But the researches of Dr Gross and Miss Bateson appear to supply the materials for an answer. It is true that the documents show a marked difference between the composition of the gild-merchant and that of the burgessbody. The gild may include 'foreigners' and residents who do not rank as burgesses; on the other hand, the burgess, though eligible by hereditary right, may fail to obtain membership of the gild, since he is required to pay a substantial entrance-fee and to find sureties. None the less the gild-merchant is a franchise belonging to the burgess-body. They have bought from the Crown the right of founding a gild and determining its composition. If some of them are ultimately excluded from the gild, or if non-burgesses are admitted to it, this is the effect of bylaws which the burgesses themselves have made. When King John granted a gild-merchant to Ipswich, the chief magistrates of the town fixed the constitution of the gild; the borough-moot elected the gild-officers, voted them a revenue, and ordained an annual audit of the gild accounts.* Here the dependence of the gild upon the community is unmistakable. What then was more natural than that the community should throw duties and burdens upon the body which they themselves had created for the protection of their privileges?

The difference in the composition of the gild and the borough-moot is not so serious as to prevent the ordinary burgess from feeling confidence in the gild authorities, or the ordinary gild-brother from taking it as a matter of course that the gild should advance money to the town and even undertake the expense of public works. So again, if the procedure of the gild's morning-speech' seems more expeditious or rational than that of the borough-moot, there is a general willingness to stretch the jurisdiction of the gild and make it the arbiter in every kind of civil suit in which gild-brethren are concerned. The chances of a conflict between gild and community are reduced to a minimum when, as commonly happens, a borough which has received the right of electing a mayor or bailiff makes this magistrate the ex-officio president of the gild. When the mayor is doing justice with burgesses as his assessors, it seems idle to

* Gross, 'The Gild Merchant,' vol. ii, pp. 115 ff.

enquire whether the court is held for the gild or for the borough. If he has tallage to collect, it is only natural that he should advance the sum-total from the gild purse and use the gild officials as his agents in collecting individual quotas. Now and then a distinction must be drawn between the town and gild, when 'foreign' gildbrethren are numerous, or when it is a question of exercising a regality which has been granted to the boroughmoot and may be forfeited if exercised by any other body; but such occasions are rare. There is no danger that the gild will tyrannise over the town. The probabilities are the other way-that the town may exploit the gild to the detriment of 'foreign' and non-burgess members.

It has already been mentioned that in London history the gild-merchant makes no appearance. It is true that we possess a thirteenth-century charter which grants to a Florentine merchant, among other privileges of London citizenship, the right of being in the gild-merchant. But this may be treated as a mere mistake on the part of a chancery clerk who was using common forms without reflection.* The historian of London, if he desires to trace the origin of the civic magistracies, must concentrate his attention on the facts which are known about the 'commune' of London under Stephen, Richard I, and John. First mentioned in the year 1141, this association collapsed under Henry II, who even curtailed the modest privileges which his grandfather had bestowed upon the city. But in 1191, during Richard's absence on crusade, Prince John gave his formal sanction to the 'commune'; and the citizens elected a mayor. How much of their new constitution was approved by Richard is a mystery. But the office of mayor remained in existence after his return; and in 1215 John permitted the citizens to elect this officer annually for the future. This was the sum of our information on the question until Mr Round produced a document of 1193 which mentions, in addition to the mayor, the existence of échevins and probi homines to whom obedience is due from the citizens; and another of 1205-6 relating to a body called the Twenty-four, who are entrusted with judicial duties. Mr Round, who had

already detected foreign influence in the peculiar federal constitution of the Cinque Ports, conjectured that the new London evidence pointed to a constitution resembling that of Rouen; for in the Norman capital were also to be found échevins and probi homines, twenty-four in number, and judging in the court of the commune. The suggestion, at once ingenious and plausible, seemed fatal to the older theory that English town-life had developed independently of continental models."

