Part 17

[1] _The Correspondence of William Cowper._ Arranged in chronological order, with annotations, by Thomas Wright, Principal of Cowper School, Olney. Four volumes. New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1904.

[2] In a newly published volume of the letters of William Bodham Donne (the friend of Edward FitzGerald and Bernard Barton), the editor, Catharine B. Johnson, throws doubt on this supposed descent of Cowper's mother from the Poet Dean.

[3] How refreshing is that whiff of good honest smoke in the abstemious lives of Cowper and John Newton! I have just seen, in W. Tuckwell's _Reminiscences of a Radical Parson_, a happy allusion to William Bull's pipes: "To Olney, under the auspices of a benevolent Quaker.... I saw all the relics: the parlour where bewitching Lady Austen's shuttlecock flew to and fro; the hole made in the wall for the entrance and exit of the hares; the poet's bedroom; Mrs. Unwin's room, where, as she knelt by the bed in prayer, her clothes caught fire. The garden was in other hands, but I obtained leave to enter it. Of course, I went straight to the summer-house, small, and with not much glass, the wall and ceiling covered with names, Cowper's wig-block on the table, _a hole in the floor where that mellow divine, the Reverend Mr. Bull, kept his pipes_; outside, the bed of pinks celebrated affectionately in one of his letters to Joseph Hill, pipings from which are still growing in my garden."--The date of the Rev. Mr. Tuckwell's visit to Olney is not indicated, but his _Reminiscences_ were published in the present year, 1905.

[4] Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 23, 1804, and died at Paris, October 13, 1869.

[5] _The Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne._ In six volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1904.

[6] _The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti._ With Memoir and Notes, etc. By William Michael Rossetti. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1904.

[7] _Robert Browning._ By C. H. Herford. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1905.

[8] _The Complete Works of Laurence Sterne._ Edited by Wilbur L. Cross. Supplemented with the Life by Percy Fitzgerald. 12 volumes. New York: J. F. Taylor & Co. 1904.

[9] _Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of J. H. Shorthouse._ Edited by his wife. In two volumes. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1905.

[10] Yet even while I read the proof of this page there lies before me an article in the _Contemporary Review_ (July, 1905), in which Sir Oliver Lodge utters the old assumptions of science with childlike simplicity. "I want to urge," he says, "that my advocacy of science and scientific training is not really due to any wish to be able to travel faster or shout further round the earth, or to construct more extensive towns, or to consume more atmosphere and absorb more rivers, nor even to overcome disease, prolong human life, grow more corn, and cultivate to better advantage the kindly surface of the earth; though all these latter things will be 'added unto us' if we persevere in high aims. But it is none of these things which should be held out as the ultimate object and aim of humanity--the gain derivable from a genuine pursuit of truth of every kind; no, the ultimate aim can be expressed in many ways, but I claim that it is no less than to be able to comprehend what is the length and breadth and depth and height of this mighty universe, including man as part of it, and to know not man and nature alone, but to attain also some incipient comprehension of what the saints speak of as the love of God which passeth knowledge, and so to begin an entrance into the fulness of an existence beside which the joy even of a perfect earthly life is but as the happiness of a summer's day." The sentiment is beautiful, but what shall we say of the logic? To speak of attaining through _science_ a comprehension, even an incipient comprehension, of that which passeth _knowledge_, is to fall into that curious confusion of ideas to which the scientifically trained mind is subject when it goes beyond its own field. "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding." Has Sir Oliver read the Book of Job?

THE END.

* * * * *

Shelburne Essays

By Paul Elmer More

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_Contents_

FIRST SERIES: A Hermit's Notes on Thoreau--The Solitude of Nathaniel Hawthorne--The Origins of Hawthorne and Poe--The Influence of Emerson--The Spirit of Carlyle--The Science of English Verse--Arthur Symonds: The Two Illusions--The Epic of Ireland--Two Poets of the Irish Movement--Tolstoy; or, The Ancient Feud between Philosophy and Art--The Religious Ground of Humanitarianism.

SECOND SERIES: Elizabethan Sonnets--Shakespeare's Sonnets--Lafcadio Hearn--The First Complete Edition of Hazlitt--Charles Lamb--Kipling and FitzGerald--George Crabbe--The Novels of George Meredith--Hawthorne: Looking before and after--Delphi and Greek Literature--Nemesis; or, The Divine Envy.

THIRD SERIES: The Correspondence of William Cowper--Whittier the Poet--The Centenary of Sainte-Beuve--The Scotch Novels and Scotch History--Swinburne--Christina Rossetti--Why is Browning Popular?--A Note on Byron's "Don Juan"--Laurence Sterne--J. Henry Shorthouse--The Quest.

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