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THE public, as well as Mr. Froude, is being punished for the faults in his 'Life of Carlyle.' Of the one hundred and fiftyeight letters printed in these volumes, considerably more than half treat solely of domestic affairs, or merely restate facts and opinions already set forth in print more than once by Carlyle himself or by earlier editors, and many deal chiefly with matters too trivial to be of any healthy interest to general readers. For publishing them, however, Mr. Norton has the tolerably good excuse that some in important particulars, and all by their cumulative evidence in details, help to correct Mr. Froude's errors. It is a cruel ordeal to which the dead Carlyle has been, and, as more volumes are likely to follow, doubtless is still to be subjected. All the privacies of his life are sought out, every chance expression that he gave of his varying mood is ruthlessly exposed to view -in the first instance by a too zealous biographer, who was, at the same time, a slipshod transcriber and a

prejudiced

annotator; and now by the friends who deem it incumbent on them to carry on or supplement the mental and moral dissection he commenced in order that the public may assist at a second post-mortem examination, and arrive at a truer verdict than the first self-constituted coroner delivered. The resultis inevitably unfairto Carlyle'smemory. All but the most enthusiastic of his admirers are being wearied, if not offended, by an accumulation of books which cannot well be ignored, as from each really valuable matter may be gleaned, but in which it is irksome to separate the wheat from the tares. Future critics and biographers will have an excellent store of material from which to construct a really accurate account of one of the most remarkable men of our century; but in the meanwhile his fame is not enhanced.

The contents of these volumes belong to what was, in some respects, the most interesting stage in Carlyle's life - the nine and a half years after his marriage, during which he was struggling to eminence as a man of letters amid many troubles

caused partly by his own honesty, or as some might call it perversity, and partly by circumstances beyond his control. If no other sources of information about this period were open to us, the volumes would suffice to make a vivid picture of it, fully elucidating his character, and interesting in every page. As it is, Mr. Froude has told his readers more than enough on the subject; and numerous as are the correcсtions and contradictions of Mr. Froude which Mr. Norton supplies, they do not very materially alter the view that intelligent readers of 'The First Forty Years of Carlyle's Life' had formed. Readers who асcepted and exaggerated Mr. Froude's statements and inferences may be set right, and to readers who, in taking up these 'Letters,' come fresh to the inquiry, if any such there will be, they should be convincing and hardly redundant; but to others they tell little of importance that is new. They show that Carlyle's poverty and his constitutional irritability, without intentional unkindness on his part, were responsible for the martyrdom that we are assured Mrs. Carlyle endured in being his wife, and that the martyrdom was cheerfully and even proudly accepted by her, as something which was inevitable and which was to her far more tolerable than would have been any lot that could have fallen to her had she not married the man of her choice. If their means were pinched, and if Carlyle's fitful genius could not develope itself in the drudgery to which he had to submit during their first two years of married life in Edinburgh, she recognized that it was not his fault. If she dreaded the prospect of retiring to Craigenputtock, and found its loneliness even more trying to her in reality than she had anticipated, she submitted to the necessity as a good wife should, and, making the best of the hardships she shared with him, urged him on in the line of life and work which to her, as clearly as to him, appeared to be the line of duty. When they came to live in London she was happier, and tried to make him happier, on the 2001. a year or so to which their income was for some time limited than probably either would have been had he, for the sake of making money, swerved from the ideal he set before himself. Nothing is plainer than that Carlyle's ideal for himself was also hers for him. Perhaps, indeed, the chief cause of his impracticableness was the excess of admiration, rendering her too self-sacrificing, and perforce inclining him to selfishness, with which she regarded him, and which led her to encourage him in ways of thought and courses of action that were mistaken.

shaped themselves queerly in his mind, and as such appeared to him to be not new shapes, but new creations; and regarding them himself in that light and as of that nature, he-still quite honestly-shaped them yet more queerly in his efforts to present them most forcibly to the world. There was nothing unworthy in his "ambition." It was, at the worst, only "that last infirmity of noble minds," and, if it was "unlucky" at first, it in the long run contributed not a little to his worldly success and literary fame. But, whatever it was, it was natural to him. This comes out very clearly in his private letters. To his simple-hearted and plainspeaking parents, to his brothers and sisters, as well as to his wife and friends, who may be regarded rather as admirers whose homage fostered his eccentricity, he wrote in the same distorted style that appeared, only more garnished and elaborate, in some of his essays and in 'Sartor Resartus.' That he could write in simpler phraseology, and certainly without lessening of power, appears in some of his other, and we should say his best essays, and in his 'Life of Schiller' as well as in many of his letters; but it was evidently harder for him to write thus straightforwardly than to be eccentric.

