says, 'After a scene with Blifil, the air is cleared by a laugh of Tom Jones.' Why, Tom Jones in my holding is as big a rogue as Blifil. Before God he is—I mean the man is selfish according to his nature as Blifil according to his." (London Times, Weekly Edition, July 21, 1911, p. 581.)

Mention should not be omitted of the remarkably full descriptive bibliography, prepared with the collaboration of Mr. Frederick Dickson. Incidentally this reveals the fact, to any not already aware of it, that the Fielding collection at the Yale Library, largely Mr. Dickson's gift, is so notable as to make New Haven a proper place of pilgrimage for all students of the novelist. RAYMOND M. ALDEN

Stanford University

ENGLISH PAGEANTRY: AN HISTORICAL OUTLINE. Vol. 1. By Robert Withington. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1918.

The task of reviewing half a book is not an easy one, nor is it fair to the author. The reviewer, in his ignorance of what the unpublished volume may contain, is unable to form an idea of the whole structure, is reluctant to censure the author for omissions which may turn out to be supplied later, cannot judge of certain important duties of scholarship in the absence of bibliography and index, and in many ways is annoyingly hampered. From all these causes my estimate of Mr. Withington's book is bound to suffer, and I beg indulgence for any faults of judgment arising from them.

English Pageantry is in many ways typical of the research by which a Doctorate of Philosophy is won at our universities, not indeed of all kinds of research, but certainly of a very popular kind-the omnium-gatherum. Such works bring inevitably to my mind a saying of Henry Adams about his own students of history at Harvard: "The boys worked like rabbits, and dug holes all over the field of archaic society; no difficulty stopped them; unknown languages yielded before their attack.

Their science had no system, and could have none, since its subject was merely antiquarian." What was true of graduate research in Adams' day was also true in mine, when Mr. Withington and I were fellow rabbits. That he was burrowing as intensely as I was, in the same breathless anxiety lest some small piece of fact be overlooked, his published volume shows clearly. He must have had, as I did, an uncontrolled desire to make all knowledge (in the field of his thesis) his province, to gather into one vast heap all that had been written upon his subject. This, as I remember, was the instinctive desire of

the group of us who were studying together for our examinations. It was not taught us by our professors, but at least they gave it a tacit kind of encouragement.

Such a desire would doubtless be right and fruitful in the case of a small, carefully limited subject. But with one like English pageantry, which is neither small nor limited, the results of research are staggering. Within the two hundred and fifty-odd large pages of this first volume are displayed vast stores of fact regarding folk-mumming, processions, giants, wild men, pageant characters (Biblical, historical, romantic, allegorical, mythological, symbolic), tournaments, disguisings, masques, and six hundred years of royal entries. One feels confident that, so

far as it is humanly possible, not one royal entry between 1300 and 1900 has been overlooked. One is overwhelmed by the sheer weight of fact. The notes are prodigious; they keep a hubbub on every page, clambering well up toward the middle, and frequently past it; a full half of the book belongs to them. In them, as in the text above, Latin and French jostle the English. (Why is it "unscholarly" to translate long passages from a foreign tongue?) The reader is deafened by the mingled voices of medieval chroniclers, eighteenth century antiquarians, and the hosts of Harley, Bodley, and Cotton. The burrowing has been thorough. One must admit that nowhere else have so many facts regarding English pageantry been gathered together. Unquestionably good work has been done in thus creating a useful book of reference. No historian of pageantry hereafter can afford to neglect it; he will be sure to find in its two compendious volumes the fact which he is in search of-almost sure, I had better say, because it is the fatality of such omnibus books as this to lose facts as well as to gather them.

As a momument to unwearied diligence, then, English Pageantry has a quantity of grandeur. But as a work of scholarly art it leaves much to be desired. Mr. Withington is censured by his own subtitle, "An Historical Outline," for if there is anything the book lacks it is outline. That, I should say, is its chief fault. It lacks above all things what glorifies the best French theses, and the best of our own too-the quality of structure. The architectural purpose, the sense of line and balance are wanting. One does not feel here the faculty of choice, that highest attribute of the artist of whatever kind, because choice cannot be felt where nothing is rejected. Mr. Withington does not appreciate that what appears in print should be only a small part of what the artist in his researches has turned over. Consequently, instead of the clear line and the sufficiency of illustration which characterize the work of a Bédier, or a Paris, or a Manly, he amasses details which upon examination prove to be ineffective from either of two points of view. For if his desire is to collect and describe every instance of pageant mounting in

England, he has evidently attempted the impossible, and on the other hand if his desire is to outline clearly a stage of development, he has overloaded his design. For example, in order to make clear the character of pageants used in royal entries before 1432, it surely is not necessary to summarize every recorded instance of such entry, only to report in many cases that no pageants can be found.

