; he must himself exercise a certain effort. In a word, he must bring the glow of imagination into play, he must let his mental atmosphere be nimble and keenly receptive. He must remem- ber that while portraiture may have verisimili- tude of a kind, it can very rarely simulate that loveliest thing in a woman's beauty — expres- sion. He must discern in the canvas a light 44 ECCE PUELLA that is not there. He must see the colour come and go upon the face, must see the eyes darken or gleam, the lips move, the smile just about to come forth : and, if possible, the inner radiance that, in many vivid and fine natures, seems to dwell upon the forehead, though too fugitive ever to be caught, save as it were for a moment unawares. FRAGMENTS FROM THE LOST JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO To E. A. S. FRAGMENTS FROM THE LOST JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO* Before I went to Rome with my master Cosimo many strange things happened. No perilous or untoward incidents befell me, it is true, but I was ever so curious in the by- ways of life that each day brought me some- thing whereat to marvel greatly. It was ever so with me. Life itself is the supreme mystery : whoso fathoms that will solve the whole secret that has puzzled the wisest men of all time. Yet the more I think (and what a strain this endless thinking is — thinking, thinking, think- ing !) the more I realise that there can be no discovery for any man save the revelation that * Doubtless the Journal of Piero di Cosimo, or certain portions of it, must have been known to Vasari. His description, certainly, of the Car of Death, closely tallies with Fiero's own. 48 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO the world exists for him only. What I mean is clear, though peradventure to some it might seem either a sport in words, an untimely folly, or to others a dark saying, such as the occult wisdom of those soothsayers and astrologers who, I am well assured, play upon the igno- rance of the uneducated. It is this : that whatsoever this world has, behind its veil, as it were ; such hidden beauty or strangeness or terror is only to be seen of those eyes which bring their own power of seeing. Children and many ignorant country-people believe, that the fogs and rains which the autumnal equinox bringeth do indeed obliterate the stars from the obscured heavens : not knowing that their shining is a thing apart, and as far removed from the vanities of this earth as the virtues of the most Blessed Virgin Mother are from the petty goodnesses and shortcomings of womankind in this world — and most certainly from those of the ladies of Florence, who seem to me to have much resemblance to those flighty insects which hover in still noons and at sundown by Arno-side, having all the cha- racteristics of these, but lacking in the most welcome, that they perish speedily, even if they survive their long day from starsetting to moon- JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 49 rise. But wiser persons, to whom the processes of nature are, in their superficial aspects, not in any wise strange, know well the foolishness of such surmises about the disappearance of heavenly bodies because of the rising of earthly mists and vapours. And so is it with the more occult world of thought. One must have the eye of faith as well as the eye of the body. One must know that there is light beyond dark- ness, life beyond death, spirit beyond clay, just as the educated know that the same stars which we saw yesternight still whirl their silver spheres through the upper spaces, whether mists and darkness intervene or the equally obscuring splendour of the sun. But over and above this there is a further vision which a few have. This sight brings to the mind and thence to the soul what is beyond the extremest visual ken. Men so gifted are the world's philosophers. They see not merely the fixity of the stars and the mutability of the mists and darkness, but the causes of these obscurities : and they appre- hend also the laws whereby the stars exist and scatter their remote influences upon the tides of life, whether these be of the waters of ocean or of the sap in trees and plants, or of the hot or gelid blood in the living things of the world, E 50 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO from the lizard and the callous newt to man himself. And yet again there are some who have a still deeper sight. These are they who are the passionate students of life. But of what avail is it that one telleth unto another his interpretation, if the other understand not also something of the occult meanings, the lost language, of which it is the halting translation ? There is no salve to our undying curiosity save that which is found of ourselves. Therefore is it why I, for one, have long sought diligently of her, Madonna Natura — Natura Benigna or Na- tura Maligna? — my one mistress; and how I shall ever so continue, even as I have done from my youth onward. My youth ! Ah ! I was young then when I started with good Master Cosimo for the court of Pope Sixtus in that near and yet far-off Rome. I have already, earlier in these journals, written of my lonely but not unhappy boyhood, but now I cannot help recalling those bygone days. Here is a letter which Cosimo Rosselli, my good master, my very father, wrote to me, now years agone. It is already stained with some chemic dissolution : as the world is with the stain of mortality : as / am, now that I am sere as one of those October chestnut-leaves I brought home JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 5 1 with me the other day from that deep glade of Vallombrosa I love so well. 1 My ever-beloved Piero,' so runs the dear familiar hand, ' the tears are in my eyes to-day, and for two causes. This afternoon, after I had finished painting — and, alas ! my craft is not what it was — I went forth to sun myself in the gardens of the Medici, having at all times the entry thereto. There, just as I was about to leave, owing to a twilight wind, somewhat premature and cold, coming out of the green- ness of the cypress boughs, I heard a sound as of some one sobbing. It had such bitter distress in it that my heart ached. After a brief time of uncertainty I beheld, quite close, and leaning against a very ancient yew, an old man, so wearily a wreck of life that he seemed rather a human-like excrescence of the tree than a fellow creature. But the crackling of a cone or twig beneath my feet aroused him, and he passed at once from the semblance of dismal death to the reality of a yet more dismal life. He was about to make haste away, as speedily as his age and infirmities would permit, and not without an angry and half-defiant irritation at my unwitting intrusion, such as, I bethought me, betokened some rankling memory of better days, when he e — 2 52 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO stumbled over one of the two sticks whereby he aided his feeble gait. I ran forward to assist him, and whom think you, Piero, I recognised ? None other than that true and great painter whom you have so often admired, Sandro Botti- celli ! Ah, how it made my tears well to my eyes. But though he knew me, he would have none of me. I besought him by old friendship, by the memory of our comradeship at Rome, when he and I and Domenico Ghirlandajo, and Luca of Cortona, and Piero Perugino, all wrought together for the Papal award. He laughed once, but bitterly; and taunted me, by asking if I had yet turned my pictures into a jeweller's stock ; alluding therein to the method whereby I gained the Pope's prime favour, by the excessive gild- ing of my work, which made his Holiness believe it to be superior to the productions of better men — (a matter, Piero, I once took pride in, but am now ashamed of) : but, on my silence, he turned away as though penitent before an old friend. " Mio caro amico, mio maestro carissimo" I began, when he brusquely interrupted me, and cried " Ecco ! Cosimo Rosselli, I am Ales- sandro Filipepi, the son of Mariano Filipepi, of Florence, and have nought to do with the vain dabbler in painted follies whom men call JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 53 Botticelli. You knew me of old, and may call me Sandro if you will, but not that other name. Shall my tears and my bitter repentance never wash out those days of sinful vanity ! " To the which heart-wrung cry I replied : " I knew you had thrown away brush and pencil, Sandro mio, and that you had become a Piagnone,* but I never believed, I cannot now believe, that you, you, the master Botticelli — nay, you must let me say it — can forget your art. How well I re- member your saying to Ghirlandajo, that work was good but beauty was better, as the soul is lovelier than even the most fair body. You cannot have forgotten that, nor how you once told Luca Signorelli that pure colour was like God, for the very being of God is pure music, and pure colour is but the visible and beautiful tranced body of music. Whereupon he sighed, looked at me long and earnestly ; then, mutter- ing only, " I am well, I am well, I want for nought," made me sign of farewell, and went on his way. But for hours afterward, ay and oft since, methought I heard that bitter, miser- able sob where the yew and cypress shadows were. h That is, of the bigoted sect of Fra Girolamo Savonarola. 