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POPULAR superstition is so long-lived and popular humor is so antiquated that the two volumes before us, although they would naturally be thought to belong to different centuries, may be regarded as contemporaneous in their subject matter. Both titles are, to a certain extent, misnomers in Mr. Dyer's book there is much that is not folk-lore, and in Mr. Ashton's there is a considerable portion of the humor that belongs to all times and nations alike. But, not to cavil, traits of rural England in Shakespeare's day and for long afterwards are instructively illustrated in one; and, in the other, characteristics of the city of the Roundheads in the Cavalier time are exemplified by a series of anecdotes and ballads, many of which Shakespeare undoubtedly laughed at, when he was young, and was bored by when he grew old. By the help of both, an amusing, vivid, and tolerably complete idea of the habits of thinking and pleasuring among the lower orders before the Revolution can be made out. In the volume especially devoted to Shakespeare and the country, for one cannot think of folk-lore in a municipality, there is a plentiful store of knowledge regarding witches, ghosts, elves, fairies; the Robins, Pucks, Jacks, Wills, Joans, Pegs, Hobs, Gills, and all benevole or malicious sprites; demons of earth, fire, and air, and the other ranks of the devil's hierarchy, with which our ancestors made walking o' nights a diversion. But, instead of confining himself within such limits, the author has really written a dictionary of popular beliefs and customs referred to by Shakespeare, and by sucking dry special authorities on one or another subject

1 Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. By the REV. T. F. THISELTON DYER, M. A. Oxon. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square. 1884.

has swelled out his one book so that it is a little library by itself. Although not an original work, as might be thought, but a compilation and condensation of several others, small and large, it does not pretend to being anything new. Its usefulness, so far from being impaired by its second-hand nature, is the greater, inasmuch as the author opens in a general view a much larger horizon than any specialist could have done by his own separate investigation.

Opening the volume at random, one cannot but be struck by the curious psychological fact that the uneducated hold nothing so true as that into which an element of doubt enters. In the history of all superstitions, hallucinations, chicanery, or other sources of vulgar error, faith is not only harder to combat than is common sense, but faith in evil is more obstinate than faith in good. The devilworshipers, however dignified by more euphemistic names, are by no means an extinct sect now, and in our forefathers' day their imaginations were active. What more plausible historical argument could a modern pessimist adduce for his opinions than the disproportionate number of evil beings which were conjured out of the north of old, the tra ditional habitation of demons, as may still be noticed in Milton? They thronged the witches' Sabbath; they rode howling down the winds in the pack of the spectral hunter; they assumed all disguises, corporeal or ghostly, ugly or fair, strange or ordinary, human or beastly, Amaimon, whom Glendower gave the bastinado, Barbason, Mahu, the chief dictator of hell, and the whole unloosed legion. Nor did they only walk the earth in "all shapes that

Humour, Wit, and Satire of the Seventeenth Century. Collected and Illustrated by Jons ASHTON. New York: J. W. Bouton. 1884.

man goes up and down in ;" their shadowy influence was felt in many a ludicrous conceit or cruel custom. The goat still went to the devil every twentyfour hours to have his beard combed; a tailless cat would empty a room like the pestilence; the stool and stake were at hand for the trial and execution of any withered, crooked, mumbling old crone. The supernatural was as usual then as scientific experiments are now. The moon shed insanity, engendered the abortive moon-calf, touched herbs with medicinal virtue; the thunderstone fell; the Scotch barnacle blossomed into geese; the owl shrieked,

"the fatal bellman

Which gives the stern'st good night;" the basilisk fascinated; the phoenix, dragon, and unicorn were names of weird meaning; and rats were rhymed to death in Ireland. Similarly, the plants, flowers, insects, reptiles, had curious properties and strange histories. In medicine, next to religion the great field of unreason, alchemists distilled potable gold, witches made mummy for Othello handkerchiefs, and quacks sold drugs against the malign influence of the sun's and moon's eclipses. To a truly scientific mind, how almost out of nature must it seem that the sanest mind in all literature was "evolved" during the prevalence of such a view of natural phenomena !

In the latter half of his work Mr. Dyer has given attention to pastimes, habits and customs, and miscellaneous matters, that exhibit the material rather than the mental state of the English country folk in Shakespeare's age. "England was merry England then," as the verse says, and it is pleasant to know that a few of the old Maypoles remain: "one still supports a weathercock in the churchyard at Pendleton, Manchester; and in Derbyshire, a few years ago, several were to be seen standing on some of the village greens." Around them, adorned with St. George's

banner and the white, forked pennon, ranged the ancient morris-dance of Scarlet, Maid Marian, and Little John; and near by were played the comic interludes that furnished "more matter for a May morning." The revolving months brought frequent festivals, each with its special character: now there was drinking of the Whitsun ale, sold by the church-wardens to repair the church; and now the "booting" and hock-cart of the harvest home furnished more amusement to the young; Midsummer Eve and Hallowmas, and above all Christmas, with their questioning maids, their soul-cakes, their gilt nutmegs and wassail candles; and many, many more there were that make our own holidays seem starvelings by comparison. Births, christenings, marriages, deaths, and burials, now too generally only matters of record, were solemn and, even in the case of the last two, happy occasions. But all this is become, so to speak, an old wives' tale. Briefly, by merely glancing here and there in the last two hundred pages, one is sure to come upon some "rite of May" that he would have been glad "to do observaunce" to. Cakes and ale we have, and ginger is hot i' the mouth; but how many a pretty extravagance has gone by that once made Britannia's Pastorals something more genuine than an elaborated suggestion from Theocritus! Colin Clout is a homely name, and Autolycus is a pleasant one, but both "suffer not thinking on with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is,

