Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/151

 1921 SHORT NOTICES 143 administration for his private fortune and appointed procurators privatarum rerum '. This statement is, to say the least, highly controversial. Still, the main outline is firmly drawn, if with some lack of picturesqueness : surely Antinous deserved at least a mention ? The misspelling of names is a serious blemish : this may perhaps be in part due to the translator, for we can hardly suppose that the authors would have passed ' Ananes ' (for ' Anauni '), ' Salonius Julianus ', and the like. Italian forms survive in a large number of instances — Eossolani, Jazigi, and so forth. What was the original of * those guilty of adultery were declared indicia publico, ' we do not venture to guess. H. S. J. We have nothing but praise for Dr. Newport J. D. White's small and scholarly volume on St. Patrick, His Writings and Life (in Translations of Christian Literature, series v) (London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920). Dr. White had previously given us in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, xxv, c, no. 7, an equally excellent edition, with collation of manuscripts and with translations of the Latin writings of St. Patrick, the Libri Sancti Patricii, i.e. the Confessio, and the Epistola ad Coroticum, generally so called. In addition to these, he has in the present volume added translations of the famous Lorica of St. Patrick (p. 64), of the Dicta Patricii, and of the most ancient life of St. Patrick now extant, viz. that by Muirchu-Maccu-Machtheni. In each case the English text is accompanied by introduction and notes, which elucidate and explain the uncertainties and difficulties of the texts themselves, the incidents which they record, and the persons and places named. But while Dr. White mentions the difficulties fully, he wisely refrains from dogmatically solving any of them ; and it may be doubted if they ever will be solved. Where such experts as Dr. Whitley Stokes, Dr. Bury, and Dr. White have not succeeded, besides many more who might be named, who can venture to hope for success ? We refer to such points as the identification of Bannavem Taberniae, the birthplace of St. Patrick, and of the locality of his six years' captivity in Ireland ; the difficulty of filling up the continental gap in St. Patrick's life, 411/12-32. Did he during that time go to Eome ? Was his religion due to papal origin and fore- thought ? On these and other points the evidence pro and con is impartially given, and the reader is left free to draw his own conclusions. F. E. W. To the Weltgeschichte appearing under the editorship of Dr. L. M. Hartmann has been added Dr. S. Hellmann's Das Mittelalter bis zum Ausgange der Kreuzzuge (Gotha : Perthes, 1920). It is a good handbook which may be recommended to teachers and will be found suggestive by historical scholars. The author's point of view will doubtless not be accepted by all his readers. He treats the early middle ages mainly as the period of the development of the Frankish state system and of the gradual reaction of the west upon the east ; but the possession of a single point of view is in itself helpful in surveying such a complicated wealth of material. Again, his method is analytic rather than descriptive ; he is not a narrator ; but at the same time he has an eye for concrete and