English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer. By W.
H. Schofield, Ph.D. (Macmillan and Co. 'Is. 6d.)—This is the second of a series of six volumes which is to give the history of the English literature of some three centuries. (Professor Schofield stops short of Chaucer, whose name, however, frequently appears, and to whom he is devoting the volume which is to follow that now noticed, but includes some writers whose literary activities belong to a time after Chaucer's birth.) It is scarcely a popular subject. An average reader would have difficulty in giving half-a-dozen names connected with it. There is a long roll of writers in Latin, Florence of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Walter Map, Matthew Paris, and Grosseteste among them, but these do not come within the scope of this book. Of English work there is a certain succession. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle covers nearly a century. Then come various works chiefly devotional ; in 1200 we have the romance of " Brut," and about the same time Professor Schofield puts the lyric " Summer is y-comen in," and for the next century a number of legends, songs, and devotional pieces, but with no conspicuous name. Perhaps the first that stands out also is Richard Rolle of Hampole. In the fourteenth century we have Langland, Wycliffe, and Lydgate. It will easily be understood that Professor Schofield's task is made much more laborious by this fact. We cannot speak too highly of the industry and care with which he has accomplished it. To most readers the most inter- esting part will be the romance, Arthurian and other; but whatever the subject it will be found adequately treated.
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