Sir Richard Church. By Stanley Lane-Poole. (Longmans and Co.) —This
sketch of Sir Richard Church's military career has already appeared in that most valuable record of deserving and unknown historical services, the English Historical Review. Richard Church ran away from school to enlist, and his father, a Quaker, putting the best face he could on the matter, procured him a commission. He went first to Egypt, which he disliked, and then to Sicily and Capri, which island he held with his superior officer in the very face of Joseph and Murat ; to the Ionian Islands, where he disciplined the unruly Greeks into respectable soldiers, afterwards to liberate Greece ; to the Italian Peninsula, where he took part in a campaign and crushed the Brigands of Apulia ; and finally to Greece, where he will ever be remembered. His was a life of varied service, not loudly known to fame, but one of which the usefulness becomes apparent in after-years. Mr. Lane-Poole has scarcely been able to do either himself or his subject justice in some seventy pages, all too scant for so kaleidoscopic a career as Church's was. We have enough; with some letters, to show the determination of the man, his talents, and the singular power of command and of charm which enabled him to lead a suspicious, wayward, and unprin- cipled crowd of Greek patriots. Mr. Lane-Poole is not at his best in describing a campaign, but he is thoroughly appreciative, and therefore a good biographer.
Previous page
