3 AUGUST 1918, Page 17

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge has done a service

to students of all ages in issuing two cheap and well-printed pamphlets containing Selections from Matthew Paris and Selections from Giraldus Cambrensis (9d. each), edited, with a few notes and a glossary, by Miss C. A. J. Skeel. The mediaeval Latin is easy, and the well-chosen extracts illustrate the history of both Church and State. It would be a good thing—though it may be heresy to say so— if our famous old chroniclers were read in our Public Schools. Matthew Paris and the pugnacious Gerald of Wales are highly interesting authors, for whom Latin was by no means a dead language, and it is absurd to boycott them because they could not write so well as Cicero or Caesar.