The False Dmitri. Described by British Eyewitnesses. Edited by Sonia
E. Howe. (Williams and Norgate. 6s. net.)—The " false " Demetrius, the Perkin Warbeck of Russia, claimed to be a son of Ivan the Terrible, and was thus a contemporary of James I. and Shakespeare. He plotted against Boris Godunov, whom we now all know as the hero of Mussorgsky's opera, and after the death of Boris he won the throne by the help of a Polish army. He seems to have been a clever man, but his Western tastes offended the nation, and his brutal Polish allies set up a reign of terror in Moscow. Thus he soon came to a violentl end. The English merchants settled in Moscow, "who have in al changes been well beloved by the Russians" (according to a contem- porary), sent home reports of these strange doings, and Mrs. Howe has had the happy idea of collecting and reprinting their narratives, especially the " Bloudie and Terrible Massacre" of 1607 and Brereton's " Newes of the Present Miseries of Rushia " of 1614, together with the story of an English volunteer—one of twelve hundred men who went to fight against Poland in 1609. We are reminded that Poland at this time played the wolf to Russia's lamb—a fact which Polish apologists are careful to forget.
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