Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/476

 468 SHORT NOTICES July name of Seneca, Mr. Holland inclines to think that they are not by the philosopher, but by another member of the family. This is, of course, conceivable. But writers at least as eminent as Seneca have written worse plays, and the dramas contain much rhetoric and even poetry that is worthy of Seneca at his best. The Octavia is clearly not by Seneca. But, if style and technique count for anything, it is equally clearly not by the author of the other plays, and the arguments based by Mr. Holland on the fact of its inclusion with the other plays seem, therefore, to fall to the ground. The book concludes with a somewhat slight sketch of the life and character of Maecenas, and genealogies of the imperial house and the family of Seneca. H. E. B. In The Ancient List of the Coarhs of Patrick (Dublin : Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxv, section C, no. 9), Dr. H. J. Lawlor and Mr. E. L. Best give the most complete and scholarly edition of a very important document connected with the early ecclesiastical history of Ireland. It is entitled ' Comarbada Patraic ', and is called by its editors ' The Ancient List of the Coarbs of Patrick '. This is more accurate than Dr. Whitley Stokes's title, ' List of S. Patrick's Successors in the See of Armagh ', because it is not primarily a list of bishops of Armagh ; the second and third names in it are the names of contemporaries of St. Patrick, who did not outlive him, and therefore could not have been his successors. Nor is it exclusively a list of abbots of Armagh. In one of the four extant manuscripts (0) three lay benefactors, two of them being kings, are named after no. 50. This supports the conclusion that the list is founded on, and to some extent actually preserves, the liturgical diptychs of the church of Armagh. More direct evidence is in an Irish note appended to no. 36, in the Book of Leinster, the earliest manuscript authority for the lists (c. 1160), which says, ' Three erenachs here who took the abbacy by force, and who are not mentioned at mass '. The meaning of this note is well worked out by the editors, who have thereby solved to a large extent the origin and nature of this list, and compel us to recognize in it what was originally, and to a large extent is still, an interesting survival of a feature in the liturgy of the Celtic church in Ireland. This feature, the recitation of the diptychs at mass, fell into desuetude at Armagh in the eleventh century. A similar explanation is here suggested for the list of abbots in the last hymn in the Antiphonary of Bangor (p. 335). The suggestion is worthy of consideration ; it helps to the identification of Aedeus, named as the third abbot in that historic hymn. A complete specimen of such diptychs has been preserved in the ninth-century Stowe missal. F. E. W. Now that Cardinal Gasquet is resident in Rome, it was very suitable that he should write the history of the English college. It is, therefore, somewhat disappointing to find that his History of the Venerable English College, Rome (London : Longmans, 1920), as he is carefid to state in the preface, is only a sketch drawn up for the celebration of the centenary of the reopening of the college in 1818, a celebration which, it appears, the circumstances of the times have postponed. It is evident from the