The Library.

Writings ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of
Hampole and materials for his Biography, by
Hope Emily Allen. (The Modern Language
Association of America, D. C. Heath and Co.,
£1 10s. net.).

FOR
OR some eighteen years, Miss Hope Allen,
already known as the writer of a mono-
graph on the authorship of the Pricke of
Conscience,' has been working to establish the
Rolle Canon: this valuable book is the out-
come. Dr. Horstman searched Oxford, Cam-
bridge and London for MSS., publishing later
his two well-known volumes, now more than
thirty years old, and most unfortunately out
of print. Miss Allen has ransacked some forty
other libraries; in the British Isles, Switzer-
land, Belgium, Sweden, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Austria and America. One by
one, she takes the works she believes to be
Rolle's own, carefully tabulating the MSS.,
and gives much information on each, together
with criticism. Having dealt thus with his
Latin works, Scripture Commentaries, Middle
English prose treatises and poems, she turns
her attention to writings, in her view, of
doubtful authenticity, or of wrong ascription.
Then, having dealt, in ten pages, with early
biographies, she devotes nearly one hundred
to matters she has gathered for a biography;
matters of ascertained fact (these remaining
scanty) matters of hypothesis and of criticism.
Addenda and Indices, the latter reasonably
ample, close the most complete study of Rolle,
so far, published. It is and will remain a
source of information and stimulus to all
Rolle students. That it is final, no one will
claim; least of all, we imagine, its learned,
laborious author, too experienced as she must
be, to suppose that in "criticism" of MSS.
belonging to inadequately chronicled eras,
there can be definitive finality. She has given
students something better than any such chim-
era, namely, a treasure-house set firmly along
the high steep way to knowledge; though, doubt-
less, there are points in her work which will
be challenged, some, eventually, modified.

Few matters are more disputable than ascrip-
tions of long-gone-by authorship; but sometimes
she gives, unnecessarily, the impression that
previous searchers in the same field have been
more rash or careless than minute investiga-
tion of their words shews them to have been.
Her treatment of Horstman's argument, from
"cadenced prose" is a notable but not iso-
lated instance. By omitting an etc., and his
footnote of "characteristic words," she might
mislead a reader about his precise position.
Sometimes she relies wholly on external evi-
dence, when internal would modify her plea;
and it may be urged that, in general, she is,
using the words broadly, stronger on the scien-
tific than on the philosophical side. She does
not seem to possess the mystical flair of Dr.
Horstman, whose name, strangely, she persist-
ently misspells; still less of Miss Deanesly. An
example occurs on p. 109, where she discusses

the date of Rolle's "conversion" with a hard definiteness which jars. She chooses the 'Comment on Canticles as a "standard" by which to form the canon, and she insists on the im

portance of finding calor, dulcor and canor in all works if they are to be accounted genuine. But, is so rigid a method applicable to so

stubborn an individualist as Rolle? It seems even more temerarious than Horstman's

test," even if, as she suggests, it had been, as it was not, his sole one, of "cadenced prose.' For her argument that 'Our Daily Work,' Grace' and 'Prayer' are not Rolle's she offers no certain proof. To cast doubt on the first, she cites a passage in a single MS. (not the Thornton) which she says "would probably make his authorship impossible." This, the Ingilby (from Ripley Castle) is also a northern MS. But she admits that "another hand inserts at the beginning and the end other Northern pieces." Possibly, therefore, the Thornton version may be quite correct. Anyhow, Miss Allen does not weigh against this passage the rest of 'Our Daily Work, with its perpetual reminders of Rolle's language and standpoint; she does not allow for possible variation of statement, nor suggest a more probable writer of this not unimportant treatise.

In the 'Materials for His Biography, she succeeds, where others have failed, in finding his family name in North Country documents. As early as 1160, she cites a juryman, in a Rievaulx litigation, "Ricardus Rolle villein," with a reference to habitation at Thornton le Dale, generally, and by Miss Allen, accepted as Rolle's birth-place. In the Rievaulx Chartulary however the last two words are run together, and as there is a parallel case of a surname, Manievilain, some doubt about Rolle alone remains. However, William Rolle, possibly Rolle's father, appears in documents (Lay Subsidies) of 1327 and 1333.

a

to

She accepts John de Dalton, Keeper of Pickering Castle, as Rolle's patron; but surely, she darkens the picture of him given in the North Riding Records? She calls him a grafter and landgrabber." The later Middle Age is not wholly amenable to twentieth century standards, and the humorous attractiveness of the North Riding's rough ways then seems escape her. She thinks Pickering Church more probably the scene of the Assumption Sermon than Topcliffe. If she had wholly accepted Dom Noetinger's interesting hypothesis in The Month January, 1926, that Rolle was, after Oxford days, a student, a doctor at the Sorbonne, and (resting on a line in the 'Melum') a priest, who did not become a hermit till 1326, then perhaps she might get over the difficulty that Pickering was too near his home for him to escape his father's notice, if he preached there on a great festival; but she writes critically of this theory, which, doubtless, Dom Noetinger will further explicate in his promised edition of some of Rolle's writings in French. Nowhere in the book is her criticism more interestingly searching than in these particular pages. In his article, mentioned above, Dom Noetinger, anxiously longing for the speedy publication of Miss Allen's book, wrote "As long as we do not know exactly which among the works attributed to him are genuine and which are spurious, it is difficult to ground a strong argument on his writings."

