A Benedictine Martyr in England. By Dom Bede Camm. O.S.B.
(Bliss, Sands, and Co. 7s. 6d.)—This volume, which is an account of the "life and times of the venerable servant of God, Dom John Roberts, 0.S.B.." a Roman Catholic "martyr" who was executed in 1610, is written with much enthusiasm. This is no doubt explained by the standpoint of the author, who describes himself as "an Oxford convert who had been drawn to the monastic life in a foreign country where he had gained the Faith, who had left England for a few weeks a Protestant tourist, to return after some years a priest and a monk." The writer is quite conscious of his discursiveness, which is beyond question considerable, and mars the symmetry of what might have been a valuable, and is certainly an interesting, book. The story of John Roberts, who was "the pioneer and the proto-martyr of the Benedictine revival, sealing the success of the movement by his blood," was certainly worth telling. But it might have been condensed to a much greater extent than it is here. Thus the author spends a page or two at the very beginning of his narrative in telling who his hero was not, before proving from the archives of the College of Valladolid, which are, indeed, of very great value, that he was born at Transweneth, in the county of Merioneth, in 1575 or 1576; that "his parents were of gentle blood, and were Catholics at heart, but like so many in those days, they seem to have yielded to the persecution and out- wardly conformed to the new religion of the State." The whole of the necessarily obscure story of Roberts is told on the same scale of magnitude and diffuseness, until he is captured, con- demned, and executed in the year 1610; all the details of the trial which are now discoverable are reproduced. At the same time, there are odds and ends of valuable historical information embedded in the book which may be found by the careful researcher. The author's enthusiasm is beautiful, if occasionally also hysterical.
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