'Let's go to the music!' cried Mr. Keller. God knows, I want a composing influence of some kind.' At the end of the first act of the opera, a new trouble exhausted his small stock of patience. He had been too irritated, on leaving the house, to remember his operaglass; and he was sufficiently near-sighted to feel the want of it. It is needless to say that I left the theatre at once to bring back the glass in time for the next act. My instructions informed me that I should find it on his bedroom-table. I thought Joseph looked confused when he opened the house-door to me. As I ran upstairs, he followed me, saying something. I was in too great a hurry to pay any attention to him. Reaching the second floor by two stairs at a time, I burst into Mr. Keller's bedroom, and found myself face to face with-Madame Fontaine ! END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. LONDON: PRINTED BY CHATTO & WINDUS'S LIST OF BOOKS. Imperial 8vo, with 147 fine Engravings, half-morocco, 36s. THE EARLY TEUTONIC, ITALIAN, AND FRENCH MASTERS. Translated and Edited from the Dohme Series by A. H. KEANE, M.A.I. With numerous Illustrations. "Cannot fail to be of the utmost use to students of art history."-TIMES. Crown 8vo, 1,200 pages, cloth extra, 12s. 6d. THE READER'S HANDBOOK OF ALLUSIONS, REFERENCES, PLOTS, AND STORIES. By the Rev. E. COBHAM BREWER, LL.D. The object of this Handbook is to supply readers and speakers with a lucid bus very brief account of such names as are used in allusions and references, whether by poets or prose writers-to furnish those who consult it with the plot of popular dramas, the story of epic poems, and the outline of well-known tales. Thus, it gives in a few lines the story of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey," of Virgil's Eneid," Lucan's "Pharsalia," and the "Thebaid" of Statius; of Dante's "Divine Comedy," Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and Tasso's "Ferusalem Delivered;" of Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Paradise Regained;" of Thomson's "Seasons;" of Ossian's tales, the " Nibelungen Lied" of the German Minnesingers, the "Romance of the Rose," the "Lusiad" of Camoens, the "Loves of Theagenes and Charicleia" by Heliodorus; with the several story poems of Chaucer, Gower, Piers Plowman, Hawes, Spenser, Drayton, Phineas Fletcher, Prior, Goldsmith, Campbell, Southey, Byron, Scott, Moore, Tennyson, Longfellow, and so on. Far from limiting its scope to poets, the Handbook tells, with similar brevity, the stories of our national fairy tales and romances, such novels as those by Charles Dickens, "Vanity Fair" by Thackeray, the "Rasselas" of Johnson, Gulliver's Travels" by Swift, the "Sentimental Journey" by Sterne, "Don Quixote" and "Gil Blas," "Telemachus" by Fénélon, and" Undine" by De la Motte Fouqué. Great pains have been taken with the Arthurian stories, whether from Sir T. Mallory's collection or from the "Mabinogion," because Tennyson has brought them to the front in his "Idylls of the King; and the number of dramatic plots sketched out is many hundreds Another striking and interesting feature of the book is the revelation of the source from which dramatists and romancers have derived their stories, and the strange repetitions of historic incidents. In the Appendix are added two lists: the first contains the date and author of the several dramatic works set down; and the second, the date of the divers poems or novels given under their author's name. |