to the power of the Turk the very province whose sufferings evoked the magnificent demonstrations against the Turks in 1876. (P. 281.) Then as to the future-she strongly urges a restoration of the European concert which was broken by the Anglo-Turkish Convention, and which was the very object of the Crimean War.

The Duke of Wellington, in his Memorandum on the Treaty of Adrianople, foreshadowed the concerted understanding which is now more than ever to be desired. He wrote: The object of our measures, whatever they are, should be to obtain an engagement, or, at all events, a clear understanding among the Five Powers, that, in case of the dissolution of the Turkish Monarchy the disposition of the dominions hitherto under its government should be concerted and determined upon by the Five Powers in conference. (P. 148, quoting Wellington's Despatches,' vol. vi. p. 219.)

6

With regard to Turkey in Europe, I quote the following :—

Russia seeks no annexations in the Balkan Peninsula. Within the last sixty years we have thrice dictated treaties to the vanquished Turks, but we have not at this moment one foot more territory in Europe than we had in 1815. We have not even taken a Cyprus concession from the Sultan in this continent as the price of all our victories. Turkey in Europe, so far as Russia is concerned, is territorially as she was when the Battle of Waterloo was fought. (Pp. 145-6.)

She has certainly no desire to possess Constantinople. . . . But it is quite true that Constantinople occupies such a place in the Russian imagination that, questions of self-preservation apart, no Russian Emperor could tolerate the Austrians on the Bosphorus. (Pp. 166, 167.)

The Balkan lands belong to the Balkan people (149). Greece should receive Epirus, Thessaly, Crete, and the Hellenic Islands, which may, perhaps, include Cyprus when you get tired of it. (P. 159.)

It is to be observed that Panslavism, or the union of all the Slav races of Europe under the headship of the Russian Czar, is an idea no longer seriously entertained in the mind of any well-informed Russian.

Mr. Aksakoff, the acknowledged spokesman of the Moscow Slavonic Committee (which in England has been mistakenly called Panslavist), makes this declaration:

The East of Europe belongs to Oriental Europeans; the Slav countries belong to the Slavs. It is not a question of territorial conquests for Russia; it is a question of calling to an independent existence (political and social) all those different Slav groups which people the Balkan Peninsula. (P. 150.)

Here Panslavism is distinctly repudiated; Philo-Slavism is defined. Let us be careful not to confuse our notions by a confusion of terms. I have never met a Panslavist among the Southern Slavs. The Slav nationalities desire their own free and unfettered individual development. The traditional policy in Serbia and Montenegro has been to get help wherever they can, now from Russia, now from

Powers and their agents one against the other; they are indeed open to the charge of ingratitude towards Russia, which has sacrificed and accomplished so much for them. The Southern Slavs have no tendency to Russian absorption, making use of the idea merely as a threat or a bugbear to England and Austria, and an argumentum ad hominem in the following strain: Give us our liberties, or we

will throw ourselves into the arms of Russia.'

This work neither gives nor professes to give a complete picture of Russia, of her internal political and social condition. For instance, there is but a passing mention of one of the most hopeful facts in the country, viz. that the beginning and foundation of popular representation exists in the village communities, where the peasants manage their local concerns. The nation is being trained from below upwards to representation; the principle is there, rooted and established, and must work upwards through the ranks until the rapidly increasing intelligence, cultivation, and education of the people shall find salutary expression in the management of their national affairs. In the chapter on Russian Autocracy'-which is chiefly noteworthy as an exposition of the views of a loyal and typical Russian subject, who is a reverent believer in the autocracy-she makes this passing mention of the rural municipalities:

We believe, with Goethe, that the best of all Governments is that which best teaches self-government, but a permanent head of a strong centralised Administration is sometimes a necessity even for the development of self-government. In this respect Russia may compare favourably with England, for we have rural municipalities elected by universal suffrage, established by the Emperor Nicholas, and I suppose I am not wrong in saying that you have no such elective authorities in your country districts. (P. 236.)

An earnest of progress, indeed, is found in the fact that Russia, without any pressure from without or any revolution at home, has liberated twenty millions of her own serfs. And the more one knows the highly educated upper Russian class, the more faith we have in the future of the nation, and the more confidently we expect for them representation and extended self-government.

Russians have the opportunity of knowing England very thoroughly, both from our freedom of the press, and also from the fact that almost every educated Russian can read English. It is extremely rare for an English person to possess the slightest knowledge of the Russian language. We in England consequently know very little of Russia, and almost nothing of the under strata of her society, where are now stirring forces and energies which must find vent in destructive explosion, or in the healthy and wholesome expression afforded by representation. But however impossible it may be to us to form a true idea of internal Russia and her as yet unhealed moral plague of Nihilism, amid the masses of misrepresentation which

and from various unreliable and outer sources, it is very clear that the Nihilists are neither the Liberals nor the Philo-Slavs of Russia. This is self-evident from the manifesto of Bakunin, the Nihilist leader, in 1868, given in a foot-note, p. 256. Many among the Nihilists are of Jewish origin; and our authoress is able to tell us that Nihilism is not widely spread in the upper classes, and has no hold whatever on the mass of the people, who are loyal to their Czar and to their faith. While this volume is chiefly valuable as a statement of the Russian case against England in foreign policy, it is also rich in facts and indications on the whole subject of Russian life and feeling, and as an Englishwoman I can cordially recommend its study to British readers.

