Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/99

 ii s. xii. JULY si, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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MCBRIDE (11 S. xi. 266, 345). By the Editor's kind permissioD I recently hazarded the opinion that Admiral McBride was the grandson of the Scotch minister of tho first congregation of Belfast.

May I confirm my note, as I have returned to my books and find that the printed history of the first congregation of Bally- money has the following ?

" Mr. Robert McBride was the son of the well- known Rev. John McBride, minister of the first Presbyterian congregation in Belfast (whose will may be seen in Benn's ' History of Belfast ').

" For refusing to swear that the Pretender was not the son of James II., which he alleged he could not conscientiously do, the Rev. John McBride had to escape arrest by fleeing to Scotland. In his portrait, which is in Belfast, a hole may be seen made through his bands by the sword of the disappointed official who came to arrest him.

" His son, the Rev. Robert McBride, born 1686, died 1759, was an eminent divine. His younger son entered the British Navy, and became a Rear-Admiral, in which capacity he had the honour of conveying to England her late Majesty, Queen Charlotte of spotless memory."

Should your correspondent wish to see the epitaph of the Admiral's father and some more entries concerning him in the parish records, I shall gladly send them. Y. T.

0n

Sources and Literature of English History from the Earliest Times to about 1//S-5. By Charles Gross. (Longmans & Co., 11. -i*. net.)

Tins is the second edition of the monumental work which first appeared in 1900. The author, Gurney Professor of History and Political Science in Harvard University, had looked forward to preparing it, having begun the collection of the requisite additional material from the very moment of the publication of the original edition. He died at the end of 1909, and this completion of his labours is offered as a tribute to his memory by his colleagues at Harvard and by the members of his own family. The end of the year 1910 is tho terminus up to which it has been sought to render the record complete ; but we observe th.it all the more important publications of sub- sequent years up to 1914 are included.

It would be difficult to overrate the value of this bibliography which, indeed, stands alone in the field of English historical study. For all practical purposes it is exhaustive as to the printed matter of English history concerned with the period up to the end of the fifteenth ri-ntm-y, whether this consists of editions of "sources" or of the work of modern writers. We should have been glad of some fuller treat- mut of the Calendars of State Papers issued under the direction of the Master of the Rolls.

The short critical notes appended to a majority of the entries are most valuable, and it is a good thing to have at least some of the less trustworthy

books included and stigmatized rather than merely condemned by omission. This is par- ticularly the case with the older books ; we have noted in some quarters a tendency to quote somewhat antiquated authors as if their opinions or facts became better by keeping. So far as we have tested the estimates given here, they render a clear account of the best authorities n a subject without erring on the side of severity in dealing with lesser writers.

We have said enough to indicate that this new edition forms a work of which every serious historical student is bound to make careful note.

THE new number of The Quarterly Review will count as a memorable one. Its first article is Mr. Stephen Reynolds 's ' Inshore Fisheries and Naval Deeds,' which well deserves that place, partly through the great and urgent interest of the matter, and partly by reason of the vivid, yet not exaggerated literary quality of its presentment. Dr. J. H. Round's ' Recent Peerage Cases ' needs no recommendation to the attention of our readers. Few things are better worth acquiring just now than a clear understanding of the many factors of the problem of the Near East, and Dr. Walter Leaf, in his rapid and fascinating sketch of ' The Dardanelles,' and his discussion of the nature of the historic importance of that ever-famous waterway, deals most happily with what is perhaps the most attractive, as it is certainly the most truly fundamental, of the physical factors of the problem. Dr. Stanley Lane-Poole's article on ' The Caliphate ' is a brilliant and instructive piece of work which should not be missed either. Mr. Henry Cloriston's study of ' Tasso's Later Verse ' does not, indeed, throw any fresh light on the main mystery of Tasso's career, and, relying, as it does, largely on translations, may be felt by some to be languid, but contains, nevertheless, useful and suggestive criticism, and is the more welcome as bringing our minds to dwell on the achievement of our latest ally. Mr. A. W. G. Randall gives us a penetrating and valuable criticism of German education through the mind of Nietzsche, which may well be useful in counter- acting two lines of error somewhat prevalent amongst us that which takes Nietzsche for something little better than a monster, and that which tends to exalt German education as some- thing faultless in plan, if not in detail. With those we have mentioned, the number includes noteworthy essays on economic and political subjects ; one on 'War, Wounds, and Disease,' by Sir W. Osier ; and the usual outlines of the progress of the war, by Col. Blood and Mr. Archibald Hurd.

THE Edinburgh Review for July is also a very fine number. Two articles on the present economic and financial position the editor's ' Economic Endurance ' and the unsigned paper, ' The Out- look for Capital,' with which the number opens though not strictly within the scope of ' N. and Q., T may yet well be mentioned, as, more than most collections of dicta about aspects of the war, they are likely to interest the student in future years. Dr. A. Shadwell has a study of German war literature which is as good as the somewhat scanty material he had at his disposal allowed it to be. Mr. Gosse's ' War Poetry in France ' should be ! read by everybody a brilliant, sympathetic, and, we think, accurate treatment of a subject near to