54 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO ' And the other cause of my weeping to-day, though rather a soft summer rain, such as falls from my white lilac (where the young thrush revolves his song oftentimes leisurely, but again with such a marvellous swift joy and sweetness as to make me wonder at God's grace to these creatures of a springtide), rather such a rain I say than the sterner tears which I shed earlier over my unhappy Botticelli. ' For I came by chance, dear son, upon an early and a strange letter of thine, when thou wert not yet in thy fifteenth year. How keenly it recalled those bygone days ! I seemed once again to see thee, ever studious, and apart from thy fellows, and oftentimes rapt in strange imaginings. Fond, indeed, thou wert then as now of remote places, and of all things fantastic, and of solitude ; a dreamy youth, moreover, wont to reply vaguely to questions of common import. And in this letter of thine, writ as I say when thou were not yet in thy fifteenth year, thou speakest strangely for a youth. "The bale of life is so bitter that one hath perforce to occupy one's-self with such diver- sion as is offered by the strange, the fantastic, the terrible." What manner of boy is it who writeth thus ? Again : " I saw to-day a cloud JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 55 of those smoke-like balls of seed blown from a field of dandelions : how beautiful they were, how exquisite their dalliance with the light wind, how perfect each delicate part — nothing out of heaven more wondrous light and aerial ! All were blown upon a rotting dunghill, amid whose indiscriminate filth and stench were perishing butterflies, and some stained apple- blossoms, and voracious beetles and centipedes and other horrible insects, with worms, unwieldy and overgorged, rejoicing in corruption. And when I went home and fell into a dream, I was sore perplexed whether I had seen all this, or had been but deliberating upon dear ambitions, and fair hopes, and human life, and the end thereof, and the immortality of the worm." Ah, Piero, Piero, as thou wert then, so art thou now ; men say strange things of thy way- ward life, though they praise thy genius. And the ending of thy letter, how sad it is ! " But thee, Cosimo Rosselli, my master, whom I love, can deep affection save thee from the ills of life? If so, thou art saved indeed ! " 1 And now, dear Piero, though I have seen nought of thee for long, we seem to be closelier drawn one to the other. Wilt thou not come and visit one who, whatsoever men idly say 56 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO against thee, will ever love thy person as he reveres thy genius. Thou knowest that I am thine in comradeship and love, Cos i mo Rosselli.' # # # * # They say that I live more as a wild beast than as a man : because I bar my doors against the idle and the over curious; eat, only when I am an-hungered ; will not have my garden digged, nor the fruit-trees pruned ; will not haunt the streets, or the taverns, or the guest- rooms, nor talk much and eagerly of matters that concern me not at all. So be it. Perhaps the wild beast is none the less beloved of nature than the foolish human babbler. Why should I eat save when I would ? Why not be solitary, when solitude is my festival ? Why have my garden digged or my fruit-trees pruned, when to me the pleasure is greater to see the branches trail upon the ground, to behold the vines grow in their own way (as the human fool will not do, but persuadeth himself to ancestral follies, and conventions of outworn usage). Nature hath heed of her offspring. She hath birds to feed off these grape clusters, whether they be high and wind-swayed, or lie all ruined in the mould ; butterflies, too, and moths, that haunt JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 57 the sugared ooze upon over-ripe fruit ; and flame- like wasps darting hither and thither, with keen knives cutting the purple skins ; and the larvae of many insects, and caterpillars and grey slugs and worms — these hath she all to feed, from my vines, as well as me. I am but one of these : but not so happy, because I think : not so wise, because I hope. # # # # # Last night, very late (how white the shining of the moon upon the flood of Arno, and how deathlike the city in its silence, though joys and woes, and passionate hopes and more passionate despairs quivered, like exposed nerves, beneath the cold, calm exterior), on my homeward way from Vallombrosa, I stopped at the house of Antonio del Monte, the naturalist. Walking along the chestnut glades, hours before, and wondering if ever painter would be born who would be able to paint living nature, and not but our dull dream of her (yet, in my vanity, thinking of that landscape which I painted for Pope Sixtus, when I went to Rome with Cosimo Rosselli, the one which gained me so much praise and so many commissions) : wondering also, in my strange uplifted ecstasy, if in any other world — if such there be, as I shrewdly suspect, 58 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO among all those stars and planets overhead, despite what the Prior said to me about the evil and perilous thoughts of the excommuni- cated and already damned — wondering then if there be any more beautiful than this, with with such infinities of mercy and delight for us, and indeed for all living things, I beheld some- what that struck me as with a chill of fever. Overhead I saw a hawk, motionless as though painted against a dome of blue. It fell suddenly, many a score of paces — how many I could not say : then hung hovering ; and all in a moment crashed upon a hen-partridge cowering over her chicks, and spilt the blood from the cleft head upon the wheat-stacks close by. And further, scarce fifty yards away from where I stood, a fierce stoat crept nigher and nigher to a rabbit, which crouched trembling, giving forth a strange choking sob at times, and at the last sprang upon it and drove its teeth into the rabbit's skull. And further, I saw a sparrow-hawk on a fir-bough, tearing a young thrush to pieces, and scattering the bloodied feathers to right and left. And further, I saw a dead and rotten branch fall and crush a white bloom of lilies on the sward under- neath. And further, I saw at my feet a small but agile insect, striped like a wasp, that ran JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 59 backward and sideward as easily as forward, and it waylaid a tender yellow moth and nipped its head off and devoured it. Then a passion came into my heart, and I went away with my soul sick within me. I laughed at the beauty of the world, and cursed the mercy thereof. And as I passed the vlilage at the foot of the hill I heard a man, blaspheming, strike his wife with savage cruelty ; and the cry somewhere of a child wailing in pain. And when I told all to Antonio del Monte, he laughed. He said Na- ture was a beast of prey. And I — I— have loved Nature, have worshipped her ! The end of idolaters is death within death. ***** I remember well — it was after my first car- nival in Rome — that an idea of a new and striking, albeit fantastic, masquerade, came into my mind. Yet it was not there but in Florence that I fulfilled it ; and many years later. I was in great favour then with the gay Florentine youth, ever alert to novelties as to fierce deeds : they prized me for my invention in designing pleasurable surprises. Of a truth, the mas- querades became new things altogether, after my dispositions were approved and carried into effect. Thenceforth they became triumphal pro- 60 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO cessions, with men and horses gorgeously and strangely apparelled, and with wild or joyous music. It was a fine sight indeed, when, along the flower-strewn streets, young men (nude, or with leopard or tiger skins thrown about them, and garlanded with roses and lilies) rode upon foam-white stallions, these snorting through blood-red nostrils or neighing with hoarse clangours that rang against the black marble and basalt of the Florentine palaces ! The sun shone upon the ivory skins of the men and the blanched milk-white steeds, and upon the trod- den flowers, all red and white and yellow (that gave up an indescribable languorous and most sweet smell, as though the very soul of spring were dying there and passing away in forlorn fragrances), and upon the gay crowd, so brightly and variously clad, and upon the beautiful fair women — many with wind-lifted hair and loosened bodices, and breasts that gleamed like globed water-lilies : the froth and foam, these, of the carnival-tide — laughing, and throwing those deep blood-red roses which are called Hearts o' Love, and wearing cream-hued and scarlet scarfs, twined round and trailing from the whitest of arms. And not less striking the processional array by night. Down the dark JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 6 1 streets tramped the white horses, their riders now in gleaming armour, or fantastically garbed like chieftains of the Magyars or of the barbaric East. Two by two the riders went, and betwixt each couple not fewer than twoscore ten stalwart men on foot, each waving a burning torch in one hand and carrying an unsheathed sword in the other, so that it caught and flashed forth a hundred lights. The horses themselves were a sight to see, in their rich accoutrements ! Thereafter came a high car, garlanded with flowers and draperies and many rare devices. And all this to the laughter of men and women, the neighing of the stallions, the clanking of weapons, the sputtering of the torches, the shrill shrieks of Greek fifes, and the furious challenging blare of fivescore brazen trumpets ! Ay, these were goodly sights, though none equalled my Masquerade of Death, which is none other than the idea whereof I wrote a little ago : and of which men speak eagerly to this day, some with pleasant awe and dainty shudderings, others crossing themselves and muttering of devilish imaginations and Anti- christ and