There are probably a good many people who know something about Jowett and have read several works of Gilbert Murray's, and yet could not even guess who was the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford who bridged the gap. It was Bywater. Between two great popular influences the pendulum took a swing towards scholarship in the strictest sense, and from 1893 to 1908 the chair was filled by one of the most learned Hellenists of his day in any land, a man less great indeed than Scaliger and Bentley and the present Professor of Latin at Cambridge, but assuredly of their type. Those three rank even higher, not so much because they are more "brilliant" as because their interest in the classics is primarily the literary one. They apply their criticism and interpretation to the more purely literary authors, and their style has a quality not relevant to scientific scholarship, however welcome there—it has the creative writer's zest. Bywater's learning ranged, certainly, over the whole field of Greek prose and poetry; he had, moreover, a keen interest in literature as such, read the chief contemporary poets and novelists, and had views about them; he was master of an admirable Latin style; but his ruling passion was not literature so much as knowledge, and it was in the philosophic writers that he found his special field. For that reason his most characteristic work may be said to be his edition of Aristotle's Ethics, published in 1890. At the same time, that by which he is deservedly best known is an edition of a work on the borderland between philosophy and literature, Aristotle's Poetics, to which he supplied, in 1909, an English paraphrase and a fully explanatory commentary, both the best things of their kind for any student of that work; and as these will always be many, the book's future seems assured.
"Bywater," writes a relative, "was always studying"; and again, in words of insight, "but if he were not actually a genius he was far from being merely a learned man." His enlightenment and humanity are brought out in Dr. Jackson's admirable little biography, which, as the story of a scholar who died soon after the European War began, seems worth commending now. Though he disliked what we know as Liberalism, the word is the right one for his educational views; he supported the abolition of University religious tests, and was against compulsory Greek. Further than that it is not applicable; he was a Tariff Reformer. As an undergraduate he belonged to the famous "Old Mortality Club." He was a friend and disciple of Mark Pattison, and, like him, married a lady who was an excellent scholar and at the same time humane and charming. Of Walter Pater he was a friend and no disciple; "his style I do not like: it seems to me affected and pretentious and often sadly wanting in lucidity." In congenial company one of the most sociable of men, he showed much kindness to promising young scholars. Some of the mots ascribed to him are rather donnish, but not all: "I often think that modern education is a conspiracy on the part of schoolmasters and dons to keep men babies until they are four-and-twenty" is profounder than it looks; and he realised that "those who care for manuscripts per se are usually dull dogs."
All through his life he was a great bibliophile, and even in this respect happily mated. Few wives would pack their husbands off to Paris immediately after breakfast to inspect a copy of the editio princeps of Homer, and when they returned with it the following evening give it to them for a birthday-present. But he possessed something even more remarkable than that (for of Homer there are, after all, other editions); in his copy of Melanchthon's De Anima was an autograph of Rabelais.
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LIFE IN THE COUNTRY PARISH. By Eleanor Trotter, M.A. Cambridge University Press. 10s. net.
This book has one serious fault: there is not enough of it. Miss Trotter gives a feast of good things, suggests so many interesting happenings of the period, that she might have expanded almost every page into three, and still we might ask for more. It is, however, confined strictly to showing how the ordinary business of government was carried on during this troubled century. Readers will find good exercise for the imagination in filling in the outlines. Take this for example: "The beadle's chief work was of a punitive nature; he was expected to help the constable in apprehending and punishing rogues; he wore a special dress, and carried a whip or wand in his hand with which he drove the dogs out of church." A footnote says: "In 1887 at Wensley Church the wands were still to be seen. They were six in number, and were attached to the front of the churchwardens' high pews." The vestry book at Pittington, page 104, shows this entry: "Maie 3, 1646, John Lazing was appointed to be bedel for driving doggs out of the church in time of public worship, and other necessary dutys." The office of church-warden was then of great importance, and carried with it the dignity of a special "high pew," a matter of moment when the seating arrangements in church almost created a table of precedence. But why did the dogs of those days show such a church-going disposition? The beadle's office to-day would be a sinecure, for during many years of regular attendance the writer has only twice seen a dog in church.
The next page refers to "Rogue Money," the colloquial term for a contribution not exceeding 6d. or 8d. a week levied on Sunday on the parish for the maintenance of poor prisoners in the county gaol. A further levy of not less than 20s. per annum from the whole North Riding was made for the relief of poor prisoners of the King's Bench and Marshalsea. Even taking into account the greater value of money then, this would not go far among destitute prisoners, but it is somewhat surprising to find that any provision at all was made in those hard days.
The temptation to go on extracting these vignettes is great, but must be resisted. Surprises of this sort, however, are numerous, and when we remember the lack of hard roads, the absence of any postal facilities, and the difficulties and cost of any sort of communication, it is astounding to find how well acquainted the local justices were with the statutes, and to what an extent they succeeded in administering them. Miss Trotter's investigations have evidently much impressed this upon her, and her preface gives an excellent summary of the conclusions at which she has arrived.
The great majority of the men who took their share in the government of England in the seventeenth century had neither learning nor culture; some probably were not able to write their own names; nevertheless, through being made responsible for the well-being and good order of the little community to which they belonged, they gained a considerable amount of political education. The work of local government, carried on voluntarily from father to son through untold generations, has produced certain characteristics—a moderation of outlook, a reasonableness and sanity of mind, an intensely critical faculty and a political insight—which are typical of our race.... There is a fear lest the masses through ignorance of the work of their forefathers may demand a centralisation of governmental functions, which is alien to the character of the English Constitution.
The author has earned public thanks for bringing to light these interesting records of an interesting period. It should be compulsory for every education authority to use this and similar works as part of the historical instruction given in all our schools. Such books would clothe the dry bones of history, as ordinarily taught, in a so much more attractive garb that lessons might become a pleasure instead of a penance. The Royal Commission on Public Records received a letter from M. Paul Meyer, of the Ecole des Chartes, in which he says: "En Angleterre tout est en désordre," referring to our widely scattered and unorganised records. This Royal Commission is doing a great service in trying to bring order out of chaos, but it is not its function to do for the general reader what a book like this may do—bring to life in a handy and digested form some of the buried records of our past.