Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/228

 212 Reviews.

Nova Legenda Anglie : as collected by John of Tynemouth, John Capgrave, and others, and first printed, with new Lives, by Wynkyn de Worde, a.d. mdxvi. Now re-edited with fresh material from MS. and printed sources by Carl Horstman, Ph.D., editor of Altenglische Legetiden, Richard Ro lie of Ham- pole, The South English Lege?idary, &c. 2 vols. Pp. Ixviii., 506 and 731. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. 1901. 36s. net.

John the Englishman, who modestly called himself John the Sinner, and was distinguished from other Enghshmen as John of Tynemouth, where he was vicar in the early part of the fourteenth century, was not only a great admirer of sanctity and of the saints, but a thoroughly patriotic fellow. There might be excellent saints in foreign countries, but the saints of his own land were good enough for him ; and accordingly he devoted himself to collecting all he could find about them into a Sanctilogium Angli?e, Walli^e, Scotise, et Hibernise. He did his work with wonderful industry and amazing success. It was revised and rearranged by Capgrave in the fifteenth century, and re-edited and printed by Wynkyn de Worde in the sixteenth. De Worde held the doctrine of the " predominant partner " so strongly that he dropped all mention of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and called the book Nova Legenda Anglie. It has now been reprinted by the University of Oxford, after careful collation with the MS. of the original in the Cottonian collections, with valuable notes and a very scholarly and interesting introduction by Dr. Horstman. The editor apologises for the incompleteness of the introduction, and the delegates of the University Press explain why they thought it better not to wait until he had finished it. We. confess we doubt whether they have exercised a wise discretion. This is a monumental and probably a final revision, and it seems to us, having regard to the excellence of the work Dr. Horstman has been able to do, that it would have been better worth while to allow him fully to complete it than to press forward the publication while incomplete. Possibly Dr. Horstman may still be able to proceed with it and to publish it in its completed form as a separate essay or in a second edition. There are three ways in which a sanctilogium may be arranged. John of Tynemouth naturallv adopted the calendar as the basis