Two of these were produced in collaboration with Cardinal Gasquet, namely Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (1890) and The Bosworth Psalter (1908). In the former volume no hint was given of the shares taken by the two writers in the work. Further, much of its interest has now gone, through the fuller publication of Cranmer's Draft Services by Dr. Wickham Legg for the Henry Bradshaw Society. It would probably not be difficult for an acute critic to dissever the two contributions, for the two writers differ notably in style; though there might well prove to be much in which the influence of one was to be discerned through the pen of the other. But probably nothing would result from such a feat that would tend to enhance the deservedly great reputation of Mr. Bishop. For the historical part of the book is more valuable than the liturgical.

In The Bosworth Psalter his task was to deal with the Calendar besides contributing to the few pages of conclusions.' This h executed in 100 pages, full of labour, minute comparison and criticism, and leading to some very valuable results, concerning the inner history of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and the changes introduced by the Normans into the cult.

Mr. Bishop also contributed a liturgical note of fifty pages to Dom Kuypers' edition of The Book of Cerne. This note formed the starting-point for the paper on 'Spanish Symptoms' included in Liturgica Historica, and his latest views upon the topic in question must be sought for there.

A bare enumeration of the titles and subjects thus handled gives but little idea of the width of interest that is spread out here before students. Many great topics are handled incidentally: and often some of the most important work deals with questions which at first sight seem distant from the matter in hand. It is found however to be really germane to the subject besides having an independent interest of its own. An instance may be given, drawn from Mr. Bishop's handling of the sources of Roman Liturgy. In one case The Litany of the Saints forms the main topic of one of the papers in another a question is raised as to the origin of the Six Candles set upon the altar according to the present Roman rite. But incidentally the Ordines come into question. Much light is thrown upon the origin, history and value of both the earlier and the more mediaeval Ordines printed by Mabillon: and an acute analysis of the Ordo of St. Amand, made popular by Mgr. Duchesne's book, shews that document in a very different light from that in which it had previously been regarded.

It is perhaps curious to note that two other contributory sources seem to have occupied Mr. Bishop's attention much less. Little is said of the early history of the Breviary, though this has much bearing upon some of the points handled. More remarkable yet is the absence of attention to the Mass-lessons, though these have an even more important light to cast upon problems connected with the early stages of the Roman Liturgy. That he had such matters as these well in mind there can be little doubt and our regret is proportionately great that we have no way of knowing what his view was of the bearing of such documents as these upon the subjects which he studied from other standpoints.

The obiter dicta then are in some ways as valuable as the treatment of the main themes. Happily through the 'piety' of Dom Connolly the book is provided with an excellent General Index. The student who is wise will make his own notes and extracts in plenty from the book as he goes through it for his own orientation and guidance: but if he has failed to do this, he will be wise from time to time to consult the index in the hope that somewhere in the pages of the volume he will find an obiter dictum bearing on some question that concerns him.

Not content with this alone, Dom Connolly has provided also an index of the MSS cited. It is the last item in the volume: and if anyone wishes to be convinced of the width of Mr. Bishop's erudition, he need only run his eye over those four pages. The writer looked with interest in this list for Harl. MS 2961. He had a personal reason for doing so for long ago, as a callow curate just infected with a zeal for liturgical study, he was making a tyro's effort to grapple with that MS. His helplessness brought him first some words of encouragement and help from the scholar who is now Cardinal Gasquet, and he has never forgotten the kindness. But a further help was also in store, in the form of a sheet of paper descriptive of the MS which the same kindness procured from Mr. Edmund Bishop. The sheet came to the top again not long ago. It had not been forgotten and when a new occasion recently arose for working at the old notes on Harl. MS 2961 of a quarter of a century ago, there it still was.

The MS is the Leofric Collectar-that is, one of those monuments of early Breviary, of which Mr. Bishop knew much, though the knowledge is not revealed in this volume. The MS therefore does not appear in the list. But the little anecdote may serve as an illustration of what has been said above about Mr. Bishop's

erudition; and also of the true scholar's generosity to friends and helpfulness to young fledgelings, which made him not only revered as an authority but deeply respected as a noble character by those who had the privilege of knowing him.

W. H. FRERE.

THE POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY.

Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses. By THOMAS HARDY. (Macmillan. 1917.) 7s. 6d. net.

net.

Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy. (Macmillan. 1916.) 35.

IN 1898 Mr. Hardy published Wessex Poems, in 1902 Poems of the Past and Present, in 1904-8 came that mighty drama The Dynasts, in 1904 and 1914 Time's Laughing-Stocks and Satires of Circumstance. Now the veteran gives us Moments of Vision and will, we hope, still give us more. A year earlier Messrs. Macmillan added to their ' Golden Treasury' series an excellent selection of 120 poems (including some which appear in this last volume), an invitation to those who know not the master, and a thrice-welcome companion for the myriads who revere him. The Woodlanders is perhaps the best of the novels: The Well-beloved is one of the happiest of all their happy titles, for it gives the key to the author's wide sway over hearts. 'I shall still read Anatole France and Thomas Hardy,' said Wilamowitz-Moellendorf when he despaired of the restoration of literary friendship after the war. What is the deepest impression left by these two last volumes? Surely this, that Thomas Hardy is such a lover of men.

'I lipp'd rough rhymes of chance not choice,

I thought not what my words might be;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.'

And this voice comes not only from the one faint figure of that midsummer eve, but from all sorts of men women and children throughout the poems, from kings and squires and farmers with their wives, from the fat death-doomed ever-walking student, the lovers and mourners, enemies and friends, ladies and glass-stainers, labourers and soldiers; even from those 'primest fuglemen' of his own line 'fogged in far antiqueness

past surmise and reason's reach' of whom at last he learns himself to be 'mere continuator and counterfeit '-and yet, 'Love lures life on,' and this kind, simple heart finds something admirable in all its fellows and chastens us by tenderness. Well, he too has won the love of his readers, and something more, as he tells us in many a brave lyric:

'Whatever his message-glad or grim-
Two bright-souled women clave to him;
Stand and say that while day decays,
It will be word enough of praise.'

In poems as in novels he is very close to nature:

'When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the people say,

'He was a man who used to notice such things"?

'If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, Will they say,

He strove that such innocent creatures should

come to no harm,

But he could do little for them; and now he is gone"?' The innocent creatures he partly understands. Behind and about them and himself is the enveloping mystery with which he has lived so continuously in his practical country life that he knows he can never really know it. It touches, interpenetrates, absorbs him, but at the centre there is something alien, something not yet to be trusted. Nature surrounds him as his fathers' worship does: the ultimate meaning of each is obscure. All the more he accepts the use and wont of each, kindly, reverently. Churches to this architect, choirs and the old village orchestras are dear to this son of the violinist. The cool failings of the country clergy he takes without blame, as a labourer would. Read The Choirmaster's Burial':

We would with our lutes
Play over him

By his grave-brim

The psalm he liked best-
The one whose sense suits

"Mount Ephraim "—

And perhaps we should seem
To him in Death's dream,
Like the seraphim.'

But the Vicar said,

'That old-fashioned way

Requires a fine day,
And it seems to me

It had better not be.'

So they buried the master without any tune,' and at dead of next night a ghostly band made up for all.

Those ghosts of Mr. Hardy's! Not fanciful, not blends of the mind with phenomena, too real-we would almost say, too sacred to discuss. These too have their substance in his

love for men and for the innocent creatures' which, like men, suffer the mystery of life, and cheerfully play in it their unasked for, inevitable part. Read-you will scarcely do so without tears of remorse and thankfulness- The Blinded Bird.'

Mr. Hardy's faith is indeed severe. It was, he says, a relief to him when he deemed it reasonable to suppose that the Immanent Will is unconscious. If that Will should ever open conscious eyes, How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise?' he asks:

'Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,
Thy whole high-heaving firmamental frame,
Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?'

'In tenebris' (with its motto, Considerabam ad dexteram et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me. . . . Non est qui requirat animam meam) is a confession that among the many and the strong' there is no place for one who cannot discern their vision:

'Let him in whose ears the low-voiced Best is killed by the clash of the First,

Who holds that if way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst,

Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crooked

ness, custom, and fear,

Get him up and begone as one shaped awry: he disturbs the order here.'

Let him stay and let him speak if he can speak with Thomas Hardy's charity. We need such a one to face the worst of truth. Without his pains we shall never reach the best of truth. And he perhaps will come with us. Certainly he will if he honestly can. The volume of selections ends with that chorus from The Dynasts in which hope is sung:

'Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair!'