TALK AT A COUNTRY-HOLTSE.* THERE are no lines of Tennyson's

better known, or oftener quoted, than his description of an English home in "The Palace of Art," ending with- " A haunt of ancient peace."

An Englishman clings involuntarily to his birthplace, especially if it be the home in which his forefathers lived and died before him, and in which all the deepest fibres of his being, the multiplied roots of early associations, have been planted. These lines have a peculiar fitness as a beading to the first chapter of Sir Edward Strachey's new volume, and form an appropriate threshold over which we step into the old Manor Place that serves as setting and framework to the "Talk." Though the author's identity is thinly veiled under the synonym of "The Squire," there is no doubt that the picture of the old English home is drawn, as it were, from the life. The imaginary friend who forms a kind of Boswell to the Squire's Johnson, or young disciple at the feet of elder sage, thus describes the Manor Place of Southetoune, or Sutton :—" Evening was coming on when I drove through the lodge-gates I saw before me, and on my right hand, two giant arbors—(" aisles" Tennyson would have called them)—of lime-trees, feathering to the ground, and seeming to reach the very sky; while between them opened out an avenue of immemorial elms. On my left I saw, as Leland had seen them before me, the old 1Dattlemented wall and the square tower with its corner turret rising behind and above the wall, and a succession of gables on either side ; and among them I saw one marked by a cross which I knew must be that of the chapel which my old friend had told me of, as the work of Building Bess of Hardwicke, afterward Countess of Shrewsbury. Like the Roman Coliseum before it was scraped by the modern re- formers, the old battlemented wall had a flora of its own : ferns, crimson valerian, snapdragons, and briar-roses, and along with these I saw an ash and a yew growing on the battlements, where they had been sown no doubt by the rooks. And as I passed through an archway in the wall, the whole house came in view. It was not a castle, nor a palace, but it might be called a real though small record of what men had been doing there from the time of Domesday Book to our own." It was Bess of Hardwicke, then married to her third husband, Sir William St. Loe, who added the "great parlor," where most of the " Talks " take place (it is a small detail, but the American spelling adopted throughout the book seems especially obtrusive when applied to an Elizabethan building), and the subjects range from Persian poetry and Arrow- headed inscriptions to such a modern theme as the morality of election by ballot. Sir Edward Strachey's translation of Sa'di's "Reason for composing the Book" (the Bustan or Garden) will commend itself to all compilers of table-talk or reminiscences. We give a short extract :—

"Through many far-off lands, I wondering, went ; With men of every kind my days I spent ; • Talk at a Countrn-Houxe. By Sir Edward Strachey, Bart. London: William Blackwood and Sons.

To me each corner did some pleasure yield,

I gleaned some ears from every harvest field.

So pure of heart, and of such humble mind, None like the men of Shiraz did I find : Blest be that land ! It won my heart away From cities famous for Imperial sway.

'Twas pain to leave a garden all so fair, And not some token of my friends to bear.

Methought, when travellers from Egypt come,

They bring back sweetmeats to their friends at home :

And if no sweetmeats in my hand I bring, Words sweeter far than sugar poets sing.

Those sugared sweetmeats men but seem to eat,

In books the wise store up the real sweet."

By the way, the foot-note to p. 144, pointing out that the translator had altered a date by a year to fit the trammels of rhyme, reminds us of Marjorie Fleming's similar treatment of a date in her verses on James II. being killed at Roxburgh :—

"He was killed by a cannon splinter, Quite in the middle of the winter; Perhaps it was not at that time, But I can get no other rhyme !"

