Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/26

 18

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. JULY 4,

as to Smith's * Diet. Christ. Antiq.' This earlier use is not mentioned in the 'H.E.D.,' but I have made a note of it for the supple- ment, and am glad to know what my old friend Canon Raine meant. Durham.

J. T. F.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &O.

The. Scots Peerage. Edited by Sir James Balfour

Paul. Vol. V. (Edinburgh, David Douglas.) THE Scots Peerage has broken the back of the heavy task on which it started four years ago, for the fifth volume, starting with Lord Innermeath, takes us down to the amazing tangle of the Earldom of Mar. It treats of thirty-one different peerages and twenty-one families, namely Boyd, Campbell (Irvine and London), Erskine (Kellie and Mar), Falconer, Gordon (Ken mure), Hay, Ingram, Keith, Ker (Jedburgh and Lothian), Kinnaird, Lennox, Leslie (Leven and Lindores), Livingston (Kilsyth and Linlithgow), Lyle, Macdonald, Macdonell, Mac- lellan, Maitland, Morgan-Grenville, Seton, and Stewart (Innermeath, Lennox and Mar). The work has been done by fifteen different authors, the editor himself supplying six of the articles. The co-operative method is the only practicable one in dealing quickly with genealogical work on such a scale, and yet it is full of difficulties. Except under the eye of a dominant editor, such a book is apt to differ in scope and texture. On the other hand, that dominance may banish the personal touch which makes G. E. C. a delight ; and it is, moreover, apt to create disaffection, for the family historian tends to become so obsessed as to permit no meddling with his method. Sir James Balfour Paul is not a hard taskmaster, but we believe it is an open secret that even he has had to jettison some of the contributions ; and he might with advantage have insisted on greater uniformity in those published. It is not only that different writers have a different method, but the same writer some- times varies. For example, Mr. A. Francis Steuart in treating Steuart, Duke of Lennox, gives as many as twelve reference notes to a page, whereas Mr. F. J. Grant describes Lennox, Duke of Lennox, without a single reference. Again Mr. Grant says that Lord Alexander Gordon-Lennox " had issue " without stating that issue as Mr. Cosmo Gordon- Lennox, the well-known player and playwright, who married Miss Marie Tempest. On the other hand, he works out the descendants of George Lindsay (1691-1764) through the female line to a great-great- great grandson named Rudd, born as recently as July 13, 1906, although he .does not give the issue of Lady Muriel Watkins, the daughter of the present Lord Lindsay. Some of the descents are not a bit more illuminative than those given in Burke. For example Mr. Grant might at least have taken the trouble to refer to the ' D.N.B.' for that remarkable young man the Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer (1856-87), who was not only an Arabic scholar of note, but the writer on shorthand in the ' Encyclopaedia Britan- nica,' and the first to cycle from John o' Groats to Land's End. Precisely the same thing occurs with living people. The annual peerages are very inhuman in this respect, chronicling only dull official facts. The ' Scots Peerage ' gets ahead of

Burke by telling us that Lord Kinnaird is a banker, but it might have given a line to his great interest in football; and under Kinnoull it would be interesting to state that Mr. Claude Hay is a stock broker as well as M.P. ; even our little friend Whitaker goes that length. The omission cannot be on the ground that trade is inadmissible, for in the same article we learn that Charles, son of the second Earl of Kinnoull had a monopoly for the manufacture of glass.

Among the most satisfying articles in this volume are Mr. Macmath's accounts of Kenmure, although he might have given us a reference to Conolly's curious ' Romance of the Ranks ' in his note on the claimants for the peerage; Mr. Macphail's long account of the Earls of Lauderdale ; the Martinis de Ruvi guy's description of the Earls of Kil- marnock ; and the Rev. John Anderson's learned disquisition on the Celtic Earls of Lennox and the Earls of Mar, though he cannily declines to express an opinion on the rival claims which roused the righteous indignation of Lord Crawford.

Among the intruders in this volume are the Ingrams, for whom the Viscounty of Irvine was created why, it is not clear. They began with a tallow chandler of London, who married a haber- dasher (why are these facts interesting in the sixteenth century when omitted in the twentieth ?), but found it so difficult to maintain their line that the third viscount, who died in 1702, was succeeded in turn by five of his nine sons, and then by his grandson, the ninth and last viscount, who left only five daughters. It is a curious comment on the point of view of another day that one of these left a goodly estate to her husband's illegitimate son, who founded a well-known military family. Improvements might be effected in the ' Scots Peerage,' but if it is not definitive it forms a good framework for the great masses of material that have come to light since Douglas's day.

The Shakespeare Apocrypha: being a _ Collection of Fourteen Plays which have been ascribed to Shake- speare. Edited, with Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography, by C. F. Tucker Brooke, B.Litt. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

THIS excellent edition, tastefully bound in limp cloth, will at once take standard rank as a satis- factory issue of the doubtful Shakespearian plays. A text founded on careful examination of the originals by a competent scholar has been needed for years, and such the present editor provides. His ample knowledge alike of native and foreign criticism in books and fugitive publications will be realized by all who read his compact and judicious introduction. Notes on the text are printed at the bottom of the page, and there are a few explanatory notes at the end which are dis- tinguished by their practical brevity.

We read that " the collation of the early editions has been done twice to secure accuracy, and the proof-sheets revised by the original quartos. Par- ticular care has been taken to verify readings which are in opposition to those recorded by other modern editors.

We add that every five lines is numbered at the side throughout the scenes, an important practical aid to reference which is sometimes forgotten. To- keep within the limits of some 450 pages a small type has had to be used, but the merits of the edition will, we hope, ensure another issue, perhaps in three volumes or more, in which larger print can