66

count of the Acts of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, together with the Greek text of this jewel among the martyrologies, edited for the first time from a manuscript in the Library of the Holy Sepulchre, of which library some description was given, it will be remembered, in Study" No. 1. This Greek text appears to have been edited with Dr. Harris's customary care, and is accompanied on each opposite page with the longer of the two previously known Latin recensions, while the other and shorter recension is given in an appendix. A comparison of the three seems to show not only that the Latin texts are independent of each other, but that both are in the main dependent on the Greek. In this conclusion Dr. Harris subsequently received the unhesitating concurrence of Harnack ("Theologische Literaturzeitung" for August 9, 1890, p. 404). Sundry outstanding phenomena, however, especially in connection with the employment of Greek terms by the Latin text, and of Latinisms by the Greek, still stood in need of explanation; and now Hilgenfeld seems to have found the missing link (see his "Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Theologie" for 1891, pp. 126-128). The original narrative professes to embody memoranda written down by the martyrs Perpetua and Saturus themselves. Hilgenfeld ingeniously explains many of the phenomena above mentioned by the hypothesis that these underlying memoranda were in the Punic tongue. Accordingly, on this supposition, we have all three languages current in the North African church at the opening of the third century; the testimony of Augustine and Jerome that the Punic was still a living language two centuries later is familiar.

Study No. 4 contains (besides two or three brief papers on mathematical and astronomical matters) an English translation of the Passion of Perpetua by Mr. Seth K. Gifford, who took part with Dr. Harris in editing the Greek text, an account, with collation, by W. C. Braithwaite of a new cursive manuscript of the Four Gospels recently obtained at Athens, specimens of uncial lectionaries from Mt. Sinai, and a catalogue (by Professor R. W. Rogers) of forty-seven manuscripts, chiefly Oriental (Hebrew, Ethiopie, Syriac, etc.), purchased by Dr. Harris on his recent visit to the East and added to the Library of Haverford College — a collection which many an older and wealthier American college might

envy.

The fifth number is devoted to an interesting "Preliminary Study" of Tatian's Diatessaron, by Professor Harris. This Harmony, the mere title of which has long been of special interest to Biblical students, has assumed new prominence of late by reason of the recovery of the work itself, both in Armenian and in Arabic. These discoveries, while confirming the traditional opinion that the Harmony furnishes irrefragable evidence of the early currency of our Four Gospels, have in their turn disclosed new problems, relative alike to the New Testament text and to the growth of the Canon. It is the former relation, namely, the bearing of the contents of the Harmony, as thus recovered, upon sundry readings in extant Greek manuscripts, which mainly engages Dr. Harris's attention. Into details this is not the place to enter. It may only be stated that he thinks he finds traces of readings which cannot be paralleled from any other source than the Harmony; and further, he believes himself warranted in postulating a pre-Tatian harmony, at least of the Passion. It were greatly to be wished that our knowledge warranted assurance relative to some of the assumptions on which Professor Harris's conclusions necessarily rest. But his Essay, like the recent criti

cisms passed by Harnack on the positions of Zahn, will stimulate that minute, patient, many-sided study by which sure results may be ultimately reached, even should we be disappointed of those new discoveries which the past encourages us to expect.

It may be noted incidentally that "the unintelligible Ditornon" (p. 9, note), which the Dictionary of Christian Biography (iv. 796") makes Ditouron," is simply a mistake for "Ditonron," standing for Diatessaron (see Ezra Abbot's "Critical Essays,” p. 55, note).

Dr. Harris and Haverford certainly deserve the congratulations and thanks of all friends of Biblical and ecclesiastical learning.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

J. H. Thayer.

THE DEFENSE OF POESY, otherwise known as An Apology for Poetry. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by ALBERT S. COOK. Boston: Ginn & Co. 1890.

Notwithstanding the recent efforts of distinguished scholars both in England and America to popularize our older and more neglected classies, to bring them, in Addison's phrase, "out of the closet to dwell in clubs and coffee houses," there are still not a few books among them that are known to the world of readers only by their titles and general reputation. These books we have all of us read about; they confront us, duly labeled and classified, like specimens in a museum of antiquities, in all the text-book histories of English literature, and by a polite and highly convenient fiction we are all assumed to have read them for ourselves. Sir Philip Sidney's "Defense of Poesy" is emphatically a book to be read rather than a book to be read about, and Professor Cook's publication of it in a neat and accessible form is both valuable and timely. The book is interesting because under the occasional affectations of Sidney's outworn style we touch the living man behind.

