CURRENT LITERATURE.
The King's Book of Sports. By L. A. Govett. (Elliot Stock.)— This is a sufficiently interesting little volume of the antiquarian sort, although it may be doubted if it is necessary at this time of day to say so much on so essentially slight a subject. For The King's Book of Sports is in reality but a Royal proclamation, issued' first by James I. in 1618, and afterwards reissued by Charles I. in 1633, having for its object the authorisation of certain sports on Sunday after evening service. Mr. Govett's excuse, therefore, for printing a good deal which, moreover, is not quite unfamiliar, about the character of James, and about Sunday observance, is a. rather slender one. Besides, if stories must be told of James, they ought to be reliable. Mr. Govett is not always accurate. Thus, he tells us that, " one day, brought to a solitary island on the coast of Fife to admire a fine view, he shouted Treason !' like a child till he was taken home in safety." Here Mr. Govett makes out James to be much more of a coward than he really was. What really happened was this. Sir George Bruce of Culross, who owned coal-mines worked under the sea, took James to see them. The coal- shaft ended in an island. When James found himself there, sur- rounded by water, he called out " Treason ! "—an act which was cowardly no doubt, but which was not perhaps so very surprising when one recalls the Gowrie Conspiracy. Mr. Govett's excuse for giving so much of a prefatory character about James is, of course, that it is necessary to understand his character as a preliminary to understanding his declaration on the subject of " Sports." This is no doubt, quite true ; yet such an explanation need not have been so long as it is. When Mr. Govett deals with the actual "declara- tion," and treats of the political and social history of the period in which it was issued and reissued, he is entertaining, and even not a little edifying. Altogether, this will be found by many an eminently useful work of the " historical side-lights " type.
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