A Selection from the Liber Studiorum of J. M. W. Turner. A Drawing-Book for Art Students suggested by the Writings of Mr. Buskin. With a Historical Introduction by Mr. Frederick Wedmore, and Practical Notes by Frank Short. London, etc.: Blackie & Son, Limited.
The very great utility, to use no stronger expression, of a careful study of the Liber Studiorum for any one who desires to become a draughtsman or painter of landscape will be readily acknowledged, even by those who do not share Mr. Ruskin’s passionate enthusiasm for Turner’s work. To reproduce satisfactorily the Liber at a cost which would place it within the reach of the average student was a worthy design, and so far as certain of the reproductions are concerned the attempt has been more than justified by the result. Those of the series which are reproduced in mezzotint from photogravure plates which have been worked over by Mr. Frank Short are extremely interesting, not only as giving a very excellent reproduction of Turner’s work, but also as showing how a judicious reinforcement of a mechanical process by artistic skill can produce a result impossible otherwise at anything like the cost. There are four of these mezzotint photogravures, and three of them are of the highest excellence; the fourth is rather hard. The reproductions of the etchings are very satisfactory; but the process blocks which constitute the smaller illustrations in the text are by no means good. The colour in which they are printed, too, is unsuitable. The book as a whole, however, is a luxurious drawing- book, and the practical suggestions by Mr. Frank Short are as valuable as one would have expected from so earnest a student and so competent an artist and craftsman. The introduction by Mr. Frederick Wedmore gives an account of the Liber, and quotations from Mr. Stopford Brooke and Mr. Ruskin are interspersed throughout the portfolio.
The Stuart Dynasty. By Percy M. Thornton. London: William Ridgway. 1890.
Though many archives have been ransacked for material for this volume, it cannot be said that any important fresh light has been thrown either upon the characters of the Stuart monarchs, or upon the ‘occurrents’ of their reigns. The chief interest of the volume lies in the admirable reproductions by Messrs. Walker & Boutall of Stuart portraits, that of James II of England, the property of the Queen, being reproduced with specially remarkable delicacy.
Complete Concordance to the Poems and Songs of Robert Burns. J. B. Reid, M.A. Glasgow: Kerr & Richardson.
A young person on being asked, in malice prepense, whether she did not think Shakespeare greatly overrated, replied innocently, ‘Perhaps he is, but he is so much quoted, you know’. ‘That is because he has simply collected common sayings and strung them together’, was the wicked answer. The same inconsequent observation might be made of Burns. He is so much quoted that he has patented all the good things, for after laboriously turning an original phrase, we find that some listener with a good memory fixes it as Shakespeare’s or as Burns’s, or transfixes us with a line from one or the other expressing the same notion vastly better. With Mrs. Cowden Clarke’s Shakespeare Concordance and Mr. Reid’s Burns Concordance, we can verify our references, and see whether or not our good things have been anticipated. The publication of such a volume, involving a large outlay over a great number of years, is highly creditable at once to the enthusiasm and the patience of publisher and editor. The work has been done once for all, and with marvellous thoroughness and accuracy. The most noticeable philological point which the Concordance readily enables one to determine is the origin of the words used by Burns. Without going so far towards the elimination of the spirit from the letter as that German professor who is at present engaged upon his magnum opus, ‘On the Irregular Verbs of Robert Burns’, it is interesting to note that, so far as a rapid calculation discloses, the proportion of Scotch and Saxon words is very much smaller than one would have suspected, although no account is taken of the repetition of the same words, which in a reliable estimate should be taken into account. We find then in a few pages of the Concordance the following percentages: Scotch, 10 per cent.; Saxon, 24 per cent.; French, 28 per cent.; Latin, 38 per cent. That the Scottish national poet should have so far departed from the well of the Scots tongue pure and undefiled, if it ever were so, as to use 66 per cent, of Latin and French words is rather remarkable. A more thorough analysis of Burns’s words than we have been able to make might, however, upset this calculation and conclusion.
Anent Old Edinburgh, and some of the Worthies who walked its Streets, with Other Papers. By Alison Hay Dunlop. Edinburgh: R. & H. Somerville. 1890.
The Book of Old Edinburgh, written by Miss Dunlop and her brother as a guide to the Old Edinburgh Street in the Exhibition of 1886, came upon most people as a surprise, for few had suspected that there was living in Edinburgh an antiquarian woman with the spirit of the Society of Antiquaries double distilled in her, and with a pen as graceful even as Dr. John Brown’s. Anent Old Edinburgh is one of the most charming books of its kind. The racy Scots stories and the topographical sketches ought to be read by every stranger who wends his way down to Stock bridge, or up the Canongate and the High Street to the Lawnmarket and the Castle.
