sufficient harmony between the parts to bring about even a satisfactory decorative unity. But if we turn to the 'Ordination of the Seven Deacons' at Berlin we find the story told with a certain dignity and persuasiveness; the figure of Peter is finely isolated and more nobly posed than any figure of the earlier series, and the figures surrounding him are related in groups with a certain rhythmical flow of line. In the background depth is obtained by a happier use of perspective than heretofore, and the various divisions of the landscape have less the air of being successive side scenes pushed into the composition from either wing. This is in fact a curiously orthodox, almost academic, composition for Carpaccio. The 'St Stephen Disputing,' of the Brera, has much of his native quaintness and odd charm, but it, too, is more held together, as well as more noble in its interpretation of character, more seriously imagined, than any of the earlier works. The 'Stephen Preaching' is again a finely thought-out composition, with a clear purpose shown in the massing and piling up of the buildings in the background; altogether a design such as one could not have augured from the helpless ignorance of such problems shown in the Triumph of St George.' Finally, in the Stoning of Stephen,' at Stuttgart, Carpaccio, so long the merely entertaining narrator, becomes for once seriously dramatic, and his native ingenuity and spontaneity help him to create a really moving design. So far from declining at the end of his life, as our authors suggest, it would seem that he was only just at the end learning to use his great native gifts, no longer in a haphazard and extempore fashion, but with deliberate purpose and newly enlightened mind. Even the very latest painting, the St Paul, brought to light by our authors for the first time, has a dignity and grandeur in the silhouette of which one could find no trace in his earlier work.*

6

What, one wonders, was the cause of this great change? We may perhaps guess that it came from contact with a new group of artists with bigger ideas and more scrupulous execution than had obtained in the Bastiani

* The very late painting of the 'Lion of St Mark' is also one of Carpaccio's most perfect works. For the reasons given above, the Dead Christ,' at Berlin, would seem rather to belong to the early or middle period of his career.

workshop. And there is this to support such a view, that there are traces of a familiarity with Cima da Conegliano's works. Without going into details of formal resemblances one may cite Carpaccio's Death of the Virgin,' at Ferrara, dated 1508 (i.e. shortly before the Stephen series), in which not only the main idea but individual heads are taken direct from Cima's version of the theme. Again, in the 'Presentation of the Virgin,' in the same series, there is considerable likeness with Cima's painting of that subject. Finally, in the Ordination of the Deacons,' the landscape is no longer of Bastiani's type, as heretofore, but definitely Cimesque, while the St Peter is also Cimesque in pose and drapery.

To some it may seem improbable that so strong an individuality as Carpaccio's would come under the influence of a more derivative artist like Cima, but if Cima lacked Carpaccio's ruder and more instinctive talents he was a far more scholarly designer and a more accomplished painter, and he possessed, moreover, a much more delicate and scrupulous taste, all of which qualities one may suppose Carpaccio to have been quick enough to perceive and wise enough to emulate.

To Dr Ludwig and Signor Molmenti, then, Carpaccio is merely a great artist. They scarcely endeavour to define the kind of greatness he exemplified. Mistaking the actual for the real, they speak much of the truth of his art, contrasting it with the supposedly false idealism of others. Now in all the greater truths of art, truths of construction, truths of dramatic feeling and expression, Carpaccio was singularly lacking. He had, on the other hand, an extraordinary native gift for mimicry, a quickness in observing, and a childlike directness in recording the more obvious aspects of pose and gesture. One feels him to have been simple, unreflecting, genial, and humourous. He reflects admirably the materialism of the Venetian temperament, but he colours it with a playful fancy which redeems it altogether from Philistine grossness. To him, however, it never becomes transfigured, as in Gianbellini, with deep imaginative sympathy or religious rêverie. His taste, in the matter of form, is constantly at fault; he inclines in all his accessories to a futile repetition of meagre units. As an extreme instance of this one may take the architectural background in his drawing

for the Presentation in the Temple,' in the Uffizi. But the same will apply to his treatment of all architectural accessories and furniture. On the other hand, in the matter of colour, he had both fine taste and rich invention. His colour, it is true, never becomes an organ for the expression of rare and exalted moods, as it does with Bellini and Giorgione, but it has extreme decorative beauty, and it has the common qualities of Venetian colour, its geniality, its glow and generosity, in rare perfection.

