Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/471

 Reviews and Notes 467 This volume, however, issued in the year when Fielding, returned from Leyden, "was in London at work on his play, contributes a hitherto unmentioned item to the "Wagstaffe" controversy, and perhaps also to the problem of Fielding's source. At least it suggests certain pertinent questions: What was the nature of the material added in this folio to the twenty- four octavo pages of the " Wagstaffe" pamphlet, and who wrote it? Was Thomas Redivivus a complete burlesque of the original His- tory, somewhat in the manner of Ned Ward's Hudibr as Redivivus: or was it a reprint of the History with a ''spurious second and third part" newly added along with certain mock-critical apparatus? Does Ritson's comment mean that these additions, late in time, were so much in keeping with the original as to impose upon Thomas Hearne (died 1735)? Who was the author of the "spurious" parts? And who were the "Several Hands" responsible for the Annotations? May members of the Scrib- lerus Club have been responsible, Swift, perhaps, among others? And who was dealt with in the prefixed "historical and critical Remarks on the Life and Writings of the Author": Was this the original " Wagstaffe" memoir, or a new burlesque on writings of that nature? My present bibliographical environment makes any attempt to answer these questions impossible to me; but cannot others more fortunately situated do better? I can only suggest that this bulky work appearing in the very year when, according to Professor Cross, Fielding was making the acquaintance of literary London, would seem more likely to have attracted the playwright's attention than the pamphlet of 1711. Some hint as to the authorship might even have reached him and stirred his interest. HELEN SARD HUGHES. The University of Iowa. THE DRAMATIC RECORDS OF SIR HENRY HERBERT. By Joseph Quincy Adams. Cornell Studies in English. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1917. Professor Joseph Quincy Adams, in The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, has done serviceable work in a field which cries for organization. The documents illustrating the history of the English drama and theatre number many thou- sands; they are being added to yearly; and they lie scattered through the writings of half a hundred scholars. To assemble and arrange them in one great corpus, with indices, would be a formidable undertaking, but one fraught with relief to the laboring scholar. For even a partial ordering of these materials one breathes a prayer of gratitude.