The Lost Language of Symbolism. By Harold Bayley. 2 vols.
(Williams and Norgate. 253. net.)—Basing his inferences on the study of medieval water-marks, Mr. Harold Bayley has elaborated in his present work the suggestions originally put forward by him in A New Light on the Renaissance. This time, however, it is the whole subject of symbolism that he takes for his province. Emphasizing the close relation of symbolism and philology, he draws from an examination of the mystic significance of fairy tales, throughout the ages, deductions which are often debatable and to tho layman even fantastic, but always interesting, and shows how their spiritual messages, concentrated in a sign, were passed to and fro by the paper-makers of Europe, whose mills, as he points out, were usually built in heretical districts. The fascination of following Mr. Bayley in his task of reading in the most literal sense between the lines is second only to the pleasure of independent discovery, and the quaint designs with which almost every page of the work is illustrated are as attractive as the matter itself.
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