The Library. The Pastime of Pleasure. By Stephen Hawes, with Introduction, Notes, Glossary and Indexes by William Edward Mead, Ph.D. (Humphrey Milford, for the Early English Text Society. 15s. net.). STOPFORD BROOKE stigmatized The Pastime of Pleasure' as a "soulless resurrection." Its latest editor, if seemingly too sophisticated to appreciate wholeheartedly his author's charming and ingenuous poetry, claims that in his effort to renue that hath be longe decayd The floure of chyvalry Hawes more than any other writer of his time represents the most characteristic features of the rapidly disappearing Middle Ages." That, if it were all which it is not, justifies the appearance of this reprint of the earliest complete copy of 1517, with variants from the three other sixteenth century editions. The contemporary woodcuts, admirably reproduced, add value, light and delight to the whole. Consonant with the time's fashion, the poem is allegorical; though the aptness of his preliminary training in the Seven Liberal Arts to the hero's later business of slaying large and awful giants, and that unusual serpent, "made of seven metals," on his way to winning the beaute and the femelynesse Of la bell pucell even Hawes cannot demonstrate. However, he desired to deal with current education; so he quite simply used it as part preparation for gallant and debonair Grande Amoure.' The importance attached to rhetoric in the heyday of the Renaissance is plain, not only from the space Hawes allots to it, but more from the fact that while he retained the scholastic conviction that logic is the way to truth, he allowed rhetoric somehow to overshadow it, and thrusts shrewdly at the common herd who may not comprehend of This that I wryte is harde and couert To them that haue nothynge intelligence Up so downe they make it oft transfvert. Professor Mead has provided an adequate if not enthusiastic Introduction, and a glossary which might have been fuller. But he has somewhat departed from the standard accuracy we are accustomed to expect in this series. There are omissions or inversions of letters on p. xlvi, 1. 1981, and 1. 2092; in 1. 85, pedurable appears for perdurable; in 1. 256, gloryons for gloryous, which ruins a rime; in 1. 2040, u is printed for n, and the same mistake occurs in 1. 2090. Nor is the Glossary free from typographical errors. وو "" The reign of Henry VII perhaps deserves the charge of literary dulness, but Hawes has real poetic charm, more perhaps than his editor admits. Further, unlike the majority of the to is Early English Text Society's reprints, The Pastime of Pleasure may appeal not only to students of language and literature, but more general readers. No doubt Hawes sometimes much to earlier writers, whose parallel descripconventional "; obviously he owed tive passages Mr. Mead cites in his Notes. Yet Hawes is not merely "parallel"; though, for example, he might remember the castles of Dante, Mandeville and others, perhaps even the wonderful picture in the Northumbrian 'Cursor Mundi,' which the editor does not recall, yet he did not borrow his fancy, nor his quick delight in colour, form and melody. Is there no foretaste of unborn Spenser in this picture of the tower of Doctrine? 66 Apart from its poetry, Hawes's 'Pastime convey's his era's attitude to education, and its recollections of departing chivalry with all the vividness of current reality in King Melyzus' exhortation on Knighthood to Grande Amoure we catch its living force as only a contemporary can give it. The historian of education, too, will find here accounts of the trivium and quadrivium fuller than any other in our literature; and though Professor Mead declares that Hawes adds nothing new and even nothing specific," the philosopher may demur when he remembers, in the section on Grammar, that new fashions, comparison of old times and wholly to the former's advantage, which shews how inevitably the older generation discounts the younger, whether Henry VII reigns or George V. Can we admit, either, that he lacks originality when we remember the Impostor, Godfrey go bylue (Godfrey Go-quickly), whose portrait is as sharp as one of Chaucer's, whose punishment is swift, when Correction, with her knotted whip, "made him skip.' Hawes has added a notable character to our collection of English rogues. Perhaps it is by its infinite variety that our literature shines; and so, since it varies as we do ourselves, the 'Passetyme' may find fresh lovers in its old-new shape. The importance, to students, of the Early English Text Society's publications can hardly be over-stated. But if occasionally, as by this poem, the ordinary cultivated reader could be enticed into the pleasant paths of Middle English thought and expression, the gain would be still siderable; only dissipation of accumulated ignorance can check tendencies to under-rate the past, to forget the greatness of our inheritance. After all, how many realise that to this at least half-forgotten Groom of Henry VII's Chamber we owe the bitter-sweet lines, Grand Amoure nears man's end? more con After the day there cometh the darke nyght as Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century. By THIS no was many-sided and discriminating article from the pen of the Dean of Winchester. Excommunication in the Middle Ages,' based on the Diocese HIS book contains three lectures delivered Registers of Bath and Wells, by Mr. H. P. in Birkbeck College last November, with Palmer, is a good discussion of a subject which, apparent additions save footnotes. The we have often thought, has not received