acorns, for such hogs as are kept on the borders of forests for about six weeks from the end of September. See Naturalist's Diary for that month, and T. T. for 1814, P. 249. Its bark, when stripped off, is usefully employed for tanning leather, and afterwards for hot beds and fuel. Oak timber is well adapted to almost every purpose of rural and domestic economy, particularly for staves, laths, and spokes of wheels. The saw-dust, and even the leaves, have been found useful in tanning: the galls are employed in dying, and various other purposes. The oak (says Mr. Gilpin) is the most picturesque tree in itself, and the most accommodating in composition. It refuses no subject either in natural or in artificial landscape. It is suited to the grandest, and may, with propriety, be introduced into the most pastoral. It adds new dignity to the ruined tower and Gothic arch: by stretching its wild moss-grown branches athwart their ivied walls, it gives them a kind of majesty coeval with itself: at the same time its propriety is still preserved, if it throw its arms over the purling brook, or the mantling pool, where it beholds Its reverend image in th' expanse below.' We recommend this work to the attention of our juvenile readers, who will find it an agreeable and instructive companion. CORRESPONDENCE. The obliging letter of an Old Friend (at Bath) does not enable us to ascertain what are the works that have not yet appeared in our pages, to which it alludes: but surely neither he nor his compa nions can require to be reminded that, of the immense multitude of publications which our presses now send forth, many must, in the nature of things, wait a considerable time for notice in our confined space, and many others must inevitably be passed in silence. As to Reviews being mere booksellers' advertisers and puffs,' all those who know any thing of the Monthly Review know that it never was subject to any influence of parties or individuals, political, theological, or commercial; and its perfect independence always has been, and we trust always will be, one recommendation to which it may pretend, whatever other claims to public favour it may or may not substantiate. We intend to report in our next Appendix the interesting Foreign Publications mentioned by Inquisitor. GENERAL INDEX. In answer to the numerous inquiries and applications which have been made to us, respecting a new GENERAL INDEX, we have now to announce that this undertaking, comprizing the whole of the New Series of the Monthly Review, to the end of the present year, is in considerable forwardness, and will probably be put to the press in the approaching Spring. The plan of the former General Index will be observed: but some improvements will be adopted, and greater copiousness of reference be introduced, in the way of duplication, so as to render less likely any failure of search. It is calculated to form two large volumes in octavo. THE MONTHLY REVIEW, For DECEMBER, 1816. ART. I. The History of the Kings of England and the Modern History of William of Malmesbury. Translated from the Latin by the Rev. John Sharpe, B.A., Curate of Elstead and of Treyford, Sussex; and formerly Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford. 4to. pp. 628. Three Guineas in Boards. Longman and Co., and Porter. 1815. THE HE old English historians were a set of men of whom our countrymen have just reason to be proud: yet, notwithstanding their claims to the gratitude and attention of posterity, they have met with the most constant neglect; and, while nearly all the store-houses of literature receive a supply so ample as to produce a glut of many of the commodities, this article alone has been almost wholly overlooked. Not only have we to regret a want of translations of these early and interesting records, without the testimony of which all the researches of our modern annalists would have been vain, and all their eloquence, their taste, and their polished periods useless, but the neglect of the Latin originals themselves has long been, and still is, a subject of reproach to the literary character of our nation. The editions which we do possess of the monkish historians have been but rarely multiplied by the press,-never, indeed, in modern times; and they are in many instances conveyed to us in forms and types so repulsive, that all but the truly hungry student (no common character in our days) have passed them by in search of fare more daintily tricked out to captivate the eye. Yet the Englishman who never has opened these venerable volumes can but meanly appreciate the efforts of his own ancestors, in keeping the lamp of learning fed, although in obscurity, and in periods too which greatly preceded the general revival of literature in Europe. They will teach him that, as early as the Norman conquest, although learning was confined within the walls of monasteries, it was not solely exercised there in abstruse metaphysical subtleties, abstract speculations, or disputatious school-divinity: but that, while historical facts were searched out with indefatigable zeal, they were clothed in a style of language VOL. LXXXI. Ꮓ that that evinced no incompetent knowlege of classical antiquity, and much occasional success in the imitation of its best models. Studies such as these were also the more meritorious in their professors, because their fame could be but little estimated by any of their cotemporaries except their brother-churchmen, and the endless labour of transcription was an effectual bar to any very rapid circulation of their works among foreign countries. This is not the place for entering into the causes of the improvement of learning which began gradually to manifest itself soon after the Norman conquest, but received such checks during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, from the constant civil wars which distracted our country, as almost to annihilate the vital spark. We fully agree, however, with some of our ablest modern historians, that the increase of monasteries for the first century and a half subsequent to the Conquest, much as those institutions might in after times have been perverted, had a most beneficial tendency to this improvement. Not only were they almost the sole repositories of antient learning, but they afforded means of instruction by no means contemptible; and, by employing the more studious youth in the work of constant transcription from antient authors, they insensibly ameliorated his style, his taste, and his sentiments. Dr. Robertson regarded the Crusades as no inconsiderable auxiliary, contrary to the opinion of other