In places, out of the midst of critical disquisitions or the even progress of the argument, there flash on us sentences which reflect as in a mirror Sidney's high-bred and lofty spirit, which reveal the innate purity and high-mindedness of the man for whom all England mourned. From quite another aspect the book is interesting to the student of English prose as an example of its formation or transitional period, but perhaps more than all because of its close and intimate relations to the greatest epoch in the history of the literature. Sidney wrote during those preparatory years of critical discussion, of doubt, experiment, and expectancy, which immediately preceded the assured and triumphant outburst of the full Elizabethan chorus. From 1579 to 1585, the year of Sidney's death, and for a little later, the air seems filled with the preparatory tuning up of the orchestra. For a time Sidney was first among the little group of literary experimenters and disputers which included the learned but short-sighted Gabriel Harvey and the young Edmund SpenThe Defense of Poesy" is incomparably the most important outcome of the group in criticism. Suggested by the puritanical attack of Stephen Gosson, a newly reformed playwright, it has no trace of mere controversialism, but is rather a calm and dispassionate declaration of Sidney's æsthetic principles. In it Sidney defends and exalts poetry by showing that the moral basis, the moral object, underlies all true poetic

ser.

art.

66

As a help towards a right appreciation of the "Defense," Professor Cook's edition must be regarded as highly satisfactory. The notes are full and pertinent, and are especially strong in their citation of passages in classic and other authors illustrative of the text. The Introduction, after a brief biographical sketch, discusses the probable date of the “Defense," and contains also brief sections on the "Learning, Style, Theory of Poetry, and the Followers and Imitators of its Author."

of

Professor Cook follows Fox Bourne in assigning 1583 as the year its composition, in preference to 1581, the date usually accepted. While the later date may be correct, both dates being merely conjectural, we cannot agree with Professor Cook in thinking the argument in support of it irresistible." It is contended that as the "Defense is written in a more sober and less euphuistic style than "the Arcadia," a longer interval than formerly supposed must have elapsed between the composition of the two works. This argument would have some force were it possible to place the earlier and later work in the same category, but the entire difference in their subject and purpose furnishes us with a sufficient explanation of their difference in style. The " Arcadia" was regarded by Sidney as a pastoral poem, verse not being essential to poetry according to his definition of it, the "Defense' as a prose treatise, and those elaborations which his overflowing fancy delighted in in the one were not unnaturally excluded from the other.

It is to be regretted that the space devoted to this fruitless discussion had not been given to some consideration of those important relations which Sidney's work bears to his time. The brief biography is, perhaps of necessity, chronological and bloodless, but some fuller suggestion of Sidney's points of contact with the intellectual movements about himor in default of this a brief bibliography of the subject would have still further increased the usefulness of this scholarly and admirable edition.

GERMANTOWN, PHILADELPHIA.

Henry S. Pancoast.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND. 1620-1789. By WILLIAM B. WEEDEN. In two volumes. Vol. i. pp. xvi, 447; Vol. ii. pp. xiv, 964. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1890. $4.50. These pages teem with a bewildering multiplicity of facts, the general trend of which it is rather difficult for any eye but that of an economist to make out. In the second volume, however (perhaps from the educating influence of reading the first), the stages of development become broader and more distinct.

The author describes the value of the Indians as having been much greater for the industry of the early colonists than has been commonly appreciated, from the time when Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to deal with the maize, for the first half century or more. He describes very particularly the sacred and mystic wampum, which served the natives at once for currency and records, and which for nearly a century was so helpful to the colonists, at first, indeed, indispensable. The fur trade was at first a very great assistance in the development of New England, until, as more civilized sources of wealth encroached upon it, it receded, and the importance of the Indians receded with it. Among the Dutch of New York, we should judge, it continued prominent long

after the New Englanders had ceased to have much to do with it. It is not for nothing that beavers figure in the arms of the city of New York. Mr. Weeden remarks that the rise into view of the new continent stirred profoundly all the emerging powers of that new birth of man, of which even the Reformation is only one phase. And although the spiritual impulses were more powerful with the leading minority, yet the hope of bettering their condition in life was the more steadily impelling motive with the numerical majority. Besides, the Puritans, austere as they were in their scheme of life, were not in any Catholic sense ascetic, but recognized a sober enjoyment of the gifts of nature as a duty and a privilege.

The author remarks that the whole history of New England might have been different if the full force of the ocean had beat on her southern coast. But Long Island Sound was a binder that gave her a sheltered and easy connection with the regions beyond. once distinct from them and connected with them.

She was thus at

Canada was much more carefully organized than New England. But that power of "carrying the home outwards," in articulated communities of homes, which made New England, was lacking to the French. In every one of our towns was the embryo of a state, and in every state the embryo of an empire. And while England, with altogether unintended benevolence, most wholesomely neglected her offshoots, France benevolently smothered hers out of all capacity of empire, leaving in them simply the stubborn capacity of becoming a thorn in the flesh to the English race.

