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 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 285 sober evidence of English returns, lists, and estimates : nor even with general impressions formed on the spot. What in reality was the extent of actual prosecution ? How far were fines exacted, oaths actually tendered, or prisons filled ? How far were the persecuting laws enforced ? Or, in whatever degree they were not, to what causes and to whose influence is the mitigation to be traced ? Again we ask the questions in vain. Questions of this nature are of much greater importance than many of the rival attractions which usurp the student's attention, such as the invent- ing, or the pooh-poohing, of plots. They may be of secondary interest to the apologist ; but they are of prime interest to the historian. Until they are solved we are at the mercy of the controversialists, the politicians, the diplomatists both amateur and professional, the underworld of informers and spies : an uncomfortable position, which still prevails. Underneath all this phantasmagoria there is a real world, in which people live and act and think ; in which they go to church with some sort of conscience, or they do not ; in which perhaps they combine some church-going with some venturesome hearing of mass in secret or some harbouring of a recusant priest. There are parishes which are content or not content with the new ways, and with the new parson, or more often with the old one who with more or less of conviction has conformed. There are districts which are conservative and districts which are innovat- ing. There are views which are protestant and anti-catholic, there are views which are catholic and anti-Roman. Where in the midst of all this real life is the recusant or the conservative ? If we can get nearer to such realities as these, we can afford to care less for Elizabeth and her whims or policies, for popes and emperors, for the rivalries of France and Spain. The subject of ' The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth ' seems to demand something more of this sort than the book provides. Perhaps the time for accomplishing so difficult a task has hardly come. The history of the exiles abroad is another and an easier matter ; and writers like Lechat who have recently taken up that theme have chosen the simpler part. But the situation in England deserves more elucidation than it has received as yet : and many judgements must meanwhile be held in suspense. W. H. FRERE. Matthew Prior. A Study of his Public Career and Correspondence. By L. ft. WICKHAM LEGO. (Cambridge : University Press, 1921.) THIS life of Matthew Prior suffers from the disadvantage of having been compiled before, but published after, Mr. Bickley's book on the same subject which appeared in 1914. As far as the principal and printed sources of information on Prior are concerned, little could be usefully added to Mr. Bickley's work. On the other hand, apart from those sources, little would have been left of Mr. Legg's. In the circumstances Mr. Legg has decided to publish his book as it stood, although chapters i to vii, up to the secret mission of 1711, and chapter xii, after the secret com- mittee of 1715, consist chiefly of matter already to be found in the corre- sponding chapters of the earlier biography. The remainder of the book throws some light, largely derived