papal maledictions. I made my Car of Death in such secrecy in the Hall of the Pope, that none — no ! not one — 62 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO saw it aforehand. Then I made all arrange- ments, not only in mine own privacy, but where- soever the procession should pass by ; and these arrangements included the way itself, for I had special purposes to fulfil. And all who gave me of their service did so under a bond of secrecy, for after a while it became impossible to hide, from some at least of my assistants, either the parts or the whole of my scheme. There were two of my pupils who were of especial service to me, both named Andrea. The one is still called Andrea di Cosimo : the other, a greater than his master, is known throughout all the lands northward of Rome, and even to France, as Andrea del Sarto. He was brought to me by my friend Gian' Barile, the Florentine painter, as a youth of exceeding promise ; and I came to love him, almost as the good Cosimo Rosselli loved me. He was ever a Passionate of art, from the days when he spent his leisure hours staring at the frescoes by Leonardo and Michel- Angelo in this very Hall of the Pope where I made my Car of Death. Rumours have reached me in mine old age that Andrea del Sarto, whom I see no more (whom do I see, I, Piero di Cosimo, " the mad painter," lonely as the falling star that last night swept the circuit of JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 63 the heavens, and flashed into an oblivion of darkness beyond human ken ?) — rumours, I say, have reached me that Andrea declareth my Procession of Death symbolised the return of the Medici. This is false. It is one to me whether the Medici feed upon the taxes of the Florentines, or upon those of any alien city. My device was of fantastical delight and a brooding imagination ; and I have thought of stranger things still, but have scarce dared even to suggest them. Thus was it, then, in the height of the Car- nival. My great triumphal car, instead of being drawn by prancing horses and gaily decorated, was yoked to black buffaloes, each of sombre and terrible seeming, with horns overlaid with whitest plaster, and with eyes made hollowly red and burning with virulent pigments. The car itself was all hung in black sweeping drape- ries, gloomful as a starless and moonless night with imminence of rain ; very dolorous to look upon ; and yet not the less so because, every here and there, painted with whitely gleaming dead men's bones and broad crosses. High up on the car sat the gigantic figure of Death him- self, dreadful of aspect, and holding in one out- stretched hand his ever thirsting and hungering 64 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO scythe. Beneath him, huddled round the huge throne whereon he sat, were dismal tombs, blank and awful. Before the slow-moving car and lowering buffaloes, and after it likewise, rode a great number of the dead on horseback, all singing in a trembling voice the Miserere. The sight made many quake, and some who laughed broke into sobs. And at those places where, in former carnivals, the triumphal pro- cession was wont to stop for a sweet and joyous singing, and for the interchange of blythe and happy mockeries and good fortunes, it now stopped also ; but, instead, the tombs upon the huge car opened, and thence crawled, or glided, or sprang forth figures garbed in close-fitting black, all painted over with the insignia of death, the grinning skull, the long-jointed arms and legs, and all the bones of the human skeleton. These dreadful things moved close one to another ; and then, to the drear accompaniments of muffled strains, sang, in a most melancholy music, that solemn chant beginning — "■Dolor, pianto e penitenza" etc. It was a strange sight. Many, it is said, dream of it still. * * # # * JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 65 After a still evening, and a sunsetting sky of the most marvellous delicate green, with pale lemon-yellow spaces beyond, the weather has changed. I noted how low the fireflies flittered among the under-branches of the guelder-rose and around the bole of my old yew, and how sultry their wandering lights. The voices of the dogs barking in the gardens of Fiesole came down the slopes no more clear and sharp, but as though from afar, and muffled, as in a dense snowing. Nothing crackled in the garden. That strange beast out of Araby or Cathay, which Messer Antonio gave me in exchange for my portrait of him, made a mewing noise, very weird, yet not like any cat or other animal I have known — rather like a mad person mouth- ing in vague fear. Methought it might be a lost soul. If — if I The rain at last ! Streaming, rushing, pour- ing down ; the garden-ways aflood ; the house- vents spouting forth upon the streets ! Most joyous of sounds ! Oh, would I were striding along, singing my Song of Death, amid the now wind-furied glades, in tempestuous Vallom- brosa ! ***** 66 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO II* Yesterday I completed a series of drawings of strange animals, similar to those of dragons, and other rare creatures, which I made for Giuliano de' Medici. I have often wondered if, in some far country, a fortunate traveller will not unex- pectedly come upon those half-human creatures of which legends tell us. How well I remember going to a wild rocky place on the Pisan shore, in hope to see the golden hair and white breasts and waving arms of those Ladies of the Deep of whom I heard oft in my boyhood : or, at the very least, to catch the delicate sweet forlornness of their alien singing ! One night — it seems but yester eve as I recall it — I lay in a heathy dingle, watching the moonlight resting like the caressing hand of God upon the tired earth : and listening to the deep undertone of the ancient Sea, as he laid his lips against the shore and murmured, in a tongue unknown to men, secrets of Oblivion, and dull, remote prophecies. There was an * The following excerpts, all that remain of Piero's Journal, are plainly of a considerably later date than those just given. The postscript by Antonio del Monte is written on the page immediately succeeding that containing Piero's latest entry. There is some further writing below the ' Requiescat,' apparently in Latin, but, save for a few letters, indecipherable. JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 6j absolute hush in the air. Now and again the pinging sound of a gnat deepened the profound stillness. Almost I fancied that I heard the serene aerial chiming of the stars. While I lay there adream, mine ears caught the sound of a faint splashing. I thought it was a fish, leaping in silver upon a moongold wave to snap at a wandering firefly. Then as the sound waxed more distinct and without intermission, I con- ceived the idea that the sirens were swimming landward, and I caught myself listening eagerly for that wild fantastic music which lures mari- ners to the doom of which no man knoweth the manner or fulness. Suddenly I heard a low laugh. The sweet humanity of it acted upon me like the dawn after a night of gloom. As silently as the doe lifts her head from the fern- covert when she scents from afar off the prowl- ing wolf, I raised myself. Per Bacco ! was I still adream ? . . . I wondered. A beautiful girl ran to and fro along the sea- marge, her ivory limbs splashing far and wide the foam of each long, low, wave. Her hair drifted behind her like the tresses of a wind-blown larch. Her beautiful naked body gleamed in the moonlight, and as she moved hither and thither, now swiftly as though pursued, now f — 2 68 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO with dainty listlessness, I thought that I had never seen aught lovelier. A little cape ran out from the shore, and as she neared it she laughed low again and again : low, and yet so that I heard it easily. It thrilled me unspeak- ably. There was in it such unfathomable pain, and yet with — oh, such a subtle rare magic of delight ! I felt that I could — nay, that I would — follow that low-haunting laugh, and that ideal beauty, even to the ends of the earth, even though I were led into places of death, unspeak- able because of their terror. Suddenly she — this thing of beauty and grace — disappeared as in a wave, and I saw her no more. With the speed of a man fleeing for his life I raced towards the beach. Strange that I should notice, and for a second or two halt, because of the shrill sudden cry of an aziola. It mocked me, I thought. But when I reached the shore, nought was there. There was the same vast stretch of the moonlit deep : the same long low wave, for ever breaking in foam out of stillness, like the froth upon a dying man's lips : the same inscru- table silence on sea and land, save for the ping- ing of the gnats below the cystus-bushes, and the low thrilling monotone out of the heart of the waters. Hastily I ran out upon the little cape : JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO 69 but no, nought could I see beyond it or close under. Had I, then, beheld one of those myste- rious creatures who live in Ocean, and lament a lost humanity ? I wandered all night long by the margin of the sea, but heard no unwonted sound, save the crying of a strange bird far waveward : saw no unusual sight, save a furtive phosphorescence which came and went upon the dark surface of the waters, like an evil smile upon the face of an Oriental satrap dreaming of cruel delights. But about dawn I met a haggard fisherman, who stared at me blankly and muttered some foolishness. From him, in reply to my eager questions, I learned that one Mariana, the daughter of a gentleman of Pisa, had recently become