We have digressed into this scrap of criticism not because it would be proper here to add anything to the superfluity of comment and exposition that has already been offered on Carlyle's place as a man of letters, but because it furnishes a key, as we think, to his familiar letters and their purport and to his every-day life, both as a literary hack and as a husband who was "gey ill to deal wi'." That, it is interesting to note, is the correct version of the phrase applied to him by his mother, and made much of by Mr. Froude, who misquotes it as "gey ill to live wi." The blunder illustrates Mr. Froude's carelessness, but it is not such a libel on Carlyle as Mr. Norton seems to think.

Carlyle's irritability and eccentricity show themselves, through these letters, not only in his domestic relations and mode of writing, but also in his relations with his friends and his self-criticisms and self-laudations over his literary undertakings. As regards the latter, he evidently felt with Hamlet, but with more persistency of purpose than Hamlet's, that he had been created by a cursed spite to try to set right an outof-joint world. Every task to which he set himself was entered upon with an extravagance of heroism that is grotesque, and, if pursued, was pursued with groanings of spirit that rise above or sink below the grotesque. If he had a stomachache, or if house-cleaning or house-shifting caused his ink-pot and writing table to be awkward for him to use, he thought that the heavens were falling upon him, and he was as mutinous in talk as Lucifer was in action. To each labour that he took in hand, even if it was a magazine pot-boiler, he applied himself like a Hercules, and there was hardly one from which he did not emerge without as much cursing on the way as the jackdaw of Rheims provoked. When each was done he was nearly as well pleased as he had been at the commencement, but the intermediate steps were ludiAll this was eminently characteristic of the man, as also and no less were the contradictory views he alternately formed and expressed on all the people with whom he came in contact. If his remarks about Irving, Jeffrey, and others are to be taken seriously, it must be remembered that the seriousness was for the moment only, and it was truer of him than of most men that his bark was worse than his bite. This fact should qualify his strictures on his contemporaries, of which almost enough has been printed in his 'Reminiscences' and the books about him which have since appeared; and it renders less valuable than interesting most of the new items of discordant gossip that Mr. Norton has published for the first time. No one can be blamed, however, for liking to read such gossip, especially when it was Carlyle who penned it, and readers who do not care to plod through all Mr. Norton's pages will be guided by his capital index to a profusion of pithy and pungent passages about all sorts of memorable persons. Mrs. Austin, Lord Brougham, the Bullers, Coleridge, Emerson, Fonblanque, Leigh Hunt, Maginn, Mill, the Basil Montagus, Mrs. Somerville, Southey, John Sterling, Henry Taylor, and Wordsworth, named in alphabetical order, are a few of the many of whom Carlyle's silhouettes, hit off with amazing vigour under the fitful flashes of light in which he saw them, are here presented to us. Let this piece of a letter he wrote to his brother Dr. John Carlyle, in 1835, serve as a sample :

but

"One Taylor (Henry Taylor, who has written a 'Philip van Artevelde,' a good man, whose laugh reminds me of poor Irving's) invited me to meet Southey some weeks ago. I went and

met Southey. A man of clear brown complexion,

large nose, no chin, or next to none;

