Tales of the West. By the Author of Letters from the East. Lond., 1828, 12mo., 2 vols., is by John Carne (see Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 60-1). G. C. B.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (5th S. xi. 479, 519; xii. 19.)—

Love Not.-I am indebted to "N. & Q." for the correction of my error in regard to the authorship of this song, which I had in a scrap-book long before I heard it sung, or possessed the poems of Mrs. Hemans. I think the newspaper from which I cut it must have given the wrong name, as I cannot otherwise account for the error of a lifetime, of which I was only convinced by your correspondent's suggestion as to looking for it (and not M. P. finding it) in Mrs. Hemans's works.

(5th S. xii. 469.)

"Ye who would in aught excel," &c.
"Guarde para su regalo

Este sentencia un autor:

Si el sabio no apruebe, malo;
Si el necio aplaude, peor."

Yriarte, L'Oso y la Mona (v. Sismondi, Littérature
du Midi de l'Europe, t. iv. p. 251).
H. B. C.

1. "Nulla omnino," &c. (S. Aug.. De Trinitate, lib. i. c. i.). 2. "Unus ipse erat," &c. (Ibid., lib. iv. c. xiv. § 19).

(5th S. xii. 489.)

ED. MARSHALL.

"The Red King lies in Malwood keep,"

is from the poem The Red King, by William Stewart
Rose, to whom Sir Walter Scott dedicated the first canto
of Marmion in 1808.
JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

"Be ignorance thy choice," &c.
Beattie's Minstrel, bk. ii. st. 30.
G. F. S. E.

"Where Freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent."
This quotation is from Tennyson's lines, beginning,
"You ask me why, tho' ill at ease."

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

CHRISTMAS GIFT-BOOKS.

G. F. S. E.

is as remarkable as their quality, and the volumes published this season by Messrs. Routledge & Sons alone would make a fair library for any schoolboy. We begin with Caldecott's delightful picture books, which deservedly achieved last year a world-wide popularity. The Mad Dog and The Babes in the Wood will fully sustain the artist's reputation as a draughtsman and humourist of genius, although the subjects are scarcely as well adapted for comic art as John Gilpin and The House that Jack Built. The Babes in the Wood is to our mind far too melancholy and pathetic a tale for children, but the story is charmingly told in the pictures, and no one can fail to appreciate the feeling for colour displayed in the larger drawings. The suggestiveness of this artist's work is one of its greatest charms. Not a stroke is wasted, and whole pictures are dashed off in a few masterful lines. It may confidently be predicted that these toy-books, which are now sold for a few pence, will command a high price in the next century for those who have been wise enough to collect and preserve them. The same remark emphatically applies to

Under the Window, by Kate Greenaway, which is as perfect in its own way as any of Caldecott's series. The book would be well worth buying if it was only for the groups of children on the cover, which are so gracefully and naturally drawn. But this is only a foretaste of the feast within, for every page abounds with quaint coloured drawings of children in every imaginable attitude. The little girls in poke bonnets, and the small boys in frills are simply delicious. The only drawback to this charming book is the inferior quality of the doggerel verses which are so admirably illustrated. The artist would have found an inexhaustible fund of subjects more worthy of her pencil in the good old nursery rhymes.

Every Boy's Annual, edited by Edmund Routledge, has long been an established favourite, and there is no falling off in the volume for 1880. It is full of capital stories, and the adventures of Ensign Norreys "Under the Colours," in Corfu, China and Japan, will be devoured by schoolboys all over the world. The puzzles are as numerous and ingenious as ever, but we suspect that most boys will skip the paper on organ-building, the organ being an instrument which no schoolboy would ever dream of attempting to construct. On the other hand, Hoffman's translation of Robert Houdin's "Secrets of Stage Conjuring" will be read with pleasure and instruction by

readers of every age.

The success of the Boy's Annual induced Messrs. Routledge three years ago to bring out a similar magazine for girls; and as girls are generally fonder of reading than boys, and have more time for it, Every Girl's Annual soon became a standard favourite. The new volume for 1880 abounds with good stories, of which "My Hero" is to our mind the best. The illustrations this year are better than ever, and the articles on perfumes and painting on glass will set many young hands to work. Some of the poetry might have been spared, and Alice King's historical sketches are feeble and colourless, but there are worse faults than feebleness; Miss Goatley's paper ought never to have found a place in the Girl's Annual.

Little Wideawake is an illustrated magazine for younger children, and is deservedly as popular in the nursery as the Girl's Annual is in the school room. This year's volume is larger than its predecessors, and contains upwards of 400 illustrations of decided merit. Miss Greenaway's coloured portrait of "Little Miss Patty" makes a charming frontispiece and cover, and pretty children of every size and growth please the eye wherever you open the book. The animals and birds, too, are as prominent as usual, and the illustrations of nursery rhymes are more successful than ever.

