age, we, as it were by incantation, evoke its genius from the dead. Acquainted with this 'genius' of the age, we are enabled to see its events, its men in their true lineaments and proportions. The chief cause of misconception regarding the great characters of past times is that they are so frequently estimated out of relation to the age to which they belong. To correct such misconceptions not only knowledge is required, but the constant reminding ourselves that we must not apply present standards to their words and actions. Take, for example, one great man who has already been mentioned-the poet Milton. The contrast between Milton the poet and Milton the controversialist is so shocking to modern feeling that it is almost inconceivable that they should be one and the same man. When we think of the grace and pure beauty of such poems as Lycidas, L'Allegro, and Comus, of the sublimity of Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, we are at a loss to understand how the same hand could have written such things as the replies to Salmasius. In point of fact, however, the scurrilous and brutal language of Milton towards his adversaries had been the current coin of scholars for more than a century before his day. In their controversies with each other these scholars, humanists they called themselves, thought that in the interests of truth it was perfectly legitimate to traduce the private character of those who differed from them. Peter Ramus, the unflinching critic of the mediaeval Aristotle, was constantly reminded by his antagonists that he was the son of a charcoal-burner. Salamasius exulted that he had knocked Milton blind in the course of their repeated encounters, and Scioppius, another humanist, congratulated himself on having killed Joseph Scaliger by the exposure of his vaunted pedigree. The fact that Milton's controversial style was not peculiar to himself does not indeed make us regret the less that he indulged in it, but it reminds us that we must not judge him by modern canons of good taste and feeling.

The difficulty of attaching their proper meaning to the spoken and written words of a past age is, indeed, one of the chief obstacles in the way of understanding it. We read a letter, a sermon, a speech of a past century; we attach a definite meaning to every word, and we imagine we have taken in the full mind of the writer or speaker. But the truth is that words expressive of the deeper thoughts and feelings of men vary in suggestion with every age. Words that to one age savour of unctuous

hypocrisy once expressed honest and genuine feeling. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries biblical phraseology was applied in a way that the hasty modern reader is apt to set down as cant-the truth being that the English Bible was then a new book whose words came home to men's minds with a freshness and point of which familiarity has deprived them.

The later historians of a past age cannot enable us to appreciate those delicate shades of thought and feeling which distinguish it from every other. The only means of acquiring this power of appreciation is to make ourselves familiar with the literature of the period in question. But we cannot read all the literature of the time, and it is necessary to determine what portions of it may be read with most profit. Lord Bacon, in the passage already quoted, distinctly says that it is enough even for the historian himself that he should taste' (degustare) the literature of the period, whose history he undertakes to write. For the reader of history, therefore, it is sufficient that he should familiarise himself with the chief literary productions of the period he may choose for special study. As has already been said, it is in the representative poets that we find the spirit of the age in its most concentrated, most comprehensive, and most vital expression. But there is another form of literature which, if the age has produced it, is invaluable for its adequate understanding. In certain periods there have been. minds with a genius for systematising the general thought and experience, and for condensing them in a great work, which remains as a perpetual memorial of the epoch that produced it. Such a work, for example, is the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes a work whose scope and intention embodies the ideals, carried no doubt to extremes, of similarly-minded Englishmen of his generation. Read from the point of view of history, Hobbes' book is a revelation of the conflicting ideals in politics and religion which underlay the great struggle between Crown and Parliament in the first half of the seventeenth century. At the close of that century we have another thinker, John Locke, whose work was in no less degree conditioned by the experience of his time, of which it remains the equally durable memorial. The value of the work of such thinkers is that it not only reveals the conflicting ideals of their own time, but it links that time with the past and future of the total experience of the race. When we lay down Hobbes and take up Locke, we become aware of the never-ceasing endeavour of

humanity to adjust itself to the changing conditions under which its life is lived. And what is history but the tale of this endeavour on the part of man since he first awoke to conscious purpose?