"For oh, for oh, the hobby-horse is forgot.'" Would that Colin might again come to court, say we; even at the risk of not escaping a peerage so easily as he was wont!

Mr. Ashton's volume exhibits city life, or such of its least repulsive elements as gave color to some of the vulgarities and tavern fooleries of Shakespeare's dramas, and formed the staple of the low comedy. It is a collection

of jests, brief tales, and ballads, with a slight admixture of political satire, and is consequently a book to be read in, and not through. In large quantities, a jest book is almost as dry reading as Jewish history. In the first place, much of it is already familiar, and has been from the dawn of the humorous faculty in man; in the second place, many of the jokes have been improved on since antiquity, so that to look for attractive humor in them is like looking for human beauty in an anthropoid ape; in the third place - but this is to be guilty of that very lack of freshness in treatment of which we complain. The man who hoped to live to hear his own funeral sermon preached; the sot who went to bed last night like a beast, "What, so drunk?" "No, so sober;" the trio who, being tied over a stream by girdles, the first to a tree, the second to the first, and so on, hung quietly while the upper one undid his fastening in order to tighten it (Hibernice, "Wait till I spit on my hands"); the rogue who called on the bystanders to seize the judge, "for I go in danger of my life because of him; " the husband who gave speech to his dumb wife by the help of the magician, but found no magician potent enough to stop her tongue; the lass who remarked of the very old wine that it was very little for its age (ascribed sometimes to Foote); the newfledged scholar who proved two glasses, or chickens, or herrings, or whatsoever, to be three, and was told to solace himself with the third; and many another of the witty characters who are resuscitated in these pages, were probably among.t .those who told Noah that "it would n't be much of a shower." In fact, one need only read over the list of sources whence Mr. Ashton has reprinted these extracts to see that some of his authorities are merely compendiums of all the wit extant, as is declared on their title pages; and consequently the collection, as a whole, belongs to the seven

teenth century only in the sense that it was all printed between the extreme limits 1600-1700.

It should not be understood, however, that the work is without local or temporal color. The chief butt is of course the countryman, as always. The despised nationality is, as in Shakespeare's time, the Welsh; but there must be some tenderness in Mr. Ashton's heart for the Scotch, who surely were more shot at than would be thought from these extracts. The Irish and the Jews, who furnish so many first and second clowns to our contemporary drolleries, appear scarcely at all. The Puritan, who in humor is necessarily the hypocrite in a vile form, and the Cavalier, who poses as dandy or braggart, are more fully represented. fully represented. In general, however, no class or sect is aimed at; the wit is individual, ascribed to the jesters of the age, Scogin, Hobson, George Peele, or Tarlton, and the humor universal, dealing with such themes as the married man's repentance, the evils of getting poor by drink, the millennium to come when the devil goes blind, the cozening of tailors, and the praises of the black leather bottle. What is read here, in fact, is just such a farrago as would have been heard by a frequent lounger in the old London taverns. There is a smell of nappy ale in one's nostrils, and a noise of roisterers in one's ears, throughout the perusal.

The illustrations make, to our taste, the most entertaining part of the volume. Rude as the cuts are, there is a certain speaking quality in their postures, an esprit in their very woodenness, a naïveté in their ignorance of drawing and perspective, that are charming; their stiffnesses are those of Punch and Judy, their diminutiveness is puppet-like, and they frequently tell the story more quickly than docs the text. "THE JOLLY WELSH WOMAN, Who, drinking at the Sign of the Crown in London, found a Spring in her Mugg, for Joy of

which hur Sung the praise of Old England resolving never to return to Wales again," is made far more interesting, with her smooth, long, old-maidish hair and melancholy features, as she hugs the huge tankard with a crone-like fondness. The captain stepping boldly off the globe, with his "Hey for Lubberland" (a new Cockayne, except that now it is roasted pigs instead of geese that go about crying, "Come, eat me "), gives us a new sense of the locality of that carnal paradise. The wonderfully black devil, with a stiff tail like a twisted harpoon, and evidently with the intentions of a very bad Bruin; pig-faced Miss Tannakin Skinker, the long-nosed lass, "dashing" the countenances of her suitors; Prince Rupert's aged monkey; the Cavalier, with his ribboned love-lock, his half-unbuttoned doublet and sleeves, his ruffled hosetops, big spurs, and horned boots,a very modish figure; Mrs. Caudle giving her first Boulster Lecture to her mate, who vainly simulates slumber; the unfortunate maid who counted her chickens too soon, all these, and others, have a kind of galvanic lifelikeness. With what a jaunty grace the valiant cook-maid prances off on her rockinghorse of a steed! With what a piteous and solemn patience the Anabaptist convert suffers himself to be dipped! How the beauty of Nell Gwynne's face is clouded under its grotesque patches, and with what meekness does the prince,