and thought-lined brow, vehement hazel eyes; huge mass of white hair surmounting it: a straitlaced, limited, well-instructed, well-conditioned, excessively sensitive, even irritable-looking man. His irr irritability I think is his grand spiritual feature; as his grand bodily is perhaps leanness and long legs: a nervous female might shriek when he rises for the first time, and stretches to such unexpected length-like a lean pair of tongs! We parted good friends; and may meet again, or not meet, as Destiny orders. At the same house, since that, Jane and I went to meet Wordsworth. I did not expect much; but got mostly what I expected. The old man has a fine shrewdness and naturalness in his expression of face (a long Cumberland figure): one finds also a kind of sincerity in his speech: but for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution it excels all the other speech I had heard from mortal. A genuine man (which is much), but also essentially a small genuine man: nothing perhaps is sadder (of the glad kind) than the unbounded laudation of such a man; sad proof of the rarity of such. I fancy, however, he has fallen into the garrulity of age, and is not what he was also that his environment (and rural Prophethood) has hurt him much. He seems impatient that even Shakespear should be admired: 'so much out of

my own pockets the shake of hand he gives

you is feckless, egoistical; rather fancy he

nothing in the world so much as one could wish. When I compare that man with a great man,alas, he is like dwindling into a contemptibility. Jean Paul (for example), neither was he great, could have worn him as a finger-ring."

For solid literary interest, perhaps the most important pages in this book-and they are numerous are those which set forth in garish colours the relations between Carlyle

and Mill. This was the literary man's early impression of the philosopher:

"I find Mill one of the purest, worthiest men of this country; but, as you say, much too exclusively logical. I think he will mend: but his character is naturally not large, rather high and solid."

Mr. Norton's collection of letters furnishes much welcome, and we believe fresh, illustration of Mill's warm friendship for Carlyle. Mill wished to print 'The Diamond Necklace' at his own expense when no publisher would take the risk of offering that marvel of vivid writing to the world. He lent Carlyle, when he was preparing 'The French Revolution,' as the latter said, "as many Books of his as would load a considerable cuddy-cart...... some of them I think almost specially bought for me"; and, as is well known, when the first volume of the book was destroyed through the stupidity of a servant, Mill made all the reparation in his power, and more generous reparation than one person in a hundred would have thought of making. Carlyle was forgiving and grateful, yet he sneered and grumbled, and in his outrageously pronounced comments, as well as

in his almost unconscious admissions, we can see the wide differences of temperament and training which hampered the friendship, so long as it lasted, between these two great leaders of thought half a century ago and later.

The New Latin Primer. Edited by J. P. Postgate, Litt.D., with the Co-operation of C. A. Vince, M.A. (Cassell & Co.)

DR. POSTGATE deserves well of the miserable critics who are doomed to pass opinion on educational works dealing with Greek or Latin and on editions of works in the said tongues. The Latin primer before us, manifestly inspired by a more beneficent power than those to which most of the countless elementary grammars owe their origin, refreshes the wearied reviewer by an aroma of novelty and by lucid exposition and orderly arrangement, thus raising the hope that it may annihilate many of the loathly brood aforesaid and check their baneful production in the future.

To affirm that a primer is excellent is, of course, easy, but the proof of such an affirmation is so difficult and tedious a task that we should prefer, were it feasible, to recommend teachers to test our verdict for themselves. As we must, however, be content with a δεύτερος πλοῦς, we would, in case our reasons as stated should not appear sufficiently cogent, remind our readers of the judge whose judgments were always sound, but his reasons seldom convincing.

In view of Dr. Postgate's distinguished position as a student and professor of comparative philology the judicious suppression of that science, which at present affords indifferent nutriment for babes, is perhaps the first thing to jump into the scale when

to be left out of account; nor yet, again, the use of the word "base" instead of stem-a small matter, but not proportionately light. But on the whole the most important improvement is this, that an exceptionally simple diction and terminology have been achieved without sacrificing precision or lucidity. A signal instance of felicitous innovation in this department is furnished by the phrase "subjunctive of imagination," instead of "potential conjunctive." The general treatment of the subjunctive approximates to the views on that mood and the optative which have for years been inculcated in these columns. But neither this seductive trait nor our general approbation blinds us to a few slight blemishes. For instance, the definition of syllable, p. 2, is clearly faulty: "Syllables are the smallest portions of words which can be pronounced separately." The

example is "ho-mo." But the second o can be pronounced separately; while in regens it must be puzzling to a beginner at any rate to determine how the division into "smallest portions" is to be made. The objectionable phrase "complete (its) sense is still applied to the equally objectionable "complement." If "complement" is associated with "complete," the presence of more than one complement in a clause seems perplexingly superfluous. This is a point to which we have already called attention. It is unnecessary, if not absolutely incorrect, to say that it is " by a metaphor" that the accusative is used of extent of time (p. 77).