Such an artist as Carpaccio must always, one would think, appear delightful and lovable, like the fairy stories of our childhood, since, like them, he demands no intellectual effort on the part of the spectator, but only a kindly interest and curiosity in the thread of his story. Burne-Jones, in a letter quoted by our authors, summed up the situation admirably when he said that Gentile Bellini won his respect, but Carpaccio his love. We love him for the frankness of his failings as well as for the untouched spontaneity of his talent; but while we do well to love him, we should never confuse our sense of values so far as to offer him our respect.

If Dr Ludwig's work on Carpaccio stood alone it would still be a remarkable monument to his memory. But it does not. On almost every period and every branch of Venetian art he has thrown a flood of much-needed daylight; and when one reads in Signor Molmenti's pathetic preface of the terrible conditions of illness and suffering under which he accomplished this work, one cannot but join in his deep admiration of the man's character and in envy of the enthusiasm which carried him on till the very last, hopeful, eager, and disinterested; for his devotion to truth was absolute and entirely untinged by personal ambitions. He wanted to find out the truth, and he cared very little who got the glory of the discovery so long as the truth was made known. To myself it is a real pleasure to bear witness to his kindly helpfulness, his chivalrous generosity in communicating to a much younger and scarcely known writer the advantage of all the information which he had patiently excavated from archives or acquired in his frequent journeys to remote country places.

ROGER FRY.

Art. XI.-BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS OF THE CIVIL

WAR.

Catalogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers, and Manuscripts relating to the Civil War, Commonwealth, and Restoration. Collected by George Thomason, 16401661. Two vols. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1908.

IN February 1849 Thomas Carlyle was called upon to give evidence before the Royal Commission then sitting to enquire into the management of the British Museum. His own experience had lain chiefly among the two great collections relating to the English Civil War and to the French Revolution, and of these two collections he speaks with characteristic picturesqueness and energy. He says of the Thomason Tracts, 'In value, I believe the whole world could not parallel them. I consider them to be the most valuable set of documents connected with English history; greatly preferable to all the sheep-skins in the Tower for informing the English what the English were in former times.' Alluding to Thomason's own catalogue in twelve folio volumes, he says, 'If a man wanted to do a beneficent act to England he ought to print the catalogue of these Civil War pamphlets; he might begin that to-morrow and send it away to all parts as soon as it could be printed.' Finally, he expresses his emphatic opinion that without a catalogue these collections 'might as well have been locked up in water-tight chests and sunk on the Dogger Bank as put into the British Museum.'

That Carlyle was right in his main contention is selfevident. An uncatalogued library is as exasperating as an unindexed book; but it is perhaps fortunate that his scheme of printing Thomason's catalogue as it stands fell through. Excellent as this catalogue is in many respects it has no sort of index, and the fact that the chronological sequence of the titles is continually broken by arbitrary divisions into folios, quartos, octavos, and so forth, would, in any case, have been a serious drawback to its practical At the time when Carlyle spoke, the General Catalogue of Printed Books was just beginning to take form and substance. The task of compiling and printing a

use.

catalogue containing some four millions of entries has been no brief or simple task. Its completion at the beginning of the present century has at last rendered it possible for the staff of the Museum Library to turn their attention to more specialised forms of work, and to pro duce a catalogue which tardily but thoroughly justifies Carlyle's counsel.

We hope that the present monograph on the Thomason collection may be the first of a series of catalogues devoted to the many collections, historical, scientific, and literary, contained in the Library of the British Museum.

This catalogue consists of a list of all the books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and newspapers, arranged as strictly as possible in chronological order, a plan which has been rendered possible by the fact that Thomason himself dated each book as it came into his hands, followed by an elaborate index of the names of persons, places, political parties, portraits, and in fact any matter which its compilers considered useful. The preface gives all the information obtainable on the biography of George Thomason and the history of his collection.

Thomason had been settled as a bookseller in St Paul's Churchyard for fourteen years when, on the day of the meeting of the Long Parliament, November 3, 1640, he determined to collect the books, pamphlets, and newspapers which at that date began to pour from the press. Such a resolve could only have been formed by a man gifted in a remarkable degree with historical foresight and imagination; nor could anything short of heroic resolution have enabled him to continue the task without a single break through more than twenty years of constant strain and stress until he finally completed his collection with the record of the coronation of Charles II, April 23, 1661. In the year 1651 Thomason was seriously involved in the Presbyterian conspiracy known as Love's Plot, and was closely clapt up at Whitehall' during the months of April and May. Yet even imprisonment gave no check to his collection; the pamphlets and newspapers issued during these weeks were as regularly received and dated as at any other period. It was probably about this time, or perhaps a month or two earlier, when the discovery of the plot was imminent, and he had good reason to fear the confiscation of his property, that he sent his entire