or why his statue stands conspicuous in College Green to-day. Not less astounding is the attempt to prove that the bribery by which the Union of the British and the Irish parliaments was effected was an everyday exercise of the normal functions of the English governors of Ireland, and therefore deserving of no special condemnation. There are many other respects in which the author runs counter to generally received opinions, such, for example, as his treatment of the Volunteers and his estimate of the character and motives of Townshend, Fox, and Burke, of Pitt, Cornwallis, and Castlreagh.

Enough has perhaps been said to show that The End of the Irish Parliament possesses a particularly pungent interest. Written in a spirit, or at least with an air, of dispassionate fair-mindedness and of historical calm, and yet bristling with points of controversy, it appears to me to be so far out of the common that I hope on another occasion to have the opportunity of dealing with it more fully than the space now at my disposal permits.

P. J. LENNOX.

The Complete Works of George Gascoigne.

In two Volumes.

Edited by John W. Cunliffe, M. A., D. Lit. (London). Cambridge: at the University Press, 1907 and 1910. Vol. I., pp. 506; Vol. II., pp. viii + 600. Price $1.50 net per volume.

George Gascoigne (1525-1577), a descendant of Henry the Fourth's incorruptible Chief Justice of that name, was the son of a Bedfordshire knight. Having left Cambridge without a degree, entered Gray's Inn as a law student, written poems, and sat in Parliament for two years (1557-1559), he was disinherited by his father on account of his prodigality. A marriage with a rich widow did not sufficiently diminish the unwelcome attentions of his creditors, and so he sailed for Holland and served for two years (1573-1575) under the Prince of Orange. Taken prisoner by the Spaniards, he remained for four months in their hands, but was at length released, and on his return to England devoted the two remaining years of his life to collecting, re-casting, and publishing his works. He evidently enjoyed some degree of court favour, for he accompanied Queen Elizabeth to Leicester's seat at Kenilworth, and devised part of the entertainments provided on that sumptuous

occasion, and is careful to set the whole thing down in full for our delectation.

Tam Marti quam Mercurio was the motto which Gascoigne prefixed to the edition of his Posies which he brought out in the year 1575, and to others of his works, and it may be taken as fairly typical not only of the man but of the busy, aggressive, many-sided age in which he lived. He wished to bring home to his contemporaries that he desired fame for his exploits on the field of battle as well as in the field of literary endeavour. His portrait, printed at the back of the title in the first edition of The Steele Glas (1576), with the same motto, and showing an arquebus with pouches for powder and shot on the one side and books with pen and ink-pot on the other, illustrates still more forcibly his dual claim for recognition. It is a sad commentary on the vanity of human wishes that neither as warrior nor as writer has he won anything but mediocrity of renown.

Yet, because of his multitudinous experiments in verse and prose, Gascoigne has an assured place in literary history. Mr. Edmund Gosse, while condemning him as one who has not bequeathed "to English literature a single work or even a single line which is now read with enjoyment, for its own sake," has yet, in the same sentence, to admit that he was "an innovator of extraordinary ingenuity and versatility." Hallam, after devoting half a column to him, and describing" the general commendations of Chalmers on this poet" as "rather hyperbolical," sums up by saying that "we may leave him a respectable place among the Elizabethan versifiers." Despite this damning with faint praise, Gascoigne occupies with some distinction a whole chapter of twelve pages in the third volume of The Cambridge History of English Literature, and in a later chapter has three pages devoted by Mr. Saintsbury to one of his works. When to all this it is added that Gascoigne wrote the first English prose Comedy (Supposes, from Ariosto's I Suppositi, represented at Gray's Inn in 1566); the first treatise on poetry in the English language (Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English, 1575); the first translation of a Greek tragedy produced on the stage in

2

In article "Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature" in Chambers' Cyclopaedia of English Literature, Vol. 1, p. 238.

2 Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Chap. XIV, Sect. IV, § 60.

England (Jocasta, based on the Phoenissae of Euripides, enacted at Gray's Inn, 1566); the first English satire in blank verse (The Steele Glas, 1576); the first prose tale of modern life (The Adventures of Master F. J., 1573); and the first mask (The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, 1576), it will be readily understood how worthy his works are of being reprinted in the series of the Cambridge English Classics.

The two goodly volumes that these works fill are turned out in a style that is characteristic of the publishers: good binding, a handsome cover, and clear type, to say nothing of the quaint illustration. The editing has been done in a careful and scholarly manner by Professor Cunliffe. There are three appendices running to 59 pages, with indexes of Titles and of First Lines of Poems. In one of the appendices is given a pamphlet entitled The Spoyle of Antwerpe which, although unacknowledged by the author, the editor has no difficulty in identifying as Gascoigne's. Apart from the merits or demerits of the works themselves, students of the historical development of the English language have here a wide field for philological research, which, I am confident, will give ample returns to cultivation. From the point of view of prosody also Gascoigne will well repay study.

