Archæological research has been actively pursued during the year, and the various Surveys of India, Ceylon, and Nubia have published monographs, also The Egyptian Exploration Fund has launched its new venture—The Journal of Egyptian Archæology,—and continues the issue (Part X.) of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. The particular rolls now edited under the learned supervision of Dr. Grenfell and Dr. Hunt are among the most famous of their discoveries—including, as they do, parts of an extra-Canonical Gospel, and fragments of the two famous Lyric Poets, Sappho and Alcæus. This discovery, needless to add perhaps, has provided one of the literary sensations of the year, and goes far to justify the importance of the work of research in that cradle and tomb of almost all Antiquity—Egypt.
The British Museum has done admirable work in cataloguing its collection of Egyptian Scarabs, as also in dealing with accounts of the Egyptian and Assyrian Sculptures in its possession (British Museum). These last are profusely illustrated, and are edited by Dr. Wallis Budge. The Palestine Exploration Fund issues its Annual for 1912-13. Coming nearer home, we are glad to welcome The Bronze Age in Ireland, by Mr. George Coffey, Keeper of the Irish Antiquities in the National Museum, and Mr. E. C. R. Armstrong's Irish Seal-Matrices and Seals—both works issued by Messrs. Hodges & Figgis, of Dublin. Professor Haverfield writes on Roman Britain in 1913 (Brit. Acad. Supp. Paper) (Milford).
Anthropology, likewise, has made great strides throughout the year. Much attention has been given to aboriginal tribes and their customs, both in Northern and Central Africa, in Nigeria, also in Northern Australia, where Mr. Baldwin Spencer (Special Commissioner for Aboriginals in the Northern Territory) continues the investigations he formerly pursued with his friend, the late Mr. Gillen, to whose memory the work is dedicated (Macmillan).
As was mentioned last year, the output of Oriental literature grows apace. Much of this is due to the awakening of China, India and the East generally. The part the Chinese are taking in this renaissance of Oriental culture is indicated by the first issue of a Chinese Review (monthly), owned, edited and printed (in London) entirely by Chinamen. Interest, too, in Oriental literature has been fostered largely in English University circles, and under the enlightened and scholarly direction of the British Museum. Oxford, Cambridge and London vie with one another to produce scholarly editions of Eastern Texts or Dissertations on the ancient Religions of India, Assyria, Egypt. Mohammedanism too is not overlooked, or the Literature of Modern Persia. For particular details of the principal Oriental Literature dealt with, the publications of the British Museum, as well as of the before-mentioned Universities, are the surest guide.
Classics are yet, happily for us, under the fine inspiration of Professor Gilbert Murray, who though resting from the arduous labours of previous years, revises the proofs of Mr. R. T. Elliot's edition of The Acharnians of Aristophanes (Oxford, Clarendon Press; London, Milford), and, in collaboration with Miss Jane Harrison, affords his sympathetic approval to Mr. A. K. Thomson's Studies in the Odyssey (Oxford, Clarendon Press; London, Milford). Dr. A. S. Way continues his rendering of Sophocles in English Verse (Macmillan), and Mr. F. M. Cornford, in his Origin of Attic Comedy (Arnold), associates himself with Professor Gilbert Murray in ascribing the beginnings of Greek Comedy to the Ritual Drama. Zeus; A Study in Ancient Religion, by Mr. A. B. Cook, Vol. I., comes from the Cambridge University Press, and we welcome the theory of Miss Gladys M. N. Davis, Classical Scholar, late Royal University of Ireland, in her learned volume, The Asiatic Dionysos, that the origin of the Dionysos Cult was Asiatic rather than Egyptian (Bell). Coming to Roman Classics, the Loeb Classical Library (Heinemann) continues its translations, and Sir Robert Allison translates for us five of the Plays of Plautus (Humphreys).
In the department of English Prose Literature an especially fine harvest is to be gathered for 1914, though it is only possible in this brief notice to glean a sheaf or two from among the best-known writers. ex-President Roosevelt gives us History as Literature, and other essays (Murray); Mr. H. G. Wells tells us how An Englishman Looks at the World (Cassell); Mr. Wilfred Ward writes of Men and Matters (Longmans); Mr. A. C. Benson gives us Where No Fear Was, a book about Fear (Smith Elder). Then we have Mrs. Meynell's Essays (Burns & Oates), Mr. George Moore's Hail and Farewell (Heinemann), also The Towers of the Mirrors and other Essays upon the Spirit of Places, by Vernon Lee (Lane). Messrs. Dent publish Mr. Austin Dobson's Eighteenth Century Studies, and M. Maeterlinck's fine appreciation of so-called Supernatural phenomena in The Unknown Guest is rendered into English for us by Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (Methuen).
