Mr. Masefield has written a very interesting introduction to Messrs.
Dent's eight-volume edition of Haleluyt's Voyages (E3 the set). The Elizabethan sailors drank a gallon of beer a day and ate a pound of beef and a pound of biscuits a day ; they suffered terribly from scurvy and dysentery, but at times their life was pleasant, particularly when the beer was . not acid and the prizes they took were a compensation for, the scurvy, dysentery and boredom they suffered in the intervals between- fighting. .Mr. Masefield makes their lives and the ships they. ventured in Jive again for us : he says very truly that the beauty of sails is of a recent yesterday, for the iron sailing-ship has "an indefinable air of potential swiftness that no entirely . wooden ship would ever have attained." Messrs. Dent are to be congratulated on the first two volumes of this beautiful edition. The binding, print, and illustrations are all that can be desired.
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