marvellous 'Satan' of Tintoretto which so fascinated me. Now I am lying under those shadowy acacias on the Lido of San Nicoletto, which become after any lengthened stay in Venice in May so doubly dear. As I lie here at the sunset-hour, not far from the desecrated and desolate Hebrew burial-ground, under the boughs of the blossoming acacias, I look across the lagoons towards the city, still beautifully unreal in the scirocco veil which has dimly shrouded it all day. There is no wind: the tide, now on the flow, makes no motion save here and there a noise- less swirl, and is, indeed, only to be marked by the swaying of the 'dead-man's-hair,' or sea-grass, as the current creeps slowly and steadily onward. But a quiver in the atmosphere, a tremor in the silvery haze above and beyond San Michele and Murano forebodes some imminent change. At this exquisite moment, when neither night nor day nor gloaming prevails, and when everything visible seems as un- substantial as in a mirage, it is easy as well as pleasant to let the imagination idly dwell upon that young and immortal 'Bacchus' whom Tintoretto has shown us, stepping garlanded from the Ionian waves. For the hour and the place lend magic to such a remembrance till it becomes real and near, and one half expects to see Dionysos pass before one^s eyes from out the green leafland behind, or rise and come forward from amidst the shadows of the lagoons. But just as Venice seems to merge into Naxos, the tremor in the north has spread southward; and already a rustle in the acacias overhead tells of im- mediate awakening. And now, quicker than I can write, though, in truth, I scribble tardily enough, the sky is almost clear save for misty fleeces fast retreating inland across the Laguna Morte; the wavelets, no longer opaline, change to delicate green, and, further ofl^, to azure; and a fresh wind blows past the upper islands from the mountains far away beyond Torcello. In a few moments all is changed, and 'Bacchus' is again a dream, a beautiful unreality. But as the flying shreds of mist and streaks of cloud above Fusina and Mestre shine like crimson flames, as scarlet and purple and gold burn above Venice in splendour wholly indescribable, suddenly the beauty of Tintoretto's plumed and triumphant 'Satan' dominates my imagination. This glowing splendour, this terrible glory, is one with his magnificence of beauty, with his power and dominion; and now, in a flash, I realise how some grand or beautiful human creation may have birth from contemplation of no earthly original, but from the cloud-fires of heaven and the insight of a supreme imagination. William Shahp.
REVIEWS AND NOTES.
Mr. T. W. Rolleston's Teaching of Epictetus (Camelot Series, Walter Scott), will hardly take rank among the first-rate translations from the classics. It is perhaps quite a proper method, in such versions from the antique tongues, to use an English which has about it a certain archaic flavour. But all English should be idiomatic, and Mr. Rolleston's style has not altogether rid itself of reminiscences of the construing lesson and the crib. It is marvellous that men who in the expression of their own thoughts write perfectly good English, should, when translating, be dragged in such halting and stumbling fashion at the heels of alien and obsolete constructions. And the pity is that we cannot have the classics done into English by some one who is utterly uninfected with Greek. Granted these shortcomings, however, the book is not an unserviceable one, as bringing 'down to a yet lower level of price and popularity the work which has already been done in more finished style by Mr. Long. Of the later classic moralists Epictetus is by far the greatest, and of the Stoics he is for all time the St. John, as Seneca is the somewhat windy Apollos. One may describe him as a kind of second .Socrates with the rough wit left out, and with a strong dash of Thomas a Kempis infused. The Christian-like character of his teaching has often been noted, and perhaps nothing can show more clearly than it and the work of other later Pagan schools, that the great movement which is generally viewed apart and isolated, was in reality only one of the phases of a very w'ide emotional development. Unquestionably a great part of the value of such teaching depended on the reaction it embodied against the then prevalent social conditions — and to some at least of us moderns, the incessant physicking with intellectual antidotes or anodynes must seem to savour slightly of the valetudinarian habit- There are others, however, and many of the best among us, who still in seas 3ns of doubt and difficulty, prop their minds with the comfortable sentences of the 'halting slave.' Mr. Rolleston introduces his book with a very readable, if somewhat inexhaustive introduction; but those who have formed a just idea of Greek democracy will not soon pardon his unfair and illiberal glance at Demosthenes and the great Athenian republic.
We have to acknowledge receipt of the following:—
English Wayfaring Life, XlVth Century. By M. J. J. Jusserand, translated by Lucy Toulmin Smith; published by T. Fisher Unwin, London.
A Russian Proprietor: The Cossacks: ami Ivan Ilyitch. By
Count Tolstoi; published by Walter Scott, London; and by same
publisher—
- Poems of George Crabbe, edited by Edward Lamplough.
- Life of Crabbe. By T. S. Kebbel, M.A.
- Life of Mill. By W. L. Courtney.
- Essays of Lowell, with an apology for a preface.
- Essays of Johnson. Edited by Stuart J. Reid.
- Nobly Won. A novel in two volumes. By B. Pullen-Burry; published by Remington and Co., London.
- Quiet Folk. By R. Menzies Fergusson, M.A. Illustrated by John Lochhead. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.
The Ruskin Reading Guild, which has recently been established, has announced the issue of a monthly Journal. This journal will be devoted to the diffusion of a knowledge of the writings of Ruskin, and to the promotion, by means of associative effort, of thoughtful reading of good literature. The editor is Mr. Williain Marwick, Hillside House, Arbroath, N.B.
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable. Printers to Her Majesty.