It is probably unlikely that any final conclusion will ever be reached on the Rolle Canon: but Miss Allen's book, even if she accepts, as impeccably genuine, fewer works than some of her predecessors, has admitted to the canon a sufficient number and sufficiently vital to the understanding of the man, his life, and his teachings, to make it possible now to ground a strong argument on his writings."

"

The Laws of Verse. By J. C. Andersen. (Cambridge University Press. 7s. 6d. net.)

E were in the concluding para

We were interested indersens preface, in

which he hints at a "deeper law" than any
touched on in this volume,
"music that

a

beats in us all." What he is at present concerned with are the characteristic or normal

forms in which, so far as English poetry goes,

that music manifests itself. Those who know the late T. S. Omond's work on metre will find

this a kindred work. It proceeds on examination of verse as we have it, under the headings of stress-unit, verse unit, heroic couplet and blank verse, and stanza-unit, without introducing questions of correctness or incorrectness of

whether their lyrics usually come to them ac-
companied by a definite melody. We should
rather expect to find that is the case.
Westmill. By Guy Ewing. (Tunbridge Wells:
Courier, Co., Ltd.)

T

THE boast of Westmill lies chiefly in its history. The church is ancient, and by no means without interesting detail, but it is surpassed by many village churches; for the number and variety of the personages who, from Domesday onward, have lived in or been connected with it, Westmill must be assigned a

high place among villages of its size. Its early

lords were the de Montfichets from them passed to de Valence, and from the widow of

Aymer de Valence in 1376 to the Cistercian

Abbey of St. Mary Graces by the Tower, with whom it remained till the Dissolution when it fell, as so much did, to Thomas Audley. The historian of Hertfordshire, Nathaniel Salmon, was curate here from 1695 to about 1702 and

Mr. Ewing when he comes to him takes occasion to quote from our late regretted correThe

spondent W. B. Gerish, who has vindicated Salmon from some unfair depreciation. Rectors of Westmill in the troublous days of

rebellion and revolution were firm royalists. Only one of them appears in the 'D.N.B.'

Henry Pepys, to wit, later Bishop of Worcester, but, as Mr. Ewing shows, there were men of character among the rest in the long line of them. In Westmill is Button-snap, the cottage left to Charles Lamb by his god-father Field, which, indeed, Lamb visited but once or twice and soon parted with. Our author rejects Mr. E. V. Lucas's suggestion that Lamb invented the odd name, in favour of its being a corruption of "Button's Knap." The chapter in which this is dealt with, entitled 'Places and Traditions,' with a later one entitled 'Our Fathers have told us,' brings together not only the many particulars concerning houses and estates which the serious historian and topographer look for, but also character sketches, legends and odd sayings which are good to have. The Registers are dealt with very fully, and present abundance of minor good things at every turn. Thus under Marriages we have note that the wedding of Arthur Ashley Pearson and Margaret Hyde Greg was the last at Westmill to be held in the old-fashioned style with postilions in huntings caps and short jackets. The chapter on the Tythe Books is even more valuable; and students of placenames will find the concluding chapter on that topic worth making note of. The illustrations are abundant and good. We have now a large number of village histories, and we think the average standard of merit in them is both fairly high and rising: we should, however, mark this particular village history above the average standard.

form, and with the minimum of actual critic-
ism; and it works down (apart from the study
of the blank verse form) to recognition of a
type-verse of eight stress-units which takes four
usual forms here called Romance; Ballard;
Nibelungen and Alexandrine. The relation of
time to stress, the introduction of additional
syllables, or the dropping of units, and the
effects thus produced, which form the sub-
stance of the study, are treated with skill and
judgment, aided by a retentive memory for
rhythm and a good ear, and rounded out with
abundant examples. The key-note of the
theory we take to be expectation. To rouse,
prolong, satisfy-sometimes to tantalise and
astonish-expectation is the function of verse
as a rhythmical structure. This is, virtually,
to lure thought on and on; and it might, we
believe, be shown that this beam of expectation
going before, not wholly constituted by rhythm
or rhyme but, if we may so put it, brightened
by these, is one of the marks of great poetry.
Mr. Andersen has a good chapter on Poetry
and Music in which he naturally comes to the
proportion between stanzas or lines and the
breath of the singer. In great poetry there
is a natural proportion between stanzas and
lines on the one hand and the length of the
pulse of emotion (again, so to put it), on
the other. Mr. Andersen does not say much
about this; nor about the subtler and more
intricate correspondence between units in
poetry and units in thought: but we seem to
trace in his work an awareness of these allied
as they are more closely to the "deeper law "
he recognises than to his present theme. A
good many problems about verse might be
solved if poets could be persuaded to tell us
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