To return, however, to our main contention: the oratio obliqua has offered ample scope for the display of original method and luminous explanation, and the professor is to be congratulated on having adequately disposed of this knotty, thorny topic in less than five pages. It should be clearly understood that while the 'New Latin Primer' is decidedly new in substance as well as in age, the reforms which it embodies are cautious and moderate. The compiler evidently agrees with us in thinking that the time for a sweeping revolution in our methods of treating elementary grammar has not yet arrived. Indeed, some venerable notions are, as we have pointed out in one instance, treated with too much reverence. As we often hear, however, that we live in an age of compromise, it may be inferred that many ancient phrases and terms have been retained unwillingly or hesitatingly, with the intention of doing practical good rather than of attaining a theoretical perfection from which the primerusing public might shrink in alarm.

The First Ascent of the Kasaï: being some Records of Service under the Lone Star. By C. S. Latrobe Bateman. Maps and Illustrations. (Philip & Son.)

THE most characteristic feature of this, one of the latest records of African travel, con

varied as to subject-matter and style, and would prove an ornament to any book. Whether chromo-lithographs, etchings, or woodcuts, they are executed with commendable skill, and barring some of the native portraits, they prove the author an amateur artist of more than average capacity. It would, however, be an injustice to allow the reader to suppose that the value of the work depended solely upon the illustrations, for Mr. Bateman is as skilful with the pen as he is with his brush and pencil; his style is animated, and his verbal descriptions are quite on a par with his pictures.

The author's experience of Africa is considerable, for before he entered the service of the Congo State, early in 1884, he had resided for several years at Mayumba as the representative of a Liverpool commercial house. In the work before us, however, he confines himself to a few episodes of his African life, and in this he has done wisely. Instead of presenting the public with a wearisome diary, placing more or less faithfully on record the experiences and impressions of every succeeding day, he contents himself with giving a readable account of those things only which he considers worth recording. He takes his readers upthe Kasai, that important tributary of the Congo, long since known to the Portuguese, but first traced to its mouth by the expedition led by Lieut. Wissmann; he makes them partakers of his joys and hardships whilst residing at the Luebo station, which he may be said to have founded, and of which he was chief until December, 1886; and invites them to accompany him to the station of Luluaburg, where he introduces them to some of the most remarkable native notabilities whom it has

been the fate of travellers to encounter. Having brought back his readers to Stanley Pool, he unceremoniously takes leave of them, and finds his way home by himself.

is

It is, therefore, only a small portion of Africa with which the volume deals, but it one abounding in features of interest. There is first of all the navigation of the Kasai, which, notwithstanding the introduction of steam, is scarcely ever unattended with some adventure; then the reader is introduced to one of the most remarkable and promising tribes of Central Africa, the Baluba; and finally an insight is afforded into the daily routine of work at one of the stations of the Congo State.

As to African scenery, the author expresses an earnest contempt for the "fashionable affectation" of those who, contrasting it with the scenery of other tropical regions, describe it as tame and uninteresting :

"The scenery through which we had passed since leaving the Pool is in many respects most beautiful, but, like the scenery elsewhere in this vast continent, it seems perhaps less beautiful than in reality it is: a fact, if fact it be, that I

can only ascribe to the power of association to impress the mind. The broad level of the river gives contrast and relief to the bare bold hills through which its bold path is cleft-hills which, though little varied by cliff and crag, and of somewhat uniform height, are garlanded and gemmed with all the dark luxuriant richness of the tropic forest, and gilded with the most glorious sunshine. From the cool grey and gold of dawn on through the burning brilliance of the day to the rose and amber splendours of the sunset, the voyager may watch the nearing and receding of bluffs, with the fringe of forest round their bases, sometimes mirrored in the glassy stream, and sometimes dimmed with haze or chequered with the fleeting cloud, but lonely always: unjoined with human story and the endless life of man. At home the records of our past, our glories and our griefs, form the remotest memories of the race, live in the features of the land; but in the country of an unknown past, through which the mighty river flows, the

thought is borne ever onwards to a future no less unknown."

