at leading true Christian lives. Buddhism was a protest against mechanical formalism; so was the dialectic of Soerates, and Dr. Johnson's celebrated dictum, "Clear your mind of cant." Such protests are always necessary. As far as possible a compromise ought to be effected between the Jewish and the Gentile, the dogmatic and the rational modes of thought, so that neither respect for authority nor the duty of private judgment is put out of sight.

On Sunday evening, Feb. 26, the last of a series of sermons addressed to the junior members of the University was delivered by the Bishop of Peterborough. The text chosen was Matth. xix. 22, "But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." On these words Bishop Magee preached a sermon, the power and eloquence of which it would be hard to surpass. Nothing could have been better suited to the vast congregation of undergraduates, who crowded every corner of St. Mary's, than the eloquent appeal which called upon them now, in the days of their youth, to give up some at least of the "great possessions" that stand between them and their Master, and not merely to offer to Him the dregs of a negligent and wasted life.

in the hope of making this humanity still more effectual. Where food is given, water should also be supplied, and kept continually from freezing: for birds are miserable without water. Again, besides bread, which I firmly believe has often been the death of starving gluttons who are not used to it, odd bits of meat and fat will be very acceptable. Bird-seeds of all sorts can be had at Innes' shop in Queen Street. And lastly, an excellent plan is to get a large cocoa-nut, saw it in half, and fix the two halves either in the fork of a tree, or in some place where they will be easily discovered by the birds and can be seen from a window; this will soon be the special delight of the titmice, but in hard times other birds too will have recourse to it, and it will last them a long time.

It is much to be hoped that by the time these few lines appear in print, the green grass will be once more appearing and yielding the birds their natural food of grubs and insects. This spell of bitter weather is more than usually hard upon them, for when it came many of them had already paired, and were beginning to think of their nests. As long ago as the 6th the chaffinches were beginning to practise their song, and a day or two later most of them had it nearly perfect. All round Christ Church meadow the pairing was going on of titmice, blackbirds, etc.; and now not only have all the weddings been put off, but many a bride or bridegroom may be lying stiff under the snow. W. W. F.

HARD TIMES FOR THE BIRDS.

OUR birds may just now be very thankful that they have a town to come into, where they have at least a fair chance of picking up something to eat. I walked this morning (Sunday) round by Godstow and Wytham, and found the country almost as destitute of animal life as Siberia: a wag-tail or two on the river-ice, and a few melancholy rooks on the wing, were all I saw till I reached the first farmyard at Wytham. Here there was a large and noisy assembly, including many tree-sparrows; and close by, on a bit of grass which the wind had cleared of snow, was a congregation of rooks and a water-hen. It was strange to see, in the midst of the universal desolation, and hard by this desponding company of half-starved birds, that a palm which overhangs the stream, was actually putting forth healthy-looking silky buds.

As soon as I neared the city again, birds began to be abundant. Wagtails ran about in the streets: even meadowpipits and larks have been seen there. A woodcock was taken in Wadham quad, the day after the great snow-storm, in an enfeebled condition. A rumour reaches me of a Great Crested Grebe, but as yet I have no particulars. Siskins have appeared in Christ Church meadow: while the tow-path was echoing with shouts, and the meadow was for a few minutes deserted one day of the Torpids, I enjoyed the sight of a very bold pair of these charming little birds pecking at an invisible something on the ice just below the Cherwell island. But even in the city it is as much as the birds can do to get a living. The fieldfares seem to have wisely departed to milder regions, and are no doubt enjoying themselves further down the valley where there is no snow lying. Some redwings are here, but looking sadly dejected. The robins occasionally sing, and never seem to lose heart entirely; but it is a very bad time for thrushes, blackbirds, and others whose natural diet is an animal one. Yesterday I saw, to my horror, nearly a dozen blackbirds, most of them cocks, on a stall in the market; victims, I suppose, to the tameness which hunger forces on them.

