turies surely attained the highest point ever reached in religon. The Church was everywhere." As might be inferred from the perusal of Chaucer, there was no street but by the sight of a spire or a will reminded the citizen that the Church was with him always to rule his life. At her bidding the whole nation, from the king downwards, renounced meat for a fourth part of the whole year—a fact which as is said, "alone marks the enormous power of the Church." In the fourteenth century, when the population of London was not more than 120,000 there were in London 126 parish churches. Sir Walter estimates roughly that with the parish churches and their property a full quarter of the city was occupied by the religious houses and the places they owned, and he opines that what the boy Whittington heard at Highgate was not the chime of Bow Church alone—it was the sound of the bells of all the churches and all the convents of London ringing together.
These extracts—often in the very words of the book—show how bright, animated, and picturesque is a book which is monumental in its scope. We have testified before, and will do so again, to the transcendent merits of a work which during its progress was its author's delight, and on its completion will constitute his monument. The illustrations are once more a highly admirable and striking feature. Those to the opening portion are chosen with much taste, and are drawn frequently from recondite sources.
Letters of Literary Men.—Vol. I. Sir Thomas More to Robert Burns.—Vol. II. Nineteenth Century. Arranged and edited by F. A. Mumby. (Routledge & Sons.)
In two volumes belonging to the valuable and attractive "London Library" we have here a representative collection of the best English letters, linking the period of Sir Thomas More and that of Tennyson and Ruskin. We say designedly "the best," though in the case of the contents of the first volume it is hard to say which of Walpole, Gray, and Cowper is. best. The first letter in this volume is a touching epistle to his daughter Margaret Roper, written with a coal by Sir Thomas More when a prisoner in the Tower. Very early come two letters from John Lyly the Euphuist, from the recently published edition of his plays by Mr. R. Warwick Bond. Spenser, Ascham, Raleigh, Sidney, Bacon, Beaumont, Jonson, Donne, are all included in the first section. In the second—the age of Milton and Dryden—appear, among others, Suckling, Walton, the Duchess of Newcastle, Cowley, and Congreve. The third section comprises such known letter-writers as Swift, Pope, Lord Chesterfield, Gray, Walpole. Johnson, and Goldsmith: and the fourth, Burke, Gibbon, Sheridan, Cowper, and Burns.
Vol. ii. begins with Fanny Burney and her confidences concerning "Daddy" Crisp, and, after dealing with Blake, Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, reaches Lamb, the most delightful of letter-writers. Byron heads a part including the correspondence oi Moore, Shelley, Keats, Hazlitt, Hunt, Landor, and Beddoes. The Early Victorian Age begins with Macaulay, and passes through Thackeray and the Brownings to Dickens, Hood, and Carlyle. As the selection is confined to those no longer living, the last part is 'The Age of Tennyson,' and includes Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, James Thomson, R. L. Stevenson, and John Ruskin. The selection is on the whole well made, the idea of the work is happy, and the volumes may be opened at any point with the certainty of gratification.
History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages. By J. C. L. Sismondi. Recast and supplemented by William Boulting. (Routledge & Sons. )
In favour of the series to which this volume belongs, and its claims upon the serious student and booklover, we have already spoken. Our commendations are once more merited and bestowed. There is a class of worker to whom Sismondi's 'Italian Republics' constitutes an inestimable treasure. Here for a crown is the whole of a great history, never, so far as we are aware, at anything like so reasonable or satisfactory a price rendered accessible to the English reader. Its substance is moreover recast in the light of subsequent knowledge, and is in some respects corrected, and in others brought up to date. Close study, such as the book in its present state demands, is not within general reach, and we ourselves, looking at the temptations the work puts forward, can but sigh for the leisure, which we know resignedly can never more be ours, to master and assimilate all its varied information. Youth is the time in which one reads and stores up knowledge. We can, then, but congratulate the fortunate youth in whom the love of learning burns on the fact that he has within his reach a work, at a nominal price, the full deglutition and enjoyment of which may furnish him with sustenance and pastime for the rest of the winter. Books such as the present are those precisely which the hardworking student lacks. The production of such is a boon to the scholar.
Collectanea. First Series. By Charles Crawford. (Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare Head Press.)
We have here, with a dedication to Prof. Dowden, who is well aware of the value of the contents, a volume of singular interest to Shakespearian students generally, and to readers of 'N. & Q.' in particular. This volume—to be followed, it is to be hoped, by many others—consists of the investigations into the early drama of Mr. Charles Crawford. Of its contents—with the exception of a single article on 'Arden of Feversham,' which appeared in the 'Jarhbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft,' 1903 all first saw the light in 'N. & Q.,' wherein they have already attracted the attention of our readers. As a proof of how much can be accomplished by the aid of parallels judiciously selected, they occupy a unique position in literature. By Mr. Crawford's aid the cruces of the Tudor drama are being solved, and light is cast upon the darkest of its mysteries. The four papers reprinted from our columns are those on (1) Richard Barnfield, Marlowe, and Shakespeare; (2) Ben Jonson's method of composing verse; (3) John Webster and Sir Philip Sidney; and (i) Edmund Spenser, 'Selimus,' and 'Locrine.' Quite irrefutable are the conclusions of these separate essays, and their interest is enormous, absorbing. As revelations they are wonderful; and the only question concerning them is, Whither do they tend? In no other literature, surely, can similar resemblances and obligations be traced. It is naturally impossible for us to quote afresh in our columns what first appeared therein. We can only congratulate ourselves upon being the earliest to introduce to the public matter so valuable and so significant.
