Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/195

 10* 8. V. FEB. 24. 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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to the list, for there exist several lustred pieces bearing such marks impressed." A. H. Church s ' English Earthenware made during the Seven- teenth and Eighteenth Centuries,' 1904, pp. 113-14, 125.

I myself possessed two platinum lustred figures of boys, nude, holding supports for candles, but the resemblance to silver in these examples of the statuette was some- what remote. J. HOLDEN MAcMlCHAEL.

Cf. W. Burton's 'A History and Descrip- tion of English Earthenware and Stone- ware ' (London, 1904). L. L. K.

" PIN-FIRE " (10 th S. v. 70, 114). I took out with me to India in 1864 a pin-fire breech-loader. This followed after ray muzzle-loader. HAROLD MALET, Col.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Greaom the Great : his Place in History and Thow/ht. By F. Homes Dudden, B.D. 2 vols. (Longmans <fe Co.)

IT is with good reason that the historic conscious- ness has conferred on Gregory I. the title of "Great." Probably no other man has impressed his own mind and personality so deeply on the history of the civilized world. Wherever Chris- tianity has spread, his influence has been felt ; and it is impossible even to conceive what England might have remained if Gregory, by his famous mission to our shores, had not brought it into the fold of St. Peter. His strong, masterful nature, his marvellous energy and power of organization, his indefatigable zeal in spreading the faith of Christ, mark him out as a "King of Men," and have enforced the homage and respect of Chris- tendom. Mr. Dudden distributes his comprehen- sive work into three books, which treat of (i) Gregory's life before his Pontificate, (ii) his Pontifi- cate, and (iii) his theology. He lays put his material on the colossal scale of a great historical picture, which some will possibly think excessive. He takes a hundred pages to place us in the milieu amid which Gregory lived and acted. He has evi- dently steeped himself in the Gregorian literature, and has a knowledge of the period as minute as it is wide. His biography probably will be recognized as the standard work on the subject, and the marvel is that the field has remained so long unoccupied. If we were to hint a fault, it would be a certain want of proportion in the space allotted to some incidents. When an interesting story can be told, Mr. Dudden cannot resist the temptation to digress. Columba's mission, e.g., in the North had really no point of contact with Augustine's in the South ; yet Mr. Dudden fills three pages with Adamnan's touching account of the last days of the great Irish- man ; we read them with pleasure, but feel they are a digression. On the other hand, these super- fluities are counterbalanced by occasional sins of omission. The epitaph composed for Gregory's tomb by Oldradus is surely germane to the subject,

yet we are left to look it up for ourselves, if we- choose to do so, in the pages of Bseda.

The third book, devoted to Gregory as a great Doctor of the Church, is full of skilfully condensed matter. Classical learning was at a low ebb in? Rome when he was called to the Papacy, Greek being practically unknown. Gregory himself openly discouraged what he termed " the idle vanities of secular literature," and had nothing but praise for the " scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus." Paganism was still at that time a power to be- reckoned with, and classical learning was only, in his estimation, a danger to the faith of Chris- tians. The fact is that, bred as a monk, Gregory never quite divested himself of the ascetic mind and narrow outlook of the cloister. He favoured* the cult of relics, and in many ways inaugurated a lower type of popular religion. He was the first also to introduce familiar stories and illustrations into his sermons, and thus became the forerunner of a long line of popular preachers.

But if he was above all a saint and an ecclesiastic, he was also a statesman of a very shrewd and* practical sagacity. It will ever be remembered to- his credit that, notwithstanding his burning zeal for his own faith, he stood forward as the defender and champion of the Jews when they were generally persecuted. And his wise toleration i manifested in the ' Responsa ' he sent to Augustine for his guidance in matters of reform. Another famous work of his, 'The Pastoral Care,' became a widely read manual, and moulded the polity and conduct of the church's rulers for many ages. It is not too much to say that he was the founder of the mediaeval Papacv as a temporal power, and that the Church of Rome is what it is because it is saturated with the spirit of Gregory. His chief honour will ever remain that he was the first great organizer of missions in the outlying regions of European heathenism, and the indirect promoter, in consequence, of modern culture and civilization.

Life in Morocco and Glimpses Beyond. By Budgett

Meakin. (Chatto & Wiudus.)

MR. MEAKIN has turned to profitable account a residence in Morocco longer than many Europeans, or at least many Englishmen, can boast. The present appears to be the fourth book which he has written, during recent years concerning the Moors and their doings. His experiences are recent, and the political views he expresses deal with the eminently disturbed land of to-day. So favourably impressed is he with place and people that he recommends Morocco to. the modern traveller. This counsel should be taken with limitations. Nowhere else within reasonable distance can the East the true East be seen. Egypt, Tunisia, Algiers, are all sophis- ticated. Morocco is, however, better suited to the active and adventurous than to the pacific traveller after pleasure. Mr. Meakin was, for a time at least, accompanied by his wife, to whom he owes glimpses of interiors he would not otherwise have- obtained. Most of his impressions have previously seen the light in The Times of Morocco and in various English periodicals ; while other portions are to be included in a further record of experiences in Morocco. We find little personal adven- ture ; indeed little incident of any kind. As a description of life as at present seen in Morocco, and of places and institutions as they exist, the whole is exemplary and edifying. A series of photographic illustrations adds to the value and