1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 131 have often taxed to the full the palaeographic skill of Dr. Williamson's assistants, throw more light upon the personality of the earl than upon the enterprises in which he engaged. Eelying upon such evidence, Dr. Williamson should have been able to offer the public a biography of absorbing interest. If he has not done so, the failure must be attributed very largely to Lord Cumberland himself. He was a bad correspondent, unable by himself to string two sentences together, and using his pen to convey requests and complaints rather than tidings or intelligence. A single quotation will serve to illustrate his literary style. ' My sweet Meg,' he writes to his wife, sooth desire lack thee to write at large, as I wish, I must in few desire that he may at some times be thought of, who hath never any quiet till he return where he only is contented. It may well have been difficult to reject epistles that entailed so much toil to decipher. Yet many of these letters are hardly worth the printing. The book, however, suffers from another drawback more detrimental than dullness. In spite of Dr. Williamson's belief in his versatility, Lord Cumberland was first and last a seaman. The new material, illustrating the maritime side of an eminent sailor's career, demanded therefore a treatment more severely nautical. Two alternative methods suggest themselves, and either of them might have been adopted with profit. The new documents could have been published in full, or the substance of the new discoveries could have been collated with the statements of Wright, Linschoten, Purchas, and Monson, and an entirely new narrative of the voyages prepared. Dr. Williamson has adopted whole-heartedly neither the one course nor the other. He has given us in full the accounts by Robinson of the eighth expedition and the twelfth ; but these only serve to whet our appetite for what he has suppressed. When we read the earl's own description of the capture of Porto. Rico (pp. 222-3), and Robinson's graphic account of the cutting out of the Cinque Llagas, we grow dissatisfied with Dr. Williamson's abstracts of proceedings, more especially as such summaries (if they are to be adequate) require a wider knowledge of naval history than Dr. Williamson possesses. One example will suffice to illustrate his editorial deficiency. On p. 103, referring to the Madre de Dios, he writes : The whole episode may be said to have been somewhat undignified, the Queen and the courtiers all quarrelling over the plunder which was won from Spain by sheer piracy. The people gained no special advantage, for the avaricious monarch seized the bulk of the wealth. As a matter of fact, there had been open warfare between England and Spain for seven years, and the capture of a hostile carrack was therefore a perfectly legitimate operation. The money for the expedition, moreover, was not granted by parliament, but was drawn from private purses ; and the people of that date were therefore no more entitled to share the prize-money than the general public of to-day are entitled to dividends in commercial enterprises to which they have not subscribed. Nevertheless, Dr. Williamson's book is one which (for the documents reproduced) no student of Cumberland or the Elizabethan war with Spain can possibly afford to ignore. There are one or two typographical K2
