Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/633

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 625 ' Crauh ' (pp. 4, 22, 32) is not ' Grug ', but ' Crach ', i. e. scabby, a surname of which there are many examples in the Record of Carnarvon. ' Gilbertus de Yolgreve ' (p. 6) was, surely, from Gulgrave (now Golden Grove) in the parish of Llanasa. J. E. L. The third volume of the late Dr. L. Traube's Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen (Munich : Beck, 1920), which contains his Kleine Schriften, is not a mere reprint of his collected papers, but a carefully revised edition taking into account all the important literature that has appeared since Traube's death in 1907. Originally the series was to have comprised five volumes, but this volume is its last. No student of medieval history, of textual criticism, or of the transmission of learning can afford to be without these volumes. For the palaeographer they constitute not only an indispensable tool, but an inexhaustible mine and a source of inspiration. Everything Traube wrote had more than mere facts : it had ideas which opened up new vistas and stimulated further research. The present volume is divided into three parts : (i) Contributions to Classical Philology (pp. 1-92) ; (ii) Contributions to Medieval Philology (pp. 93-209) ; (iii) Palaeography and the History of Manuscripts (pp. 211-90). Here it is impossible to do more than to mention a few of the more striking papers. The volume opens with ' Untersuchungen zur Uberlieferungsgeschichte romischer Schriftsteller ', including, among others, Valerius Maximus, Cornelius Nepos, Livy, and Ammianus Marcellinus. There follows the fascinating medieval study ' Perrona Scottorum ', with its important palaeographical digression ; then the purely palaeographical paper on the date of Codex Eomanus of Virgil, in which Traube first called attention to the importance of the study of the symbols used for such holy words as deus, dominus, lesus, Christus, spiritus, sanctus, the idea which is fully developed in his master- piece, Nomina Sacra. The last study, ' Anonymus Cortesianus ', contains a crushing exposure of a literary fraud fathered by a professor of Rome who has never seen fit to defend his alleged discovery. The volume closes with an appendix and indexes to the three volumes. The index of manu scripts is disappointing, since it registers merely libraries and not in dividual manuscripts discussed. E. A. L. Eight of the nine essays collected in Mr. Harold J. Laski's The Founda- tions of Sovereignty (London : Allen and Unwin, 1921) are reprinted from six different periodicals, and, as they are united by a common purpose, it will certainly be useful to have them in one volume. The preface tells us that they are ' part of a scaffolding from which there is eventually to emerge a general reconstruction of the state '. No one can quarrel with Mr. Laski for proceeding tentatively, and these papers, like those in his earlier collections, contribute a good deal to the elucidation of various points of detail. But his readers, including some of those who share his dissatisfaction with certain popular views of the state, will naturally wish to know whether anything more has been done to meet the difficulties -presented by the ' pluralistic ' conception which is to take their place. The ordinary man suspects that conception of leading to anarchy : he may VOL. XXXVII. NO. CXLVIII. S S