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always prove attractive to the student of Europe's mental and emotional growth. That there should be in our mother tongue more than 50 published translations of Goethes chief dramatic poem - not to mention the many in other tongues - implies - if it does not prove, that the subject matter of Faust (also other apart from its literary clothing) is of more than temporary interest to us - is something more than a fad, than a whim of the 19th Century.
There is a full section devoted to fun, wit, and humour - to Butler, Montaigne, Cervantes, Heine Hart and Jerome - yet it is possible that some of the richest amusement to be found in this varied collection, comes from the lesser Canadian poets,
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- the very small fry - The rhyming is so primitive, the provocation to smiling and laughter is so thoroughly unconscious, the personality so egotistically natural, that these naive attempts come straight home to our common nature: - the simple egoism makes their interest widely inclusive. Some of them are as deliciously human as Falstaff himself, far removed as they may be from him intellectually, and some of them are as asinine as Bottom the Weaver.
Why collect such common effusions? Why collect "such stuff and rot" as the art for art sake or purely literary critic has been known to call it? The answer is, that the books are of Bibliographical interest, often representing the earliest output of the Canadian village printing-press, - their primary attempts at book making. Having
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given the rhymes an odd corner in the weekly newspaper, the printer is readily persuaded to collect and issue them in book form, anticipating a good local sale - often by direct canvass of the poetaster himself.
As a result of these primitive conditions, this section is distinctly amateurish in body and soul.
Canadiana is represented by early publications from Quebec Montreal and Niagara, including many books for the native Indians in their several dialects. One, a primer for the Mohawk children, London 1786, has a quaint dated copperplate frontispiece. showing the interior of a school; the native teacher being in leggings, fashionable short breeches long westminster sporting coat, ornamented with ear drops, and
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partially shaved scalp, leaving a que of long rough straggling hair to crown the whole. The table at his side carries of course an old fashioned birch rod, a quill pen and a metal ink stand. The inside of the log cabin is plastered. The pupils - boys and girls - imitate the teacher in the use of ear ornaments and in the que. The shadows of the picture are washed in, the engraving being in light outline, the whole work suggests that the artist drew more heavily on his imagination than he did on the plate of copper.
This collection does not profess to represent the nether world although it has "Letters from Hell," yet Devils and Demonology are not neglected, the necessary correctative for
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this class of literature being found in a goodly number of the utopias, all of which I think labour under the same defect of not recognizing, that man always has had a satanic seasoning, always has had enough of the thoroughly earthy in him to ensure a good anchorage to this mundane life & its soil
[red pen: See 49. A. 49. B. 49.C]
It is getting late I see and I must hasten to a close. Dictionaries and Bibliographies are represented by more than 400 items, and fine art has not only some original Ruskins - the etchings by his own hand - - but there is a nice show of "Annuals" "Gifts" & "Offerings" with their highly finished delicate steel engravings - common in the first years of this century, but now getting scarce, and dying
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