dis- traught because of the exceeding beauty of a youth of whom she had dreamt — because of his surpassing loveliness, but still more because of his visionary immortality, which could not mate with her earthliness. She had passed through Pisa as one dazed, and had been seen at sun- down watching the inward — moving tide, and laughing strangely to herself the while. None had seen or heard of her since. But this had occurred many days — ay, weeks — before mine own adventure. To this day, in all verity, yO JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO I khow not whether 'twas Mariana of Pisa whom I saw passing like a dream through the wave, or some Donna Ignota born of the moon- shine and the sea. ***** To-night, as I walked in my wilderness (so I lovingly call my garden), filled full as it is with all manner of strange things and desolate growths, I noticed an unwonted flashing of red lights. Ever and again it happened, and once so that I was almost dazzled. At first I thought some rare creature, a lizard or salamander from afar, or it might be some gem or old-time weapon, lay amid the mould ; but at the last I found to my surprise that this flashing of light was caused by two or three blooms among a cluster of nasturtiums. One, in particular, glowed like the lantern of a monk in a dark wine- vault. I knew not till then that flowers gave off this mysterious effulgence, though, now I think of it, Suleiman has told me that he has seen something of the kind in the region beyond Nilus. It has made me think. Perhaps all created things give off some coloured emana- tion. I should like to paint the people going to and fro in the streets of Florence, with all their hidden sins made visible in furtive flashes JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO J\ of scarlet and purple, and wan green and yel- low, and bloodied red ! Cristo, how the Medici would reward me for my pains if I painted them ! 'T would be a short shrift then for the hermit-painter, Piero di Cosimo ! Nay, but seriously, what if some of us have this quality ? 'T would account for the divers strange and terrifying apparitions of the dead, of which rumour is oft, in the dark hours, so garrulous. (On the morrow.) I slept little last night, for a deep brooding over the thing of which I have writ above. I have decided to tell Alessandro Bardi that I shall paint him and his Caterina after all. How I hate old Luigi Bardi ! The insolence of the purse-proud man ! How dared he insult me that day on the Ponte Vecchio ? — sneering at me as a madman because I had stood staring for an hour or more upon the marvellous violet lights in the shallow flood of Arno, laughing loudly while I told him that that violet had to be waited for for weeks at a time ; mocking with his twisted mouth, " Violet ! violet ! Covpo di Cristo, hark to the man ! He cannot even see aright !" Fool that he was ! Howsoever, it is true that painters see deeper into colour, as falconers see further than goldsmiths. And yet, 72 JOURNALS OF PIERO DI COSIMO because of his ducats, he thought he could obtain a portrait of his son and his mistress from me ! No doubt — si, si, amico mio — you shall have the portrait — ecco ! Piero di Cosimo shall paint your son and the twilight-eyed Caterina. kwee-kwilloh ! A Restless Magpie {mockingly). Kwilloh . . . kwollow, ohee kwollow-kwan ! Echo. Follow . . . oh, follow them / Further Echo. Follow/ . . . Fol . . . low! Love (rising). I come, I come ! who calls ? Distant Echo {faintly). Fol . . . low. Printed by R.ffolkard &> Son, 32, Devonshire Street, Bloomsbury, London, W.C. BY THE SAME AUTHOR Life of Heine Life of Browning The Severn Alemoirs Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy [2nd Edition) Sospiri di Roma Children of Tomorrow A Fellmv and His Wife {Co- Author) The Gypsy Christ: and Other Tales {Autumn, 1895: Stone & Kimball) Vistas. {2nd Edition) Vistas. {Augmented American Edition. Ln the " Green Tree Library.'''' In 3rd Edition) FORTHCOMING Wives in Exile. {A Comedy in Romance) The Idolater : and Other Tales The Ideals of Art List of Books in Belles Lettres ALL THE BOOKS IN THIS CATALOGUE ARE PUBLISHED AT NET PRICES London: Elkin Mathews, Vigo Street, W. i8gs-g6 Telegraphic Address — ' Elegantia, London.' Vigo Viatica Lector ! eme^ lege^ iff gauaebis List of Books IN BELLES LETTRES (Including some Transfers) PUBLISHED BY Elkin Mathews VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. IV. B. — T/te Authors and Publisher reserve the right of reprinting any book in this list, except in cases where a stipulation has been made to the contrary, and of printing a separate edition of any of the books for A merica. In the case of limited Editions, the numbers mentioned do not include the copies sent for review, nor those supplied to the public libraries. The prices of books not yet published are subject to variation. The Books mentioned in this Catalogue can be obtained to order by any Bookseller. It should be noted also that they are supplied to the Trade on terms which will not allow of discount. The folloiving are a few of the Authors represented in this Catalogue : R. D. Blackmore. Charles Lamb. Robert Bridges. P. B. Marston. Bliss Carman. William Morris. E. R. Chapman. Hon. Roden Noel. Ernest Dowson. May Probvn. Michael Field. F. York Powell. T. Gordon Hake. William Sharp. Arthur Hallam. J. A. Symonds. Katharine Hinkson. John Todhunter. Herbert P.#Horne. Henry Van Dyke. Richard Hovey. Theodore Watts. Leigh Hunt. Frederick Wedmore. Selvvyn Image. P. H. Wicksteed. Lionel Johnson. W. B. Yeats. The Publications of Elkin Mathews ABBOTT {DR. C. C). Travels in a Tree-Top. Sm. 8vo. $s. net. Philadelphia : y. B. Lippincott Company. M Dr. Abbott pleases by the interest he takes in the subject which he treats . . and he adorns his matter with a good English style . . . Altogether, with it) dainty printing, it would be a charming book to read in the open air on a bright summer's day — Athmtrum. " He has an observant eye, a warm sympathy, and a pen that enables us to see with him. Nothing could be more restful than to read the thoughts of such nature- lovers. The very titles of his chapters suggest quiet and gentle things." — Dublin Herald. " A delightful volume this of Nature Sketches. Dr. Abbott writes about New England woods and streams, scenes neither quite familiar nor quite strange to us who know the same things in the old country. The severer winter makes some difference, as, for instance, in the number of birds that migrate there, but aie stationary here; and there are, of course, other differences in both fauna and flora; nevertheless, we feel in a way, at home, when Dr. Abbott takes us on one of his delightful winter or summer excursions. This is a book which we cannot recommend too highly." — Spectator. The Birds About Us 73 Engravings. Second Edition. Thick cr. Svo. 55. 6d. net. Philadelphia : y. B. Lippincott Company. BATEMAN (MAY). Sonnets and Songs. With a title design by John D. Mackenzie. Fcap. Svo. 3s. 6d. net. BINTON (LAURENCE). Lyric Poems, with title page by Selwyn Image. Sq. i6mo. 55. net. "This little volume of LYRIC POEMS displays a grace of fancy, a spontaneity and individuality of inspiration, and a felicitous command of metre and diction, wh.ch lift the writer above the average of the minor singers of our time. . . We may expect much from the writer of 'An April Day,' or of the strong concluding lines on the preseni age from a piece entitled * Present and Future.' ' — 7im>s. "The product of a definite and sympathetic personality." — Globe. "The impression that this volume makes upon us is that the writer has caught the spirit of Maithew Arnold, and that in no common degree. , . . Quite Titianesque in its force and colour." — Spectator. First Book of London Visions. Fcap. 8vo. Wrapper. 15. net. [/« the press. BLACKMORE (R. D.) Fringilla : or. Some Tales in Verse. By the Author of "Lorna Doone." With Eleven full-page Illustrations and numerous vignettes and initials by L'jUIS Fairfax- Ml'ckley and Three by James \V. R. Linton. Crown Svo. 10s. net. The Publications of Elkin Mathews BLACKMORE (R. D.)— continued. " ' Fringilla ' mast be looked upon as Mr. Blackmore's diversions, and as such it is very delightful. A whimsical originality, an imaginative wealth of detail, a pleasant sense of humour are among Mr. Blackmore's qualities as a poet." — Speaker. " Mr. Blackmore's rerse is cultured and careful ; it is full of knowledge ; it has every quality which commands our respect ; it has an old-world charm of gentlcnes3 and peace.' — Mr. W. L. COURTNEY, in the Daily Telegraph. "The charming and accomplished drawings of Mr. Fairfax-Muckley, so finely designed, so admirably decorative." — Academy. BOfVCHER (HAVERING). The C Major of Life : A Novel. Cr. Svo. 3*. 6d. net. [Isham Facsimile Reprint.] BRETON (NICHOLAS). No Whippinge, nor Trippinge, but a kinde friendly Snippinge. London, 1601. A Facsimile Reprint, with the original Borders to every page, with a Bibliographical Note by Charles Edmonds. 200 copies, printed on hand-made paper at the CHISWICK Press. i2mo. 3s. 6d. net. Also 50 copies Large Paper. 