SCCTAL LIFE IN STUART ENGLAND. By Mary Coate. (Methuen. 6s.
net.) SCCTAL LIFE IN STUART ENGLAND. By Mary Coate. (Methuen. 6s. net.) Whether by reason of politics, Bodley, or Clarendon, the seventeenth century seems to belong to Oxford. Miss Coate, in the wake of Sir Charles Firth's documented enthusiasm, has written a book indispensable to the social or literary historian, and eminently readable in itself. It is perhaps a mistake to regard the Stuart dynasty as homogeneous for this purpose. The Restoration makes a change too violent to have any but the deepest roots in the previous reigns. The growth of psychology in the seventeenth century is seldom appraised rightly, and the effect of wars considered politically only. We now know more of the effects of war on youth, and perhaps that knowledge makes our sympathy more penetrating, and our inspection of the embroidery of the times more expert. Neither overloading nor under-illustrating, Miss Coate uses her documents to good purpose. Her historical balance always gives form to details hitherto used for mere curiosity. Vivid glimpses show us over Balliol College a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house," a naval chaplain noting No prayers to-day, by reason of business," and nurses forbidden " to entice patients into public-houses to drinke with them." An excellent bibliography makes one hope for an enlarged edition in which chapter and verse will be gir, en for the many fascinating quotations.
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