Early English Art
SINCE the days of William Morris, one of whose multifarious
• activities was the discovery and study of early English manuscripts, there has been publication at intervals of large, expensive and specialist volumes on the manuscripts of this, one of the greatest periods of British an. Splendid books some of them are, such as that of Dr. E. G. Millar, or the facsimile edition of the Caedmon MS. in the Bodleian, but they are not retailed at what is called a popular price. One has to go to museum libraries to read them. The publication of this new, small volume, though its scope is naturally restricted, is therefore a very valuable contribution to the knowledge and enjoyment of the amateur. It is -devoutly to be wished that companion volumes might follow it. The Benedictional prepared for St. Aethelwold, now at Chatsworth, volume one of the Utrecht Psalters, "The Life of St. Guthlac of Croyland," with its roundels of fabulous demons, or one of the "Bestiaries " of the late twelfth century, would all be worth doing. A volume on the great Mathew Paris, "Master Hugo," or on de Brailes and others would be equally interesting. It is time that the study of this wonderfully fruitful epoch was made available to the general public. It has been entombed for too long in the archives of the specialist. In his preface Mr. Oakeshott pleads the very reasonable difficulties of precise attribution as regards this period, and later he suggests that the formalism of Anglo-Saxon art may seem strange to those of us accustomed to the art of later periods. This may well be true, but let these things not discourage the publication of more drawings, and if possible slightly better reproductions, though one has no wish to carp. As an afterthought, it is amazing how, through all the vicissitudes of the centuries, the British linear quality persists. The drawings in the Winchester Bible by the so-called "Master of the Leaping Figures," remind one curiously in their violence and lineas purity of Rowlandson's cartoons, and in our own day, though it may seem even more remote, of the drawings of Wyndham Lewis..
MICHAEL AYRTON.
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