Vie de Saint Hugues, Chartreux, Eve'que de Lincoln. Par un
Religieux de In Grande Chartreuse. (Burns and Oates.)—The establishment of the French Carthusians at Parkminster, in Sussex, one of the consequences of the French law against religious congregations, has borne fruit in a number of works illustrating the history of the order in England, of which the present volume is the last. Hugh of Lincoln, however, as one of the greatest and most loveable of our medieval Churchmen, has not wanted biographers in England. Besides the notice in Newman's Anglican " Lives of the Saints," and Canon Dimock's edition of the "Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis," and the "Metrical Life," even Mr. Fronde has made the saint the subject of a sympathetic study. Indeed, Hugh's good sense and good humour are as irresistible now as they were in the days of Henry II. and his son. The present volume is sumptuously printed, but the author has no idea of literary graces, and, what is worse, is insufferably prolix. Historically, the Life does not add anything to our knowledge of the saint, and its devotional purpose is rather outside the scope of our criticism, though here, too, a greater lightness of touch would have been welcome. In addition to the sources already known, the author has drawn upon a French edition of the " Magna Vita," published at the end of the seventeenth century, but it only differs from the English edition in the larger number of miracles it records.
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