Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/508

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. NOV. 20, 1920.

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Early Life and Education of John Evelyn 1620-1641. With a Commentary by H. Maynard Smith. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 12s. Qd. net.)

HEADERS of Evelyn's ' Memoirs ' know that the first twenty-one years of his life occupy but a 'few pages. Mr. Maynard Smith, has made a Commentary on this initial part of the Diary, expanding it to a closely-printed volume, full of matter of all kinds, which runs to near 200 pages. He prints an Apology to start with, and disarms surprise and criticism by his perfect awareness of affording cause for some little amusement. Hi apology, however, is one that will be acknowledged as valid by every friend of N. & Q.' The Memoirs are his hobby. Name by name, incident by incident, word by word, he has gone through the record of these years, has put together into plea- sant notes all manner of out of the way informa- tion, and has, in order to produce a livelier sense of the seventeenth century, added a good many touches belonging to the period immediately antecedent. In fact, as Mr. Maynard Smith's volumes progress, with good Indexes attached to them, they may be noted by students as store- houses to be turned to for facts concerning minor personalities, stray incidents, lost customs and other such matters as are not easy to run to earth when one wants them.

Evelyn furnishes a better thread for this sort of work than would a diarist of greater character and capacity. His own point of view, his proper and intimate idea of things and people, is not of any great interest. Therefore he does not deflect interest from the topics he discourses on much more than does any neutral reporter of sufficient information anywhere. His very qualities are neutral, or only positive in the degree that makes him an efficient and valuable dilettante. Never- theless, we owe him enough to give him a right to commemoration upon his Tercentenary, and perhaps no commemoration could be invented likely to be more to his own taste, or more useful, to his admirers than just such work as this.

A detailed discussion of Mr. Maynard Smith's voluminous notes is not possible. Curious readers "will certainly find them worth perusal.

dLondon County Council : Proposed Demolition of

Nineteen City Churches. Report by the Clerk

of the Council and the Architect of the Council.

(Printed for the L.C.C., Np. 2046, 3s. Qd.)

WE have much pleasure ia drawing the attention

of our readers to this able and careful Report, which

sets out in full the matters of historical interest

connected with the much -discussed nineteen

churches, together with particulars of their

architecture and interior fittings. An illustration

of each church is supplied in the important cases

more than one ; and there is a plan of the city

of London showing the sites of churches burnt

down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt ; those

of churches rebuilt but since demolished ; the

churches now proposed to be demolished, and

those it is proposed to retain.

It is with great satisfaction that we see the weight of the London County Council on the

side of the defenders of the churches. For St. Katherine Coleman alone have their experts nothing much to plead, for the rest the accumu- lated argument, from the antiquity of the sites ; the numerous historical connections ; the beauty of some of the buildings, and their interest as specimens of architecture (an interest which is rather modified than diminished by their being largely examples of unpretentious and relatively simple and inexpensive work), strikes one as hard indeed to be resisted.

A point to note is the amount of money which has, quite recently, been spent on two or three of these buildings, evidence, at any rate, of living interest. And, at the other pole, we have to note that five undoubtedly and four in all likeli- hood of the foundations belong to pre-Conquest times, and that the latest foundation goes back to the earlier half of the thirteenth century.

Apart from its importance as a document in the present controversy, this Report should prove of permanent value and use to the student of London.

Dream Children and the Child Angel. By Charles Lamb. With Decorations by Paul Woodroffe. Saint George Series No. 5. (De la More Press, Is. net.)

THE floral decorations graceful and unpreten- tious are much more pleasing than the frontis- piece of commonplace angels. The chief charm of the booklet is, however, the print, which is good enough to add a distinct nuance of pleasure as one reads the familiar sentences.

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