55. net. Facsimile reprint from the semi-unique copy discovered in the autumn of 1867 by Mr. Charles Edmonds in a disused lumber room at Lamport Hall. Northams (Sir Charles E Isham's), and purchased lately by the British Museum authorities. When Dr. A. B. firosart collected Breton's Works a few years ago for his " Chertsey Worthies Library," he was forced to conte9s that certain of Breton's most coveted books were missing and absolutely unavailable. The serai-unique example under notice was one of these. BRIDGES (ROBERT). A New Volume of Poems. [In preparation. BYRON (MAT). A Little Book of Lyrics. [In preparation. CARMAN (BLISS) & RICHARD HOVEY. Songs from Vagabondia. With Decorations by Tom B. Meteyard. P'cap. Svo. 55. net. Boston : Cope land &* Day. " The Authors of the small joint volume called ' Songs from Vagabondia,' have an unmistakable right to the name of poet. These little snatches have the spirit of a gip>y Omar Khayyami They have always caieless verve, and often caielcss felicity j they are m.isculiue and rough, as roving songs should be. . . Here, certainly, i» the peel's soul. . . . You, have the v/hulc spirit of the book in, such an unfor- Vigo Street, London, W. CARMAN (BLISS) &- RICHARD HOVET— continued. getable little lyric as ' In the House of Idiedaily.' . . We refer the reader to the delightful little volume itself, which comes as a welcome interlude amidst the highly wrought introspective poetry of the day. '—Francis Thompson, in Merry England. " Bliss Carman is the author of a delightful volume of verse, ' Low Tide on Grand Pre,' and Richard Hovey is the foiemost of the living poets of America, with the exception, peihaps, of Bret Harte and Joaquim Miller, whose names are more familiar. He sounds a deeper note than either of these, and deals with loftier themes.'' — Dublin Express. " Both possess the power of investing actualities with fancy, and leaving them none the less actual ; of setting the march music of the vagabond's feet to words; of being comrades with nature, yet without presumption. And they have that charm, rare in writers of verse, of drawing the reader into the fellowship of their own zest and contentment." — Athenaum. CHAPMAN (ELIZABETH RACHEL). A Little Child's Wreath : A Sonnet Sequence. With title page and cover designed by Selwyn Image. Second Edition. Sq. i6rao., green buckram. 2s.6d.mt. New York : Dodd, Mead &■ Company. " Contains many tender and pathetic passages, and some really exquisite and subtle touches of childhood nature. . . . The average excellence of the sonnets is undoubted. "Spectator. " In these forty pages of poetry ... we have a contribution inspired by grief for the loss of a child of seven, which is not unworthy to take its place even beside ' In Memoriam.' . . . Miss Chapman has ventured upon sacred ground, but she has come otf safely, with the inspiration of a divine sympathy in lur soul, and with lips touched with the live coal from the altar on which glow3 the flame of immortal love " — W. T. STEAD, in The Review of Reviews. ** Full of a very solemn and beautiful but never exaggerated sentiment."— LOGROLLER, in Star. "While they are brimming with tenderness and tears, they are marked with the skilled workmanship of the real poet." — Glasgow Herald. " Evidently describes very real and intense sorrow. Its strains of tender sym- pathy will appeal specially to those whose hearts have been wrung by the loss ot a young child, and the verses are touching in their simplicity " — Morning- Pott. " Re-assurcs us on its fust page by its sanity and its simple tenderness." — Bookman. COLERIDGE (HON. STEPHEN). The Sanctity of Confession : A Romance. 2nd edi- tion. Printed by Clowes & Son. 250 copies. Cr. 8vo. 3j. net [ Very few remain. "Mr. Stephen Coleridge's sixteenth-century romance is well and pleasantly written. The style is throughout in keeping with the story; and we should imagine that the historical probabilities are well observed." — Pall Mall Gaxette. Mr. GLADSTONE writes;— "I have read the singularly well told story. . . . It opens up questions both deep and dark ; it cannot be right to accept in religion or anything else a secret which destroys the lifa of an innocent fellow creattiie." The Publications of Elkin Mathews CORBIN (JOHN). The Elizabethan Hamlet: A Study of the Sources, and of Shakspere's Environment, to show that the Mad Scenes had a Comic Aspect now Ignored. With a Prefatory Note by F. York Powell, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Small 4to. 35 6d. net. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. ..." When we add that so competent a judge as Professor York Powell expresses his belief in a Prelatory Note that Mr. Corbin has 'got hold of a truth that has not been clearly, if at all, expressed in our Elizabethan studies— to wit, that the 16th century audience's point of view, and, of necessity, the playwright's treatment of his subject, were very different from ours of to-day in many matters of mark' — and express our own concurrence in this, we have said enough to recommend Mr. Corbin's little book to the attention of all Shakespearian students." — Times. CROSSING (WILLIAM). The Ancient Crosses of Dartmoor ; with a Descrip- tion of their Surroundings. With 11 plates. 8vo. cloth. 45. 6d. net. [ Very few remain. DAVIES (R. R.). Some Account of the Old Church at Chelsea and of its Monuments. [In preparation. DE GRUCHY {AUGUSTA). Under the Hawthorn, and Other Verses. With Frontispiece by Walter Crane. Printed at the Rugby Press. 300 copies. Cr. 8vo. $s. net. Also 30 copies on Japanese vellum. 155. net. "Melodious in metre, graceful in fancy, and not without spontaneity of inspira- tion."— Times. " Very tender and melodious is much of Mrs. De Gruchy's verse. Rare imaginative power marks the dramatic monologue ' In the Prison Van.'" — Speaker. " Distinguished bv the attractive qualities of grace and refinement, and a purity of style that is as refreshing as a limpid stream in the heat of a summer's noon. . . . The charm of these poems lies in their naturalness, which is indeed an admirable quality in song.'' — Saturday Review. DIVERSI COLORES SERIES. See Horne. DOIVSON (ERNEST). Dilemmas : Stories and Studies in Sentiment. (A Case of Conscience.— The Diary of a Successful Man. — An Orchestral Violin.— The Statute of Limitations.— Souvenirs of an Egoist). Crown 8vo. $s. 6d. net. New York: Frederick A, Stokes Company. Vigo Street, London, W. DOIVSON (ERNEST)— continued. " Unquestionably they are good stories, with a real human interest in them." — St. James's Gaxette. " ' A Case of Conscience ' ... an exceedingly good story. At first sight it might appear unfinished, as one of the problems presented is left unsolved ; but one soon feels that anything more would have spoilt the act with which the double tragedy of the two men's lives is flashed before the reader in a few pages." — Jlthenaum. "These stories can be read with pure enjoyment, for along with subtlety of thought and grace of diction there is true refinement." — Liverpool Mercury. Poems (Diversi Co/ores Series). With a title design by H. P. Horne. Printed at the Chiswick Press, on hand-made paper. i6mo. $s. net. [Shortly. " Mr Dowson's contributions to the two series of the Rhymer's Book were subtle and exquisite poems. He has a touch of Elizabethan distinction. . . . Mr. Dowson's stories are very remarkable in quality." — Boston Literary IVorli. FIELD (MICHAEL). Sight and Song (Poems on Pictures). Printed by Constables. 400 copies. i2mo. $s. net. [ Very feiv remain. Stephania : a Trialogue in Three Acts. Frontis- piece, colophon, and ornament for binding designed by Selwyn Image. Printed by Folkard & Son. 250 copies (200 for sale). Pott 4to. 65. net. [ Very few remain. "We have true drama in 'Stephania.' .... Stephania, Otho, and Sylvester II., the three persons of the play, are more than mere names Besides great effort, commendable effort, there is real greatness in this play; and the blank verse is often sinewy and strong with thought and passion."— Speaker. "'Stephania' is striking in design and powerful in execution. It is a highly dramatic 'trialogue' between the Emperor Otho III., his tutor Gerbert, and Stephania, the widow of the murdered Roman Consul, Crescentius. The poem contains much fine work, and is picturesque and of poetical accent. . . ." — Westminster Reziew. A Question of Memory : A Play in Four Acts- 100 copies only. 8vo. 51. net. [Very few remain- Attila, My Attila ! A Drama in Four Acts. With a Facsimile of Two Medals. (Uniform with Stephania). Pott 4to. 55. net. It deals with the strange and desperate adventures of Honoria, daughter of the famous Empress Galla Placidia. This young princt-ss may reasonably be regarded as the New Woman of the filth century, and it is from this point of view that Michael Field has presented her audacities and their punishment. The title page reproduces a medal which, in Gibbon's words, " exhibits the pleasing countenance of Hoaoria," together with one that represents her mother. 8 The Publications of Eflcin Mathews GALTON (ARTHUR). Essays upon Matthew Arnold (Diversi Colores Series), Printed at the Chiswick Press on hand-made paper. Cr. 8vo. $s. net. \_In preparation. GASKIN (ARTHUR). Good King Wenceslas. A Carol written by Dr. Neale and Pictured by Arthur J. Gaskin ; with an Intro- duction by William Morris. 4to. 3^. 6d. net. Transferred to the present Publisher. "Mr. Arthur J. Gaskin has more than redeemed the prom^e of his illustrations' to Hans Christian Andersen's tales by his edition of the lace Dr. Neale's carol of 1 Good King Wenceslas.' . . . The pictures, pictorial borders, and initial letters are remarkable both for the vigour of the drawing and the sense of the decorative style which they exhibit. Mr. William Morris has shown his interest in the artist's works by contributing a prefatory note." — Daily News. GASKIN (MRS. ARTHUR). An A. B.C. Book. Rhymed and Pictured by Mrs. Arthur Gaskin. 60 designs. Feap. 8vo. 3* 6d.net. