The Phœnix Nest, 1593. by Hyder Edward RollinsReview by: W. W. GregModern Language Notes, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Feb., 1932), pp. 125-126Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2913712 .

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REVIEWS 125

gress, we may begin to hope for the day when the spirit of poetry and the spirit of reason will lay aside their feud. But any com- promise was inconceivable in Chatterton's time; and because of the intransigency he perished. The poet of Rowley is one of Reason's failures.

ESTHER PARKER ELLINGER Baltimore

The Phcenix Nest, 1593. Edited by HYDER EDWARD ROLLINS. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931. Pp. xliii + 241. $5.00.

This attractive anthology has been several times reprinted, most recently and satisfactorily by Hugh Macdonald in 1926 as one of the 'Haslewood Books.' The present editor explains that his edi- tion was prepared before Macdonald's appeared, but there was in any case room for both, quite apart from the fact that the book now for the first time receives full editorial honours. Except in the size of type, which is slightly reduced, Rollins follows the typographical details of the original a little more minutely than did Macdonald: a checking of several scattered pages has revealed no variant of any sort. A separate index of authors might have been convenient.

The introduction is naturally devoted largely to a discussion of the identity of the editor R. S. While on this question no certain conclusion seems possible, Rollins evidently inclines, in affection if not in reason, to one Richard Stapleton, a friend of Chapman and probable author of the Phillis and Flora included accidentally it would seem in the first edition of his Ovid's Banquet of Sense. One could wish that more definite information were available, for R. S. was no mere publisher's hack. Not only did he have access to more than commonly agreeable poems from authors of repute, and take the trouble to obtain apparently sound and accurate versions, but he oversaw his work with meticulous care. Rollins points out for instance that his versions of Lodge's poems are superior to those that appear in Lodge's own collection Phillis, published the same year, and adds that "The Phcenix Nest is the most carefully printed miscellany, one of the most carefully printed books, of the period." R. S. should be honoured among editors: it is fitting that he has himself found an editor like Professor Rollins, whose graceful ambition it has been to rival the accuracy of his prede- cessor.

It is curious that only a single early edition of the anthology seems to have been issued. Considering that of the 1593 impres- sion at least seven copies survive, I cannot regard the suggestion that " Other editions might easily have been published after the first without leaving any trace " as at all probable. The copy was

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126 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, FEBRUARY, 1932

regularly entered (8 Oct., 1593) to "Iohn Iackson and his parte- ners," that is the Eliot's Court syndicate, but the imprint is some- what laconic: "Imprinted at London, by Iohn Iackson. 1593." It was possibly a more or less private publication, over which R. S. retained control, and he may not have cared to have copies multi- plied. But the book may well have been popular, and several later collections are supposed to have borrowed from it.

There is little in the editing of the volume upon which it is neces- sary to comment. Rollins should not have said (p. xii) that the Harvard copy "belongs to an impression earlier than the British Museum copy " on the strength of a couple of uncorrected readings. An 'order' of individual forms does not imply any 'order' of copies. Nor was he well inspired to write (p. xxxviii): " one son- net with the peculiar rhyme-scheme abab bccd edee if." The poem is not a sonnet and can never have been meant for one, even if it is counted as such in Phillis: it is a couple of rime-royal stanzas!

The care and taste of the editing deserved and have received equal accuracy and beauty of printing from the Harvard University Press. The whole is a very pleasing specimen of book-building, and it is unfortunate that the sheets were not handled more carefully before binding: in the copy received, one of fifteen printed for review, some of the pages are badly smudged.

W. W. GREG London

The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, 1860-1920 (Main Currents in American Thought, Volume III). By VERNON Louis PARRINGTON. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany. 1930. Pp. xvii + 429. $4.00.

The death of Professor Parrington prevented the completion of the third volume of his notable trilogy upon the history of Ameri- can thought. The plan for the entire volume had been worked out, however, and enough of the actual writing finished to give a fairly connected account from 1860 to 1900. His appraisal of develop- ments since then is suggested by essays and other fragments reprinted from various sources. Of these addenda the one entitled "A Chapter in American Liberalism " is alone sufficient to indi- cate the loss to American literary history and social criticism entailed by his untimely passing. His colleague Professor Eby provides in a foreword a brief and appreciative assessment of the author's methods of work and literary significance.

The present volume possesses all the virtues of the earlier ones, with the additional merit that the author, now venturing into a less worked over period, succeeds in providing a unifying pattern for the apparent complexities and inconsistencies that marked the

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