The Hunting of the Snark
Snarcis Venatio. By H. D. Watson. (Blackwell. 5s.) Taw pleasant little: book is introdUced by Professor Gilbert Murray in a foreword from which we learn that, mirabile dictu, his life has some empty moments. If empty, however, they are not void ; for he fills them up with turning, into Latin or Greek, poems he remembers or advertisements in railway-car-
riages. He is thus in natural sympathy with Mr. Watson's daring but I think successful endeavour, which will delight and amuse all who still retain a tolerable memory of their school or college Latin. Some idea of its skill may be gained from noticing that Mr. Watson has turned Lewis Carroll's acrostic on Gertrude Chataway into a Latin acrostic on " Lalage Multi- loqua." The task must have been much harder, because so
much longer, than Vansittart's Jabberwocky:. hut, considering that there are six or seven hundred lines, one detects remark- ably few lapses.
This is, however, by no means all. _ Not _only is there an ingenious interpretation of the enigmatic poem, which reveals Mr. Watson as sound, in the League faith, but there are English verses of his own (with Latin versions) betraying a cultured taste and, what is more, a sympathetic and humane mind.
There is something of Horace's " higher mood " in this descrip- tion of our present troubles which one half suspects to have been written before the -English': " Bursas per auras dat tonitrus sonum Raptae frdesunt cgimina =Auer - • Promptique Bellonae iuventam Sacrificare parent ministri."
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