Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/157

 Mead 151 average reader a volume largely given up to illustrations of the social life so brilliantly sketched by Chaucer himself; passages throwing light on the life of the gentleman farmer, the weaver, the miller, the physician, and the score of other characters that live in Chaucer's pages. Such a book would be of fascinating interest, and materials for it are not altogether lacking. Singularly enough, however, notwithstanding the title, Chau- cer's name does not appear in the index or elsewhere in the book except on the title-page and in the Preface. A partial justifica- tion for the title would appear to be that the facts here recorded are outstanding facts in the history of the century and that Chau- cer's life actually spans the period covered by the book. But except at a few points the book does not directly illuminate Chau- cer's work. Thus much should be said plainly, for it is to be feared that many readers will come to it with expectations bound to be disappointed. We must emphasize, too, the fact that the book is really a text-book, not a book for the advanced investigator but one to initiate beginners into the significance and use of original sources. Evidently, the beginner, whatever his natural ability, is hardly prepared without some preliminary training to make intelligent use of primary sources. And I hasten to add that, considered from the point of view of the teacher of history, the book is an admirable one. It is thoroughly scholarly, the selections are typical, for the most part unhackneyed, and, with few exceptions, of interest to the general reader. A book of selections can be easily made by a free use of the scissors and the paste pot, but the making of a book of the quality of this one is no light recreation for an idle hour. Various critical notes (pp. 72, 87, 100, 121, 122, 129, etc.) indicate that the illustrations have not been hastily or uncritically selected. In many cases exact references indicate the volume and page from which the passage is taken. This excellent plan is, however, not uniformly followed. The beginner who wishes rapidly to verify a passage or to discover its relation to the context in the original will almost certainly be hampered by the lack of exact references on pp. 14, 15, 26, 27, 29, 34, 35, 46, 80, etc., etc. Nearly half the 295 pages of text are given to the French War (pp. 1-142) ; about 35 pages to social history; about a score of pages to ecclesiastical affairs, and 93 pages to political and constitutional history. The selected passages are mainly drawn from Froissart, Adam of Murimuth, Thomas Walsingham, Robert of Avesbury, Henry of Knighton, the Rolls of Parliament, the Fcedera, and various contemporary letters. A ^ood part of the sources are in Latin or French. The selections from these have been rendered into brisk and idiomatic English, in many cases by the editor. As a result the entire volume has a fresh flavor and is uniformly attractive.