suffiauthor claims as justification that there never cient attention, viewed as one of the factors of which can be finality in the criticism a great Reformation. Sir precipitated the of the author." Andrew MacPhail's pungent account This is doubtless true, but is not in itself an adequate plea for publication. The Life and Diaries of Sir Henry Wilson is pertitle fits none too well, for though the lecturer haps the article which will draw most frequent attention. Mr. E. M. E. Blyth writes very symdid not pass 1800, he points out that he goes Mr. pathetically about back to the date of Shakespeare's death. Austin Hopkinson's The main value of the first lecture is that it recent book, Religio Militis.' How severe are now the demands upon the historian, as to may remind the moderns, who if they think of him at all, remember that he a satirist, interpretation and yet more, in the growing and possibly that he wrote plays, that Dryden abundance of available sources, in the way of was also a not undistinguished critic: and they research, is brought out in an unsigned article entitled New Materials for History.' Mr. may be surprised by his verdict that Elizabethans' Robert Steele begins with Iwit was not that of gentlemen: epigram his there was even somewhat that was ill-bred and delightful and substantial article on the Rusclownish in it." If they do not chance to be sian Icon: "It," he says-that is, the art of the closely conversant with Dryden, they may learn icon-" is, as all art should be, a by-product." with interest that no rules did he think Of papers on modern topics we have Mr. W. G. FitzGerald's Men versus Machines in the binding"; that he held that " any method can United States So little is there new be justified by success.' staggering revelation of under the sun that our hardiest revolutionaries immense resources; Dr. Lyttelton's Nightcan barely outstrip the late seventeenth cen- mare of Examinations,' partly a recommendation of Mason methods: Mr. Justice Marshall's tury critic, the herald of the satiric and 66 correct eighteenth. The Capitulations in Egypt'; and Sir Verney Lovett's India from Curzon's Days to These -a weighty article which will doubtless be pondered in many quarters. The first place in the number is given to Mr. W. N. Medlicott's discussion of the Berlin Treaty. the The second lecture deals with editions and editors of Shakespeare. Mr. Nichol Smith happily summarizes the relative performances of Pope and Theobald: "On the one hand you have a man of genius pursuing a wrong method; on the other you have a man of very moderate capacity striving towards the right method." However, ranging himself with Samuel Johnson, he thinks that Churton Collins over-rated Theobald. This lecture may have little that is actually new in it; but it gathers up valuable matter conveniently and presents it perspicuously. Mr. Nichol Smith pleads that Johnson's value here lies in his sensible, painstaking honesty, and rates highly Malone's scholarship and candour: He never covers up his traces. When he is wrong he enables us to prove him wrong"-praise too seldom merited. To a popular audience, the subject of the last lecture, Shakespeare's Critics, may have been the most interesting. Here again, if no discoveries are made, yet the development of Shakespearian criticism is neatly given; and valuable criticism, such as Lord Kames' on the relation of the Unities" to English Drama, with Johnson's cognate reminder of the general function and scope of dramatic" delusion" (time and place included), are redeemed from oblivion and stripped of unnecessary context. The book could not fail to serve examinees; praise which we fear is rather equivocal. THE Quarterly Review for this July seems to us an outstanding number in respect of the subjects with which it deals. Bunyan, as might be expected, finds place in it-a most attractive, Printed and Published by The Bucks Free а an MR. JOHN DE LANCEY, Professor of English, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, U.S.A., writes to us:-"I am engaged in preparing a new edition of the letters of Robert Burns, re-edited from the original manuscripts. Many of these are still in private hands, and some of them have not been examined by editors since they were first printed, a century or more ago. If owners of such letters will write to me in care of the Oxford University Press, Amen House, Warwick Square, London, E.C.4, I shall be most grateful, and shall be glad to make arrangements to visit their collections." Press, Ltd., at their Offices. 20, High Street, High Wycombe, in the County of Bucks. Box number, 6d. 3 6 13 26 1s. 10d. 9d. 8d. The line is of about 7 words. CONTENTS.-No. 6. 7d. cloth. MEMORABILIA :-91. NOTES:-Berkeley Hunting Papers, 93-Notes on some Heraldic Origins, 95-The_Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, 1878, 96-" To test smoking children "-Difference in calculation of ships' tonnage The King's Evil: Form of Certificate"" Kindness as name for a disease, 97. QUERIES: Gloucestershire and the Navy Punch-Eurasian Population of India: bibliography wanted Authorship of prayers Registration of slaves-Dungarven: sea-horses and oysters Lady Peel's son Sir Richard Crane, 98-Geddes surname The Brass of Cyprus -Heraldic owner of arms wanted-St. Margaret's Church, Lynn: Peacock Feast: dial: charnel houses-The Nuns of BarkingThe Orthodox Church in the United States, 99Ashmeday-Vale Royal Jamaica-Myrc-Donovan's British Fishes '-The use of Lemon with Fish-" Between the dog and the wolf "-The Mingled Web-Biographical details wanted, 100 -Henry Pownall-Cowper's letters-Reference wanted-Authors wanted, 101. moon SETS FOR SALE. FIRST SERIES (1849-1855), 12 Volumes and General Index, bound cloth, (2 volumes and General Index in Publisher's cloth), second hand, clean and sound, £3 38. SECOND SERIES (1856-1861), 12 volumes, uniformly bound in cloth, second hand, clean and sound, £2 2s. THIRD SERIES (1862-1867), 12 volumes, uniformly bound in cloth, second hand, clean and sound, £2 28. THIRD SERIES (1862-1867), bound half leather, marbled boards, in new condition, £10 108. FOURTH SERIES (1868-1883), bound half leather, marbled boards, second hand, in good condition, £7 78. FIFTH SERIES (1874-1879) bound half leather, marbled boards, second-hand, in good condition, £7 78. WANTED. THIRD SERIES.