The author frequently refers to the happy and elastic intermixture of individual agriculture and communal pasturage and forestry, of which some relics still abide in Massachusetts. He traces also the interesting survivals of old feudal dependencies and distinctions, gradually yielding to the new commonweal which was growing up in every town, the sense of individual value subordinate to the corporate interests, subordination being for a while subjected to an almost inquisitorial interference, economic hardly less than moral, which, however, gradually subsided into a moderation that has always left the civic sense thoroughly active. Mr. Doyle is wrong, Mr. Weeden remarks, in supposing that this civic sense has ever lapsed in New England, though it was peculiarly apparent at first. It has always been far above the sodden sluggishness of European rural life. Indians and negroes, having no share in this commonwealth, were with naive unconsciousness held by the most godly as lawful booty, though treated kindly enough. In the sumptuary laws (which name is now so ridiculously misapplied to prohibitionist legislation) we find religious, aristocratic, and economic motives curiously blended in one, and female persistency quietly, though slowly, fretting away the restraints as often as they were reimposed. Rhode Island, which left conscience free, left apparel also free.

The author's description of Winthrop, on all the sides of his noble and gentle character, is very fine. Economically, too, he led. His ship, The Blessing of the Bay, carried, "not imperial Cæsar, but the continental destiny of an imperial state." "The Dove of Peace hovered upon her white-winged sails; ample Ceres nestled in the corn stowed within her narrow hold; the Lares climbed her slight spars, and hung about the smoke of her homely forecastle; every rope of her simple rigging bound the community more closely; while at her helm the genius of her master directed her onward to a brighter and better future for all mankind.”

It is amusing to see how the religious dislike of Massachusetts Bay to Rhode Island expressed itself economically. Having the larger market, they held the heretics pretty much at their mercy, and would listen to no propositions of "reciprocity." Commercially, and at last industrially, however, Rhode Island showed herself to be of a bold and prevailing nature, until the British occupancy of Newport destroyed the former branch of her independence. But throughout New England there were hard conditions of life without, simple plenty within, a slowly growing commodity of life, but in only a few cases before the eighteenth century anything that could be called an ample and luxurious dignity of living. Cromwell's extreme solicitude to transfer the New Englanders bodily to the newly conquered Jamaica is exceedingly curious. That island Eden would soon have smothered out the new principles of life. These did come, indeed, into a curious complicity with West Indian lawlessness, in its descending stages of privateering and buccaneering, until the third descent of piracy somewhat tardily roused the Puritan conscience into applying the medicament of the gallows. The author gives very full accounts of the development of the paramount interest of the fisheries, including that pursuit of the whale which bred the race of hardy mariners "whose keels have vexed every sea." He does well to point out how much our undoubtedly large proportion of Norse blood (which some of us signify in our Norse names) has had to do with this.

John Winthrop, the younger, the author says, was the founder of the paper currency of America. The want of currency was like the want of lifeblood to the commonwealth. But in all his tentative uncertainties, he never fell into the idiocy of "fiat money." Paper was to represent money, but to represent it really and convertibly.

By 1700, fear and want had receded from New England, and so had spiritual exaltation. Wealth and comfort were coming in; it was the time of such merchants as John Hull, introducing that of such greater and luxurious merchants as Peter Faneuil. Independence was in the blood, but showed itself as yet only in endless squabbles with royal governors. The second volume is easier to read and to follow, and less interesting than the first. The blended and contrasted influence, however, of Edwards and Franklin on the national character is worth following out. It certainly needed all the heights of an Edwards to keep Poor Richard from plunging us inextricably into the quagmire of mere utilitarianism.

The author's description of the miseries on miseries of the dismal time between 1783 and 1789 is the counterpart of Mr. John Fiske's portraiture of it on the political side. We had neither currency, nor solvency, nor free movement of trade at home, nor protection for it abroad. So large a proportion of the exiled and plundered Loyalists were merchants that, as Mr. Weeden remarks, New England had an incalculable loss in radiating centres of economic force. Here, too, as in Mr. Fiske's "Critical Period of American History," Washington appears in the forefront, his attentive eye seeing everything, and his kingly nature penetrating into every heart, and preparing it for the grand solution of 1789.

The second volume closes with an invaluable catalogue of current prices for every year from 1630 to 1789 inclusive, except 1739. Some years include a large number of articles, some only one or two, according as statistics are procurable.

ANDOVER.

Charles C. Starbuck.