FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.
The Abbé Liszt is engaged on the fourth volume of his Memoirs. The work is expected to fill six volumes. The first volume is to appear immediately.
The authorities of the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg intend to bring out a palæographical series, containing specimens of their most important Greek, Latin, Slavonic, French, and other manuscripts.
M. Renan’s health has improved, but his projected tour in Palestine is postponed on account of the disturbed condition of the East. His lectures at the Collège de France on the Old Testament are attended by persons of both sexes and listened to with much interest.
A praiseworthy step has been taken by the Edinburgh Town Council in resolving to place memorial tablets on all spots of historical interest in the city. The first place to receive this mark of attention is the site in Chambers Street (formerly College Wynd) of the house where Sir Walter Scott was born; and it has also been decided to erect a memorial stone over the grave of the novelist’s father in Greyfriars’ Churchyard.
The Senate of Hamburg has made a gift of 1,000 marks to Herr Karl Theodor Gædertz, the author of Geschichte des Niederdeutschen Schauspiels, in acknowledgment of the value of his work in the illustration of the literary history of Hamburg. The present was made through the Hanseatic Minister in Berlin, where Herr Gædertz resides.
A biography of the late Richard Lepsius is in preparation by his pupil and friend Prof. G. Ebers. The author has had the diaries, letters, and other papers of Lepsius placed at his disposal for this purpose.
The successor of the lamented Prof. Lepsius at the Royal Library at Berlin is not yet appointed. We are glad to learn that the post will not be filled by a great name only, but by a specialist. This is, in fact, greatly needed, as the Berlin library is one of the least accessible in Europe to scholars in general. Books are given out but twice a day, and then only if they have been asked for the previous day.
“Count Paul Vasali,” whose lively sketches of Viennese society in the Nouvelle Revue have just been completed, announces that he intends shortly to commence a similar series on society in London.
A collection of unpublished letters of the Countess of Albany is being prepared for the press by Prof. Camillo Antona-Traversi. It is stated that these letters far exceed in interest all the specimens hitherto printed of the correspondence of the Countess.
Says the Athenæum. The Trustees of Cornell University have invited Mr. Eugene Schuyler to give a course of lectures on the diplomatic and consular service of the United States. The course is to be in connection with the Department of History and Political Science. It is hoped that these new lectures, by supplementing those already given in the university in connexion with international law and history, will aid in training men to compete for positions in the service when a proper reform shall be made in the matter of appointments.
The study of palæography is receiving increased attention just now in Italy. A short time since a palæographical school was founded at Naples, under the direction of the learned archivist, Dr. A. Miola. More recently the Pope has established at the Vatican a similar institution, which he has placed under the management of Father Carini.
The Revue Politique et Littéraire states that the MS. of two unpublished tales by Perrault has just been discovered. The titles are “La Fée des Perles” and “Le Petit Homme de Bois.” It is added that the MS. will be offered to the Bibliothèque nationale.
A correspondent writes from Paris that M. Victor Hugo seemed strong and well on his birthday, though troubled with deafness. He expressed his gratification at the Laureate’s sonnet, which made a deep impression on him at the time of its publication, and which he has not forgotten.
The correspondent of the Academy, M. Lambros, has found in a MS. of the fourteenth century, belonging to the Ministry of Education at Athens, a collection, in form of a dialogue, from the works of Menander and Philistion. Boissonade printed a similar one from a Paris MS. to be found in Meineke, “Fragm. Com. Græc.,” iv. 335 ff. That consists, however, of only fifty-four verses, while the Athens one contains 350. The MS. also contains a collection of 415 maxims from Menander, each consisting of a single line.
The French edition of Mr. H. M. Stanley’s book on the Congo, which, as recently announced, is to be published in Brussels, will, we are informed, be translated by Mr. Gerard Harry, one of the editors of the Independance belge and of the Mouvement géographique.
Mr. R. L. Stevenson’s second series of “New Arabian Nights” will be called, not “The Man in the Sealskin Coat,” as at first announced, but “The Dynamiter.” Its purpose is comic. It consists of a “Prologue” and an “Epilogue,” both in the Cigar Divan (in Rupert Street) to which, as readers of the first series may remember, the chance of revolution relegated Prince Florizel of Bohemia; of a certain number of “adventures;” and of a set of subsidiary stories, “The Fair Cuban,” “The Brown Box,”“The Destroying Angel,” and “The Superfluous Mansion.” It will be published almost at once, we believe.
Dr. Ludwig Geiger has begun a new journal which promises to be of great literary importance, Vierteljahrsschrift für Kultur und Litteratur der Renaissance. (Leipzig: Seeman.) In the first number the editor contributes a very thorough study of the life and writings of Publio Fausto Andrelini, of Forli, who taught in Paris from 1489 to 1518, and did much to quicken the impulse of humanism in France. Herr Grimm examines Vasari’s authority for the statement that Michelangelo finished four statues of captives for the tomb of Julius II. He comes to the conclusion that Vasari was mistaken, and that only two, now in the Louvre, were really his work. Herr Zupitza criticises “Three Middle-English versions of Boccaccio’s story of Ghismonda and Guiscardo”—one by Banister, a second by Walter, and a third anonymous. Besides these articles are published unprinted letters of Guarino and Reuchlin. This new quarterly journal has every prospect of filling a decided need in literature, and bringing to light much new material for literary history.
In a recent number of Deutsche Rundschau Herr Herzog gives a vivid sketch of modern progress in an article on “Die Einwirkungen der modernen Verkehrsmittel auf die Culturentwicklung.” His general conclusion is that the discovery of railways and the electric telegraph has tended to democratise society and substitute practical materialism for any moral ideal of life. Only when commerce has become truly world-wide, and national interests have ceased to jar and conflict, must we look for a world-state in which ideal ends again will meet with due recognition. Freiherr von Lilicronen, in a paper on “Die Kunst der Conversation,” undertakes the defence of German “Ernst” against French “esprit” as a basis for social life. An English bystander is probably inclined to suggest a happy blending of the two. Dr. H. Hüffer publishes some hitherto unprinted letters of Heine to his friend Johann Hermann Detmold. They are the scanty records of a friendship of thirty years, and are of great importance for Heine’s biography, especially as regards his life in Paris and his relations to his wife.
In an exhaustive paper recently read before the Académie des Inscriptions (La Donation de Hugues, Marquis de Toscane, au Saint Sépulcre, et les etablissements latins de Jérusalem au Xe siècle), M. Riant reminds us how little is known of the history of Palestine previous to the time of the Crusades from the Latin side, although much has been done of late years to elucidate its history in connection with the Greek Church. He makes the re-examination of an important grant of property by the Duke of Tuscany, in A.D. 993, to the Holy Sepulchre and St. Maria Latina the occasion for a sketch of the Latin occupation from the end of the sixth to the end of the eleventh centuries, showing especially the nature of Charlemagne’s protectorate of the holy places. The document itself he subjects to a searching criticism, calling up, while so doing, a most striking figure in the Abbé Guarin, of Cuxa (one of the grantees), an eloquent ecclesiastic of great influence in both France and Italy, and a wide traveller.