Cleanness. Edited by Sir Israel Gollancz. (H. Milford. 5s. net.)—Sir
Israel Gollancz is re-editing the more notable of the mediaeval English poems with patient scholarship. Cleanness, an alliterative poem, perhaps written in Lancashire about the year 1350, is admirably annotated in this new volume of the series. We could but wish that the verse had some faint trace of the genuine poetic quality. The laboured paraphrase of Biblical stories is singularly unattractive. It must be remem- bered, however, that at a time when there were no Bibles in English and when the study of the Latin Bible by the educated laity was not encouraged by the Church, such versified para- phrases as Cleanness served a useful purpose. The editor lays stress on the lesson of purity which is enforced in the poem. Probably its mediaeval readers or hearers valued it more for the detailed Biblical narratives of the Deluge, of Sodom, and of the fall of Belshazzar.
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