SHAKESPEARE AND AESCHYLUS Numerous parallelisms between Shakespeare and the Greek tragedians have been indicated, especially by James Russell Lowell1 and J. Churton Collins.2 The two following similarities, which have not been pointed out so far as I know, are not offered as evidence of familiarity with Greek drama on Shakespeare's part, but merely as coincidences. 1. Antony's use of Caesar's robe in his funeral address strongly suggests the passage in the Choephori of Aeschylus in which Orestes displays the blood-stained cloth or garment which the murderers had thrown about his father, Agamemnon, to overcome his resistance to their weapons. Julius Caesar, Act III, Sc. II, 175 ff. Antony... You all do know this mantle. Look! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Mark how the blood of Caesar follow'd it. Kind souls, what! weep you when you but behold Choephori, 981 ff. Orestes... Spread it out with your own hands; approach and stand about it, and show this net for a man, that our father . . . the Sun-may see my mother's unclean work . . . ... Did she do it, or did she not?-Nay, I have a witness in this vesture, that it was dyed by Aegisthus' sword. It is the welling blood which hath aided time in spoiling the many hues of the embroidery.-At last, at last, he himself is before me; I utter his praises; I make his lament.3 1 "Shakespeare Once More," 1868. Cf. Lowell's Writings, Vol. III, Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1890. 2 "Shakespeare as a Classical Scholar" in Studies in Shakespeare by J. Churton Collins, Westminster, A. Constable and Co., 1904. This and the following extract are taken from the literal translation by A. W. Verrall in his edition of The 'Choephori' of Aeschylus, London, Macmillan and Co., 1893. 2. The ghost scene at the banquet in Macbeth is more than a little reminiscent of the conclusion of the Choephori, in which the Furies of the murdered Clytemnestra appear to Orestes the matricide, but are invisible to the others. Or. There is no fancy in this trouble for me. In very truth these are my mother's enraged pursuers. Cit. It is because the blood is yet fresh upon thy hands: hence the confusion that invades thy brain. Or. Ye do not see them, but I do. ORAL SUMNER COAD Columbia University REVIEWS AND NOTES LIFE OF GOETHE. P. Hume Brown: With a Prefatory Note by Viscount Haldane. 2 Vols. Holt & Co. 1920. There has of recent years been something like a little. hailstorm of Goethe-biographies. Gundolf in Germany, Croce in Italy, Thomas in America and now Hume Brown in England all have helped to prove the fascination of genius and its ability to make men of various political and ethnical attachments transcend their affiliations and join in a common worship. Among books on Goethe written in the English tongue this latest contribution is sure for a long time to come to hold a commanding position and to help rivet that reverence for the great sage established among us by Carlyle and Matthew Arnold. The prefatory Note by Viscount Haldane tells us that Professor Hume Brown-Historiographer Royal for Scotland and Professor of Ancient Scottish History and Palaeography in the University of Edinburgh-for many years cherished the ambition of making the greatness of Goethe, who was his favorite teacher as well as his favorite poet, clear to his compatriots, and that in pursuance of this plan he visited Germany in company with Lord Haldane in each year from 1898 to 1912. The result of these studies was published in part, under the title "The Youth of Goethe," as early as 1913. At the time of the premature death of Professor Hume Brown in 1918 the work was finished in Ms. with the sole exception of a chapter on "Faust II." Using a few notes left by Professor Hume Brown, Lord Haldane himself wrote this chapter confident that his familiarity with his friend's ideas justified the attempt to reproduce his thought. Significantly the book is called "Life of Goethe" and not "Life and Works of Goethe." And indeed 800 pages record the events of this rich career with minute care, tracing Goethe's growth from the early period of crowded inner tumultuousness to that of inner harmony and outward placidity, and from egoism to a cultivation of the social instinct. In consequence of this preponderant concern in Goethe's soul-evolution and a less pronounced interest in his writings as works of art, the passages dealing with Goethe's inner growth (as notably Chapter XVI) and with his relations with commanding personalities like Schiller (Chapter XXV) or Wilhelm von Humboldt, Fichte and Schelling (Chapter XXVI) are the most satisfactory. Everywhere the author betrays intimate acquaintance with the details of his hero's life. Whether his control of Goethe-literature is equally comprehensive the comments on the "Theatralische Sendung," "Benvenuto Cellini," the "Italienische Reise" or "Dichtung und Wahrheit" would lead one to doubt. Mistakes, like the one implied in the statement that the "Italienische Reise" reflects opinions no longer held by Goethe at the time of its publication (p. 323) are, however, not frequent. It is