-General Index SEVENTH SERIES.-Vol. v (Jan.-June, 1888). THIS WEEK: Berkeley Hunting Papers Fictitious Newspapers Mermaid and Mitre Taverns NOT 93 101 106 OTES AND QUERIES is published every Friday, at 20, High Street, High Wycombe, Bucks (Telephone: Wycombe 306). Subscriptions (£2 2s. a year, U.S.A. $10.50, including postage, two half-yearly indexes and two cloth binding cases, or £1 15s. 4d. a year, U.S.A. $9, without binding cases) should be sent to the Manager. The London Office is at 14, Burleigh Street, W.C.2 (Telephone: Chancery 8766), where the current issue is on sale. Orders for back numbers, indexes and bound volumes should be sent either to London or to Wycombe; letters for the Editor to the London Office. OUR us. Memorabilia. JR readers, who have not yet seen it, may like to have a note on the printed Report of the thirty-fifth Congress of Archeological Societies in union with the London Society of Antiquaries and of the Earthworks Committee for 1927, which has just been sent to Mr. E. A. B. Barnard, F.S.A., opened the discussion at the Congress, which was held on Nov. 15 of last year, and made several lamentably good points on the subject of the carelessness which even yet prevails in the use or preservation of objects of antiquarian interest. He exhibited a bridgescoring book and a shopping-list, bought by him three weeks previously at the same establishment. Both are bound in fines, the one of James I, the other of William and Mary. He spoke of blotters, book-covers and the like openly offered at Christmas, 1926, in the West End of London to buyers of presents as "Old English Parchment Deeds, the Stuart to the Georgian Period," and of hearing explanation given to a customer that a certain blotter was priced 16s. because its cover was made of fine old documents of different periods and the older the document used the higher the price of the article. He had even worse to relate, for it seems that a well-known shop in the Corso in Rome, which specializes in English goods, has toys, drums and tambourines made from old documents, whereby Italian antiquaries are scandalized and our nation brought into disrepute. Correspondence about all this and extended reference to it will be found in The Times in January, 1927, and in consequence the speaker received some interesting communications resulting in the rescue of a fine series of eighteenth century letters, and the discovery, in a derelict chest in a Worcestershire country-house, of good material connected with Shakespeare's family. Mr. Barnard quotes two countercartbalancing instances of destruction: a load" of old documets burned in a bonfire by a lady who was moving into a smaller house and had no room for them, and was unable to get any satisfactory advice as to their value; and another bonfire which consumed the contents of a lawyer's hopelessly congested office a collection so large that turning it out took two clerks a week to do, and which contained (specimens surreptitiously preserved) three or four deeds concerning a fifteenth century barn and a kitchen book of circa 1620. These facts and others brought forward by Mr. Barnard naturally started a lively discussion on steps to be taken for the preservation of old documents, the President, Lord Crawford and Balcarres, reminding the meeting in conclusion that some destruction of old documents was, after all, inevitable. THE August number of the Fortnightly Review contains a paper from the pen of Mr. Stacy Aumonier, which is nothing short of startling. It is a description-partly from an account of the experiences of a wellknown English resident who, in consequence of a motor accident and by the operation of Spanish red tape, was for a very short time incarcerated in it-of the prison of Malaga, and the conditions there. One reads and rubs one's eyes. Is this Europe of the twentieth century? Spain-a proud and long civilised country? Here are prisoners crowded together by fifties in stone cages-the governor of the prison himself calls them " cages built, six of them, round a filthy patio, with no windows, having only each on its fourth side a thick iron grille with a padlocked door opening on to the central space. The wretched inhabitants-some of them stark naked-sleep for the most part on the stone floor; there is but a single water-tap in the yard for three hundred prisoners; the smell in the " cages is overpowering; only by outside charity is actual starvation prevented. Once within the prison a man may lie there for years untried, and there is no discrimination made between youths or first offenders and hardened criminals and degenerates. The Englishman-who was detained in the patio and had the good idea of going up to each cage and shouting enquiry if there was any Britisher within-was able to rescue an Irish merchant seaman who had lain there for a |