Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/529

 10 s. VIIL NOV. .so, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

439

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

The Cambridge History of English Literature. Edited by A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller. Vol. I. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance. (Cambridge, University Press.)

THERE are many Histories of English Literature in existence, but the editors of this volume can fairly claim that it aims at an elaboration which is novel and which is needed. The Preface declares that successive movements, both main and subsidiary, are to be treated, and rightly indicates that it is often men of lesser rank who are important from an historical point of view, and who hand on the torch which seems to superficial observers to have been blown out because it does not burn so brightly. The method of considering periods and their characteristic ideas and means of expression as isolated phenomena, with no relation to the past or the future, is easy and popular, and lends itself to epigram ; but we view with satisfaction a work which will bring out the continuity of the motives and causes underlying the writing of English, from the gleeman to the journalist of to-day. It has, as the end of our last sentence hints, a comprehensive scope, and, as scholarship has no boundaries, we may expect to see the admirable foreign workers who have made English their own ranged by the side of native scholars of distinction. The result will doubtless be occasionally a distressing diversity of styles, but we think that the choice of

?ood hands everywhere will amply compensate or this.

The present volume is eminently readable throughout, and devoid of that pedantry which reinters the results of research. There are probably, as in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' no flowers of speech by request ; still, we are glad to see occasionally that use of poetic phrase in solution which brightens prose, especially prose concerning matters of learning far away from ordinary life and reading. Epigram with knowledge behind it might be encouraged with advantage. Dr. M. R. James shows a pleasant ^ift of faint irony in his chapter on 'Latin Writings in English to the Time of Alfred ' ; Dr. J. E. Sandys writes admirably on ' English Scholars of Paris and Franciscans of Oxford ' ; and Prof Saintsbury is illuminating, though hardly easy to read, on ' The Prosody of Old and Middle English.' Dr. Ward does not contribute to this volume, but Mr. Waller does useful work on ' The Beginnings,' ' The Norman Conquest,' and ' Later Transition English.' With the various chapters on the Arthurian sources of romance we are not always in agreement, but we can hardly in a restricted space enter on that Serbonian bog of rival conjectures and inferences. A reprint of an all-too-brief section by the late Prof. Maitland on ' The Anglo-French Law Language ' has all his brilliance and liveliness. On the whole, we like best the articles by Mr. Henry Bradley on ' Changes in the Language to the Days of Chaucer,' an eminently lucid and sound exposition; and by Prof. W. P. Ker on ' Metrical Romances, 1200-1500.' The last chapter we regard as a model of its kind : it is full of fine scholarship, and the freedom of expression and comparison which comes to the scholar only after long study and command of his " Quellen."

We notice that there is some overlapping in the volume ; but there are so far no serious differences of views among the various contributors. On the question of Celtic influences in English we are at one with the writer on 'The Arthurian Legend,' Prof. W. Lewis Jones, and hope his views will pre- vail among later contributors. Cross-references are inserted, but might be further used to prevent the repetition of words, e.g., concerning Walter Map. The Index is good ; and so are the bibliographies to the separate chapters. We think, however, that where texts are deficient in scholarship, this should be frankly stated. For instance, the late J. H. Bridges's edition of the ' Opus Majus ' of Roger Bacon is full of errors. Our spelling of "rime" instead of "rhyme" is followed. Living writers are not presented with the usual "Dr." or "Mr.," and living and dead are often deprived of their initials. The first omission is a matter of taste; the latter may lead to confusion, which follows hard at the heels of brevity. .The dangers of un- necessary qiiotations in foreign languages, and of fantastic and would-be clever allusions intelligible only to a few dangers which past histories have exemplified in full measure are, for the most part> happily avoided.

The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshaioe, 1600 -1672. (John Lane.)

THESE memoirs are reprinted from the original manuscript in the possession of Mr. Evelyn John Fanshawe of Parsloes, the grandson of the Fan- shawe who first printed the MS. in 1829-30. The present handsome book shows everywhere the admirable zeal and pietas of the editor, for we pre- sume that the owner of the MS. has also prepared it for the press and added the great body of notes, which far exceeds the text of the memoir in length. We see no occasion to regret the thoroughness of these annotations indeed, we delight in a piece of history which is a worthy occasion for ancestral pride. The families which have survived the shocks of time and circumstances, like the Fan- shawes, are all too few, and the zeal shown in the collection and correction of material concerning the genealogy and history involved is exemplary. At the end of the book are elaborate pedigrees of the Fanshawes.

The Fanshawe memoirs are not as a whole equal to the Verney collections of about the same date, but their writer displays a character of which any one might be proud. Devoted to her husband and king, she was inspired by either to a firmness equal to the most distressing emergencies. She was business-like, though she spelt very badly ; she was- not particularly clever or humorous ; but she was essentially a good woman, and it is clear that her many admirable qualities won the respect and attention of the various Courts in which she moved. The prayers which she includes for her family are raised by sincerity to beauty. She refused a pen- sion of 30,000 ducats offered to her in Spain if she would turn Roman Catholic.

The dull parts of her memoirs for the ordinary reader are those concerned with family matters and descriptions of foreign ceremony. Moving inci- dents, including a capital ghost story, are, how- ever, not wanting. Her husband was a translator of Horace and Camoens, a courtier and ambassador of distinction, and a devoted servant to Charles I. and II.