[1] _The Correspondence of William Cowper._ Arranged in chronological
order, with annotations, by Thomas Wright, Principal of Cowper School,
Olney. Four volumes. New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1904.
[2] In a newly published volume of the letters of William Bodham Donne
(the friend of Edward FitzGerald and Bernard Barton), the editor,
Catharine B. Johnson, throws doubt on this supposed descent of Cowper's
mother from the Poet Dean.
[3] How refreshing is that whiff of good honest smoke in the abstemious
lives of Cowper and John Newton! I have just seen, in W. Tuckwell's
_Reminiscences of a Radical Parson_, a happy allusion to William Bull's
pipes: "To Olney, under the auspices of a benevolent Quaker.... I saw
all the relics: the parlour where bewitching Lady Austen's shuttlecock
flew to and fro; the hole made in the wall for the entrance and exit of
the hares; the poet's bedroom; Mrs. Unwin's room, where, as she knelt by
the bed in prayer, her clothes caught fire. The garden was in other
hands, but I obtained leave to enter it. Of course, I went straight to
the summer-house, small, and with not much glass, the wall and ceiling
covered with names, Cowper's wig-block on the table, _a hole in the
floor where that mellow divine, the Reverend Mr. Bull, kept his pipes_;
outside, the bed of pinks celebrated affectionately in one of his
letters to Joseph Hill, pipings from which are still growing in my
garden."--The date of the Rev. Mr. Tuckwell's visit to Olney is not
indicated, but his _Reminiscences_ were published in the present year,
1905.
[4] Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December
23, 1804, and died at Paris, October 13, 1869.
[5] _The Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne._ In six volumes. New York:
Harper & Brothers. 1904.
[6] _The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti._ With Memoir and
Notes, etc. By William Michael Rossetti. New York: The Macmillan Co.,
1904.
[7] _Robert Browning._ By C. H. Herford. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.,
1905.
[8] _The Complete Works of Laurence Sterne._ Edited by Wilbur L. Cross.
Supplemented with the Life by Percy Fitzgerald. 12 volumes. New York: J.
F. Taylor & Co. 1904.
[9] _Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of J. H. Shorthouse._ Edited by
his wife. In two volumes. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1905.
[10] Yet even while I read the proof of this page there lies before me
an article in the _Contemporary Review_ (July, 1905), in which Sir
Oliver Lodge utters the old assumptions of science with childlike
simplicity. "I want to urge," he says, "that my advocacy of science and
scientific training is not really due to any wish to be able to travel
faster or shout further round the earth, or to construct more extensive
towns, or to consume more atmosphere and absorb more rivers, nor even to
overcome disease, prolong human life, grow more corn, and cultivate to
better advantage the kindly surface of the earth; though all these
latter things will be 'added unto us' if we persevere in high aims. But
it is none of these things which should be held out as the ultimate
object and aim of humanity--the gain derivable from a genuine pursuit of
truth of every kind; no, the ultimate aim can be expressed in many ways,
but I claim that it is no less than to be able to comprehend what is the
length and breadth and depth and height of this mighty universe,
including man as part of it, and to know not man and nature alone, but
to attain also some incipient comprehension of what the saints speak of
as the love of God which passeth knowledge, and so to begin an entrance
into the fulness of an existence beside which the joy even of a perfect
earthly life is but as the happiness of a summer's day." The sentiment
is beautiful, but what shall we say of the logic? To speak of attaining
through _science_ a comprehension, even an incipient comprehension, of
that which passeth _knowledge_, is to fall into that curious confusion
of ideas to which the scientifically trained mind is subject when it
goes beyond its own field. "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will
demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the
foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding." Has Sir
Oliver read the Book of Job?