SOME BOOKS OF THE lormi.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent review.]
The July number of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester (Longmans, 2s. net.), which is, in fact, a learned publication of great interest and value, as well as a chronicle of the library's progress, announces that 38,002 volumes have now been collected and sent to Louvain, to replace the books burnt by the Germans. The sixth centenary of Dante's death was marked by an exhibition of the Manchester Dante collec- tion, including five MSS. and 6,000 printed volumes ; the only edition of any value not in the John Rylands Library is the fourth, printed at Naples about 1473, of which only three or four copies are known. Professor Tout contributes a very able study of " The Place of St. Thomas of Canterbury in History," originally delivered as a lecture at Canterbury on July 7th, 1920, the seventh centenary of the translation of the martyr's remains to the shrine in the cathedral. It is not generally known that St. Thomas " first in England set apart the octave of Pentecost for the special worship of the Holy Trinity, choosing the day not so much because it was the date of his episcopal consecration, but because it was the day of the first mass which the newly priested prelate had ever sung." England adopted the new feast, and Rome ratified it nearly two centuries later.
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