The Roll of the Drum, and other Tales, by R. M. Jephson, illustrated by Major Seccombe, R.A., is a collection of spirited stories of military life on foreign service, which will be read with special interest by boys who are looking forward to the honour of holding Her Majesty's commission. The illustrations are evidently from the prentice hand of an amateur, but are full of life and spirit.

Gaspar the Gaucho, by Captain Mayne Reid, is a cheap, handy edition of one of those stirring stories of wild adventure in South America which have acquired for the author too much popularity to need criticism or recommendation. The book is admirably printed, but we could have dispensed with the illustrations, which are scarcely worthy of the text. We must repeat the same remark about Macfarlane's Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, which contains a careful and readable summary of the extraordinary career of the first Emperor of the French. Other Stories, by the Right Honourable E. A. Knatchbull Hugessen, M.P., is a fresh contribution to juvenile literature from this well-known writer's inexhaustible fund of fairy tales. The frontispiece of the little men is well enough, but, on the whole, we cannot compliment the French artist on the illustrations.

Notable Voyages, from Columbus to Parry, by William H. G. Kingston, is a book which appeals with admirable skill and success to the love of adventure latent in every boy's heart. Mr. Kingston's vivid description of the dangers and difficulties encountered by brave navigators of the sea in every age, and surmounted by indomitable courage and perseverance, cannot fail to stir the blood of his youthful readers. But we must protest against the notion implied that Captain Parry's voyage in 1819 was the last expedition to the Arctic regions worthy of being recorded. Sir John Franklin holds, by universal consent, the foremost place in the annals of Arctic discovery, and the story of his gallant and repeated attempts to reach the North Pole, with the melancholy fate of his last expedition, would have been a more fitting termination to the series of Notable Voyages.

The Voyages and Adventures of Vasco da Gama, by G. M. Fowle, is the best written account for boys of the discovery of India by the Portuguese that we have ever

come across.

True as Steel, by Madame Colomb, translated by Henry Frith, is one of those tales of horror of the FrancoGerman war which are now so popular in France. Uncle Placide is, of course, a French hero as "true as steel," who sacrifices his own life for his young nephews, and dies a martyr to the brutality of the Uhlans. This is a capital story admirably translated; but the vindictive feeling against the Germans which is nursed and kept alive by tales of this kind is much to be deplored.

Like the children, we have reserved for the last our own special favourite, for of all the glittering pile of Christmas books published by Messrs. Routledge this Christmas none pleases us better than their new edition of Miss Mitford's Children of the Village, which is beautifully illustrated with sixty original designs by living artists of eminence.

The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum. Formerly Edited by Sir Frederick Madden for the Roxburghe Club, and now Re-edited from the MSS. in the British Museum and University Library, Cambridge, with Introduction, Notes, Glossary, &c., by Sidney J. H. Herrtage, B.A. (Early English Text Society, Extra Series.)

THOSE who take an interest in that fascinating inquiry, the history of popular fiction, will hear with great satisfaction that the Early English Text Society has published this work, and will gladly acknowledge, when they

have read it, their gratitude to the learned editor for having presented to them what we venture to believe will long prove the standard edition of this great storehouse of fiction, and given it to English readers in a form every way worthy of it. It is now evident that the Gesta Romanorum, as Douce was the first to point out, had its origin in this country, a view confirmed by Madden and by the learned German editor Oesterley, whose edition, published in 1872, was the result of an examination of no fewer than 165 MSS. preserved in English and Continental libraries. Mr. Herrtage, whose learned labours on the subject eminently qualify him to give judgment on the question, agrees with Douce, Madden, and Oesterley. We could, and should like to, have said much more in praise of a book which is so clearly the Christmas book of 1879 for all lovers of our early literature; but, crowded as our columns are at this season, we could not resist announcing, by a brief notice in this our Christmas number, the publication of Herrtage's English Gesta Romanorum.

Haunted London. By Walter Thornbury. Edited by Edward Walford, M.A. (Chatto & Windus.) THIS handsomely bound book is, we assume, a reprint of the two volumes published by Hurst & Blackett in 1865, as an instalment of a larger work by their author. Indeed, the "London" described by Mr. Thornbury is mainly confined to a district stretching west of Temple Bar to St. Martin's Lane, and bounded on the north by Long Acre and on the south by the Strand. His book, a gossipy chronicle, much in the style of Leigh Hunt's Town, gains by this narrower field; and, in spite of the difficulty of constructing a connected narrative out of disconnected anecdote, is thoroughly readable and interesting. In its present form it has had the advantage of revision at the capable hands of Mr. Walford; and careful editing in volumes of this nature is a thing to be thankful for. The little illustrations by Mr. Fairholt are excellent additions to the text.

WE have received from Messrs. Kegan Paul & Co. a made paper, with a miniature portrait of the Poet charming edition of the In Memoriam, printed on handLaureate in eau forte by Le Rat, after a photograph by the late Mrs. Cameron.

MESSRS. LETTS SONS & Co. send us representative copies of their Diaries for 1880. We can only repeat the praise of former years.