P. J. LENNOX.

History of Pope Boniface VIII and his Times, with notes and Documentary Evidence. By Dom Louis Tosti, Bnedictine Monk of Monte Cassino. Translated from the Italian by The Rt. Rev. Mgr. Eugene J. Donnelly, V. F. New York, Christian Press Association Publishing Co., 1911. Pp. 546.

Three great figures dominate the history of the Papacy in the Middle Ages: Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Boniface VIII. There were of course many other great Popes whose lives and deeds profoundly affected the course of events in Europe in that period, such men as Leo the Great, Gregory the Great or Nicholas I, but historians dwell more on the achievements of the first-named than on those of any others, and give to them the place of preëminence in mediaeval papal annals. When history was written from a polemical standpoint and under the influence of sectarian

animosity those three great figures were usually held up to contempt by non-Catholic writers as monsters of corruption and ambition. Better acquaintance with facts, however, and the spirit of impartiality demanded by true scholarship, have brought about a revision of the unfavorable verdicts of the past regarding Gregory VII and Innocent III. Johann Voigt, a Professor of History in Königsberg who died in 1863 opened a new era in the general estimate of Gregory VII. His work Hildebrand als Papst Gregorius VII. und sein Zeitalter which was published in 1815 contained such a favorable, even laudatory, view of the much maligned Hildebrand that Clemens Villecourt, bishop of La Rochelle, supposed it to be the work of a Catholic and later endeavored unsuccessfully by correspondence to convert the author. Gfrörer, a rationalist, was so profoundly struck by the works and deeds of Gregory during the preparation of a life of that pontiff that he became a Catholic. The same thing happened in the case of Friedrich von Hurter, the pastor of the Reformed Church in Schaffhausen, who while writing a life of Innocent III became a Catholic with all his family. Hurter, Voigt and Gfrörer not only changed their own views regarding Catholicity but have profoundly affected the general verdict regarding Gregory and Innocent. So far Boniface VIII has not found such vindication. The charges made by his enemies during his lifetime, charges no more severe than those brought against his two great predecessors are still repeated. Dante, to whom he was the Prince of Pharisees, condemned him to one of the lowest circles of hell "where Simon Magus hath his curst abode." In a recent publication in English Boniface is called "a politician, overbearing, implacable, destitute of spiritual ideals, and controlled by blind and insatiable lust of power." If the work which Monsignor Donnelly has made available in English does not lead to the complete rehabilitation of Boniface it will at least serve to counteract in the minds of many people such estimates as that just quoted. To establish in its day truth obscured by passions; to render to virtue its honor and to avenge the opprobrium of six centuries; to inflict on crime triumphant the reprobation it deserves; to serve also the designs of Divine Providence, which does not defer always the cause of justice to the future life, such is the noble purpose which Dom Tosti had in view, and which we also maintain in our work of translation, "The History of Boniface VIII and his times," is then solely a work of historical reparation, a satisfaction due morality and society.

Whatever objections may be raised as to the advisability of translating a work which first appeared more than sixty years ago, on the ground that so much new material bearing on the life of Boniface has since been discovered, were doubtless not overlooked by Monsignor Donnelly, who evidently did not consider that anything which has appeared since Dom Tosti's time, has invalidated any of his conclusions. His true reparation in the case of Boniface VIII may the more readily be looked for, if his critics will peruse the detailed account of the political conditions which prevailed in the twelfth century as set forth in this translation, and try to form a just estimate of the character and purposes of those contemporaries of Boniface whose views have been accepted with such little hesitation by subsequent historians. Neither Dom Tosti nor his translator attempts to evade the fact that the period inaugurated by Gregory VII came to an end in the pontificate of Boniface VIII. His reign marks the beginning of the decline of papal influence in European state affairs: but, though he has undoubtedly suffered from the condemnation which is so unmercifully attached to failure of any kind, his reign cannot be said to have been a failure. It was his misfortune to be elected to the papacy at a time when the forces productive of new conditions had already made such progress that the old order was in eclipse; but he made no compromise with innovation. Some chapters in this work will especially command attention, as v. g. that on the relations between Boniface and his predecessor Celestine, chi fece per viltate il gran rifiuto. While the abdication of Celestine will long remain a subject of discussion, the part played by Boniface, and his subsequent treatment of Celestine as set forth in this translation will unquestionably relieve the Pope from the charge of bad faith, intrigue and self-seeking. Not less noteworthy is the manner in which the subject of Boniface's relations to the Colonna and Philip the Fair and his proclamation of the Jubilee of 1300 are dealt with. The learned translator deserves the gratitude of all who are interested in the cause of truth, for having found time in the midst of so many pressing pastoral and diocesan duties, to translate a work of such historical importance, and for having made his translation so eminently readable. The long list of documents and the many extensive notes which form the appendix add very appreciably to the value of the work and materially increase its usefulness as a reference volume on this period.

PATRICK J. HEALY.