4 MARCH 1882, Page 22

Wiclif's Place in History. Three Lectures delivered before the University

of Oxford in 1881. By Montagu Burrows, M.A. (Isbis- ter and Co.)—The brilliant historical and literary genius of Mr. John Richard Green is perhaps nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in the pages devoted to the work and character of Wiclif, in his History of the English People. In Mr. Green's glowing narrative, Wiclif stands out the one pre-eminently great intellectual and moral personage of his day in England, and one rises from the perusal of the vivid representation of the Reformer and the situation supplied by the writer with the wish that we might have had from the same source an expanded account of the life and labours of the "Evangelical Doctor." Bat, while genius belongs to the elect few, talent and industry have claims of their own, and it seems to us that unpretentious talent and painstaking industry have seldom achieved more success than in the small volume before us. Professor Burrows does not come before us as an original inquirer. He is, indeed, careful to specify the sources from vvhioh he has drawn the main materials of his lectures. At the same time, he mast be credited with the distinction of having given us, within the limited space of 129 pages, such a clear, detailed, and comprehensive presentation of Wiclif and his life as entitles his little book to be widely read. The lectures are specially fitted to make the name of Wiolif, what it should have been several generations ago, a household word among us. The giant Reformer, before the Reformation, the vehement protester against the various superstitions which supplied, respectively, the grounds of the great appeal against the Vatican, in the sixteenth century ; the chief instrument in the creation of our modern English tongue ; the translator of the whole Bible into the vernacular, if only from the Vulgate Version ; the apostolic organ- iser, who, by his order of " poore priestes," penetrated well-nigh the whole of England with a Gospel almost identical with that of the modern "Evangelical party ;" the anticipator of the views of the " judicious Hooker," on the relations of Church and State ; the Master of Balliol College, and the foremost Oxford man of his day; while, at the same time, he is the one parish priest who can be safely conjectured to be the original from which Chaucer sketched his "Pore Persona of a Toon." Here, surely, is a m an for whose existence all Englishmen should be grateful.