12 S. X. FEB. 18, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 139
Martinique, he fought actions with the French fleet.
Serres early in life was master of a vessel trading to Havana, so that he probably knew Port Royal.
My West Indian books not being here, my only authorities are an article on hurricanes from The Nautical Magazine for 1848, Gust's 'Naval Prints' and the 'D.N.B.' V. L. Oliver.
These seem to represent the "Battle of the Saints " fought between Dominica and the Iles des Saintes, April 12, 1782, and the subsequent bringing of the prizes to Plymouth. The Formidable was Rodney's flagship, and the Ville de Paris was Grasse's flagship. See Mahan, 'Influence of Sea Power,' pp. 480-500; Hannay, 'Rodney,' pp. 179-213; and Hood's 'Letters,' pp. 101-21, 123-30; Mundy, 'Life of Rodney,' ii. 222-50; Annual Register for 1782, 252-7. John B. Wainewright.
MRS. HOLT : ' ISOULT BARRY OF WYNS-
COTE' (12 S. x. 93). This book was first
published in 1871, and again in 1873 and
1880, and probably since, as it is a fairly
well-known book appearing in many public
library catalogues of juvenile books, but none
of Mrs. Holt's many works seem to be now
in print. I should think the nearest public
library may have a copy, if not, I shall be
glad to lend it to your correspondent on
application. ARCHIBALD SPARKE.
on
Jacques Beniyne Bossuet. A Study. By E. K.
Sanders. (S.P.C.K. 15s.)
BOSSUET has never come into his own in England.
Pascal, Corneille, Fenelon, are familiar enough
figures to us, but the Bishop of Meaux, if he is
more than a name to most Englishmen, is known
as a panegyrist, the author of the ' Oraisons
Funebres,' which we seldom read, but are quite
prepared to take on trust. This is a strong
statement, but a glance at the careful biblio-
graphy which completes the present work will
prove it to be well founded. Until now, in fact,
we have had no biography of Bossuet in English.
Yet to Frenchmen he stands as one of the greatest
figures of the literature of France or of the
world. So careful a critic as Brunetiere places
him as an orator above Chrysostom and Augustine,
and Miss Sanders assures us that " Shakespeare
alone of English writers holds with us a position
akin to that which he occupies among his country-
men."
The present careful study should remove much
<>f t he reproach, and we may congratulate ourselves
that a task which presents certain special diffi-
cult it-s should have been taken up by a writer
possessed of special aptitudes to meet them.
Miss Sanders's competence as a scholar and an
authority on seventeenth-century France has
been fully established by her earlier books : and
these have displayed also a detached, yet pene-
trating and sympathetic, insight into the ideals,
the temperament and the experiences of success
or failure to be observed in people who have
dedicated themselves to religion. All biography
moves between an account of its subject as he
appears to his own consciousness and an account
of his relations with the external world. In the
former lurks implicitly, with or without bio-
graphical consequence, his relation (or want of
relation, if the expression may be permitted us)
with God. This may, as it does in the case of
Religious, dominate the whole biography, forcing
all the rest into a second place : and may also
be so slight, or so deeply latent, that the bio-
grapher hardly at any moment seizes it, and
virtually omits it from his portrait. The diffi-
culty in drawing the portrait of a great ecclesiastic
is that this relation can neither be ignored nor
yet suffered to occupy the whole study. An
ecclesiastic is a person who has undertaken to
stand out as a representative or agent of the
supernatural in the midst of the natural life of
men. He may bungle over this business, he
may come to despise it, despair over it, detest it,
refuse it, forget it. None the less that under-
taking remains the clou to his life, its first
differentiating factor, and a biography which
has no grasp of how this problem appeared to
the man himself, and what were his resources for
solving it or his reasons for virtually giving it up,
will certainly, as so many ecclesiastical biographies
do, lack vitality. It is not enough to chronicle
the priest's or bishop's external actions : nor
enough to draw a picture of his personal piety or
his good thoughts and aspirations, however
edifying these may be. Just how he tackled
or failed to tackle his unique job is the question
wherein lies the secret of making the portrait
live a question seldom squarely taken, and
often, it would seem, but vaguely present to the
biographer's mind. The signal and rare merit
of the study before us is its direct seizure of this
central problem ; and the reward of that true
centrality is seen in the distinctness with which
Bossuet, in these pages, lives. Fundamentally,
he has been understood : and the world he
lived in understood in its relation to him. The
sense that this is so adds the pleasure of confi-
dence to the reader's enjoyment.
Miss Sanders is Well served by a firm and
delicate English style, and also by a remarkable
gift for translation. Readers who know the
French of Bossuet's letters, and especially any
who have made attempts at putting them into
English, will regard her rendering of the extracts
in this book with much respect.
Our author does not follow her hero year by
year throughout his long and laborious life,
but gives full-length portraits of him in his various
aspects and in the various stages of his develop-
ment. Thus he is presented to us as a brilliant
student ; as Archdeacon of Metz ; as preacher
at Paris ; as Court ecclesiastic ; as tutor to the
Dauphin ; as controversialist ; and finally as
Bishop of Meaux. In each case his reaction to
the burning questions of the day is brought out by