Before concluding, I should mention that by her advocacy of certain reforms the writer has given offence to the bureaucracy in her own land. The censors of the press have also objected to the reproduction of Mr. Aksakoff's speech in Moscow, which expressed the discontent of the people at the sacrifice at the Congress of advantages gained for the Southern Slavs by the war. Great displeasure has been caused by her advocacy of the Zemskie Sobory ('assemblies from all the lands'), although this institution is, according to our views, but a small step in the right direction, being merely a consultative Parliament in waiting,' to be summoned at the pleasure of the Czar. Shortly after its appearance, the work was placed on the list of books prohibited.

A. P. IRBY.

IN

WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL.

III.

N tracing more in detail the proofs of Shakespeare's familiarity with Ovid, his general literary method must be kept in view. While there is the clearest evidence that his mind was richly stored with knowledge of all kinds, he is far too great an artist to make any section of it prominent in his writings. This applies with special force to the kind of knowledge which academic poets and scholarly wits are apt to display-the knowledge of books. Many of the writers for the stage, who were Shakespeare's immediate predecessors or early contemporaries, had spent some years at the Universities, and their dramas not only abound with literary references and allusions, but contain at intervals long quotations from foreign sources, and especially from the Roman poets and prose writers. The unspent force of the powerful Renaissance wave swayed secondary and imitative minds in the same direction. And at the outset of his career, Shakespeare was so far affected by the prevailing tendencies, that his early plays have, as a rule, more numerous learned allusions than the later. This is not, however, as is sometimes assumed, an invariable mark or test of early work. The Comedy of Errors,' though constructed on the wellknown lines of Plautus and Terence, contains, perhaps for this very reason, far fewer classical allusions than many, indeed than most, of the later plays. But in Titus Andronicus,' 'Love's Labour Lost,' 'The Taming of the Shrew,' and the Parts of 'Henry VI.,' the bookish element, though much less than in many contemporary plays, is still a distinctive feature. Even in these earliest efforts, however, Shakespeare yields only a passing and temporary homage to the custom of copious allusion and quotation so common in his day. His intellectual power was too exuberant, his creative imagination too fertile, his dramatic feeling too vivid and intense, to allow of scholastic display, or merely external decoration of any kind. Classical and learned allusions, if employed at all, are usually wrought by the dominant feeling into the very substance of the work. But, as I have said, in his more mature and characteristic writings such allusions are rare. It is the more significant, therefore, that direct references to Ovid, and quotations from his poems, are comparatively numerous, although, as might be expected, they occur for the most part in early plays. Apart from direct evidence, indeed, it might be safely assumed that the influence of Ovid over Shakespeare would be stronger in the earlier stages of his career, before his own dramatic style was fully formed, than in the later, when his powers were developed, and he had acquired complete command over the con

In dealing with the direct references to Ovid, 'Titus Andronicus' may be taken first in order of time. At least I may say in passing that, after a careful examination of the question, I feel convinced that the play is Shakespeare's, and if so, it is obvious it must be early work, his very first tragedy, if not his first drama. The marks of youthful effort are everywhere apparent, not only in the acceptance of the coarse type of tragedy that occupied the London stage when Shakespeare first became acquainted with it, but in the crude handling of character and motive, and the want of harmony in working out the details of the conception. All through the ardent love of beauty and keen delight in nature struggle with the physical horrors and moral gloom of the tragedy. In relation to the point in hand, the immaturity is seen in the extent to which the smell of the lamp mingles with the freshness and vigour of poetic feeling. The wide circle of references to Greek fable and Roman story suggests that the writer had come recently from his books, and was not unwilling to display his acquaintance with them. Some of the books and authors from whose pages incidents and allusions had been derived are, as in the case of Ovid, mentioned by name.

The earliest direct reference to Ovid occurs in the first scene of the fourth act, where, in the garden of Titus's house, the terribly mutilated Lavinia is seen eagerly turning over the books her nephew Lucius had let fall on her hasty approach. Titus and Marcus, to whom the boy had appealed, after watching her for a time, observe that she has fixed on one of the books and is rapidly turning over the leaves as though in search of some reference or passage that might tell what she cannot utter,—

Tit. Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?
Young Luc. Grandsire, 'tis Ovid's Metamorphoses;
My mother gave it me.

Marc.

For love of her that's gone,

Perhaps she cull'd it from among the rest.

Tit. Soft! see how busily she turns the leaves !
What would she find ?—Lavinia, shall I read?
This is the tragic tale of Philomel,

And treats of Tereus's treason.

[Helping her.

The tale of Tereus having hinted at her woe, the plan devised by her uncle for revealing the names of the murderous ruffians who had so cruelly wronged her-that of writing in the sand with the staff— seems also to have been suggested by Ovid. At least it naturally recalls the vivid dramatic sketch in which he describes the lingeredout parting on the shore between Calypso and Ulysses. Urged to tell once more the tale of Troy, the wide-wandering hero draws with his stick on the sand a map of the city, with the friendly and hostile encampments around it.

Ille levi virga (virgam nam forte tenebat),