302 SHORT NOTICES April tine's Soliloquies (' Blooms '), the Dialogues and the Pastoral Care of Gregory the Great, the Universal History of Orosius, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, and has added an introduction, descriptive and explanatory chapters, and a connecting thread of commentary. The volume is so evidently a labour of love that it seems ungracious to suggest that it is a work of supererogation, but it is difficult to see to what kind of public it will appeal. Too costly for the ordinary reader, it is too popular for the specialist, to whom the original texts in critical editions are easily accessible. Still, Bishop Browne has illustrated his subject from a wide and varied range of knowledge, and the book affords pleasant, if somewhat discursive, reading. The book is, on the whole, well printed and accurate, though verbal and historical slips occur, and the cover bears a peculiarly unhappy ' Englishing ' of the legend on the Alfred Jewel : ' Alfred caused make me ' — which is neither grammatical modern English nor a literal translation of the original Anglo-Saxon. The identification of ' book-land ' with ' fee simple ' (p. 9, n. 1) is mis- leading. ' Book-land ' is land held by ' book ' or charter, in eontradistirifc- tion to land held by unwritten title. The date of Alfred's accession was 871, not 872 (p. 178), and Ecgbryht was not his father (p. 193). In his introduction, Bishop Brewne adheres to the opinion, rejected by Stubbs and by practically all the recent biographers of King Alfred, that the mater to whom in Asser's pretty story Alfred read or repeated the book of Saxon poems was his step-mother Judith, Ethelwulf's Frankish child- wife. The consequent suggestion that the art of Wessex may be traced to a Frankish source is only partially true. Frankish and Celtic influences and native taste all had a share in producing the remarkable school of ninth-century Anglo-Saxon decorative art. B. A. L. In St. Oswald and the Church of Worcester (British Academy, Supple- mental Papers V) the Dean of Wells elucidates one of the obscurer episodes in the tenth-century re-establishment of English monasticism. His method is to criticize the biographies and histories of the early Norman age in the light of tenth-century documents and of such literary materials as incorporate a genuine Old English tradition. The result is a convinc- ing story of Oswald's dealings with his cathedral church. He found at Worcester a small church dedicated to St. Peter and served by secular clergy. Into this community he gradually introduced monks from his new foundation of Ramsey. Although Oswald became bishop in 961, there is no proof of the presence of monks in his familia before 977, nor is there any trace of a sudden change in the composition of this body at any time. In 983 Oswald completed a new and larger church at Worcester in honour of St. Mary ; the earlier church of St. Peter remaining beside it for half a century longer. These conclusions are supported by an appendix of three sections. The first section discusses and dismisses seventeen land-books earlier than Oswald's time, which refer to a church of St. Mary as already existing in Worcester. The notes on these charters form a very valuable contribution to the criticism of early Old English documents. They are followed by a discussion of the date at which monks were first introduced into the church of Worcester. The final