Whilst stationed at Luebo the author appears to have been fully occupied from early morn till late at night, and if the chiefs at the other stations perform their duties with similar earnestness, the results must soon show themselves in a development of commerce throughout the "State," and the establishment of a truce among tribes now continually at war with each other. The author had first of all to clear the ground and to build the station of which he was to be the commandant, and that he completed this laborious task with success is proved by his plans and sketches. He next laid out plantations, so as to make himself independent of the "precarious" supplies received from Leopoldville. Much of his time was spent in negotiations with native chiefs for the purpose of "regulating" trade, and asserting the authority of the Congo State. It is satisfactory to be told that the export slave trade from the country around Luebo and Luluaburg has been completely stopped since the occupation of these places, and that a caravan from Bihe, which bought up slaves to be converted into ivory elsewhere, was unceremoniously expelled the country. A large share of the author's attention was naturally taken up by the interesting people among whom he lived during thirteen months. Dr. Wolf and Lieut. Wissmann, as also Dr. Pogge, have already made their readers acquainted with this tribe, and quite recently Mr. Arnot has told us something about its south-easternmost branch in the country to the west of Lake Bangweolo; but to most Englishmen the information now brought forward by Mr. Bateman will be new. Whilst the Baluba in the southeast have submitted to the of Msiri and his Wa-Galaganza, those on the Kasai occupy a region which formerly belonged to the Bakete. Our author applies to this section of the Baluba the term Bashilange, which, according to Dr. Wolf, is merely a nickname by which they are known to their neighbours.

tyrannical yoke

"In form they are large of stature and very tall, rather dark and coarse-featured, but not stupid or unintellectual in look. Like all negro races with which I am acquainted, they are easily excited to any imaginable degree of frenzy. Their insensibility to pity, their natural cruelty, and their untruthfulness are also characteristics possessed by them in common with other negro tribes. Not so, however, are their virtues, which are in my experience, unhappily, almost unique in Africa. They are thoroughly and unimpeachably honest; somewhat reserved in speech; brave to foolhardiness; and faithful to each other and to their superiors, in whom, especially if Europeans, they place the most complete, absolutely unquestioning reliance. They are prejudiced in favour of foreign customs rather than otherwise, and spontaneously copy the usages of civilization. They are warm-hearted and affectionate towards their friends, and especially their kinsfolk, and they are the only African tribe amongst whom, in their primitive state, I have observed anything like a becoming conjugal affection and regard. To say nothing of such recommendations as their emancipation from fetishism, their ancient abandonment of canni

balism, their heretofore most happy experience Europeans, and their national unity sway of a really princely prince, I believe them to be the most open to the best influences of civilization of any African tribe whatsoever."

One of the most curious institutions of the Baluba is the "fraternity" of hempsmokers, which practises some curious rites and is supposed by the author to enjoin a community of wives and husbands, which is hardly compatible with a "becoming conjugal affection." For information on this and other matters of interest, however, the reader should refer to the pages of Mr. Bateman's book.

Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, A.D. 1492-1532. Edited by the Rev. A. Jes

sopp, D.D. (Camden Society.)

THIS is one of the most important contributions to ecclesiastical history that the Camden Society has published. Yet it may be scarcely a dozen antiquaries will take the trouble to read through it from beginning to end. The details of five visitations, four of them being conducted by the same bishop, must of necessity contain a great amount of mere technical matter, and many repetitions of the same complaints, whether real or imaginary, as well as a recurrence of the same names of monks and nuns at successive

visitations. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the work is one of general interest, and as it is entirely in Latin its perusal will, of course, for the most part be limited to antiquaries who possess some little scholarship. But its real importance is that it is the first instalment of an investigation which will probably materially modify the ordinarily received view of the awful state of the monasteries at the time of their suppression by Henry VIII. and Cromwell. Of the evidence on which that view rests Dr. Jessopp's opinion is as follows :

"When the Inquisitors of Henry VIII. and his Vicar-General Cromwell went on their tours of Visitations they were men who had no experience of the ordinary forms of inquiry which had heretofore been in use. They called themselves

Visitors. They were in effect mere hired detectives of the very vilest stamp, who came to levy blackmail and if possible to find some excuse for their robberies by vilifying their victims. In all the hideous comperta which have come down to us there is not, if I remember rightly, a single instance of any report or complaint having been made to the Visitors from any one outside. The

enormities set down against the poor people by themselves against themselves. In other words the comperta of 1535 and 1536 can only be received as the horrible inventions of the

miserable men who wrote them down upon their papers, well knowing that as in no case could the charges be supported, so on the other hand in no case could they be met or were the accused ever intended to be put upon their trial."

