Shorter Notices
THIS twopence-coloured biography skims brightly over the sur- face of Knox's life. There is plenty of chat about Mistress Elizabeth and Mistress Anne, about dances at Holyrood and Maitland of Lethington's almond eyes ; but Mr. Preedy makes no attempt to set Knox in relation to the European background, and never reminds us, for instance, that there was a powerful Catholic revival on the Continent when Knox came home in 1559, a fact which makes it easier to understand his behaviour to Scottish Catholics. Mr. Preedy deals cursorily with Knox's ambiguous attitude towards civil authority ; he calls Calvinism bad names, but does nothing to elucidate it, and the "freedom from polemics," which he claims for his book, works out as a freedom to make as sweeping condemnations of Knox's opponent Mary (" quite unfit to reign ") as of Knox himself (" one of the most benighted of men intellectually "). Certainly the book does nothing to displace Lord Eustace Percy's study of three years ago (which is not included in Mr. Preedy's biblio- graphy) as the standard modern work on John Knox.
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