A new light was, however, thrown upon the evidence when Miss Bateson reviewed the whole collection of documents from which Mr Round had drawn his evidence (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 14252). She showed that this collection, made by a Londoner between 1206 and 1216, threw a flood of light upon the institutions of the city in these the darkest years of its development. The contemporary customs which the author cites seem to reveal a distinctively English constitution. They suggest that the échevins and the Twenty-four were the same officials under different names, in fact the twenty-four aldermen of the city wards. They show us a folk-moot summoned by the great bell of St Paul's, and a husting-court in which the suitors sit, according to immemorial Teutonic custom, on four benches within a railed space, and in which the aldermen act as judgment-finders. Evidently the early attempts to found a commune had not resulted in the importation of French usages and forms of government. London, thanks to Miss Bateson's careful study of the documents, became, if not altogether a normal case of burghal development, at all events much less exotic than it had seemed in the light of Mr Round's hypothesis.

While thus destroying a suggested link between Norman and English town-life, she established another of almost equal interest by her researches into the history of the seignorial boroughs which the Anglo-Norman lords of the Welsh Marches and Ireland created so profusely. Le Prevost suggested that the 'leges Britolii,' mentioned in many charters of these boroughs, were not derived, as had been supposed, from Bristol, but from the Norman bourg of Breteuil. Miss Bateson followed up this clue. She showed that William Fitz-Osbern, the castellan

* Round, The Commune of London,' pp. 219 ff.

of Breteuil, granted to Hereford the privileges which Breteuil had received shortly before 1066, and that his example had been widely followed by the Marchers. Then, by a comparison of the derivative custumals, she proceeded to reconstruct the privileges of Breteuil. In details her conclusions were not unimpeachable, but the main result was of far-reaching significance. She showed conclusively that these seignorial boroughs were in the nature of a commercial speculation; that the design of the founders was to people them with traders; and that, while privileges were heaped upon the individual burgess, the right of self-government was sedulously withheld from the community. In boroughs of the Breteuil pattern the law of the borough-court was adapted to the needs of a commercial community; and the borough reeve was prevented from interfering with the burgesses in the pursuit of their avocation as traders. But the reeve appointed by the lord of the borough; and the interests of the lord centred round the market-tolls and the proceeds of the borough court. Incidentally the comparison of customs showed that the foreign model counted for comparatively little in the history of the derivative boroughs. A few main principles of the parent charter were retained, but local circumstances and custom produced essential modifications.

was

Here, as elsewhere, Miss Bateson found good reason for insisting upon the paramount importance of economic forces and national tradition. The more obvious the influence of personal ideas and foreign examples, the more striking the resistance offered to them by the permanent needs and tendencies of the communities to which they were applied. In the last resort she returned again and again to the conception of a community as a living organism which, however much it may be modified by environment, is never the mere resultant of the forces that converge upon it, but assimilates new principles, and in assimilating transforms them. It is a matter for deep regret that one who had so firmly grasped the essential characteristics of the social organism was denied the opportunity of illustrating them through a constructive account of that particular institution on which she had concentrated her researches.

H. W. C. DAVIS.

Art. IV.-DR JOHNSON'S 'LIVES OF THE POETS.'

1. Lives of the English Poets. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Three vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.

2. Lives of the most Eminent English Poets, with critical observations on their works. By Samuel Johnson. Edited, with notes corrective and explanatory, by Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. Three vols. London: Murray,

1854.

6

3. The Six Chief Lives from Johnson's Lives of the Poets.' Edited, with a preface, by Matthew Arnold. London: Macmillan, 1878.

4. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Edited, with notes, by Mrs Alexander Napier, and an introduction by J. W. Hales. Three vols. London: Bell, 1890.

5. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. With notes and introduction by Arthur Waugh. Six vols. London: Kegan Paul, 1896.

6. The Lives of the most Eminent English Poets. By Samuel Johnson. Three vols. English Classics,' edited by W. E. Henley. London: Methuen, 1896.

7. Johnsonian Miscellanies. Arranged and edited by G. Birkbeck Hill. Two vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897.

EXACTLY a hundred and twenty-six years have passed since Johnson gave the 'Lives of the Poets' in its completed form to the world. It was the most popular of his writings in his own generation, and it has been the most popular of his writings ever since. In spite of all that has intervened since its first appearance, the transformation of the poetry and criticism characteristic of the eighteenth century into the poetry and criticism characteristic of the nineteenth, the indifference with which most of the poets who are the subjects of its critiques are regarded. by modern readers, the inevitable dissatisfaction with the aims, the principles, the methods of the older school of criticism, induced by familiarity with those of the schools succeeding it-in spite of all this, it is probable that no decade has passed without new impressions being called for; and that the work still retains its vitality and attractiveness is sufficiently shown by the