The visitations of Bishops Goldwell and Nicke were held at intervals of six years, beginning in 1492 and ending with 1532, that of 1498, if it took place at all, being omitted. As Goldwell died in 1498 it is probable no visitation took place that year, and his successor survived his consecration little more than a year; so that it is likely that Bishop Nicke's visitation of 1514 is the next in order of time. All the visitations show that there were faults to be reformed, and in some cases sins of a very grievous nature are alleged

and substantially proved against some of the religious. And one case is recorded of a nun who had borne a child about a year before. The prioress does not mention it,

but it is established on the accusation of several sisters, and by the confession of the delinquent herself. She was punished in the light sentence that she should sit below the rest of the sisters for a month and say the Psalms seven times over during the time. There is one other instance of a similar allegation, which amounts only to a suspicion, but which the visitors thought sufficiently scandalous to make it desirable to separate the incriminated persons. Of minor offences in some of the nunneries there are several complaints from one or more of the sisters, whilst in most the report is that all is going on satisfactorily.

As regards the monasteries, the information obtained by the visitors from questioning each member separately amounts to this, that in many there was a considerable amount of indolence and indifference, whilst in some few cases of flagrant wickedness were detected. Upon the whole, there are some forty or fifty houses visited, and comparatively few are convicted of any great crimes such as Cromwell's visitors charge the monasteries with. Perhaps the best specimen we can select of a badly managed house which abounded in abuses of various kinds is the abbey of Wymondham, of which there are four recorded visitations. In the first visitation of 1492 no particular cases of immorality are detailed, but the house was in the utmost disorder, and everything was going wrong; and the upshot of the visitation was that the abbot had to resign his functions in favour of one of the brethren, the agreement being made on terms very favourable to the abbot. Twenty-two years later things were much worse. Three of the monks were suspected of having intercourse with women of doubtful character, and violent altercations were constantlytaking place between the abbot, the prior, and the brethren. In 1520 matters were changed for the better under the management of a new abbot, John Holt, titular Bishop of Lydden; but still several matters of smaller importance come before the visitors, and are accordingly directed to be reformed. In 1526, under a new abbot, who was evidently a reformer of abuses, there is very little that requires amendment. There is only a fragment remaining of the visitation of 1532, and so we hear no more of Wymondham.

We have selected two or three of the worst cases of abuse and scandal, and certainly if Norwich is to be taken as a fair specimen, neither much better nor much worse than other dioceses, the comperta of these episcopal visitations stand in very marked contrast with the horrible crimes alleged to have been discovered by Cromwell's visitors. Dr. Jessopp scarcely attempts to conceal his belief that when the accounts of other monastic visitations are published it will be found that Norwich presents a tolerably accurate representation of the character of the monastic life in the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is not unlikely that public opinion, which has hitherto been formed mainly upon previous volume of the Camden Society, entitled 'The Suppression of the Monasteries,' will now tend to oscillate to the opposite extreme, and the abuses which