From what I hear, I believe that much is being done to keep these unlucky songsters alive. The park-keeper is busy with grain with which some kind friend of the birds provides him, and there is hardly a house where food is not put out at the windows. I will venture to make one or two suggestions,

Reviews.

SIR C. BOWEN'S VIRGIL.1

In his preface Sir C. Bowen boldly calls the attention of his readers to the two conditions of a successful translation of the Aeneid which Conington long ago enunciated: first, that it should be an English poem; secondly, that it should be a translation and not a mere paraphrase. Nor is he content with these; he would add a third axiom, that Virgil "must be translated more or less lineally, as well as literally." The familiar quotations, often single lines, with which the mind of the scholar is stored, must be reproduced as complete wholes, pointed and rounded so as to linger in the memory like their originals. This last condition has never yet been satisfied in an English translation, because no metre has ever been tried which could gather and grasp in a single line the whole of the rich material that one Virgilian hexameter will often contain. So our new translator looked about for a metre which would be capacious yet rhythmical, free and elastic, yet lending itself easily to rhyme, which in Sir Charles' well-chosen words, "adds to our sense of adjustment and nicety, and awakens in the reader an interest in the fortunes and success of each single line, which reacts usefully on the industry and care of the translator." English hexameters would not do: they do not admit of rhyme, and the dissyllable at the end of each line is apt to become tedious, like the wearisome blank verse line of Fletcher the dramatist, which we first made acquaintance with in some parts of Henry VIII. No other metre which had as yet been tried seemed to promise well; and the result was the invention of one almost if not quite new, which has been used throughout this volume with such remarkable skill as to exhibit it to the reader at its very best. This metre is simply the hexameter shorn of its last syllable, and thus admitting easily of rhyme, e. g.

perhaps rather lilt, about it, arising from the dactylic or anapaestic capabilities of our language, which, if it cannot reproduce the majestic march of the Virgilian hexameter, at least gives the reader a sense of stir and motion, and lifts him fairly out of all metrical pettinesses. It is in fact very nearly identical with the swinging anapaestic metre of which Lord Tennyson has of late years become so fond; but a close examination will disclose the fact that Sir C. Bowen, following Virgil, nearly always begins his line with a dactyl or a spondee, while the freer Tennysonian line starts as often as not with an anapaest. There is a further difference of some importance that Sir C. Bowen has done all he can to relieve the monotony of his metre (for it is apt to grow wearisome in the Aeneid) by carefully breaking his lines at various points, following his original here too as closely as was possible; while Tennyson, who has only written short poems in anapaestic metre, has not felt this necessity.

So much for the vehicle in which this translation is conveyed. But is it a success? The answer of most lovers of Virgil will probably be, that being handled by an excellent scholar with a mind saturated with Virgil and with the best English poetry, it is a complete success in the translation of the Eclogues, and only not a complete success in the Aeneid, because the Aeneid is untranslatable. The peculiar force of Virgil's diction and metre in combination, is to give dignity even to the comparatively trivial incidents and descriptions that must occur in a poem of such length; so that even where we grow tired of Aeneas and his battles, each line has still a stately beauty for us in which the mind and ear find complete satisfaction and repose. This cannot ever be the case in a translation, simply because no translator, even if he be himself a poet, can ever share the inward fiery feeling that prompts and sustains the creator of a great original work of art, in striving to make the outward form of his creation respond to its inward meaning and spirit. Perhaps the only English metre that could ever have been hopefully applied to the Aeneid is that of Paradise Lost; and the secret of that verse seems to have vanished. Landor alone in this century had

some sense of it: but Landor would never have had the patience to translate the Aeneid.