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. HAKE {DR. T. GORDON, "The Parable Poet.") Madeline, and other Pof.ms. Crown 8vo. $s. net. Transferred to the present Publisher, "The ministry of the anjel Daphne to her erring human sister is frequently related in strains of pure and elevated tenderness. Nor does the poet who can show so much delicacy fail in strength. The description of Madeline as she passes in trance to her vengeance is full of vivid pictures and charged with tragic feeling The individuality of the writer lies in his deep sympathy with w.'iatever affects the being and condition of man. . . . Taken as a whole, the book has high and unusual claims.'' — Athincrum. ''I havebeen reading 'Madeline' again. For sheer originality, both of conception and of treatment, I consider that it stands alone." — Mr. Theodore Watts. Parables and Tales. (Mother and Child. — The Crip- ple.— The Blind Boy.— Old Morality. —Old Souls.— The Lily of the Valley. — The Deadly Nightshade. — The Poet). With a Biographical Sketch by Theodore Watts. 9 illustrations by Arthur Hughes. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net. "The qualities of Dr. Gordon Hake's work were from the first fully admitted and warmly praised by one of the greatest of contemporary poets, who was also a critic of exceptional acuteness — Rossetti Indeed, the only two review articles which Rossetti ever wrote were written on two of Dr. Hake's books: ' Madeline,' which he reviewed in the Academy in 1871, and ' ("arables and Tales,' which he reviewed in the Fortnightly in 1875. Many eminent critics have expressed a decided preference for ' Parublcs and Talcs * to Dr. Hake's other works, and it had the advantage of being Vigo Street, London, W. HAKE (DR. T. GORDON)— continued. enriched with the admirable illustrations of Arthur Hughes."— Saturday Review, January, 1895. " The piece called ' Old Souls ' is probably secure of a distinct place in the liter- atureofour day, and we believe the same may be predicted of other poems in the little collection just issued. . . . Should Dr. Hake's more restricted, but lovely and sincere contributions to the poetry of real life not find the immediate response they deserve, he may at least remember that others also have failed to meet at once with lull justice and recognition But we will hope for good encouragement to his present and future work ; and can at least ensure the lover of poetry that in these simple pages he shall find not seldom a humanity limpid and pellucid — the well-spring of a true heart, with which his tears must mingle as with their own element. " Dr. Hake has been fortunate in the beautiful drawings which Mr. Arthur Hughes has contributed to his little volume. No poet could have a more congenial yoke-fellow than this gifted and imaginative artist."— D. G. Rossetti, in the Fortnightly. 1875. HEMINGWAY (PERCY). Out of Egypt : Stories from the Threshold of the East. Cover design by Gleeson White. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net. " This is a strong book.'' — Academy. "This is a remarkable book. Egyptian life has seldom been portrayed from the inside. . . . The author's knowledge of Arabic, his sympathy with the religion of Islam, above all his enure freedom from Western prejudice, have enabled him to learn more of what modern Egypt really is than the average Englishman could possibly acquire in a lifetime at Cairo or Port Said.'' — African Review. "A lively and picturesque style. . . undoubted talent." — Manchester Guardian. " But seldom that the first production o. an author is so mature and so finished in style as this. . . . The sketches are veritable spoils of the Egyptians— gems of sproe in a setting of clear air, sharp outlines, and wondrous skies. — Morning Leader. " This book places its author amongst those writers from whom lasting work of high aim is to be expected.'' — The Star. "The tale . . . is treated with daring directness. . . An impressive and pathetic close to a story told throughout with arresting strength and simplicity " — Daily News. "Genuine power and pathos." — Pali Mall Gaxette. The Happy Wanderer (Poems). With title design by Charles I. ffoulkes. Printed at the Chiswick Press, on hand-made paper. Sq. i6mo. 55. net. [In the press, HICKEY (EMILY H). A Volume of Poems. [In preparation. Verse Tales, Lyrics and Translations. Printed at the Arnold Press. 300 copies. Imp. i6mo. 5s. net. [ Very few remain. 'Miss Hickey's 'Verse Tales, Lyrics, and Translations' almost invariably reach a high level of finish and completeness. The book is a string of little rounded pearls. — Athtnaum. io The Publications of Elkin Mathews HINKSON {HENRY A.). Dublin Verses. By Members of Trinity College. Selected and Edited by II. A. Hinkson, late Scholar of Trinity College, Dublin. Pott 4to. 55. net. Dublin : Hodges, Figgis &> Co. , Limited. Includes contributions by the following : — Aubrey de Vere, Sir Stephen de Vere, Oscar Wilde, J. K. Ingram, A. P. Graves, J. Todhunter, W. E. H. Lecky, T. W. Rolleston, Edward Dowden, G. A. Greene, Savage-Armstrong, Douglas Hyde, R. Y. Tyrrell, G. N. Plunkett, W. Macneile Dixon, William Wilkins, George Wilkins, and Edwin Hamilton. " A pleasant volume of contemporary Irish Verse. . . A judicious selection." — Times. " Wherever there is a group of Irish readers in near or far-off lands, these 1 Dublin Verses' will be sure to command attention and applause." — Glasgow Herald. HINKSON (KATHARINE). Sloes on the Blackthorn : a Volume of Irish Stories. Crown 8vo., 35. 6d. net. [In preparation. " HOBBY HORSE (THE)." An Illustrated Art Miscellany. Edited by Herbert P. Horne. The Fourth Number of the New Series will shortly appear, after which Mr. Mathews will publish all the numbers in a volume, price £1. is. net. Boston : Copeland &* Day. HORNE (HERBERT P.) Diversi Colores : Poems. V'gnette, &c , designed by the Author. Printed at the ChjSWICK Press. 250 copies. l6mo. $s. net. Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher. " In these few poems Mr. Horne has set betore a tasteless age, and an extravagant age, examples of poetry which, without fear or hesitation, we consider to be of true and pure beauty." — Anti-J 'accbin . " With all his fondness for sixteenth century styles and themes, Mr. Horne is yet sufficiently individual in his thought and manner. Much of his sei. liment is quite latter-day in tone and rendering ; he is a child ol his time." — Gkbe. "Mr. Home's woilc is almost always caiefully felicitous and may be compared with beautiful filagree work in verse. He is tully, pe. haps too fully, c nscious of the value of re train t, and is certainly in need of no more culture in tue handling of verse — of such verse as alone he cares to work in. He has already (he mtnts of a finished artist— or, at all events, of an artist who is capable of the utmost finish.'' — fall Mall Gaxttte. Vigo Street, London, W. n HORNE {HERBERT P.) -continued. The Series of Books begun in '"Diversi Colores" by Mr. Herbert P. Horne, will continue to be pub- lished by Mr. Elkin Mathews. The intention of the series is to give, in a collected and sometimes revised form, Poems and Essays by various writers, whose names have hitherto been chiefly asso- ciated with the Hobby Horse. The series will be edited by Mr. Herbert I*. Home, and will contain : No. II. Poems and Carols. By Selwyn Image. [Just published. No. III. Essays upon Matthew Arnold. By Ar- thur GALTON. [Immediately. No. IV. Poems. By Ernest Dowson. [Immediately. No. V. The Letters and Papers of Adam Le- GENDRE. [In preparation. _ Each volume will contain a new title-page and ornaments designed by the Editor ; and the volumes of verse will be uniform with "Diversi Colores." HORTON (ALICE). Poems. [Shortly. HUEFFER [OLIVER F. MADOX). Sonnets and Poems. With a frontispiece. [Shortly. HUGHES (ARTHUR). See Hake. HUNT (LEIGH). A Volume of Essays now collected for the first time. Edited with a critical Introduction by R. W. M. Johnson. [In the press. IMAGE (SELWYN). Poems and Carols. (Diversi Colores Series. — New Volume). Title design by H. P. Horne. Printed on hand-made paper at the Chiswtck Prf.ss. i6mo. 5-f. net. [JuU ready. "Among the artists who have turned poets will shortly have to be reckoned Mr. Selwyn Image. A volume of pogms from his pen will be published by Mi. Elkin Mathews before long. Those who are acquainted with Mr. Selwyn Image's work will expect to find a leal and deep poetic charm in this book." — Daily Chnnidt. 12 The Publications of Elkin Mathews IMAGE {SELWYN)— continued. " No one else could have done it (i.e., written ' Poems and Carols ') in just this way, and the artist himself could have done it in no other way.'' " A remarkable impress of personality, and ihis personality of singular rarity and interest. Every piece is perfectly composed; the ' mental cartooning.' to use Rossetti's phrase, has been adequately done . . . an air of grave and homely order . . . a union of quaint and suotly simple homeliness, with a somewhat abstract severity. ... It is a new thing, the revelation of a new poet. . . . Here is a book which may be trusted to outlive most contemporary literature." — Saturday Review. " An intensely personal expression of a personality of singular charm, gravity, ftncifulness, and interest ; work which is alone among contemporary verse alike in regard to substance and to form . . . comes with more true novelty than any book of verse published in England for some years." — Athenaum. " Some men seem to avoid fame as sed ulously as the majority seek it. Mr. Selwyn Image is one of these. He has achieved a charming fame by his very shyness and mystery. His very name has a look or having been designed by the Century Guild, and it was certainly first published in The Century Guild Hobby Horse." — The Realm. "In the tiny little volume of verse, 'Poems and Carols,' by Selwyn Image, we discern a note of spontaneous inspiration, a delicate and gracelul fancy, and considerable, but unequal, skill of versification. The