Ône of the great masters of history has said that the highest result of its study is the acquired ability to appreciate the differences between times and countries, nations and races. The full attainment of this power implies a sweep of knowledge which can be the acquisition of only a few. But to acquire a familiarity even with one other age than our own is a great intellectual gain. It saves us from the mechanical acceptance of standards which we are apt to think absolute for all time; it supplies us, so to speak, with a parallax from which we can more adequately estimate men and events in all countries and in all ages. The ability to see things in their true relations marks, in fact, the distinction between the educated and the uneducated mind. The whole process of education, we may say, is to lift men out of their immediate surroundings and to provide them with larger measures of things. And for such as have a predilection for what are called the humane studies, there could perhaps be no better discipline towards this end than the mastery of some one period of the past, which by the greatness of its events and the eminence of its actors marks an epoch in the history of humanity. The period we choose will be determined by our own personal affinities, for there are periods which appeal to our individual temperaments and modes of thought more powerfully than others. Some will be attracted by such a century as the eighteenth, with its love of measure and proportion, others to such a century as the sixteenth, when human passions had their freest play and the fountains of the great deep were broken The period once chosen, the method of study I have suggested can hardly fail to result in a living acquaintance with the specific characteristics that distinguish it from every other. As our study deepens, these characteristics appear with increasing clearness of definition, and the spectacle arises before us of a world, inhabited by men of like passions with our own, but whose aims, whose interests, whose modes of thought exhibit human nature under other aspects, and remind us that the preoccupations of our own day are likewise but another passing stage in the general experience of humanity.

up.

P. HUME BROWN.

STUD

Chronicle of Lanercost

TUDENTS of English and Scottish history in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have so long been familiar with the record known as The Chronicle of Lanercost that an English translation may seem to be a superfluity. But, whereas the tendency of modern education is to exchange the study of the classics for a diversity of other subjects reputed to be of greater utility, it is certain that a far smaller proportion of educated persons can read Latin easily in the twentieth century than could do so in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before that flexible language had ceased to be the common medium of scientific and literary intercourse. Now the writer of this chronicle permitted himself so many digressions from his formal narrative, betrayed such an ardent purpose of exalting his own monastic order by explaining its advantages over every other, and threw so many sidelights upon the social conditions of his time, that it seems possible that both amusement and instruction may be found in his work by many readers who, unversed in Latin, lack time for arduous historical research.

The Latin text was edited from the oldest extant MS.1 by the late Joseph Stevenson with his usual acumen and fidelity, and printed for the Maitland and Bannatyne Clubs in 1839. "The whole Chronicle,' wrote Stevenson in his preface, as it now stands has been reduced to its present form, about the latest period of which it treats, by a writer who had before him materials of a varied character and of unequal merit.' In this form it has been appended as a continuation to Roger de Hoveden's Annals.

In Stevenson's opinion there is no warrant for attributing the origin of this chronicle to the Priory of Lanercost. He judged from internal evidence that it was written by a Minorite Friar of Carlisle. Without venturing to differ from so perspicuous 1 British Museum, Cottonian MSS. Claudius D vii.

a critic as Father Stevenson, I think that it is apparent from that very evidence that a resident of Lanercost is responsible for certain passages. For instance, in respect of King Edward's visit to Lanercost in September, 1280, Dr. Stevenson observes that, had the notice of an important event been written at Lanercost, the inmates of that monastery would have dwelt thereon at greater length. True; but, as Dr. Stevenson had already pointed out, the narrative is a compilation from 'materials of a varied character and of unequal merit.' On 22nd March following after King Edward's visit it is recorded that Bishop Ralph of Carlisle performed a visitation at Lanercost, 'in which we were obliged [coacti sumus] to accept new constitutions.' It seems clear from this that a member of the convent is writing on the spot. Probably his manuscript formed part of the ' materials' employed in compilation by a Friar of Carlisle, who may have pared away a good deal that was of purely local interest. Another indication of compilation from plural sources occurs in the occasional repetition of the same event in different words. Thus in the year 1272 the death is twice recorded of Henry IV.'s brother, once as Richard king of Germany, and once again as Earl of Cornwall. The entire work covers the period from 1201 to 1346. The translation now presented only extends over the reigns of Edward I. and II. and part of the reign of Edward III., a period of perennial interest to Scotsmen, who, however, must not be offended at the bitter partizanship of a writer living just over the Border.

HERBERT MAXWELL.