No one is going to quarrel with Mr. Stirling Taylor's
facts, which he presents both succinctly and wittily and in such a way as to make his Oliver Cromwell (Cape, illustrated, 12s. 6d.) eminently worth reading. But his inferences from the facts are another matter, and even the bare statement of some of them conveys only a part of the truth. "The chief fact of his life was that he ruled' by an Army." True, up to a point, but Cromwell was no mere militarist—not just a sabre-rattler, and moreover. the position was resistlessly forced on him. Again, to say that "his only permanent contribution to the English Constitution was a standing army" is to ignore the point that it was Cromwell's destructive efforts which made
subsequent constructive constitutionalism possible. Mr. Taylor is in fact rather inclined to fix his eyes on those parts of Cromwell's policy which led to immediate results ; a longer view is surely necessary, which will show how (in Gardiner's words) "ninny, if not all, of the experiments of the Common- wealth were but premature anticipations of the legislation of the nineteenth century." But a paragraph cannot criticize this book. It is certainly worthy of attention, if only for the fact that it trails a distinctly provocative historical coat, and we would very emphatically recommend it to our readers.
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