444 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



rains and a terminal couplet, as in Shakespeare's Sonnets, 

 Spenser's Ruines of Rome, Thomas Watson's Teares of Fansie, 

 and Michael Drayton's Idea. Regarding the art — the loose 

 rhyming suits the theme. The thoughts are seldom caught all 

 within the stanza like cupids in a cage ; but are spirits, for ever 

 appearing and dissolving in a moonlight mist where Beauty 

 herself is the heavenly enchantress. They are lovely or terrible 

 or both, but can never be foretold, either in form or place. 

 Many bear each a gem — more often emerald or topaz, but some- 

 times ruby or even fire ; and beneath it all there is the undertone 

 of the divine melancholy — which is never melancholy — of 

 music, like that of oaks in a midsummer-night 's-dream of some 

 supreme philosophy. We have here then an order of art other 

 than the marble one or the flaming one — let us say of In Memo- 

 riam or Empedocles ; a more easy art perhaps, but not less 

 perfect in its designed imperfection. An art of the night-mist, 

 which however melts into ineffable revelations, while the goings 

 of the stars are brightened by it. . . . Interspersed among the 

 sonnets are three beautiful lyrics, numbers 20, 36 and 41, in 

 which the music resolves itself for a moment into pure har- 

 monies. In it we hear the voices of both the divine sisters 

 singing together. 



A great theme and a fine achievement — fundamentally, 

 absolutely germain to poetry, and yet much better than Plo- 

 tinus set in verse. It is a quest of the Holy Grail of Beauty by 

 the Sir Percival of poets. 



To the Shakespeare Tercentenary Committee and especially 

 to its Honorary Secretary, Prof. Israel Gollancz, Britain owes 

 a debt of gratitude for having saved her the shame of al- 

 most ignoring Shakespeare's Tercentenary ; and this sumptuous 

 volume, containing the contributions of one hundred and 

 sixty-six " homagers " of Shakespeare, is at least and at last 

 something. The contributions, coming not only from littera- 

 teurs but from men of all types, give a survey of the world's 

 opinion upon one of its greatest poets and men of science. The 

 contributions are in verse and in prose, and nearly all excellent 

 and interesting. 



Many of them dwell upon what Mr. Austin Dobson expresses 

 by calling Shakespeare " The Riddle of our race," and what Mr. 



