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relative to this period of the life of the great Elizabethan statesman, and Dr. Stählin, the author of this new biography in two volumes, of which this forms the first instalment, has been unable, in spite of his keenness of investigation, to materially enlarge our defective knowledge.

Despite the lack of pertinent material, the author devotes nearly onehalf of this bulky volume to this long and obscure period in the life of his hero. The greater portion of these preliminary chapters is made up of a general review of the history of the time. This review forms a painstaking piece of generalisation, and the author leaves no movement or circumstance in the history of England and the continent untouched that might illustrate the environment at home and abroad in which Walsingham grew to early manhood and middle age. In this respect these chapters are a good example of German thoroughness of treatment and at the same time of the author's wide knowledge of contemporary history. They bear, too, gratifying evidence of the breadth and objectivity of view which Ranke, above all others, infused into the study of international history in Germany, in contrast to historians of the pronouncedly patriotic type of a Treitschke, and helped to foster in this country and America.

At the same time, from the point of view of a biography of Walsingham, they reveal a tendency to discursiveness which proves rather trying to the patience of the reader. The sense of proportion is an indispensable requisite in the work of a biographer who undertakes to review the history of the time in addition to that of his hero. He should from the outset carefully weigh the relative importance of the person whose life he relates to that of the age, and adjust his treatment of the particular and the general history accordingly. Some great works of biographical and historical research, such as Masson's Life of Milton and Seeley's Life of Stein, have been marred by this lack of true perspective, and it seems to me that Dr. Stählin, whose subject is, of course, of more limited scope and importance than that of either of these great writers, has, like them, not sufficiently considered this essential preliminary question.

To make of an individual life the theme for a general history is an almost inevitably futile task except in the case of a man like Napoleon, who really was the mainspring of a great part of the activity of his age. To do so in the case of a man like Walsingham is to review general history for a specific end out of keeping with the purpose of a biography. The title of the work, Walsingham and his Time, does not invalidate this objection, for in the first half of the volume it merely covers the attempt to generalise the history of England and Western Europe in connection with that of a man who played absolutely no rôle of any importance in that history up to his fortieth year, and of whom very little is indeed known during these years. The only excuse for these digressions lies in the prospective eminence of the future Elizabethan ambassador and secretary of state. Even so, they might have been curtailed with advantage. The mere fact, for instance, that Walsingham spent a short time as a student at Padua in 1555-56 is hardly a sufficient ground for a long review of the history of contemporary Italy for the purpose of bringing before the

reader the facts and influences which might have interested and impressed the foreign student, especially as we have no evidence worth mentioning of what he did or thought whilst a member of the English nation' of the Venetian seat of learning. Whilst both interesting and readable in themselves, they are for the most part unnecessary to the specialist, and they would have been more serviceable to the general reader if they had been shorter. The general reader who wishes to peruse a biography of Walsingham will, in fact, find some difficulty in 'seeing the wood for the trees,' and will be inclined to wish for greater compression of this introductory matter. At all events, Walsingham's 'time,' in the sense of his active participation in its political and religious history, cannot be said to date before the reign of Elizabeth, and even during the first ten years of this reign all that can be said of him is that he was a quiescent member of her first two parliaments, and was employed by Cecil towards the end of the decade in attempts to discover the intrigues and plots of which Elizabeth was already the object on the part of her enemies.

In the second half of the volume the author may be said to launch in medias res, and this part is satisfactory from both the biographical and historical points of view. Here we see Walsingham, as ambassador at Paris, in closest touch with the mighty Reformation and CounterReformation movements, and his activity as ambassador during the two critical years preceding the massacre of St. Bartholomew enables his biographer to delineate, without undue rambling, the religious and political currents and counter-currents in the international history of the period in protraying the efforts of Walsingham to negotiate the alliance of England and France which culminated in the Treaty of Blois in April, 1572. In striving to draw the two countries into this alliance against Spain, Walsingham was following the bent of his religious as well as his political convictions. He was the staunch advocate of a decisive and aggressive policy on behalf of Protestantism against the vacillating moods of Elizabeth and the more cautious statesmanship of Burghley, who, in contrast to his more zealous Puritan colleague, had been trained in the opportunist school of Henry VIII. and Northumberland. In him the militant spirit of Calvinism found its most insistent exponent among the great Elizabethan statesmen, and the author has brought forcibly out this side of his political activity in the long and tedious negotiation for the Anjou marriage with which his diplomacy was so intimately concerned as a means to the greater end he had in view. Unfortunately, his able and intricate diplomacy proved ultimately futile, in spite of the treaty of Blois, and instead of the Anglo-French co-operation in behalf of the struggling Dutch Protestants, which he succeeded in negotiating on paper, came, four months later, what seemed the wreck of the Protestant cause as well as of the ambassador's work in the massacre of the Huguenots on the 24th of August, 1572, and the following days. One of the most interesting chapters in the work is the delineation of Walsingham's desperate situation in Paris during these terrible days.

This part of the work may be welcomed as a contribution to the history of the subject, even if the patience of the reader is somewhat tried

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in following the windings and turnings of the long negotiation for the marriage of a queen who persisted in toying with Hymen for purely political purposes, in spite of the insistence of both her ministers and parliaments on this crucial point. In connection with these and other episodes, in which Walsingham took so important a part, the author has done a considerable amount of research in the original authorities. He is, however, greatly indebted to English writers like Pollard for the earlier part of his work, and Froude for the later as well as the earlier part, and it is rather surprising to find an author who has so large a knowledge at first hand of the state papers of the period citing such second-hand collections of parliamentary statutes as Lee's Leading Documents of English History and Prothero's Select Statutes, instead of going direct to the Statutes of the Realm. In dealing with French history he has made ample use of the work of Ranke and of Mark's biography of Admiral Coligny as well as of contemporary sources. He is, however, evidently unacquainted with the recent Histoire de France edited by Lavisse, which is an improvement on Ranke for this period, and the work of Mark's is not the only recent book by a foreigner on sixteenth century French history which merits attention. In his treatment of Scottish history he has largely relied on Froude, and seems to be ignorant of the more recent research work done by Scottish writers on the period since Froude wrote. The Scottish student will accordingly find nothing new in his incursions into Scottish history, as it centres round such figures as Queen Mary and the Regents Murray and Morton, though it is interesting to have this history reviewed in connection with the general religious and political history of the period. JAMES MACKINnon.

HISTORICAL PORTRAITS. RICHARD II. TO HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, 14001600. The Lives by C. R. L. Fletcher. The Portraits chosen by Emery Walker. With an Introduction on The History of Portraiture in England. Pp. xxiii, 199. Quarto. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1909. 8s. 6d. nett.

PERHAPS some day the The Dictionary of National Biography may have a companion collection of portraits. For the personages of British history prior to 1600 such a work is handsomely begun by this fine gathering of one hundred and three portraits, admirably reproduced. Thirty-six are full-page plates, to many of which this large size ensures impressiveness and an added conviction of truth, as for instance the likenesses of Richard II., Henry VI., Henry VII., and Henry VIII., the sketch of James IV., and the attractive picture of James V. Mary Queen of Scots is represented by the winsome crayon sketch attributed to Clouet, and John Knox by the gowned, bearded, and capped portrait (anonymous) in the National Portrait Gallery.

Many plates combine two or more portraits-often significant in their position, as in the case of Margaret Tudor, Queen of James IV., and her sister; Katharine, Queen of Henry VIII., and Anne Boleyn; the Dowager Queen Mary of Guise and Cardinal Beaton; Maitland of Lethington and

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