equally doubtful whether Professor H. B. is always cognizant of the profound effect of many of Goethe's worksperhaps inferior in themselves on the entire trend of German letters. So we are not inade aware that the "Unterhaltungen" stand as the source from which all later short-story writing flowed nor that the notes on "Benvenuto Cellini" are virtually the beginning in Germany of that "Renaissancism"-that reverence for an age of great artists-which later, formulated by Jakob Burckard and best expressed by C. F. Meyer, was to play so significant a part in her intellectual life of the last century. In the discussion of the "Wahlverwandtschaften" we miss any hint that this work opens a new chapter in the history of the novel and that, whatever its shortcomings, it is a forerunner of the great stories of Balzac, Flaubert, Bourget and others, in which character is conceived as an organism growing and decaying in response to its own laws. In accordance with the general trend of this biography to treat Goethe's literary output as the greatest summation of wisdom in literature rather than as a series of poetical creations, the comments on poems like "Der Wanderer" (p. 102), or "Der Paria" (p. 626f.), or on the "Sprüche in Prosa" (p. 657f.), or under "Der ewige Jude" (p. 156ff.), or again on the "Wanderjahre" (p. 695ff.), or on "Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert" (p. 515f.) altogether eclipse the treatment of the lyrics in general or the dramas or the other novels. Few readers might agree with the author's summary condemnation of the scene "Wald und Höhle" in "Faust" (p. 726) or with the characterization of the style of "Iphigenie" and "Tasso" as merely "studied pose" (p. 558). When he overstresses the painfulness, and morbidity of "Die Braut von Corinth" (p. 505f) and hardly mentions "Der Gott und die Bajardere" (p. 507) he perhaps allows himself to lapse into that prudery from which he is generally admirably free. For neither Goethe's relations to Frau von Stein (Chapter XV) nor even those with Christiane Vulpius (p. 382ff.)-which have so irked all the Sacred Cows of virtue for this many a year-draw from him any but the sanest comments. With all its excellence, however, this latest Goethe-biography is not likely to gather a large audience. The specialist, though sensible of the dominant note of thoroughness and solidity, will miss any new or lifted vision. The zeal of the general reader is likely somewhat to abate at the sight of two bulky volumes and upon nearer acquaintance even more at the quantity of detail dealing with Goethe's minor works. But if the book will not be largely read by the general-as the sprightlier but far less sound and important biography by Lewes is to this day-a large number of its paragraphs will be studied and pondered by those capable of recognizing in it the most dignified monument so far erected to Goethe in the English speaking world and especially by those capable of appreciating it as an admirable vehicle for a realization of the great German's importance as the safest guide and friend for our distraught generation. College of the City of New York CAMILLO VON KLENZE A HISTORY OF MODERN COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH, by Henry Cecil Wyld. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920. Pp. xvi+398. This is a remarkably illuminating and important book, and to readers who have not closely followed the trend of English linguistic study during the past decade or two the conclusions it presents will prove startling. At every turn the reader gets new assurance that this is no mere rewarming of the older discussions of the subject, but a fresh statement based upon a rich collection of data hitherto largely neglected. The book is divided almost exactly into two halves, the first half containing an introduction, followed by a discussion of dialect types in Middle English and their survival in the modern period, and an examination of English from the fifteenth to the close of the eighteenth century. The greater part of the second half is devoted to a close study of the history of pronunciation in the modern period-the vowels of accentuated syllables, and the vowels of unstressed syllables; to changes in consonantal sounds; and to notes on inflections. The concluding chapter gives a very engaging account of the development of Colloquial Idiom. Professor Wyld clearly recognizes, as every student of evolution must, that from the nature of the case language does not change overnight, and that while one group of speakers are moving in one direction another group are lagging behind or moving in another direction. And hence at the outset he warns against the tendency, too strong even among professional investigators, to mark off sharply defined periods indicating when the language as a whole entered upon new eras of develop ment. That the history of English pronunciation is one of extreme difficulty is obvious from the fact that only in our own time has there been even an approximately successful attempt to interpret the often baffling data. Before the researches of Child, |