authors, who deemed them more likely to excite a military than a literary ambition in the people: but their effects could be visible only in times rather later than those of which we are speaking. Inventions which facilitated writing were also an accessory cause of improvement in the period to which our observations relate. It has indeed been urged that the universal custom of composing in the Latin language, in which all our early annals except that very antient one the Saxon Chronicle are written, was an impediment to the general diffusion of knowlege, because it effectually excluded all those who were not scholars by education from participating in the lights which began to burst on society; and the objection is not without some force. Yet we must consider that this drawback was compensated by the advantages resulting from the use of a language already moulded for ages to all the purposes of composition, in preference to a tongue, whether Saxon, French, or English, that was comparatively barbarous, and deficient in those niceties of grammatical precision which can alone confer perspicuity of style. Posterity should at least be grateful for the choice of these early writers. Such Such rare opportunities have ever occurred to us of speaking on this subject, that we shall doubtless be excused for delaying the notice of the translation before us, while we give a brief account of the manner in which the original writings of some others of these fathers of our history, as well as of William of Malmesbury himself, have descended to the present day. Our first English annalist Beda, more generally known as "the venerable Bede," wrote in the first half of the eighth century. His history is professedly ecclesiastical, and not civil: nor does any history purely civil occur until the close of the eleventh century, with the exception of that often-named but little consulted work, the "Saxon Chronicle," written in the language which the name denotes: but it is to this that all must have reference who inquire into the long and remote period of seven centuries, from the relinquishment of this island by the Romans to the time of Eadmer and William of Malmesbury, and to which they also and their cotemporaries had recourse. An autograph of this work is preserved in the library of Bene't College, Cambridge. We should recollect, however, that it was simply a chronicle and not a history.The first English press was set up in 1474: but no historian whatever was published from it until 1526; and the Saxon Chronicle, justly said to be one of the most valuable remains of antient language that any nation can boast, was not printed until 1644, when it appeared at the end of Wheeloc's edition of Bede, with a Latin version. Bede himself was indebted to foreign countries for his earlier impressions. After the commencement of the twelfth century, the English historians were a far more numerous body; and most of those now extant have been inserted in the following collections, arranged according to the dates at which they appeared in print for the first time: viz. Matthew of Westminster, edited by Parker the first Protestant bishop under Elizabeth, in 1570; and another edition in 1601. Matthew Paris, in part only, 1571: another edition, edited by Watts in 1640. "Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam præcipui," containing the first edition, and indeed the only one that we know, of William of Malmes bury also Hoveden, Ethelwred, and Ingulph Abbot of Croyland, published by the accomplished Sir Henry Savile, 1596. Eadmer, an historical writer, rather senior to William of M., and highly commended by him, was printed for the first time in 1623, and edited by Selden. Bede and the Saxon Chronicle have been already noticed: the latter was reedited by Gibson. Scriptores decem Historia Anglicana, London, 1652, edited by Roger Twysden, with a preface by Selden; Z 2 a valu a valuable collection. "Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores veteres,” by Gale, Oxford, 1684, in two volumes, with a third intitled the Scriptores quindecim, 1691, and containing the portion of William of Malmesbury not included in the collection of Sir Henry Savile, in which alone of all the above cited volumes his civil histories find a place. It is not to be supposed that these collections contain all the antient writers of English history: many have doubtless perished, and many are probably still lying in neglected and worm-eaten manuscript: but two circumstances are worthy of observation with respect to the dates of the editions which we have noticed; 1st, that no one was published until long after the accession of Henry the Eighth; 2dly, that no one has been published since the accession of Queen Anne. A little attention to these two facts will shew us how detrimental to the cause of historical knowlege has been the national neglect which the English have shewn towards their own historians. With respect to the former, it has been observed by Mr. Gibbon, of whose attention to this subject we shall have occasion to speak presently, that "this delay of a century in printing our early historians is the more to be lamented, as it is too probable that many authentic and valuable monuments of our history were lost in the dissolution of religious houses by Henry the Eighth. The Protestant and the patriot must applaud our deliverance; but the critic may deplore the rude havoc that was made in the libraries of churches and monasteries by the zeal, the avarice, and neglect of unworthy reformers." In another place, he eloquently adds: "The losses of history are irretrievable: when the productions of fancy or science have been swept away, new poets may invent, and new philosophers may reasón; but if the inscription of a single fact be once obliterated, it can never be restored by the united efforts of genius and industry." From the indifference that has been manifested towards these writers since the commencement of the last century, we have experienced more inconvenience than absolute loss, but it has long been high time that this reproach should be obliterated from our national escutcheon. Impelled by considerations of this nature, Mr. Pinkerton and Mr. Gibbon projected the publication of a grand national work *, to comprize all the writers of early English history, carefully collated with the best manuscripts now in existence; and to commence with extracts from all those antient foreign authors, who have in any of their writings noticed the earlier * See Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, M. Rev. for June last, p. 124. ages |