Much literary work of the year is devoted to the study of the great authors, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, by the Countess de Chambrun (Putnam), for example, or the Lectures on Dryden of the late Dr. Verrall, published by Mary de G. Verrall through the Cambridge University Press, which is likewise responsible for the issue of an interesting volume compiled with much industry by Mr. G. Waterhouse; The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Seventeenth Century. The Cambridge History of English Literature, edited by Sir A. W. Ward and Mr. A. R. Waller, proceeds to its eleventh volume, treating of the Period of the French Revolution. We welcome the publication of Messrs. Batsford's Series of Fellowship Books edited by Mary Stratton, some of them being written by such distinguished modern men of Letters as Dr. W. L. Courtney—who contributes The Meaning of Life, and by Sir A. Quiller-Couch, who is responsible for the volume on Poetry. Lord Haldane publishes his collected addresses, The Conduct of Life, with Mr. Murray. The Life and Genesis of Arlosto is dealt with very ably by Dr. J. Shield Nicholson, Professor of Political Economy in Edinburgh University (Macmillan); and Italian Gardens of the Renaissance, by Julia Cartwright (Smith Elder), should not be missed.
At home Social and Political questions have been, for the time being, shelved. But before the war began, the drift of political interest—apart from Ireland—has tended chiefly towards the great Land Question. Thus we get The Ownership, Tenure and Taxation of Land, by the Rt. Hon. Thomas P. Whittaker, P.C., M.P., also Mr. Lennard's Economic Notes on English Agricultural Wages, both issued by Messrs. Macmillan, and to the serious student the unfinished but instructive and valuable Essays of the late Professor Seebohm—Customary Acres and their Historical Importance (Longmans)—will appeal. At the present moment, too, in view of rising prices and diminishing supplies, the publication by the Manager of the Dalmeny Experimental Farms, on the secret of successful Farming, or Greater Profits from Land, should merit attention (Edinburgh, The Edina Pub. Co.). Nor should the interesting Canadian experiences of Miss Binnie Clark, in Wheat and Women (Heinemann), be missed, especially in a day when the scarcity of male labour for the land is universally a disquieting factor in the economical situation. We welcome the edition of his father's Speeches given to us by Mr. Austen Chamberlain (Constable).
In Music the attention of writers seems to be more and more concentrated upon the study of technique, and its analysis. Dr. Coward, the famous Director of the Sheffield Choir, publishes Choral Technique and Interpretation (Novello); and Mr. Cecil Forsyth gives us a volume on Orchestration, contributed to the Musician's Library of Messrs. Macmillan, Stainer & Bell. Mr. W. Wallace also discourses of The Musical Faculty: its origins and processes (Macmillan). Two works are published upon The Music of Hindostan,—this first by A. H. Fox Strangeway (Oxford, Clarendon Press; London, Milford), and Indian Music by the Begum Fyzee-Rahamin, with a preface by F. Gilbert Webb (Will. Marchant, the Goupil Gallery).
Of the making of History books there seems no end! Apart from the editing and calendaring of the sources of British History as discoverable from the Rolls cared for in the Public Record Office,—of which a complete list is furnished by Messrs. Wyman,—there are endless enterprises and discursions into all periods of History, Ancient and Modern. In connexion with the mention of original sources, reference should be made to The Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission (Wyman) which publishes its seventh volume. The issue of the Great Roll of the Pipe, 31 Hen. II. 1184-1185, under the auspices of the Pipe Roll Society (St. Catherine's Press), is highly important, and we welcome a revised edition of Magna Charta, by Mr. W. Sharp McKechnie (Glasgow, MacLehose). The Reign of Henry V. is treated by Dr. James Hamilton Wylie, in a first volume (1413-15) issued from the Cambridge University Press. Professor Pollard gives us The Reign of Henry VII. from Contemporary Sources, as far as Vol. III. (Longmans). Two or three volumes on the Elizabethan Period call for mention: A History of England from the defeat of the Armada to the death of Elizabeth, Vol. I., by E. P. Cheyney, Professor of European History in the University of Pennsylvania (Longmans), and Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, by F. A. Mumby (Constable). New Light on Drake is offered by the researches of the Hakluyt Society, and we welcome particularly a treatise on The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent, 1558-1795, by the Rev. Peter Guilday, being a Thesis offered for a Doctor's degree to the University of Louvain (Longmans).