Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/198

160 NOTES AND QUERIES. t i 2 s.ix. AUG. 20, 1921. checks and refusals, and the obstacles it presented to continuous and straightforward action. Between Elizabeth on the one hand and Parma on the other we have Walsingham and Burleigh, Davison and Heneage, Leicester himself, and Norreys, commander of the British forces in the Netherlands, coping with a situation difficult enough apart from caprices in policy. The history of these particular months, as detailed in these letters, has little that is of outstanding importance in it; on the other hand, it is full of the miseries of starving garrisons and the uneasiness of a population under the occupation and movements of soldiery. There is also here material which will enable the student to straighten out the tangled question of the secret negotiations between Elizabeth and Parma.

Mrs. Lomas provides a carefully-worked-out Preface in which the main threads of all the complicated intrigues are satisfactorily traced out and combined. The relations between England and France are scarcely less interesting than those between England and the Netherlands or Spain. The French Court is in the thick of the struggle with the King of Navarre, and anxious to prevent Elizabeth's grant of money for German reiters to come to his assistance. Stafford is Elizabeth's Ambassador at Paris and Chasteauneuf the French Ambassador in England. Among the matters with which Stafford has to concern himself is the affair of the Giffords.

Pleasant detail of matters other than war and polities' may be found in the newsletters (of which this volume includes three or four) and in a fair proportion of the rest of the correspondence. Thus Lord Willoughby, writing from Copenhagen, tells about Tycho Brahë, his observatory and his discovery of a comet.

The text, we learn, was ready for publication six years ago. We congratulate Mrs. Lomas on at last seeing before her the completed result of her labours.

We are asked to state that copies are to be obtained at Imperial House, Kingsway, W.C.2.

modest little volume is intended for the very beginner in historical study, and therefore takes in the most elementary facts and principles concerning "sources" and their use. Freshness, clearness, aptness in illustration, some care as to proportion, and good judgment as to inevitable omissions are the principal qualities—besides the requisite knowledge—on which the success of such a book as this will depend. They are present here, and make these pages excellent reading even for one to whom the matters dealt with are familiar. Much more should they prove so to readers who are as yet unacquainted with the subject. The importance of history cannot, we believe, be overrated; and if it is found dull by many minds in comparison with science or poetry, the reason most often lies, as Mr. Salzmann suggests, in the dependence on wearisome and not seldom inaccurate text-books—in the lack, that is, of some such general, living conception of the nature of history and the method of its growth as his book supplies. The chapter on Records illustrates especially well what we mean. There is a chapter headed 'Episodics' and we confess to a dubious feeling about that word, which our author tells us is of his own invention. It is intended to denote poems such as 'The Vision of Piers Plowman' or the ballad of 'Chevy Chase' which deal with isolated incidents or special aspects of life. Perhaps some reader of our columns could suggest a better.

Editor of The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, for July is much to be congratulated on an excellent number. He himself contributes an article on Dante—dealing chiefly with the history of the poet's works and influence. Dr. Tout has an illuminating paper on the place in history of St. Thomas of Canterbury J; Dr. Vaughan has a subject of very great interest in Giamba Hista Vico; Dr. Reiidel Harris imparts what, if it stands criticism, will prove an important discovery—that of a considerable fragment of the work of Marcion; and Dr. Powicke gives us the first instalment of a study of Ailred of Rievaulx, the occasion for which was the acquisition by the John Rylands Library of a manuscript of Walter Daniel's 'Centum Sententiae.' Mr. Buckle discusses, in the light of the Rylands Coptic MS., the history of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. There is a note by Mrs. Rose-Troup on Henry de Cicestria's Missal, and those of our readers who were interested in Mr. George Homer's query at 12 S. viii. 168, on the whereabouts of a Syriac MS. (a Harmony of the Life and Passion of our Lord), once in the possession of Dr. Adam Clarke, may be glad to know of the short note on the subject—also from the pen of Dr. Rendel Harris—which concludes this number.

have received the Ninth Report of the Society of Genealogists. The manuscript accessions to the library are numerous and interesting, especially in regard to Kent and Warwickshire topics. It is clear from the Report that the activity of the Society has sustained itself throughout the past year, and we note an encouraging increase in the number of members.

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