Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/351

 i2s.in.JcNK ) i9i7.j NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Dublin,' by Dr. Ellington Ball (Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland) ; Mr. Andrew Little's ' The Grey Friars in Oxford ' (Oxford Historical Society) :"and Mr. H. B. Walters 's ' Church Bells of England ' are not mentioned we take a few examples out of several that have occurred to us while some works which do not contain much more bibliographical information in any form find a place here. Literary topography is, perhaps, rather slenderly represented, but no doobt a bibliography of" bibliographies in that subject is hardly possible or needful as yet. History, on the other hand as distinct from archaeology is abundantly illustrated, and not less than the antiquary will the historical student find Mr. Humphreys's compilation of very great assistance, especially in regard to calendars of documents.

Librarians should certainly make a note of this ' Handbook to County Bibliography ' as one to be acquired, and may further, together with genealogists and local historians, be advised to look for another compilation promised in the pre- face that of a bibliography of books on Wills.

A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage and Baronetage, Itte Privy Council, Knightage, and Companionage. By Sir Bernard Burke and Ashworth P. Burke. Seventy-Ninth Edi- tion. (Harrison & Sons, 21. 2s. net.) ' BURKE ' appears this year much later than usual, owing, as Mr. Ashworth Bxirke explains in his preface, to the printers having to give pre- cedence to Government work ; but advantage has been taken of this delay to include much additional information. The editor states that he cannot recall any previous edition in which so many new articles have appeared and so many changes have had to be recorded.

Headers of ' N. & Q.' will be specially interested in the fact that five of these new articles are devoted to the ancient baronies of Cobham, Strabolgi, Dudley, Burgh, and Wharton. which, having been in abeyance, forfeited, or dormant from dates ranging from 1369 to 1757, were in 1916 called out of abeyance. Similarly two baronetcies of Scotland which had long been dormant have been added to the Boll of the Baronetage that of Dunbar of Baldoon, dor- mant since 1686, and that of Scott of Scotscraig, conferred in 1683 on a son of the Archbishop ol St. Andrews murdered in 1679. The former is No. 214 on the official Roll of the Baronetage, and the latter is No. 272.

Notable among the peerages recently created are the viscounties conferred on Sir John French, Sir Edward Grey, and Mr. Lewis Harcourt ; while the deaths recorded include those of the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Kitchener, and the Earl of Cromer.

The three thousand pages of ' Burke ' and the enormous number of facts and dates recorded in them justify the comprehensive claim of the title-pages.

Bench-Ends in English Churches. By J. Charles

Cox. (Oxford University Press, 7. 6d. net.) THIS is one of the series of works on " Church Ari in England " which is being brought out under the auspices of Mr. Francis Bond. As might be expected, the illustrations, which are lavish, are

Eerfectly delightful ; a careful study of those elonging to churches which a reader has no

opportunity of visiting would help to make a real rounding out of his acquaintance with the subject as a whole.

Dr. Cox's text consists of four chapters on methods of seating churches, enlivened by several good quotations from Church Accounts and other documents, and followed by an alphabet of ounties, with notes of the examples of fine jench-ends to be found in their respective hurches. It was, of course, impossible to include everything ; and, in so large a number of names and dates as is here brought together, it was equally impossible to avoid some proportion of rrors. In spite of some defects and faults the aook may well furnish so good a nucleus for mtiquarian work on this topic as to require to be reprinted, when amendments will be possible, and will, we trust, be made. We should have iked some discussion of the carvers and car- penters, and some attempt to characterize their work from the point of view of art ; and we cannot but think that an arrangement, either chronological best of the three or according to district, would have been preferable to the alphabetical scheme adopted. There is no need, surely, to compile a book on old Church work with a view to rapid reference. as if it were a store-list.

Church Ornaments and their Civil Antecedents' By J. Wickham Legg. (Cambridge University Press, 6s. net.) THIS short treatise it does not run to 100 pp. of a small octavo volume is full of just that sort of matter which any one interested in the anti- quarian side of the liturgical order of the Church would desire to be acquainted with, yet might find much difficulty in getting together. The mediaeval Christian altar is here traced back to the abacus of the Prcefectus Proetorio ; the use of censer and lights carried before a bishop to the custom of carrying these before the emperor ; episcopal and other vestments and ornaments to different articles of clothing whether ordinary or ceremonial in use in the civil life of the Roman Empire.

Dr. Wickham Legg seems to consider that these identifications, once established, rather derogate from the symbolical force which is usually claimed for these vestments and orna- ments. " It will be admitted, it may be by all," he says, " that there can be no more symbolism in the Christian ornaments of the present day than they had when they began to be used first in Christian worship." If that is so in the sphere of Christian liturgical use, presumably it is equally so in other spheres. But to admit that would dissolve a good deal of acknowledged symbolism. Taking it all round, there seems to be as much symbolism created a posteriori, if we may so put it, as a priori. But this is too large a subject for a brief notice. Besides ample references and a good bibliography the book contains a dozen most instructive illustrations.

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. By William

Hazlitt. With an Introduction by Sir Arthur

Quiller-Couch. (Humphrey Milford, 1. net.)

A READER might have a much worse companion

for a summer day's ramble than this little volume,

pleasant to read and pleasant to handle. We

think the shade of Hazlitt should be grateful to

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, for he says, with a