If Mr. Withington should reply to this criticism that his intention was not to write a thesis, but to compile a reference book, I would still insist that the task could have been done more artistically. I would point to a couple of reference books which have been much in his hands during the preparation of English Pageantry, namely Ward's English Dramatic Literature, and Chambers' Medieval Stage. Both these books rest upon deep erudition, yet both of them have the quality, which English Pageantry lacks, of being easy to read. Mr. Withington's failure in this respect lies mainly in two unfortunate habits for which he is not so much to blame as his training. The first of these is the constant interruption of the straightforward exposition by long citations, in old and modern English, in French and Latin, of illustrative passages. The art of choosing these passages is one involving judgment, a sense of what belongs to art as well as what belongs to scholarship. The values of mass, proportion and accent are lost where the text bristles with citations. The second great error lies in the handling of notes. Here again I would point to Ward and Chambers. Their example, like that of the best scholars, teaches that there should be a clear line of difference between text and notes. These notes are primarily meant to supply bibliographical material accompanying the textual exposition, and they may also be sparingly used for brief discussions of matters relating to the text but not essentially part of it. They should be reduced to the minimum, so that the reader's eye will be called as little as possible from one part of the page to another. But a bad modern custom has grown up of stuffing the notes with every thing for which the writer has not made a place in the text, with the result that these two parts of the book which ought to be kept distinct, are inextricably jumbled together. English Pageantry is even exaggerated in its adherence to this custom. The notes actually exceed the text in bulk. They constitute a second volume which one must read simultaneously with the principal one, and this double reading becomes exceedingly trying. For example, perhaps the most interesting of the problems raised is the debt of pageantry to Lydgate in the matter of allegory. It should have been treated definitely in one place, yet not only is it scattered throughout the book, but some of the most important of Mr. Withington's statements on the subject are casually thrown into the footnotes. In short, the school of thesis

writing to which Mr. Withington belongs, instead of culling, rejecting, and shaping its materials, heaps them into a pile, like blocks of unhewn stone, among which the reader must climb laboriously, not without danger to his shins.

Such is the criticism I have to make against all books, and there are many published yearly besides Mr. Withington's, which are built after the omnium-gatherum method. As Henry Adams said, their science has no system, and can have none, since its subject is merely antiquarian. Let me now describe English Pageantry in more detail.

Mr.

The first and only published volume (there is one more to follow) contains five lengthy chapters, on Elements of the Pageant, Remarks on the Tournament and Early Masque, the Royal Entry 1298-1558, Elizabethan Pageants, and the Royal Entry in the Seventeenth Century. The first two chapters are heterogeneous collections of elements, such as Folk-Mumming, Processions, Men in Armor, Minstrels, Giants, Animals, "Jack-inthe-Green," "Whiffler," Wild Men, the Tournament, the Disguising, the Masque, etc. The effect is not happy. Withington, in so arranging his materials, had a purpose in mind, which was to clear out of the way all the contributing elements of pageantry before beginning upon the history of the thing itself. Such, at least, is my understanding of the following statement, at the beginning of Chapter 1: "Later chapters will trace the development of the pageant from the thirteenth century down to our own times; it is the task of this to treat some of the elements that have been drawn from folk-custom, modified by the Church, or borrowed from metrical romance. I shall disregard chronology, partly because one must, in dealing with folklore material, and partly because chronology is here not a thing of great importance." Mr. Withington, then, knew what he was about. Furthermore, he perceived that his method would have the "unfortunate result" of making his opening chapter "seem chaotic." It is chaotic, and I wonder whether any method which launches a history in chaos is justifiable. Again I refer the author to his subtitle. No outline could live in the seething gulf of detail which constitutes the opening chapter. Nor is the promise contained in the sentences quoted above fulfilled, at least in this first volume. Later chapters do not "trace the development of the pageant from the thirteenth century down to our own times." They trace only the development of the pageants attending a royal entry. But if the reader is curious to know the general state of pageantry at any epochsay during the thirteenth century or under Henry VII-he will have to go unsatisfied. Mr. Withington believes that "chronology is here not a thing of great importance." Perhaps not to him, but it may be of some importance to a clear presentation of the subject. The average reader, I feel sure, would prefer

to be introduced more gradually into the subject of English pageantry, instead of being thrown in to flounder as best he can to standing ground.

There are evidences that Mr. Withington, besides being without a clear plan of procedure, was not sure of the boundaries of his subject, and consequently put in both too much and too little. From the Introduction I quote the following paragraph:

In the following pages I shall, with the exception of a chapter on pageantry in the United States, limit myself to England. There are, however, certain continental influences which cannot be ignored; these I have, so far as possible, dismissed to the footnotes. We are here more concerned with the development of pageantry in England than with international influences, which must be considered elsewhere.

With these words in mind the reviewer is puzzled to account for certain sporadic excursions to the continent which seem not to fall within the class of "continental influences which cannot be ignored." For instance, on p. 162 he finds a detailed notice, including more than a page of French, concerning the entry of Louis XII into Paris in 1498. This entertainment is introduced "as an example of a French royal-entry," and is dismissed with the comment that "it is much like English pageantry of this time." Other examples of unmotivated excursions to the continent are the descriptions of the entry of Louis XII's queen into Paris in 1513 (p. 171), of the historical pageant at Bruges in 1515 (p. 172), of the entry of Henri II into Paris in 1549 (p. 187), and of the entry of Charles IX in 1571 (p. 204). In such cases, if nowhere else, the faculty of choice should have worked, but Mr. Withington seems not to know what to reject.

Yet

If he sometimes errs on the side of too generous inclusion, he also at times errs on the opposite side. Lydgate, for example, because of his possible influence in allegorizing the pageant and because he is the first person of importance whom history can associate with pageant development, stands out as the most important figure treated in this first volume. He is discussed in several passages and referred to in many more. there is nowhere a complete or systematic exposition of Lydgate's work in pageantry; the reader apparently is assumed to know all the facts about him, and to have read the pageants he wrote. Again, that industrious laborer at public pageants in the time of Elizabeth, Thomas Churchyard, who has many interesting things to say about the technique of his business, receives only passing mention. No attempt is made to examine his writings and to estimate his importance.

Evidently what has interested Mr. Withington particularly has been the collection of materials illustrating the pageant processions; these are the materials in which the book is richest. The relations of the pageants to literature and to the life