A volume of the letters of Bishop Hensley Henson, edited
by Canon Braley and just published by the S.P.C.K. at 15s., is full of the kind of pungent observations that might be expected in Dr. Henson's correspondence. For one who (in 1900) declared that an ideal Editor of the Guardian would, among other things, " back the New Criticism against the mediaevalist " he is surprisingly fierce (in 1947) against the Bishop of Birmingham's The Rise of Christianity, and it is interesting that in one letter referring to "Barnes' melan- choly book " he affirms his own incapacity to profess belief in the Virgin Birth. Less surprising is his characteristic assessment of the late Bishop of London: " He is attempting to govern a Church in the spirit of an enthusiastic High Church curate in the fervour and confidence of his first curacy." An obiter dictum on the present Archbishop of York I will not quote ; I am not sure that Dr. Henson's editor should have. But there is room for one nicely- chiselled sentence on another distinguished- prelate, Cosmo Lang: " He had, like most Scots, an unerring instinct in the choice of friends, drawing towards the titled and socially or professionally influential with the sure procedure of iron moving to a magnet." There is a touch, often more than a touch, of mordant epigram in almost every letter.
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