CURRENT LITERATURE.
.Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. LVIIL Edited by Sidney Lee. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 15s.)—This fifty-eighth volume is remarkable for the number of foreign names it con- tains. The letter "V," of course, begins the names of a great many Dutchmen who were closely connected with England. We were no less surprised than pleased to come across Van Dyck, by Mr. Lionel Cust. In spite of the immense number of pictures he painted here (Mr. Cust says there is hardly a noble family in England which does not boast an ancestor painted by Van Dyck), the great Dutchman only worked in England for about six years. Adored and petted by the nobles, knighted and pensioned by the King, he still could not be induced to take up a more permanent abode
in this country. It is obvious that in six years he could not have
got through all the English work which bears his name. " Jabach, an art amateur and dealer of Cologne, has left a record of Van Dyck's methods,—how he gave each sitter a fixed period for sitting, and after making notes of the costume and draperies. banded the portrait and his notes to his assistants to complete,
When the picture ' over the whole him- self." There are .manY interesting naives among the Vaughans, notably Henry .Vaughan, the pat; and' his brother, the poet and alchemist." Those who delight in Vaughan's mystical poetry will be interested in- the scraps of information about his parentage and relations to-be found here. -John Aubrey, the poet's cousin; says "his grandmother. was an Aubrey, his father was a coxtembe —and no honester than he should be." There is another Vaughan born itt 1605, " indubitably related in blood as well as in mental constitution to the poet,"_ who "Was Was ,gibitXt. to . believe that he conversed with angels and spirits." On Edward de Vere, seventeenth" Earl of Oxford, there is a long and entertaining article by Mr. Sidney Lee. As a boy Oiford's wayward temper was a source of serious embarrassment to his guardian Cecil. One day in wine he killed• the cook. "Luckily a jury- "Sqasiadrrcc3 to deliver a verdict of felo-de-se, the man's death being attributed to his running upon the point of a fence sword of the said Earl.' Truly he was, as Harvey said of him, " a passing strange odd man." Another article contributed by Mr. Lee is. on -Udall, the author of Ralph Roister Bolster, the earliest English comedy known. It was written in Henry VIII.'s reign, probably for Udall's scholars when he was Head-Master of Eton. The biographies of the Verney" family are by Lady Verney, so, of course, they are good reading. There is a very good account of Henry Vincent, the forgotten Chartist agitator. He was really a great orator, was called by Sir William Molesworth "the Demosthenes of the Chartist movement," and rendered great services to the country by popularising Free-trade. He was_s, Quaker by religion and feeling, though not a raember- of the Society, and he could reduce rough men to tears.
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