12 s.x. APRIL 1,1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 259
Place (1), Row (1). Dutch, Street and Court, one each. Gloucester, Street (7), ranges with double Gloucester for Avenue and Place. Limburger, but one—but this is enough. Rockingham. Boston, Mass.
We have here a member of that valuable series 'Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought.' Such studies will rarely deal with richer material than the Paston Letters. On the other hand, few periods are more intractable to the interpreter than the fifteenth century; and these letters, though they supply a virtually inexhaustible mass of information, furnish comparatively slight data for any but superficial generalizations. Mr. Bennett, then, has addressed himself to a singularly difficult task. We have to congratulate him on having performed it well, though we are inclined to think that he would have succeeded even better if its difficulties had been more insisted upon perhaps had been more constantly resent to his own mind. Dr. Gairdner's introuction to his great edition of the letters provides the student with an ample account of the changing political situation in which the Pastons played their parts. Mr. Bennett amplifies the rather shadowy portraiture of individuals given by Dr. Gairdner and shows them in their contact not with public so much as with private affairs. The first two chapters, and, in part, the third and fourth, relate the history of the Paston family and are, broadly speaking, chronological: the rest of the book is composed of chapters on several aspects and activities of the life of the time. For these our author has drawn not only upon the Letters, of which it is clear that he has made a close and fruitful study, but also upon the now numerous published original documents belonging to the period and upon recognized authorities.
He calls his book 'Studies in an Age of Transition,' and this sub-title raises a point to which we think insufficient attention has been accorded. In most of the subjects chosen the state of things under discussion might well have been illuminated by more frequent reference to the past, of which ft was in part a development and in part a dis- integration, and to the future which was to spring from it. Without this reference beyond itself the time of the Wars of the Roses presents a scene of confusion even more hopeless than need be. Yet one other criticism we would make, a criticism which applies to a large number >f otherwise thorough and painstaking studies the Middle Ages. It is the merest common- place to remark that in those centuries the practice of religion and the authority and doctrines of the Church counted for infinitely more than they do in modern public life, and counted also a a somewhat different way. Now there is no sort of difficulty about obtaining exact and full information about the practices and beliefs of the Catholic Church, yet-^-perhaps just because it is so easy to come by it is apparently seldom sought. A historian may be excused from believing in the faith of the Church, but hardly from knowing what it is ; nor should he write of ceremonies in Holy Week or masses for the dead as if they were curious and now antiquated superstitions of which the sense is but half ascertained. " This making provision for candles for the month-mind and year-mind seems to have been very common," says our author, " and evidently had some ritualistic significance." So might one write, say, about the Polynesian canoe for the dead. There is one difficulty about the letters to which Mr. Bennett shows himself fully alive, and that is the general absence from them of the most ordinary objects and everyday doings of common life. He allows amply for these gaps ; as he does also for other gaps left by the brevity with which most affairs are treated tempting occasion for imaginative filling in. In his readiness to conjecture moods and tenses, in the rather naive treatment of his chosen topics, he betrays some inexperience and immaturity as a writer. As a student no fault can be found with him. Hardly a statement but has its authority marked ; no subject treated but has evidently been well searched out to a considerable depth. So we are told about the home life and the houses of those days ; about books and writing ; roads and travel ; law and lawlessness ; the clergy and the life of the country-side. The appendixes are interesting and useful : a list of the books possessed by the Pastons, and a list of their journeys ; a few letters in the original spelling and (a most excellent idea) a collation of Editions and the Original Letters. There is also a repro- duction of a fourteenth-century map from Gough's ' British Topography ' a pleasant feature. An ordinary map of Norfolk giving the situation of the Paston properties would be a good addition to the book, whenever it is reprinted. Dante : Poet and Apostle. By Ernest H. Wilkins. (Chicago University Press.) MOST introductions to the work of Dante expatiate upon the history of the times and the circum- stances of the poet's life. Dr. Wilkins touches these sparingly and without emphasis, making his main theme Dante's inner experience, de- velopment and message to the world. These cannot, indeed, be understood to much purpose when taken thus in isolation ; but there is plenty of literature to supply what this study does not give. It may also be argued that external facts have usually counted for too much in interpreta- tions of Dante, so that a consideration from which they are all but dropped out might serve as a corrective. Passing on to the picture of Dante's mind which Dr. Wilkins presents to us in which an " apostleship of joy" is the most characteristic feature we find it unduly simplified. Dante's attitude towards society is fully as important as his attitude towards religion, but it is barely alluded to. Yet it should greatly have modified the conception of him as the " apostle of joy. Again, the several functions of tradition and the poet's imagination in regard to the subject-matter of
