Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/173

12 S. X. FEB. 18, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 139 Martinique, he fought actions with the French fleet.

Serres early in life was master of a vessel trading to Havana, so that he probably knew Port Royal.

My West Indian books not being here, my only authorities are an article on hurricanes from The Nautical Magazine for 1848, Gust's 'Naval Prints' and the 'D.N.B.'

These seem to represent the "Battle of the Saints " fought between Dominica and the Iles des Saintes, April 12, 1782, and the subsequent bringing of the prizes to Plymouth. The Formidable was Rodney's flagship, and the Ville de Paris was Grasse's flagship. See Mahan, 'Influence of Sea Power,' pp. 480-500; Hannay, 'Rodney,' pp. 179-213; and Hood's 'Letters,' pp. 101-21, 123-30; Mundy, 'Life of Rodney,' ii. 222-50; Annual Register for 1782, 252-7.

MRS. HOLT : ' ISOULT BARRY OF WYNS- COTE' (12 S. x. 93). This book was first published in 1871, and again in 1873 and 1880, and probably since, as it is a fairly well-known book appearing in many public library catalogues of juvenile books, but none of Mrs. Holt's many works seem to be now in print. I should think the nearest public library may have a copy, if not, I shall be glad to lend it to your correspondent on application. ARCHIBALD SPARKE. on Jacques Beniyne Bossuet. A Study. By E. K. Sanders. (S.P.C.K. 15s.) BOSSUET has never come into his own in England. Pascal, Corneille, Fenelon, are familiar enough figures to us, but the Bishop of Meaux, if he is more than a name to most Englishmen, is known as a panegyrist, the author of the ' Oraisons Funebres,' which we seldom read, but are quite prepared to take on trust. This is a strong statement, but a glance at the careful biblio- graphy which completes the present work will prove it to be well founded. Until now, in fact, we have had no biography of Bossuet in English. Yet to Frenchmen he stands as one of the greatest figures of the literature of France or of the world. So careful a critic as Brunetiere places him as an orator above Chrysostom and Augustine, and Miss Sanders assures us that " Shakespeare alone of English writers holds with us a position akin to that which he occupies among his country- men." The present careful study should remove much <>f t he reproach, and we may congratulate ourselves that a task which presents certain special diffi- cult it-s should have been taken up by a writer possessed of special aptitudes to meet them. Miss Sanders's competence as a scholar and an authority on seventeenth-century France has been fully established by her earlier books : and these have displayed also a detached, yet pene- trating and sympathetic, insight into the ideals, the temperament and the experiences of success or failure to be observed in people who have dedicated themselves to religion. All biography moves between an account of its subject as he appears to his own consciousness and an account of his relations with the external world. In the former lurks implicitly, with or without bio- graphical consequence, his relation (or want of relation, if the expression may be permitted us) with God. This may, as it does in the case of Religious, dominate the whole biography, forcing all the rest into a second place : and may also be so slight, or so deeply latent, that the bio- grapher hardly at any moment seizes it, and virtually omits it from his portrait. The diffi- culty in drawing the portrait of a great ecclesiastic is that this relation can neither be ignored nor yet suffered to occupy the whole study. An ecclesiastic is a person who has undertaken to stand out as a representative or agent of the supernatural in the midst of the natural life of men. He may bungle over this business, he may come to despise it, despair over it, detest it, refuse it, forget it. None the less that under- taking remains the clou to his life, its first differentiating factor, and a biography which has no grasp of how this problem appeared to the man himself, and what were his resources for solving it or his reasons for virtually giving it up, will certainly, as so many ecclesiastical biographies do, lack vitality. It is not enough to chronicle the priest's or bishop's external actions : nor enough to draw a picture of his personal piety or his good thoughts and aspirations, however edifying these may be. Just how he tackled or failed to tackle his unique job is the question wherein lies the secret of making the portrait live a question seldom squarely taken, and often, it would seem, but vaguely present to the biographer's mind. The signal and rare merit of the study before us is its direct seizure of this central problem ; and the reward of that true centrality is seen in the distinctness with which Bossuet, in these pages, lives. Fundamentally, he has been understood : and the world he lived in understood in its relation to him. The sense that this is so adds the pleasure of confi- dence to the reader's enjoyment. Miss Sanders is Well served by a firm and delicate English style, and also by a remarkable gift for translation. Readers who know the French of Bossuet's letters, and especially any who have made attempts at putting them into English, will regard her rendering of the extracts in this book with much respect. Our author does not follow her hero year by year throughout his long and laborious life, but gives full-length portraits of him in his various aspects and in the various stages of his develop- ment. Thus he is presented to us as a brilliant student ; as Archdeacon of Metz ; as preacher at Paris ; as Court ecclesiastic ; as tutor to the Dauphin ; as controversialist ; and finally as Bishop of Meaux. In each case his reaction to the burning questions of the day is brought out by