But we should be doing Sir C. Bowen injustice if we did not acknowledge with gratitude that in certain passages, even of the Aeneid, his translation will give the English reader as perfect an idea of Virgil's magnificence as our language is capable of conveying to him. We have only space for a single example, from Aeneid vi. 298 and following

lines:

Sentinel over its waters an awful ferryman stands, Charon, grizzly and rugged: a growth of centuries lies Hoary and rough on his chin; as a flaming furnace his eyes. Hung in a loop from his shoulders a foul scarf round him he ties; Now with his pole impelling the boat, now trimming the sail, Urging his steel-grey bark with its burden of corpses pale; Aged in years, but a god's old age is unwithered and hale. If these lines be compared with the original, it will be seen that they are somewhat freer than is compatible with strict translation; but it is exactly this freedom that gives them their poetical merit. A better proof could hardly be found of the impossibility of really translating Virgil as a whole into English poetry.

In the Eclogues Virgil is not so distinctly Virgil as in the Aeneid, and perfect translation is here more attainable with out sustained and wearisome labour. Hence Sir Charles' rendering of the Eclogues is fresher and brighter than his work in the Aeneid; it is, in the present writer's opinion, the best translation he has ever seen, and a better one is never likely to be achieved. A single quotation must suffice again, this time from the ninth Eclogue (line 38):—

Come, Galatea, where in the waves can a merriment be? Here are the golden blooms of spring; earth bountiful, see, Here by the river scatters her bright-hued flowers evermoreOver the cavern hangs one poplar of silvery white, Lissom vines have woven a roof that shades it from light; Come, let the madcap billows in thunder break on the shore! Whether or no the Aeneid has yielded up any considerable part of its magic to the new translation, we may at least feel sure that this rendering of the Eclogues will live, for it is true poetry. If Sir C. Bowen is only half as successful with the Georgics, and can win them a lasting place in English poetical literature, he will confer an inestimable benefit on the increasing numbers of those who have never been initiated in the Virgilian mysteries.

One word in conclusion. We heartily congratulate Sir C. Bowen for spelling Virgil's revered name as it always has been, and probably always will be, spelt in English literature. We all know that the evidence for Vergilius is overwhelming; but we equally well know that the evidence for Virgil is as strong. 'Virgil" is not a Latin word, but an English form of a Latin word: and we may hope to keep it yet awhile as it has descended to us in our own literature from the scholar-poet of the middle ages.

66

BOYS AND MASTERS.1

"THIS is a story of school life, written because I have had

much to do with boys, though nothing to do with storytelling." This sentence, with which Mr. Gilkes begins his Preface, is an exact description of his book. No one could truthfully pretend that the Headmaster of Dulwich is-so far, at least-a first-class novelist. As little could anyone deny that this story of his, however awkward and inartistic, contains most curiously penetrating glimpses and sidelights of school life. Only the book should be entitled "Masters and Boys." The character which Mr. Gilkes has made his hero is a master. He alone has flesh and blood, roì dè σkiai aïoσovơi, We have the portrait of a master, to whom for fifteen years his school work and life "had been in the place of many

relatives," a man as much at home in the cricket-field as in

his classroom; a rough, keen, sensitive nature, who, as he grows older, is pushed gradually out of things by younger men, till at last he sorrowfully resigns for a very little reason. At such a sketch the cynic might scoff, and those who do not understand will certainly smile-both wrongly, for the man is drawn almost from the life, and the theme is worthy of a master hand. Those who understand the pathos of Browning's poem A Grammarian's Funeral will feel the intensely human tragedy which Mr. Gilkes has imagined, but which he has put into words as inadequately as his own hero would have done. And generally those parts of the book are best which concern the masters. All schoolmasters should read these parts, if only for the tacit instruction which they can get out of them. The boys are less well done. They are not unnatural,—a student of boy life could reconstruct them as Cuvier reconstructed his animals from single bones; but this is scarcely the sort of process which a novelreader expects to go through. And Mr. Gilkes has been here unconsciously influenced by his predecessors in choosing his characters-the bad boy who drinks, and the good boy who dies, and the "little black boy" of curious wickedness. But in reality, though the tale is unadorned and the moral is not pointed, the interest of the book lies in the history of one master.

1 Foys and Masters. By A. H. Gilkes. (London: Longmans.)