Carols are skilful reproductions of that rather archaic form of composition, devotional in tone and felicitous in sentiment. Love and nature are the principal themes of the Poems. It is difficult not to be hackneyed in the treatment of such themes, but Mr. Image successfully overcomes the difficulty." — The Times. " The Catholic movement in literature, a strong reality to-day in England as in France, if working within narrow limits, has its newest interpretation in Mr. Selwyn Image's ' Poems and Carols.' Of course the book is charming to look at and to handle, since it is his. The Chiswick Press and Mr. Mathews have helped him to realize his design." — The Sketch. ISHAM FACSIMILE REPRINTS; Nos. III. and IK See Breton and Southwell. %* New Elizabethan Literature at the British Museum, see The Times, 31 August, 1894, also Notes and Queries, Sept., 1894. [By the Author of The Art of Thomas Hardy\. JOHNSON (LIONEL). Poems. With a title design and colophon by H. P. Horne. Printed at the Chiswick Press, on hand-made paper. Sq. post 8vo. $s. net. Also, 25 special copies at 155. net. Boston : Copeland and Day. " Full of delicate fancy, and display much lyrical grace and felicity." — Times. "An air of solidity, combined with something also of severity, is the first impression one receives from these pages. . . . The poems are more massive than most lyrics are; they aim at dignity and attain it This is, we believe, the first book of verse that Mr. Johnson has published; and we would say, on a first reading, that for a first book it was remarkably mature. And so it is, in its accomplishment, its reserve of strength, its unfaltering style. . . . Whatever form his writing takes, it will be the expression of a rich mind, and a rare talent." — Saturday Rtview. Vigo Street, London, W. 13 JOHNSON {LIONEL)— continued. "Mr. Lionel Johnson's poems have the advantage of a two-fold inspiration. Many of these austere strains could never have been written if he had not been Jteeped in the most golden poetry of the Greeks; while, on the other hand, side by side with the mellifluous chanting, there comes another note, mild, sweet, and unsophisticated— the very bird-note of Celtic poetry. And then again one comes on a very ripe and affluent, as of one who has spoiled the very goldenest harvests of song of cultivated ages . . . Mr. Johnson's poetry is concerned with lofty things and is never less than passionately sincere. It is sane, high-minded, and full of felicities.'' —Illustrated London Nezot. "The most obvious characteristics of Mr. Johnson's verse are dignity and distinction; but beneath these one feels a passionate poetic impulse, and a grave fascinating music passes from end to emi of the volume." — Realm. " It is at once stately and passionate, austere, and free. His passion has a sane mood: his fire a white heat. . . . Once again it is the Critic spirit that make* for higher things. Mr. Johnson's muse is concerned onlv with the highest. Her flight is as of a winged thing, that goes 'higher still and higher,' and has few fluttering* near earth " — Irish Daily Independent. JOHNSON (EFF1E). In the Fire, and other Fancies. With frontispiece by Walter Crane. Imperial i6mo. 35. 6d. net. LAMB {CHARLES). Beauty and the Beast. With an Introduction by Andrew Lang. Facsimile Reprint of the rare First Edition. With 8 choice stipple engravings in brown ink, after the original plates. Royal i6mo. 2 s - 6d. net. Transferred to the present Publisher. LEGENDRE {ADAM), The Letters and Papers of. {Diversi Colores Series.) [ In preparation. MARSON {REV. C. L.). A Volume of Short Stories. [In preparation. MARSTON {PHILIP BOURKE). A Last Harvest : Lyrics and Sonnets from the Book of Love. Edited, with Biographical Sketch, by Louise Chandler Moulton. 500 copies. Printed by Miller & Son. Post Svo. 55. net. [ Very few remain. Also 50 copies on hand-made L.P. \os. 6d. net. [ Very few remain. "Among the sonnets with which the volume concludes, there are some, fine examples of a form of verse in which all competent authorities allow that Maistoa excelled 'The Bieadih and Beauty of the Spacious Night,' 'To All in Haven," 'Friendship and Love,' 'Love's Deserted Palace' — these, to mention no others, have the ' high seriousness ' which Matthew Arnold made the test of true poetry."— Atbinaum. 14 The Publications of Elkin Mathews MASON (A. E. IV.). A Romance of Wastdale. Crown 8vo. 3.?. 6d. net. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. MEYNELL {WILFRID). The Child set in the Midst. By Modern Poets. With Introduction by W. Meynell, and Facsimile of the MS. of the "Toys" by Coventry Patmore. Royal i6mo. 3-r. 6d. net. MORRIS (IV ILL 1 AM). See Gaskin. MORRISON (G. £.)• Alonzo Quixano, otherwise Don Quixote: being a dramatization of the Novel of Cervantes, and espe- cially of those parts which he left unwritten. Cr. 8vo. is. net. "This play, distinguished and full of fine qualities, is a brave attempt to enrich our poetic drama. . . . The reverence shown for Cervantes, the care to preserve intact the characteristics the Spanish master lingered over so humorously, yet so lovingly, have led Mr. Morrison to deserved and notable success." — Academy. MUSA CATHOLICA. Selected and Edited by Mrs. William Sharp. \_In preparation. MURRAY (ALMA). Portrait as Beatrice Cenci. With Critical Notice containing Four Letters from Robert Browning. 8vo. 2.s. net. NOEL (HON. RODEN). My Sea, and other posthumous Poems. With an Intro- duction by Stanley Addleshaw. Cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. [Immediately. Selected Lyrics from the Works of the late Hon. Roden Noel. With a Biographical and Critical Essay by Percy Addleshaw. Illustrated with Two Portraits, including a reproduction of the famous picture by W. B, Richmond, k.A. [/« preparation. Vigo Street, London, W. 15 NOEL {HON. RODEN)— continued. Poor People's Christmas. Printed at the Aylesbury Press. 250 copies. i6mo. is. net. [ Very few remain. " Displays the author at his best Mr. Noel always has something to say worth saying, and his technique— though like Browning, he is too intent upon idea to bcsiow all due care upon form — is generally sufficient and sometimes masterly. We hear too seldom from a poet of such deep and kindly sympathy." — Sunday Times. O' SULLIVAN (VINCENT). Poems. With a title-design by Selwyn Image. \In preparation. POWELL (F. YORK). See CORBIN. PROBYN {MAY). Pansies : A Book of Poems. With a title-page and cover design by Minnie Mathews. Fcap. 8vo. 3.5-. 6t. net. "Miss Probyn s new volume is a slim one, but rare in quality. She is no mere pretty verse maker; her spontaneity and originality are beyond question, and so far as colour and picturesqueness go, only Mr. Francis Thompson rivals her among the English Catholic peers of to-day." — Sketch. " This too small book is a mine of the purest poetry, very holy, and very refined, and removed as far as possible from the tawdry or the common-place. ' — Irish Monthly. " The religious poems are in their way perfect, with a tinge of the myrticism one looks for in the poetry of two centuries ago, but so seldom meets with nowadays." .—Catholic Times. " Full of a delicate devotional sentiment and much metrical felicity." — Times. RHYMERS' CLUB, THE SECOND BOOK OF THE. Contributions by E. Dowson, E. J. Ellis, G. A. Greene, A. Hillier, Lionel Johnson, Richard le Gal- lienne, Victor Plarr, E. Radford, E. Rhys, T. W. Rollestone, Arthur Symons, J. Tod- hunter, W. B. Yeats. Printed by Miller & Son. 500 copies (of which 400 are for sale). i6mo. 55. net. 50 copies on hand-made L.P. 10s. 6d. net. New York : Dodd, Mead dr 5 Co. •'The work of twelve very competent verse writers, many of them not unknown to fame. This form of publication is not a new departure exactly, but it is a recur- rence to the excellent fashion of the Elizabethan age, when 'England's Helicon,' Davison's ' Poetical Rhapsody,' and ' Phcenix Nest,' with scores of other collection!, contained the best songs of the best song-writers of that tuneful epoch." — Black and Wbiti. 16 The Publications of Elkin Mathews RHYMERS' CLUB, SECOND BOOK OF THE— continued. "The future of these thirteen writers, who have thus banded themselves together, will be witehed with interest. Already there is fulfilment in their work, and there is much promise." - Speaker. "In the intervals of Welsh rarebit and stout provided for them at the 'Cheshire Cheese,' in Fleet Street, the members of the Rhymers' Club have produced some very pretty poems, which Mr. Elkin Mathews has issued in his notoriously dainty manner." — Pall Mall Gaxette. SCHAFF (DR. P.). Literature and Poetry : Papers on Dante, Latin Hymns, &c. Portrait and Plates, ioo copies only. 8vo. 10s. net. [ Very few remain. SCULL (W. DELAPLA1NE). The Garden of the Matchboxes, and other Stories. Crown 8vo. ls.dd.net. [/« preparation. SHARP (WILLIAM) Ecce Puella and other Prose Imaginings. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d. net. [Immediately. SONG OF SONGS, WHICH IS SOLOMON'S. Twenty Drawings from designsby Althea Gyles. 4to. One Guinea net. Also 25 copies on special paper, Two Guineas net. [hi preparation. [Isham Facsimile Reprint]. S[0UTH1VELL] (R[OBERT]). A FOVREFOVLD MEDITATION, OF THE FOURE LAST things. Composed in a Diuine Poeme. By R. S. The author of S. Peter's complaint. London, 1606. A Facsimile Reprint, with a Bibliographical Note by Charles Edmonds. 