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TABLE TALK.

TAMPERING WITH NATIONAL DOCUMENTS.

....

ONSTANT complaints of the manner in which manuscripts of national importance have been tampered with find their way into print. In a recent number of Notes and Queries, Dr. C. M. Ingleby writes: "It is now thirteen years since, by the kindness of Dr. Carver, I spent parts of two days in the examination of the diary and account-book of Philip Henslowe. . . . . The conclusion I arrived at was that some dishonest person had taken advantage of the blanks, not infrequently left by Henslowe, for the purpose of writing pseudoantique entries, evidently with the view of supporting unauthorised statements by adducing the purport of these false entries." Five entries in the same book have recently been branded as forgeries by Mr. George F. Warner, of the Department of MSS. of the British Museum. These, Dr. Ingleby states, do not include all the forgeries in the volume. What is true of Henslowe's diary is also true of many other works of even greater importance. When blanks do not exist, the indefatigable forger has carefully erased portions of MSS., and filled in passages bearing upon subjects on which public interest may well be felt. Those whose professional duties lead them to consult MS. records are well aware to what an extent this atrocious system has been carried. Meanwhile, though protest after protest has been uttered, no one dares to mention the man upon whom rests the burden of suspicion, or, according to some opinions, of certainty. I am not going to put myself forward and bring charges against individuals which, without the aid of others, perhaps even with the aid of others, I cannot prove. This much, however, I feel bound to say: the late Deputy-Keeper of the Records had no doubt as to whose was the guilt. In my hearing, he deliberately and emphatically named the man, and he used these words, which, coming from one in his position, are not likely to be forgotten by me: "There are few national collections in which traces of that man's slime are not to be found." Not one to speak rashly was my dear friend Sir Thomas Hardy, and I for one accept with full conviction the charges against a living man

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which he did not hesitate to bring. Some day or other the name, which for obvious reasons I cannot mention, will be made public.

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purpose.

THE LATEST TRICK OF THE DOG-STEALER.

STORY which I am about to tell is perhaps scarcely suited to the Gentleman's, but it is interesting in itself, and may serve a A lady, looking out of a window in Eaton Square, saw a man, apparently a milkman, wearing a white smock, and carrying the customary pails. Exactly in front of where she stood this worthy was passed by a lady with three or four small dogs. Instanter one of these which lagged behind was snapped up, dropped into a can, and covered with the lid. This will explain the mysterious manner in which valuable dogs disappear. When asked if he has seen a dog, our bucolic-looking friend is ready with a reply that he saw one running in a direction the opposite of that he is himself taking.

A MINOR STAR IN THE SHAKESPEARIAN GALAXY.

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Na privately printed edition of the works of John Day, the dramatist, of which one hundred and fifty copies have been issued, I have made what is practically my first acquaintance with a delightful and characteristically English writer. Day belongs to the great roll of Shakespearian dramatists. He is one of the smallest of the number. It must, however, be remembered that, to employ the words of one of the same race,—

The very lees of such millions of rates
Exceed the wine of others.

I am well contented to add the name of John Day to the number of stars in that immortal galaxy. What most strikes me in reading his works is the fact that, while he is altogether unlike his fellows, it is yet evident that the same blood which pours down their veins warms his heart. Day, so far as I recall, is the very first to preach the lesson of kindness to animals. Concerning the cruelty of field sports he writes in a style that would delight Mr. Frederic Harrison, and he anticipates, feebly enough it may be, but distinctly, the arraignment of the higher powers by Mr. Swinburne in denouncing as cruel the creation that requires for the maintenance of existence the continuous sacrifice of life. It is always pleasant to see one more of our Elizabethan worthies rescued from the risk of destruction.

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A COMPLAINT FROM AMERICA.

COMPLAINT has been heard from the United States con. cerning a falling off in the number of volumes issued by the public libraries. So far as this is attributable to the supplanting of the book by the newspaper, it may be a source of regret. A man

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who attempts to keep au courant with the best portion of periodical literature will probably have little time for more serious reading. Few among those most earnest in pursuit of scholarship can spare half the time to solid reading which they admit to be desirable. I am inclined to ascribe to a more satisfactory cause the falling off in question. In the United States, good books can be bought at a price so low that the artisan or the labourer, instead of getting them from the library, is tempted to purchase for himself. I wish the same symptoms were more prevalent here. I have again and again pointed out how little real love of books exists in England, and how few shelves, in a middle-class house, are required to hold the volumes a man would feel ashamed to be without. Books are in this country, as in America, among the cheapest of luxuries or of necessities, and the money spent in obtaining greasy volumes from small libraries might, with advantage, be saved for the purchase of works which will be a source of enduring delight.

