24 JANUARY 1941, Page 16

Books of the Day

The Sense of the Past

IN his introduction to this collection of papers by the late Bishop of Truro, the Dean of Chichester says : "He was a better liturgist because he knew and loved human beings." And in a foreword Father Talbot, of the Community of the Resurrection, of which Frere was one of the foundation members, writes of "the industry, clarity and grace of a mind to which worship was the first of interests and the most usual of habits." Life and learning were not two, but one, in Dr. Frere. He edited texts and wrote numerous books and papers, which gave him a peculiar place in the esteem of men who had no share in his interests and were far removed from the chief objects of his life. They admired the exceptional simplicity, gracious and unadorned, of his style, the care and restraint with which he set out his evidence and reached his clear-cut conclusions. He wrote as a

master without a touch of masterfulness, and his work was studied with deep and genuine respect. This book reveals the hidden springs which nourished a singularly sincere and disci- plined mind. Nobody who reads the short articles reprinted here from the Truro Diocesan Gazette will find in them a trace of the passion and misunderstanding of the controversies which were the occasion of these simple and courteous statements.

Some of the reprinted papers are technical and, to those un- acquainted with the history of music and liturgy, are difficult. They were written by a specialist for specialists. Yet if they are read in the light of the historical papers, and especially of the papers written with reference to the discussions on the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, they can remind us of a truth too often forgotten. Most of us are compelled, and sometimes are content, to study history in the state of mind of a bibliophile who is ignorant of the contents of the books which he collects, or of a devotee of old buildings who has but a nodding acquaint- ance with the principles of architectural construction.

Dr. Frere was not like this. He loved and understood music ; but when he listened to plain chant he had more than an appre- ciative ear, he heard it as a man who knew all that could be known about- its history and the difficulties of its transmission. And when he spoke about the order of sentences in the conse- cration prayer and the framing of the Eucharistic canon, his sense of veneration was informed by a present awareness of every detail in their past. Hence he was far more independent than most people who hold strong opinions can be. The past, as past, did not tyrannise over him. As he patiently explained, a collect was not \ necessarily a good collect because Cranmer, if it was • Cranmer, put it into English (he knew all about Cranmer, just as he knew his colleagues on the episcopal bench), nor was a collect necessarily a bad collect because it had been deliberately composed in the twentieth century. Within the range of his wide interests, Dr. Frere was what every historian should try to be, whether he is a political, social or ecclesiastical historian. He cannot know very much, but he knows what he knows and where his knowledge stops. He refuses to dogmatise about people the springs of whose life are unfamiliar to him, as though he had the same right to judge a monk in a cloister as he has to judge Pepys, the diarist and naval administrator. He realises that if he knew more about other men and things his estimate of the men and things that he does know something about would be modified.

Midway between Dr. Frere's more technical papers on such

matters as Edwardine vernacular services, the use of Exeter and the palaeography of early mediaeval music, and his discussion of the Papacy or the Reformation come two or three papers which help the reader to see how the "technical," just because it also is an expression of the human, can affect our ideas about the more familiar aspects of history. The paper, based on the work of Joseph Braun, on the Christian altar is an admirable example ; so also is the delightful article (one of the York Minster Historical Tracts) on the York service books, with its word picture of a mediaeval congregation, and the lecture on Franciscan influence on religious services. And even the most " political " historian of the Reformation would do well to study Dr. Frere on the Anaphora. He would learn much.

From what must be called a more general point of view, the

finest essay in this volume is that on Lollardy and the Reforma- tion. Dr. Frere here emphasises, more strongly than the present writer would think it right to do, the influence of popular religious feeling in the time of King Henry VIII. The over- emphasis, if it be such, illustrates his width of view and his sympathy with the democratic. "If there were to be any

modern times at all . . . it was essential that this movement should take place." The words could be twisted into a strange view of history as an inevitable process. Coming from Dr. Frere, they were a simple expression by a man of great faith of his trust