afterwards her royal lover, bend his head while the Scots (1651) hold "their young kinges nose to ye grinstone"! Especially pathetic are the cuts delineating the death of Prince Rupert's famous white Lapland dog, Boy, who was slain at Marston Moor, near the field where, among the pre-Raphaelite bean plants, his master's head may be seen in hiding. Boy was believed to be supernatural, a witch, and there was great rejoicing over his poor corpse among the Parliament men; for his fall was gazetted far and wide.

There is one great defect in the volume. It is, as has been said, a book to be referred to, but not read; yet there is neither a table of contents nor an index. The omission, in such a case, is unpardonable. The historical value of the work is particularly lessened, since no one can possibly carry in his memory such disconnected and brief illustrations of the times, or find any one of them without a careful and tedious hunt. Mr. Dyer's Folk-Lore, on the contrary, contains an admirable and exhaustive index, and the matter itself is arranged in a very plain and systematic way, with many sub-titles and cross-references. Both volumes are valuable contributions to the history of the common people; but from their fragmentary nature, only a very incomplete and piecemeal idea of their contents can be given in the space at our disposal.

THE present discussions about ancient and modern languages in education are likely to revive a sort of assertion, which turns up now and then, as to the comparative advantages of one language over another, for purposes of conversation, oratory, science, etc. It was un

doubtedly the fashion, within the memory of living men, to set down English as vastly inferior to the Continental languages in copiousness and in neatness; and this verdict was meekly accepted by Englishmen and Americans. I suspect that it has long since been set aside

as against evidence; and I believe that exceptions might be taken to the rulings of many of the older judges in the case. At all events, it is amusing that just about the time when the Germans began to revolt most against the intrusive French element in their language, French began to open its doors to a quantity of English words. But I was

struck, the other day, with a curious awkwardness in French expression, arising from grammatical forms, which may have its precise parallel in our own language, though I have not yet detected one. I find the labels of two esteemed French wine houses reading, respectively, "Cruse et Fils Frères" and "Les Fils de Victor Jacqueminot," which we translate, "Cruse and Sons" and "Victor Jacqueminot's Sons;" the point being that "Cruse et Fils" and "Jacqueminot Fils" might mean one son, as well as many, and, the plural being the same as the singular, what seem to us singularly roundabout phrases have to be adopted. I should like, however, to see "Fromont Jeune et Risler Ainé adequately translated into English, so as to look well on a signboard.

A superior French scholar called my attention to what appeared to be a novelty to him, that there is no proper French word for to stand. I explained it to him as resulting from the absorption of sto into sum; stabam in French becomes étais, and stare becomes être. But why should this be necessary in French, when Italian can still keep stare in its original sense, after making stato "been " "?

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In modern French froidement is an adverb in constant use to describe a certain manner in conversation. I was much perplexed by it as long as I translated it "coldly," for it evidently was used of people who were quite cordial to those they were answering. But is "coolly " much better? Would "composedly" be right, in most cases, or "calmly"? Can the difficulty be that

froidement expresses the ordinary unnoticed manner of our race, and that therefore we have no special phrase to describe it at all!

I say "our race." One is often put to it for a word to include English and Americans alike. "Anglo-Saxon" and "English-speaking" are both used, and both are unsatisfactory. But surely, no coinage ever exceeded in awkwardness the late Dr. Lieber's "Anglican tribe."

- I was very much interested in Octave Thanet's story, The Bishop's Vagabond, in the January Atlantic, and still more in the reproduction of the "Cracker" dialect of South Carolina, which is on the whole very good; but I am sure that no Cracker would recognize some sounds as his own. I have just questioned several South Carolinians, one from near Aiken, with regard to the sounds to which I shall call attention, and not one recognized them as genuine reproductions. Nearly every. body about Aiken will of course say cyar, gyarden, etc.; but this breaking regularly occurs, I think, only when c and g come before ar. No person in South Carolina, Cracker or other wise, will accept cyant, cyould, cyoffin, no 'cyount, cyoop, as reproductions of any native sounds, while wyould is impossi ble for anybody. The Cracker would say neither cyoop nor coop, but coob; nor would he say (for sure) either shoo or suah, but always sho'. Suah is a very good rendering of a sound common among classes above the Cracker. A Cracker would say, I think, "I'm gwine ter do it," but never, "What hev you gwine and done?" that is, gwine for going, but not for gone. He would say, not real, but r'al; not yes'day, but yis tiddy; not mahnin' (morning), but mawnin', just as he is made to say, correctly, bawn (born) and Lawd (Lord). I do not believe that any amount of assumed dignity in the presence of guests of "quality" would bring from him "alight,