ANN, LADY FANSHAWE.
The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe, 1600-1672. (John Lane. 16s.)—Horace Walpole was less than just to the Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe when he described them as dwelling "chiefly on private domestic distresses, and what the aristocrats of that time were apprehending from their enemies." On neither count is his criticism correct, for Sir Richard Fanshawe's loyalty to the Stuart cause, his imprisonment after the battle of Worcester, and his enforced exile were "domestic distresses" of considerable historical importance ; and his wife's simple, resigned, even cheerful account of that troublous time is as little concerned with apprehensions of danger as with vain bemoaning of the family misfortunes. The Memoirs can make no claim to be a work of great literary merit, but though Lady Fanshawe was not a stylist, there is a directness about her writing that saves it from being wearisome; and one cannot but admire the optimism which she preserved through poverty, shipwreck, and all manner of vicissitudes of fortune, till the death of her husband, to whom she was very deeply attached, seems to have struck it a fatal blow. The present edition of the Memoirs is reprinted from the original manuscript in the possession of Mr. Evelyn John Fanshawe, of Parables, and its historical value has been very much enhanced by the pains which the editor has taken to annotate every point of interest which it contains. It has been his object to " supply a full setting to the picture of the Memoirs from the aides both of family annals and of general history," and he has brought unsparing energy and a wealth of valuable material to the task. He has used the Memoirs as a peg on which to hang a mass of seventeenth-century information, much of which, it is true, is old, but viewed in a new light; and much of which is new in the sense that it is easily accessible for the first time to the student of the period. The book is illustrated with portraits, reproductions of MSS., and photographs of scenes connected with the Memoirs.
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