Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/205

 ns.x.SEpT.5,1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Drake's talk, they set him before us with a renewed vivacity " in his habit as he lived," and, what greatly enhances this, in the way in which he appeared to the eyes of a multitude of persons of all degrees and kinds connected with govern- ment or with seafaring. Other detail of personal and incidental interest is abundant also.

.Mi^s Xuttall is to be congratulated, not only on the high value of the new material she has found, but also on the use she has made of it. Her grouping of the documents into parts, the notes which precede and accompany them, the Introduction, and the choice of illustrations are good and scholarly. Much working-over of what she has provided will be necessary before its full worth has been realized, and it is not to be forgotten that this volume gives us only the papers relating to Drake's voyage of circumnavigation. A note- worthy feature is the reproduction of the rare map engraved by Nicola van Sype, showing the world and the journey over it of Drake's expedi- tion : five vessels to start with ; two burning at the mouth of the River Plate ; three emerging from the Strait of Magellan; and then the solitary Golden Hind, sailing north and north-west along the Pacific coast till she reaches the ice and turns south-west to enter on the way of the Portuguese. This is a " Carte veuee et corige par le diet siegneur drach." Miss Nuttall thinks that the " corrections " by his hand are tin- royal arms, drawn over the land south of the Strait and over the tract in the north-west which he named New Albion, and the lines which boldly delimit the territories of " Nova Hispanie " (centre and west) and " Nova France " (towards the east), giving thereby to understand t h at the explorer's imagination sees England in possession of all beyond those boundaries.

Customary Acres and iheir Historical Importance, being a Scries of Unfinished Essays. By the late Frederic Seebohm. (Longmans & Co., 12s. 6<7. net.)

MR. HUGH SEEBOHM has been well advised in giving us this last work of his father's, incom- plete though it is. It contributes a solid array of facts suggestively grouped, even if not ex- haustively discussed to a study of great import- ance. His investigations into the question of tribal landholding had led Frederic Seebohm to see in the open-field system what he called a " shell " a framework or cover which at once protected the life of the agricultural population through vicissitudes of migration and conquest, and determined its social development. To realize its full significance for economic history the student must look beyond the confines of Hritain, and observe over how large a tract of Europe the system was extended, how close was the correspondence between different areas in the details of measurement, and how long and tenaciously the original principles of division held their own! Accordingly, the customary acres of "I'.ritain arc here compared with the acres of the ct >rn-growing regions of France and of the mouths of the Po and the Danube, with the Armorican sy-t (in, \\ith that of Northern and Eastern Europe, and with the agricultural units of the Mediter- ranean countries. A great part of the book is taken up with metrological statement, accom- panied by numerous illustrations ; but the social aspor-t of the question is not neglected. There is an indefeasible quality of poetry about these old

measurements all determined at bottom by the strength and capacity of man the worker, by the length or breadth of his foot and hand and arm ; by the speed or staying power which can cover just so much in an hour's march or in a day's ploughing. This also the writer has by no means overlooked in his search for traces of the connexion between people and people, and in his careful study of the relations between the groups in which the lower and higher standards of measurement were respectively adopted.

This work should be of great use not only to the student of modern history, but also to the classical student, for whom the familiar jugerum, aroitra, and parasang are invested with a new and deeper interest by being set in relation to the primitive land -measurement of the Celtic and other Euro- pean races. We noticed with pleasure the repe- tition of Dr. Dorpfeld's beautiful illustration of differences of standard by means of the ground plan of the temple of Sunium.

English History in Contemporary Poetry. By Miss C. L. Thomson. (Bell & Sons, Is. net,)

THIS is the fifth of the series on English poetry issued by the Hi-torical Association, the present volume treating on its influence in the eighteenth century. In a small work like this, of sixty- eight pages, it is not possible to give more than the fringe of the subject, but as an outline it could hardly have been better done. Miss Thomson in her brief Preface says, " To give an adequate account of the history of the eighteenth century as illustrated in contemporary poetry would be a task requiring much more learning, leisure, and space than are at my command," and all she has attempted is " to notice some of the most impor- tant and interesting allusions in the verse of the period to political events and movements."

The reigns of William and Mary and Anne,, which " may be said to have witnessed the culmina- tion of the effort to sw y public opinion by means of political verse," naturally affords a multitude of examples. Among the quotations is one from a poem the authorship of which is doubtful* though it is said to have been composed by a Capt. Ogilvie, who fought at the battle of the* Boyne, and afterwards joined the army of Louis XIV. :

It was a' for our rightfu' King We left fair Scotland's strand ;

It was a' for our rightfu' King We e'er saw Irish land, my dear, We e'er saw Irish land.

Miss Thomson brings her treatise down to the French Revolution, and reminds us that Prof. Firth has noted how the poets at first hailed it with sympathy and approval, rather than hostility. "Warton, visiting Montauban in 1750, " lamented that so fair a country should be so oppressed, and contrasted its lot with that of the oak-crowned plains of his native land." Cowper, thirty-five years later, delivered himself with equal warmth ; but it was " comparatively easy to sympathize with the oppressed nations beyond the seas. More significant was the increasing tendency to dwell on the sorrows of the English peasantry, and to make them the subject of poetry.'* The author illustrates this with quota- tions from Gray, Crabbe, and Burns,