Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/325

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 317 valuable material will be found in the accounts of churches which have been since rebuilt, such as Albury, Banbury, Bladon, and Churchill, and in the contemporary notices of structural alterations to, arid decorations of, churches, vicarages, and other buildings, such as Ham Court, Bampton. Pending the appearance of the last part with its appendixes on the manuscripts and the index, the name of the parish heading each page and a few editorial notes would have been useful to the reader ; we should have liked to know who really was the builder of Steeple Barton manor-house and why the inscriptions in Charlbury church have been omitted-. Indeed a provisional note on the manuscripts might have been given stating their exact date and their correlation, and explaining why Rawlinson's copy of Wood's notes is sometimes given in preference to the original. Occasionally this leads to mistakes ; the information regarding John Osbaldeston on p. 80 is from Wood (E. 1, fo. 142), not Rawlinson. The transcript, however, seems to contain remarkably few errors : ' 1618 ' should be ' 1616 ' on p. 15 (where also the reference Wood E. 1, fo. 186 is omitted) ; the tinctures of the arms on p. 22 need correction ; on p. 85 ' ye ... jeweller or belonging to Jewell house ' should read ' ye qu[een Elizabeth's] jeweller or belonging to ye Jewell house ' (Wood E. 1, fo. 127 V ) ; a line is omitted in Richard Croft's epitaph on p. 93 (Rawl. B. 400 f, fo. 170 V ) ; while 'Noc' is a misprint for ' Noe ' (p. 64) and ' Wood E.' for ' Wood B.' (p. 22). But these are small and unimportant points, which may be useful in a ' corrigenda ' note. M. V. T. The work of Father Gaston Sortais, S. J., La Philosophic Moderne depuis Bacon jusqu'a Leibniz. Etudes Historiques. (Paris : Lethielleux, 1920), is planned on a very elaborate scale, and, when completed, should prove a most valuable guide to philosophical literature. The first volume, now published, deals only with Bacon and his predecessors. The question of method is, of course, fundamental in the preliminary inquiry, as indeed it is throughout the volume ; and the views which Bacon's predecessors held about method are to be gathered both from the philo- sophers and from the men of science themselves. M. Sortais gives a full account of the philosophers, dealing with Ramus, Sanchez, Acontio, Hemmingsen, and the two Englishmen with whom Bacon may possibly have been brought into contact at Cambridge, Everard Digby and William Temple. A careful account of all these is given. The treatment of Digby and Temple is naturally indebted to -the earlier work of Freudenthal. Only rarely is the author confused by English official terminology, as by the words 'senior fellow', or when he speaks of Digby as ' Sir Everard Digby '. Nor do I know his authority for the statement (p. 54) that Digby was given a benefice on being deprived of his fellowship at St. John's College, Cambridge, towards the end of 1588. But these are small matters. The men of science are dealt with only in general terms, and are even spoken of (p. 279) as having merely followed the correct method by instinct. This statement cannot be justified, at any rate of Gilbert and Galileo. It is true that Gilbert did not write on method ; but the character of his work does not support the idea that he had not