A MINE OF QUOTATION.•

A STORY has been told of the famous Mr. Buckle that on being once asked his opinion of a scholastic dictionary newly published, he said oracularly that it was very good. "It is," he added, " one of the few dictionaries I have read through with pleasure." The idea conveyed, of course, was that of a perfect monument of learning. That any man should live to read dictionaries through, liking them only as an excep- tion, seemed, as indeed it was, too startling for absolute credibility. A dictionary is difficult to tackle, and in its ordinary conditions, moreover, it changes so much with the ever-changing forms of language that it is never certain when it ceases to be an authority. There are still so many who point triumphantly to Dr. Johnson as the greatest of enduring authorities on the language, that they are apt to forget how completely the spirit of change has swept over the sage's erudition, and to ignore the various trivialities which must always have been so great a drawback to the value of his great work. It is always amusing to look at for its mingled learning and simplicity, and to this day the seekers for puzzles cannot do better than propound enigmas out of his pages. What, for instance, is a " night-shriek "? which the ordinary guesser usually opines to be a kind of bird until he learns that it stands only for " a shriek at night," and wonders why the Doctor should have thought such a simple expression worthy of a separate English immortality. Nevertheless, panting time and deeper learning toil in vain after Dr. Johnson. Men still say " Silence !" to all later dictionaries when, as in the days of Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson wishes to speak.

The work before us is a monument of curious inquiry Colonel Dalbiac has issued but the first part of the work which he has planned, containing quotations from English and American authors, excluding all translations except in the case of the Bible. A second volume is to consist of quotations from Greek and Latin writers, so that the Colonel's reading must have been extensive indeed for the circle to which it will ap- peal. One cannot but rejoice that the Army and Commons combined should yet supply an active man with so muck leisure. A dictionary of quotations is in itself a curious study. Without following Buckle's preternatural example, and set- ting ourselves down to read it through, we turn over the pages to find ourselves wandering at our nnchartered will amongst a host of ancient friends. So rich a feast of chestnuts has not been provided for the eye and brain outside the gates of Bushey Park. Two indexes, one of authors and another of subjects, carefully edited down to the minutest instance • A Dictionary of Quotations (Rnglials). B Lieutenant - Oolonsl Hugh Dalbiac, M.P. London and New York: Swan Sonnenschcin and Macmillan and Cv.

of the definite article, supply material enough for medita- tions on popularity, or the undoubted indications of it which at all events quotation supplies. For it is popular quotation, distinctly, at which Colonel Dalbiac has aimed. Shakespeare provides us with three columns, and his enormous vogue may be tested by the fact that Tennyson, after the mighty dramatist the best patronised original in the list, is respon- sible for only twice as many aphorisms, or whatever we

may please to call them, as Hamlet alone. Of the Shake- spearian plays, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, Richard IL and Antony and Cleopatra, come nearest to the Prince of Denmark in number, being in that respect about equal among themselves. Sir Walter Scott—proh pudcrr !—only

just equals in vogue the lowest of these upon the rota, while only seven extracts from Matthew Arnold are but a poor set-

off against Hamlet's eighty, or the hundred and fifty or so of Alfred Tennyson. Browning, however, has seventy-nine to

answer for, but Swinbarne is limited to five. Sir Edwin Arnold, the only other living poet who figures in the list, is allotted the same number, while J. M. Barrie is made a rare living exception amongst prose-writers on the strength of the single remark that " Youth is subject to sudden fits of despondency. Its hopes go up and down like buckets in a draw-well." A further examination proves Rudyard Kipling, John Morley, the two Morrises, and J. G. Cotton Minchin- to us, we confess, unknown—to figure amongst the Colonel's originals with one or two instances apiece, but, except in Ptiorley's case, we scarcely see why. "The great business of life is, to be, to do, to do without, and to depart," is a piece

of epigram worth recording, though not perhaps quite famous enough for its place here. Alexander Pope beats Byron by a neck, the goodly pair coming about half-way between Hamlet

and Tennyson, while it is sad to think that all Martin Tupper's proverbial philosophy has only established seven little claims to be talked about. Carlyle scarcely does what might be expected from him, though the present writer confesses to some surprise at finding the most famous of bad definitions, that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, brought home to the sage of Chelsea in a somewhat different form.

That " genius means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all," is a gentler form of putting the paradox, which is a paradox none the less. " Genius " surely means nothing but a natural gift. after all ; and there is a natural gift for taking trouble as for everything else. That "genius," putting it broadly, is not likely to succeed permanently with- -out learning to take trouble, is no doubt true enough. That genius has been just as often ruined by the want of pains and perseverance is at least as true, but does not prove Carlyle's position. What says Dryden on the other hand, in absolute contradiction of Carlyle P- " Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, But genius may be born, and never can be taught."

Browning's conclusion on the subject is that " genius has somewhat of the infantine ; " though what he meant by that only Browning himself, if indeed he, could know.

It is after this inevitably discursive fashion that we wander over Colonel Dalbiac's pages. Everything cannot be there, and we miss amongst others almost the most beautiful of the

best-known passages from Hamlet, taken from the last act, "If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all "— a curious omission when Hamlet, proverbially "so full of quotations," is nevertheless so fully put under contribution.

The compiler must have been often at a loss in many of his most famous passages where to begin and where to stop, and has generally solved the difficulty, as in " To be or not to be," and in the exquisite mercy-speech from The Merchant of Venice, by setting out at length the whole. But if we be not hypercritical this strikes us as rather unsuited to a dictionary of quotations, and to be more in place in a collection of extracts. What, under the circumstances, has the famous soliloquy in As You Like It done that it should be cut down

to a mere- " All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players,"

and all the rest left out P Mercntio's Queen Mab is treated to the process of cutting down, which we take to be wrong altogether, being incontinently finished off at the " coach- maker's" line. But the Colonel must be allowed his pre- ferences, and be must have found it a matter for much

reflection where quotation stops and recital begins. We should ourselves think Burns's famous lines,—

" 0 wad some pow'r the giftie gi'e us To see oursels as ithers see us ! "

would have been more effective if confined to the single couplet, as in popular knowledge they certainly are, than they seem by having the context of the next quatrain appended to them. Popular misquotations, of which a volume might easily be made, stand corrected in the volume before us upon every page. The famous puzzle so invariably known as- " Small by degrees, and beautifully less," and boldly attributed to Pope, as the master of such antithesis, becomes "fine by degrees," as it ought, and is not only brought home to Prior, but defined as being "'Henry and Emma,' line 430." The force of precision can no further go than that, and nobody who has consulted the gallant Member's volume will have any excuse for erring upon this

head again. The parentage of some sayings is very enigmatic. In " The Great Unwashed "—attributed to Lord Brougham— the reference is, vide Hain Friswell's "Familiar Words," so

that we are still left in doubt whether Hain Friswell was right, and whether Lord Brougham was the father of the ex- pression or no. But we care little when next to it stand such magnificent lines as :—

" The greater cantle of the world is lost With very ignorance; we have kissed away Kingdoms and provinces."

How truly the Shakespeare rings, and how rare it is to find so near an echo of his style as this :-

" Shall eagles not be eagles ? wrens be wrens ? If all the world were falcons, what of that ? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eag14)."

That is Tennyson, but so eminently Shakespearian—even in the confusion of metaphor, for if all were falcons surely the eagle would be one too—that it might deceive the wisest. In short, this book is a good book, and with the chance discovery that she " lookt as butter would not melt in her mouth," is the property of John Heywood, we part from a very industrious and entertaining companion.