(C. P. Thunberg, ap. Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 142). On the other hand, the aged may be left to die without fire or food (cf. E. J. Eyre, J. of Discov. in Central Australia, ii. 321). Meanwhile, as against such instances of abandonment, which on the whole are rare, might be set a host of cases in which we find rude savages tending their dying most carefully up to their last moments, or carrying the sick and feeble about with them, often at great cost of labour, when changing camp. Altogether, this is a question to be thrashed out in the light of the evidence, which is both copious and conflicting ; and it is to be hoped that Mr. Basevi will at some future time have the opportunity to collect and digest it.
From Ritual to Romance. By Jessie L. Weston. Cambridge University Press, 1919. 12s. 6d. net.
Miss Jessie Weston's new volume follows, in general, the line of argument laid down by the author in her earlier book published in the "Quest" series, but it treats the subject more at large and reinforces the argument with much fresh material.
The main contention of the book is that neither the theory of Christian origin nor that of a folk-lore source combines all the chief features of the Grail story or explains the gravity and sense of mysticism with which the subject is approached and handled. Abandoning these two theories, Miss Weston traces the rise of the story to a survival of Mithraic beliefs still vaguely remembered in Britain at the time the Grail story arose; these Mithraic observances themselves being, in her view, but one form of the almost universal cult of agricultural deities, the outcome of the universal desire for the fecundity of nature and of human life. Her book is an attempt to combine the largest possible number of the incidents of the Grail story under one system which will, she believes, co-ordinate them, and thus provide an explanation of the whole cycle. The attempt is an ingenious one, and it comes with all the weight of Miss Weston’s long and careful study of the