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INCREASE IN THE CONSUMPTION OF FRUIT.

those whose recollections, like my own, go back to a period considerably earlier than the middle of the century, it is pleasant to contemplate the change that has come over our habits with regard to eating fruit. A generation ago, apples, pears, nuts, and oranges were all the fresh fruits obtainable after the period of strawberries and that of stone fruit had passed. At the present time our shops and markets show a variety for which all quarters of the world have been ransacked. Fruits, the names of which not long ago suggested the idea of tropical travel, are now hawked about the streets by our costermongers. I venture to assert that London is at the present moment better off, as regards the supply of fruit, than any city on the Mediterranean. The price of fruit brought from abroad is naturally higher than it is at the place of production, the cost of carriage and the loss by decay having to be made up. Ten years ago, the value of the fruits, excluding oranges and lemons, imported into England was less than a million pounds. It now stands at two and a half millions. We still eat too little fruit, but the advance that has been witnessed is remarkable. In Paris, meanwhile, what are called les quatre mendiants, namely, raisins, figs, almonds, and nuts, are still served, under the name of dessert, at second-class restaurants and hotels. When fruits and green vegetables form a still larger portion of our daily food, our national disease of dyspepsia will be in a fair way of disappearance, and with it may perhaps go that tendency to spleen by which, in the estimate of foreigners, we are constantly beset.

THE

"RECREATIONS OF THE RABELAIS CLUB."

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HE first volume of the "Recreations of the Rabelais Club" has just been issued in the shape of a handsome volume of a little less than two hundred pages. As it is supplied to none except members, it challenges no critical verdict. Two or three of the contents are serious, but the major portion consists of jeux d'esprit. Of these some are fanciful additions to the great work of Rabelais; others deal with modern topics in a spirit which claims to be Pantagruelistic. A fair share of the contents is in verse. Here is a specimen of the shorter poems, not particularly Rabelaisian, it may be, but decidedly clever :

On the 12th of September, one Sabbath morn,
I shot a hen pheasant in standing corn,
Without a licence. Combine, who can,

Such a cluster of crimes against God and man.

A REPRODUCTION OF THE CHEF D'ŒUVRE OF MOREAU LE JEUNE

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N France the rage among collectors is now either for early editions of the works of the Romanticists, or for books illustrated by the great designers of the last century-Eisen, Gravelot, Marillier, and Moreau le Jeune. So great is the demand for works of this class, that reproductions of the more esteemed among them are constantly attempted, not only in Paris, but in the principal provincial cities of France. Moreau le Jeune is in especial favour. I have just been shown a reproduction of his great work, the twenty-four designs intended to serve as a history of life and costume in the eighteenth century, which is in its way a triumph of art. The illustrations in the first livraison deal with the birth of a child, and show the various states of anxiety or rapture in the parental mind, from the moment when the approach of the son and heir is announced to that when domestics break in upon paternal solitude with the exclamation, "C'est un fils, Monsieur." Thoroughly naïve and French are the situations, and they were in the original accompanied by letterpress equally Gallic from the pen of Restif de la Bretonne. To those who like myself have long delighted in the illustrations to Molière, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Marmontel, of Moreau le Jeune, and have picked them up whenever a chance occurred, an opportunity of possessing this characteristic and hitherto almost inaccessible work of the most elegant, the most flexible, and the most piquante of eighteenth-century engravers is a subject for congratulation.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

Paris L. Conquet.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

WE

MARCH 1882.

DUST: A NOVEL.

BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE,

Only the actions of the Just

Smell sweet and blossom in the Dust.

CHAPTER IX.

E may assume, for the present, that Mr. Grant's object in calling upon Sir Francis Bendibow was to make arrangements whereby the bank might charge itself with the investment and care of his property. Meanwhile we shall have time to review what had been happening during the previous week at Mrs. Lockhart's. Philip Lancaster and Mr. Grant, having passed their first night at the "Plough and Harrow," returned to the widow's with their luggage the next morning. Their reception on this occasion was much more cordial and confident than it had been the day before. The chance which had brought Lancaster into relations with the family of the gallant old soldier, whose body he had rescued from an unmarked grave, gave him a lien upon the interest and gratitude of the two women such as he might not otherwise have acquired at all. The whole history of his acquaintance with Major Lockhart had to be told many times over to listeners who could never hear it often enough; and the narrator ransacked his memory to reproduce each trifling word and event that had belonged to their intercourse. The hearers, for their part, commented on and discussed the story with a minuteness so loving and unweariable as to move Lancaster to say privately to Mr. Grant, "Damme, sir, if it doesn't make me wish that I had been the Major, and the Major me. I shall never have a widow and daughter to mourn me so!"

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