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.

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

title-pages transcribed at the head of this article. It requires no great sagacity to foresee that whatever, and however serious, may be the defects of a work which has stood such a test as this, its permanency is secured; for better or for worse it is classical.

And serious indeed are its defects. Some, originating as they do from mere carelessness and inadvertence, are easily remedied by what annotation can supply, and are of comparatively little moment; others, to borrow an expression from Milton, 'springing from causes in Nature unremoveable,' are of much graver import and have been as disastrous to Johnson's critical reputation among those who know as they have been mischievous generally. He appears, like Aristotle, to have been abnormally deficient in imagination, in fancy, in all that is implied in æsthetic sensibility and sympathy. Other defects again may be referred to the fact that his standards and touchstones of taste and expression were derived solely from the Latin classics, and from those writers both in England and France who most nearly resembled them; and when, therefore, he was confronted with any work the measure and significance of which could not be estimated by such criteria, he acquitted himself as he acquitted himself in judging of 'Lycidas' and of Gray's 'Pindarics.' But the most serious, and certainly the most offensive, of these defects are to be attributed mainly to faults of temper and faults of age-to prejudice, to arrogance, and to that obstinate indifference to everything but preconceived impressions so common when the mind retains its vigour but loses its plasticity.

All this must be conceded, and it is well that it should be emphasised. The many do not discriminate; with them a classic is a classic, and authority is authority; and deplorable indeed it is when what is erroneous and misleading proceeds from the same source, and has the same currency assured to it, as that which is sound. Bacon observes of studies that they teach not their own use; the same may be said of such a work as Johnson's 'Lives.' With its slips and errors uncorrected, and read without guidance, no unfitter book could be placed in any reader's hands; properly edited, and with a proper commentary, no book more serviceable. When Matthew Arnold, directing attention to the critical interest and

X

educational value of the 'Lives,' prepared for students and general readers a selection containing, among others the lives of Milton and Gray, but refrained from any commentary on the critiques of these poets, the boon he conferred was a very questionable one. Nor can it be said that any of the editions cited at the head of this article supplies what is required.

The first editor of the 'Lives,' in the proper sense of the term, was Peter Cunningham. He pointed out and corrected several errors of fact, indicated and supplied many omissions due to the haste with which Johnson worked, or to the lack of information not in his time accessible, and with laudable industry gathered together a great mass of illustrative material, anecdotal, historical, and critical. He also prefixed an interesting introduction. Of the editions which intervened between the appearance of Cunningham's and that of Dr Birkbeck Hill, the best was that of Mrs Napier, with an introduction by Prof. Hales; but it added little of importance to what Cunningham had supplied.

All these editions, however, were superseded, for they were absorbed and supplemented by the elaborate work undertaken and brought to the point of completion by Dr Birkbeck Hill, and recently published in three sumptuous volumes by the Clarendon Press. Dr Hill, who unhappily died before his work had undergone its final revision, brought to his task the same qualities which enabled him to produce his monumental edition of Boswell's 'Johnson'-an acquaintance with Johnson, his contemporaries and his surroundings, never, perhaps, equalled; unwearied industry in research, directed by a conscientiousness, a very passion for accuracy, and thoroughness so intense and so scrupulous that it became almost morbid. All this, combined with his idolatrous reverence for his hero, made him an ideal editor of Boswell, and of the 'Johnsoniana,' for his business there was simply with facts and with the elucidation or illustration of them. But something more than this was required in editing such a work as the 'Lives of the Poets'; and that something more it was neither Dr Hill's desire nor intention to supply. We may regret the absence of any critical prolegomena and critical commentary, but Dr Hill must be judged, not by what he