The Saints and Missionaries of the Anglo-Saxon Era. Second Series.
By the Rev. D. C. 0. Adams. (Mowbray and Co. 55. net.) —There is no need to give a detailed notice of Mr. Adams's book. He tells the legends as he finds them, occasionally distinguishing between what he conceives to be the true and the false in them. To do this too continuously would be to take the gloss off the whole. These stories must be taken as representing. an attitude of mind, not facts. It is a serious mistake, however, to treat the Chronicle of Ingulphus as a veracious history. We have even the wonderful story of how "a certain eloquent and learned Abbot of Croyland, Joffrid," hired a farm ontside Cambridge, where he and four other Norman monks might teach the people, &c. This was "going one better" than the story of King Alfred founding University College. Mr. Adams very properly includes Alfred among his saints,—though he, as it were, apologises for it. It is strange that not even the lowest honour of ecclesiastical rank has been conferred on the great Sing; that St. Edward, of whom we know very little more than that he was killed by his stepmother Elfrida, should have been preferred before him.—With this book we may mention The Story of King Alfred, by Sir Walter Besant (G. Newnes, ls.), one of the- excellent "Library of Useful Stories," and, as might be expected, as excellent and as useful as any.
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