19 NOVEMBER 1921, Page 25

Pearl. Edited by Sir Israel Gollancz, Litt.D., F.B.A. (Chatto and

Windus. 7s. Od. net.)—Perle, the fourteenth-century elegy, receives a most appropriate setting in the Mediaeval Library indeed, it could have no better form than as a small

" boke with leuez aware." Sir Israel Gollancz's translation Into modern English which faces the mediaeval text should make it quite easy for anyone fully to appreciate the original poem. The four curious illustrations in the MS. are reproduced, and in addition to notes and a glossary, Boccaccio's Olympia is reprinted with an English translation by the editor. Attempts have been made to prove that Pearl was derived from Boccaccio's eclogue. What similarities there are between the two poems are more probably due to the common methods of mediaeval mysticism.