A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE ROBBERIES AND MURDERS OF THE
MOST NOTORIOUS PIRATES. By Captain Charles Johnson. Edited by Arthur L. Hay- ward. With Reproductions of all the original engravings. (Routledge. 25s.)—It is like meeting an old friend in new company to come upon Israel Hands in this reprint from an eighteenth-century work which had such vogue that it went through four editions in two years. (This reprint is from the enlarged fourth edition of 1726.) From Johnson's quarry Stevenson dug his Treasure Island—And a score of other romancers have done the like. The main interest of the book, however, lies in its acceptance of piracy as one of the constant facts. All these adventures are related with no more sense of anything exceptional than a journalist could feel in noting some border fighting in Macedonia : and they are worth reading because they must give every one some idea of what the seas may be when they are not policed. Every land inhabited has its customs more or less settled : but the roving communities of men without a country or inherited tradition were infinitely worse than the most savage tribes. Ikre and there, there are fine tales of skill and daring : the best story in the book is of May Read who intermittently masqueraded as a man but dropped the disguise when she fell in love. Once, knowing that her lover had a quarrel, and was not equal to his antagonist, she let him fix an hour for the duel, but contrived to push the opponent into a fight with heiSelf two hours earlier—and to kill her man. Mr. Hayward's notes are brief and useful.
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