a

houses will be explained away, and the faults and errors extenuated in a natural zeal for the defence of those who have been unjustly calumniated. Nay, we even think Dr. Jessopp himself is somewhat in the position of one who holds a brief for the defendants. Certainly in his interesting and amusing preface he has minimized the delinquencies of the monks, and has put a charitable construction, wherever it was possible, upon many of the crimes alleged, owing to the vagueness of the accusation itself or the want of distinct proof of the sin having been committed. We must admit that we had hoped that a better condition of affairs might have been shown to exist. At the same time, the fact that the conduct of many religious houses was unimpeachable is placed in a clearer light by the evidence that some of them present to us that the visitations were really of a searching character. Of course such accounts are always open to the objection that after all there may have been a conspiracy between the abbot and his brethren to reveal nothing, and in confirmation of this view it may be observed that in some of the houses several of the brethren report all things going on favourably in a case where they must have known to the contrary. Thus when in the priory of Coxford the prior admits that the morning mass is not celebrated, we find afterwards four of the monks reporting that all was well, though they must have been aware of the fact. What is still more remarkable is that the visitors' injunctions leave this point altogether unnoticed. Again, in another instance one of the monks relates the advice given them by the prior to deliberate about what answers they should give to the visitors. However, it is clear that in many cases there was sufficient dissension amongst the inmates of the same house to offer considerable temptation to disclose anything wrong that had occurred, whilst in others the abbot or prior was a man of such character that he would not be likely to screen any notorious offenders. And in all cases it appears that the visitors examined every monk or nun separately and secretly. Again, in some instances it seems probable that quarrels among the monks gave rise to malicious accusations which could not be sustained. Of the two bishops who were concerned in these visitations we know next to nothing, and what is known of Nicke, who was commonly called the blind bishop of Norwich, is not much to his credit.

Few readers probably will get beyond the introduction, which gives an excellent account of the contents of the volume. It is written in Dr. Jessopp's usual interesting manner, and exhibits an amount of learning which makes us regret that he should, as he expresses it, have denied himself the luxury of adding notes. It would have added greatly to the value of the volume if he had given such account as he could gather of the persons spoken of, and if he had explained certain terms and expressions with which even reviewers are not familiar. The transcripts have been entrusted to an inferior hand, and we are not always sure whether the mistakes are mere errors of the press, or are due to the original scribe or the person who copied the papers. But we

what the original ought to have been a correction should have been made or attention called to the mistake. Thus, for instance, at p. 21 "Per quidem examinationem" we think should have been printed Per quam] quidem examinationem ; whilst we can hardly be wrong in assigning "Nicholas" for Nicholao, and "mure" for muri, on the same page to errors of the press which should have been corrected. A few other mistakes of the same class may be found in the volume, which offend the eye of a critic, but would probably scarcely be noticed by the general reader. We venture to hope that other labourers will be found to complete what Dr. Jessopp has so well begun, and that we may see a few more accounts of bishops' visitations of religious houses.

The Earlier History of English Bookselling. By William Roberts. (Sampson Low & Co.)

BOOKSELLERS and publishers play an important part in the history of literature, but historians of English literature have never paid them much attention. Mr. Roberts has attempted to supply this deficiency, and although we are unable to commend the whole of his work, we gratefully recognize the value of part of his labours. His object in the present volume is to furnish a readable account of bookselling and booksellers in England from the earliest times to the death of Thomas Guy, publisher and founder of Guy's Hospital, in 1724. The latter half of the book is devoted to biographies of Tonson, Lintot, Curll, Dunton, and Guy, and Mr. Roberts has spared himself no pains in making these memoirs accurate and complete. The notice of "dauntless Curll" is especially attractive, and if Mr. Roberts has been able to add little to the researches of Messrs. Thoms and Solly, he has produced a very impartial and well-proportioned portrait of the most noted of private publishers. According to Mr. Tedder's notice of Curll in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' a little more is known of Curll's son Henry than Mr. Roberts sets forth. Mr. Roberts might also have told us that the famous attack on "Curlicism" in Mist's 'Journal' has been attributed to no less a journalist than Defoe. Furthermore, we would strongly urge Mr. Roberts to avoid modern slang words and phrases, which are painfully frequent in other places besides his essay on Curll. These defects, with the exception of the last, are, however, immaterial, and we have every reason to be satisfied with Mr. Roberts's sketches of the London booksellers during the reigns of William III. and Queen Anne.

We regret that we cannot allot the same measure of praise to Mr. Roberts's earlier chapters. His acquaintance with the literary antiquities of the earlier periods is obviously imperfect, nor is he acquainted with the latest researches on the subject. His sketch of bookselling before and after Caxton is most disappointing. He tells his readers that he is unable to supply a satisfactory account of the prices which Caxton's books fetched when first issued. He might have discovered from very well-known sources that one of Caxton's greatest efforts - The Golden Legend '-was valued in his own