Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/67

 u s. xii. JULY IT, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

59

" ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLISTERS " (11 S.

xi. 393 ; xii. 10). In Chaucer's ' Prologe of the Chanounes Yeman ' we have

But al thing which that schineth as the gold,

Is nought gold, as that I have herd told ;

Ne every appel that is fair at ye,

Ne is not good

I quote from Skeat's edition of Chaucer, vol. ii. p. 37, of " Bohn's Library,"' where the note to this quotation is as follows :

"This is from the 'Parabolse' of Alanus de Insulis, a Latin poet, who died in 1294 : Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum,

Nee pulchrum pomum quodlibet esse bottom. Tlyrwhitt]."

A. COLLINGWOOD LEE. Walt-ham Abbey, Essex.

Earlier is Chaucer's " Hyt is not al golde that glareth " (' House of Fame,' lib. i. 1. 272). G. L. APPERSON.

The distich, Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum,

Nee pulchrum pomum quodlibet esse bonum, is two centuries earlier than the Winchester College Hall-book of 1401-2. It is found in Alain de 1'Isle (Alanus ab Insulis),' Parabolse,' c. iii. See Suringar's edition of Bebel's ' Proverbia Germanica,' p. 402.

EDWABD BENSLY.

0n IBaaks,

A City Church Chronicle : a Short History of

St. Anne and St. Agnes, Aldersgate, and of St.

John Zachary, London, from the Twelfth Century.

By William McMurray. (Published by the

Author at the Church of the United Parishes,

Is. net.)

THIS chronicle is set out in a series of 365 num- bered paragraphs arranged in chronological order. Each paragraph is about eight lines long and deals with a separate matter, its style being modelled upon the lively brevity of a capable old chronicler, jotting down notes of facts he does not intend to expand into narrative. The method is excellent, and would have merited even more unqualified praise if it had included either marginal indications of subject-matter or a perfect index. As it is, the pamphlet makes good 'reading better and more solid reading, in fact, than many more pretentious works.

The church dedicated under this rather difficult invocation dates from the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, when it took the place of two parish churches: that of St. Anne and St. Agnes, and that of St. John Baptist, which was granted early in the twelfth century, by the canons of St. Paul's, to a monk named Zachary, whose name thenceforward it bore. This grant is the subject of the first of these entries.

St. John Zachary was the parish church of the Goldsmiths' Company, and many of these notes refer to it. Another company which had its hall in the parish was the Wax Chandlers', with whom

the church and its authorities were often at daggers drawn. The great house of the parish was that best known as Campden House, used as the mansion house of more than one Lord Mayor. The parish of St. Anne and St. Agnes boasted a house of more romantic associations in North- umberland Place, the town house of the Percies, on the west side of St. Martin's-le-Grand. It passed finally out of their hands in 1607, and its fortunes thereafter as the " King's Printing House," where Robert Barker printed the 1611 folio of the Authorized Version of the Bible, and as the " Bull and Mouth " tavern, sharing its roof with a Friends' Meeting - House, were, if less picturesque, no less interesting.

The Percies are the most famous of the charac- ters associated with the two parishes, but St. Anne's had for its incumbent the all too zealous John Hopton, afterwards Bishop of Norwich,, and was the home of John Daye, the printer ; while at Campden House kept his mayoralty that "silly man," as Pepys calls him, Sir Thomas Bind worth, who " cried, like a fainting woman, will not obey me '...." in the midst of the Great Fire.
 * Lord ! what can I do ? I am spent ; people

Mr. McMurray has collected good store of diversified detail of the anecdotic order. It is not possible to gain from his pages any very clear- notion of the extent or connected history of these parishes that, we understand, forms the subject of a book which he has on the stocks but as a sequence of entertaining and instructive " tit- bits," relating to nearly all the aspects, appur- tenances, and businesses of parochial administra- tion from the twelfth century to our own day,, carefully documented, and cleverly selected, the work could not easily be bettered.

Russia and Democracy : the German Canker in Russia. By G. de Wesselitsky, with a Preface by Henry Cust. (Heinemann, for the Central Committee for National Patriotic Organizations, Is. net.)

THE change of name of the Russian capital from Petersburg to Petrograd has forced upon the most casual reader of newspapers the fact that Russia at the beginning of the war turned with new vigour towards ideals and hopes of a purely national character, and rejected with fresh energy the influence of Germany. It is of the utmost possible importance that the origin, nature, and extent, the special activity, and the political trend of German influence in Russia, should be accurately understood. Many of our counsellors in foreign politics have failed to realize how greatly and directly Germany has been responsible for what has been held untoward in the attitude and doings of Russia.

On this ground alone the book before us whose author has had exceptional opportunities for knowing the secret side of the international politics of the last thirty years or so deserves to be carefully read. Its historical interest is equally great : as a double study in the possibilities of nationality the re is not much to be found surpassing in importance a consideration of German aims and methods on the one hand, and Russian response to them on the other. Only an outline is attempted here, but it is an outline firm, de tailed, and full enough to furnish a good frame- work for future reading.