150 copies. Printed on hand- made paper at the Chiswick Press. Roy. i6mo. $s. net. Also 50 copies, large paper. Js. 6d. net. Facsimile reprint from the unique fragment discovered in the autumn of 1867 by Mr. Charles Edmonds in a disused lumber room at Lamport Hall, Northants, and lately purchased by the British Museum authorities. This fragment supplies the first sheet of a previously unknown poem by Robert Southwell, the Roman Catholic poet, whose religious fervour lends a pathetic beauty to everything that he wrote, and future editors of Southwell's works will find it necessary to give it close study. The whole of the Poem has been completed from two MS. copies, which differ in the number of Stanzas. STRANGE (E. F.) A Book of Thoughts. [In preparation. Vigo Street, London, W. 17 SYMONDS (JOHN ADDINGTON). In the Key of Blue, and other Prose Essays. With cover designed by C. S. Ricketts. Printed at the Ballantyne Press. Third Edition. Thick cr. 8vo. 8s. 6d. net. New York : Macmillan 6° Co, " The varietv of Mr. Symonds' interests ! Here are criticisms upon the Venetian Tiepolo, upon M. Zola, upon Mediaeval Norman Songs, upon Elizabethan lyrics, upon Plato's and Dante's ideals of love; and not a sign anywhere, except may be in the last, that he has more concern for, or knowledge of, one theme than another. Add to these artistic themes the delighted records of English or Italian scenes, with their rich beauties of nature or of art, and the human passions that inform them. How joyous a sense of great possessions won at no man's hurt or loss must such a man retain." — Daily Chronicle. " Some of the essays are very charming, in Mr. Symonds best style, but the first one, that which gives its name to the volume, is at least the most curious of we lot."— Speaker. . . „ .. "The other essays are the work of a sound and sensible critic. — National Observer. "The literary essays are more restrained, and the prepared student will find therrj full of illumination and charm, while the descriptive papers have the attractiveness which Mr. Symonds always gives to work in this genre." — MR. JAS. ASHCROFT NOBLE, in The Literary World. TENNYSON (LORD). See Hallam,— Van Dyke. TODHUNTER (DR. JOHN). A Sicilian Idyll. With a Frontispiece by Walter Crane. Printed at the Chiswick Press. 250 copies. Imp. i6mo. 5s.net. 50 copies hand-made L. P. Fcap. 4to. I OS. 6d. net. [ Veryfezo remain. " He combines his notes skilfully, and puts his own voice, so^to speak, into them, and the music that results is sweet and of a pastoral tunefulness." — Speaker. " The blank verse is the true verse of pastoral, quie' and scholarly, with frequent touches of beauty. The echoes of Theocritus and of the classics at large are modest and felicitous. '—Anti-JaMn. . . , , . , " A charming little pastoral play in one act. Thr; verse is singularly graceful, and many bright gems of wit sparkle in the dialogues."- -Literary World. " Well worthy of admiration for its grace and delicate finish, us clearness, and its compactness." — Athenaum. Also the following works by the same Author transferred to the present Publisher, viz. :— Laurella, and other Poems, 55. net. — Alcestis, a Dramatic Poem, 45. net. — A Study of Shelley, $s. 6d. net. — Forest Songs, and other Poems, y. net.—Twv. Banshee., 3*. net.— JIelena in Troas, 2s. 6d. net. 1 8 The Publications of Elkin Mathews TYNAN (KATHARINE). See Hinkson. VAN DYKE (HENRY). The Poetry of Tennyson. Third Edition, enlarged. Cr. 8vo. 5$. 6i. net. The additions consist of a Portrait, Two Chapters, and the Bibliography expanded. The Laureate himself gave valuable aid in correcting various details. "Mr. Elkin Mathews publishes a new edition, revised and enlarged, of that excellent woik, 'The Poetry of Tennyson,' by Henry Van Dvke. The additions are considerable. It is extremeiy interesting to go over the bibliographical notes to see the contemptuous or, at best, contemptuously patronising tune of the reviewers in the early thirties gradually turning to civility, to a loud chorus of applause."— Anti-Jacobin. " Considered as an aid to the study of the Laureate, this labour of love merits warm commendation. Its grouping of the poems, its biblioarapny and chonology, its catalogue of Biblical allusion and quotations, are each and all substantial accessories to the knowledge of the autnor." — DR. RICHARD GARNETT, in the Illustrated London News. WATSON (E. H. LACON). The Unconscious Humourist, and other Essays. [It; preparation. \_Mr. IVedmore's Short Stories. Neiv and Uniform Issue. Crown Svo., each Volume 35. 6d. net.] IVEDMORE (FREDERICK). Pastorals of France. Fourth Edition. Crown Svo. 35. 6d. net. [Ready. New York : Charles Scribnefs Sons. " A writer in whom delicacy of literary touch is united with an almost disem- bodied fineness of sentiment." — Athenccum. " Of singular quaintness and beauty." — Contemporary Review. "The stories are exquisitely told." — The World. " Delicious idylls, written with Mr. Wedmore's fascinating command of sympathetic incident, and with his characteristic charm of style." — Illustrated London News. "The publication of the 'Pastorals' may be said to have revealed, not only anew talent, but a new literary genre. . . The charm of the writing never fails." — Bookman " In their simplicity, their tenderness, their quietude, iheii truthfulness to the remote life that they depict, 'Pastorals oi France ' are almost perfect." — Spectator. Vigo Street, London, W. 19 WEDMORE {FREDERICK}— continued. Renunciations. Third Edition. With a Portrait by J. J. Shannon. Cr. 8vo. 3*. 6d. net. [Heady. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. "These are clever studies in polite realism. ' — Athtnceum. " They are quite unusual. The picture of Richard Pelse, with his one moment of romance, is exquisite." — St. James's Gax,ette. " 'The Chemist in the Suburbs,' in ' Renunciations,' is a pure joy. . . . The story of Richard Pelse's life is told with a power not unworthy of the now disabled hand that drew for us the lonely old age of M. Parent." — Mk. Traill, in the New Review. "The book belongs to the highest order of imaginative work. ' Renunciations ' are studies from the life — pictures which make plain to us some of the innermost workings of the heart." — Academy. ''Mr. Wedmore has gained for himself an enviable reputation. His style has distinction, has ferm. He has the poet's secret how to bring out the beauty of common things. . . 'The Chemist in the Suburbs,' in 'Renunciations,' is his masterpiece."— Saturday Review. " We congratulate Mr. Wedmore on his vivid, wholesome, and artistic work, so full of suppressed feeling and of quiet strength." — Standard. English Episodes. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d. net. [Ready. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. "Distinction is the characteristic of Mr. Wedmores manner. These things remain on the mind as things seen ; not read of." — Daily News. " A penetrating insight, a fine pathos. Mr. Wedmore is a peculiarly fine and sane and carefully deliberate artist." — Westminster Gaxetie. "In 'English Episodes' we have another proof of Mr Wedmore's unique position among the writers of fiction of the day. We hardly think of his short volumes as 'stories,' but rather as life-secrets and hearts' blood, crystalised somehow, and, in their jewel-form, cut with exceeding skill by the hand of a master-workman.' . . The faultless episode of the 'Vicar of Pimlico' is the best in loftiness of purpose and keeness of interest ; but the ' Fitting Obsequies ' is its equal on different lines, and deserves to be a classic.''— World. "' English Episodes' are worthy successors of 'Pastorals' and 'Renunciations,' and with them should represent a permanent addition to Literature." — Academy. There may also be had the Collected Edition ( iSgj) of '" Pastorals of Prance" and "Renunciations," with Title-page by John Fulleylove, R.I. 55. net. WICKSTEED {P. H., Warden of University Halt). Dante : Six Sermons. * # * A Fourth Edition. (Unaltered Reprint). Cr. 8vo. is. net. " It is impossible not to be struck wtth the reality and earnestness with which Mr. Wickiteed seeks to do justice to what are the supreme elements of the Curr.meJia its spiritual significance, and the aepth and insight of its moral teaching." — Guardian, 20 The Publications of Elkin Mathews WYNNE (FRANCES). Whisper! A Volume of Verse. Fcap. 8vo. buckram. 2s. 6d. net. Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher. "A little volume of singularly sweet and graceful poems, hardly one ef which can be read by any lover of poetry without definite pleasure, and everyone who reads either of them without is, we venture to say, unable to appreciate that play of light and shadow on the heart ofman which is of the very easence of poetry." -Spectator. " The book includes, to my humble taste, many very charming pieces, mu-ical, simple, straightforward and not 'as sad as night.' It is long since 1 have read a more agreeable volume of verse, successful up to the measure of its aims and ambitions."— Mr. ANDREW LANG, in Longman s Magaxint. TEATS (W. B.). The Shadowy Waters. A Poetic Play. [/« preparation. The Wind among the Reeds (Poems). [/» preparation. Mr. Elkin Mathews holds likewise the only copies of the following Books printed at the Private f?-ess of the Rev. C. Henry Daniel, Fellow of Worcester College, Oxjord. BRIDGES (ROBERT). The Growth of Love. Printed in Fell's old English type, ou Whatman paper, ioo copies. Fcap. 4to. £$. 3s. net. Shorter Poems. Printed in Fell's old English type, on Whatman paper. 100 copies. Five Parts. Fcap. 41.0. £2. I2s.6d. net. [Very fno remain. HYMN I ECCLESIJE CVRA HENRICI DANIEL. Small 8vo. (4882), £1. 15*. net. BLAKE HIS SONGS OF INNOCENCE. Sq. i6mo. 100 copies only. i$s. net. MILTON ODE ON THE NATIVITY. Sq. l6mo. 105. 6d. net. LONDON: VIGO STREET, W. DATE DUE FFRlfi \m ?FE ? 1971 4 GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. UC SQUTHERN.REGJONAL UBFWRY F ACJl II Y I III llll! AA 000 608 547 6 IVERSITY OF CA. RIVERSIC 3 1210 01285 0028