—a bit of humour that we feel sure the "Squire " would appre- ciate. Sir Edward Strachey's "men of Shiraz" comprise poets and historians, bygone worthies and moderns like Frederick Denison Maurice and Edward Lear. He draws a fine portrait of Maurice, whom he calls one of the "greatest teachers of our generation." "His face was very fine and delicate in feature ; the expression was saintly, though not quite the ascetic saintliness which characterises some of the portraits of great men of the Roman Catholic Church ; it was rather tinged with the sweet, homely humorousness which you see in Cranach's portrait of Luther. The eyes were bright and piercing, and the mouth was firm and compressed. The whole expression of the face was energetic, almost aggressive, and yet kind and gentle; it was the look of a man who had a message to give, and who was resolved to give it ; but the resoluteness had more of self-sacrifice than of self-assertion in it." He alludes to Maurice's strong sense of humour and his grand, deep voice. "Bunsen said, to hear him read the prayers at Lincoln's Inn, where he was chaplain, was in itself to hear a sermon ; " and some one else said, still more expressively, that he "prayed the prayers." The author also speaks from personal knowledge of Edward Lear, the his- torian of Nonsense :—" I recall the image of the genial old man, with his black spectacles, or rather goggles, his gaunt figure, and his face expressive of mingled fun and melancholy, as he showed us his picturesque house at San Remo, or, later in the day, sat down at the piano in our room at the hotel, and played and sang to his own music his own pathetic nonsense of the Yonghy Bonghy Bo." Lear wrote his verses and drew his delightful illustrations for the fortunate children of his acquaintance, and a series of heraldic repre- sentations of his tailless cat, 'Foss,' " proper, couchant, passant, rampant, regardant, dansant, a-'antin'," were drawn for the " Squire's " daughter, while one of his sons was the original possessor of "The Duck and the Kangaroo" and "Calico Pie."

We gather from the conclusion of the argument on the place which should be assigned to Love's Labour's Lost, in a chronological arrangement of Shakespeare's works, that the imaginary friend "Foster" represents the " Squire's " early views on literary subjects, and that in this instance his maturer judgment still agrees with Coleridge in placing it among the earliest of the plays. In the talk on love and marriage there is a deep knowledge of life in the " Squire's " conjecture that Bunyan described Christiana's fearless passage of the river from her own experience, and that a nearer under- standing of God in her case cast out even the momentary fear that Christian felt as the waters closed over his head. It is only those who have endured the burden and heat of the day that can fully realise the promise, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."

Sir Edward Strachey's edition of Malory's great work is so well known that we naturally look for some reference to the 3rorte Dart hur in the "Talks," and are not disappointed. We find a chapter devoted to a discussion over the real locality of Camelot, whether Caerleon-on-Usk, according to Caxton, Glastonbury or Winchester, according to Malory, or, as the " Squire " holds, with much probability, Cadbury in Somersetshire. Most of the geographical links in the chain that bind together Cadbury and Camelot have already been forged in the "Globe Introduction ; " but we are piven a

charming description of the wooded hill with its ramparts and ditches and the knoll called Arthur's Castle, rising 500 ft.

above the sea. Public interest in the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table will just now be roused and revived by the new presentment of the "national epic" at the Lyceum, and the " Squire's " contributions to the subject are sure to be read with interest. We agree with him that Malory possesses some of the qualifications of a poet, while lacking the outward and visible signs of metre and rhyme; though, as Coleridge says, "mere rhyme is not poetry," and his title to being considered a poet rests more, as Carlyle puts it, on the assumption that "All deep things are Song." To quote once more from the "Squire " :—

" I am not at all willing, even for Malory's sake, to break down the distinctions between prose and verse, which I think so real and so important. I will content myself with saying that it [Merle Darther] is a work of art, real, though rude ; and for this I have the voice of the world of letters, gentle and simple, on my side, the few and minute critics notwithstanding. What 'ever sidelights their learning may have supplied to Spenser, Milton, and Tennyson, there can be no reasonable doubt that the Arthur and his knights whom they knew, are the King and knights of Ilalory. The popular voice of approval has never been silent since Caxton printed his first edition; and during the present century it has been raised, with an ever-increasing volume, to what Tennyson may be said to have given a not inappropriate expression when he said, 'There is no grander subject in the world than King Arthur.'" We have glimpses of young life dancing in the old hall, of the portraits of ancestors looking down from their panelled walls, and of the minstrels' gallery, hung with armour of the days of the Commonwealth. Like Sir Walter Vivian, the host dives— "In a hoard of tales that dealt with knights," and recalls the brave doings of his ancestors, John Strachey, the friend of Locke, and Henry Strachey, Indian secretary to Clive. The subjects discussed in the "great parlor" built by Bess of Hardwicke, or under the great limes and .oaks planted by the same imperious lady, disclose hidden stores of learning; like Sa'di's treasury, the old Manor Place is filled "with store of pearls, of truth and poetry."