Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/479

1920 In her Margherita di Durazzo (extracted from the Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane, N.S., iv, 1919) Signorina Angela Valente has undertaken to give precision and detail to a portion of the confused period of Neapolitan history that extends from the accession of Joanna I to that of Alfonso of Aragon. An insubordinate and factious nobility, and the internal feuds of a corrupted reigning house, the elder line of Anjou, gave the opportunity for renewed foreign invasions, and these were rendered more persistent by the Great Schism. It was a chief object of the popes of Avignon that their candidate, of the younger line of Anjou, should conquer Naples, in order that they themselves might gain and hold Rome; and in the end it was the adherence of Naples and Italy in general to the Roman pope, rather than a preference for either of the rivals for the kingdom, which preserved Naples for the house of Durazzo. In this contest the regent Margaret, wife and afterwards widow of Charles III of Durazzo, plays an important part which is well brought out in Signorina Valente's monograph. Her courage and resolution did much to preserve his inheritance for her son Ladislaus. Yet the attitude of the popes was the deciding factor in the struggle. Urban VI, pursuing his savage rancours, almost overthrew the Durazzans; Boniface IX by his close alliance restored them. Signorina Valente hardly gives a history of the kingdom outside Margaret's immediate activity, but her account is clear and thorough, and shows a full acquaintance with the sources and literature. A number of unpublished documents are appended, in which there are a few misprints, e. g. 'ivibi' for 'inibi' on p. 223. In the text on p. 137, 'monaco' seems a misleading description of the Knight Hospitaller Talabard.

In Four Centuries of Greek Learning in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919) we have the inaugural lecture delivered before the university of Oxford on 8 March 1894 by Ingram Bywater, Regius Professor of Greek, 1893-1908. The recovery of this lecture, long thought to have been lost, among Bywater's papers is very fortunate. In fifteen pages it gives, what many teachers must have wished for, a bird's-eye view of the course of Greek studies in England from the end of the fifteenth century to the first part of the nineteenth, and also some considered verdicts on individual Greek scholars. The authority is unimpeachable, and the words in which the story is told are worthy of the speaker. The sketch of the history is but a sketch. Many details could have been added by Bywater himself, many have been added by subsequent writers. Sir John Sandys's History of Classical Scholarship needs only to be named in this connexion. But in spite of all that has been done, there is still room for a separate history of Greek learning in England from the seventh century onwards, and such a book would contain many surprises. The manuscript libraries of this country, especially those of the universities and colleges, have not yet revealed all their secrets; the Bodleian MS. of the Liturgy of St. Basil (p. 7) which belonged to Darley abbey, the Canonici Greek Octateuch from Canterbury, and that at University College, are but a few of the odd bits of evidence of Greek learning before the Renaissance which can be produced. The estimates of individual scholars which Bywater gives are