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Current Literature 433
the existence of a strong body of serious opinion prepared to encourage
every honest endeavour to ascertain fundamental facts and put them duly
on record. Several of the articles touch on points in which Scotsmen are
concerned, notably the full and complete account of the Battle of Benburb.
The Proceedings during the year 1910 of the Somersetshire Archaeological
Natural History Society (3rd series, vol.
xvi.), besides reports and addresses,
contains Mr. St. George Gray's paper on archaeological remains at Ham
Hill, with illustrations (including the scales of a Roman loricd] of numerous
capital finds from the stone age downwards. Mr. A. Bulleid and Mr.
Gray together describe the lake village at Meare, three miles west of that
at
Glastonbury. Articles of bronze exceed those of iron, but tools of bone
(including 21 weaving combs)
are most numerous of all. A date from
200 B.C. is definitely suggested. Mr. J. H. Spencer gives an architectural
account of Taunton Castle with plans and mouldings, while Mr. F. B.
Bond does the like for Glastonbury Abbey.
F. Chanter's
Documentary study is well represented by the Rev. J.
translation of the Court Rolls of the Manor of Curry Rivel during the
Black Death, 1348-49. This admirable examination shows the deaths
of 63 tenants out of an estimated total of 150, between October, 1348,
and March, 1349 a death-rate of two-fifths of the population in six months.
There is wisdom in his hint that the much higher mortality alleged for
other places by Dr. Jessop and Dom Gasquet, may probably be an over-
estimate. Always, one may make a proverb of it, the miracle grows less.
In the Modern Languages Review (April), Prof. Grierson of Aberdeen
edits and discusses, with fresh MS. sources, a curious poem, The World's a
bubble^ by Bacon. It was adapted directly or indirectly from a Greek
epigram, and Prof. Grierson makes it the key to an interesting poetical
correspondence between Bacon, Donne, and Sir Henry Wotton. The poet
Drummond's sources continue to receive attention. Dr. Kastner now
shows much subtle, not to
say
insidious transference of phrase and idea from
Sir Philip Sidney.
It was a fashion, and not of that age only Mr. H.
;
Littledale tracks in Spenser (Amoretti, xv.) the clearest of debts to Desportes ;
M. Berthon similarly tracks Suckling's Proffered Love Rejected to a poem
assigned to Desportes ; and Mr. J. L. Lowes is only a little less convincing
in his proposition that in L' Allegro a fine passage, descriptive of a morning
walk, with a hunt and a ploughed field, owed both inspiration and music to
five and twenty lines of charming lyric in Nicholas Breton's Passionate
Shepherd. Our contemporary literary quarterly is rendering distinguished
service to scientific criticism.
The Maryland Historical Society, incorporated 1843, publishes quarterly
the Maryland Historical Magazine. In the December number is a note
of the last death in battle in the War of American Independence. In
November, 1872, Captain William Wilmot in an enterprise against James
Island, Charleston, made by suggestion of Kosciuzko, then serving with
' him under Washington, was shot, the last bloodshed in the American
*
War.' He had made his will in June, 1781. Being at this time called