Compositions and Traits',aims by the late H. C. P. Mason.
(C. J. Clay and Sons. 35. 6d. net.)—This slender volume is all that remains, besides the affectionate recollections of a circle of friends, of an accomplished and admirable man. H. C. F. Mason, after a distinguished career at Cambridge, where he bad among his honours the Bell Scholarship, the Person Prize, and a Browne Medal, worked as a Master at Harrow, Marl- borough, and Sherbonie, and from 1883-92 at Haileybury. He had a great gift in composition, and we have here about a hundred of his "fair copies," most of them translations from English into Latin or Greek verse. A few versions from Latin into English make us share the editor's regret that lie did, or anyhow left behind him, so little in this direction. What could be a better rendering of " Durum : sad leviva fit patientia Quicquid corrigere set nefas " than- " "Pis bard but patience robe of half their weight The ills we may not mend."
From among the other renderings it is difficult to choose. With scarcely an exception, they are admirably good. Here is the last stanza of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's "Blue Roses "
" It may be beyond the grave She shall find what she would have. Oh, 'twas but an idle quest— Roses red sod white are best."
" Fors an trans Stygias erraverit ills paludes, inveniat natas in sua rota roses: me labor hoc vanus docuit—quas fats negarint in medio positis posthabuisse rosis."
Here are some lines from Macaulay's "Epitaph on a Jacobite," where it will not be necessary to supply the English ("For him I threw lands," &c.) " Hale ego posthabui census, patrimonia, honores, quaeque his apes fuerat carior una mihi, pro rage externs dum maceror exul in ors, induxit iuveni tempo= cans dolor, silvas dtun paring sonat ipsa Lavernia, nostras ipse requirenti displicit Amu aquas?'
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