Gross: Sources and Literature of English History 541 as present value goes, he might have saved his labor, for here is all his private bibliographical lore in print for the public. If he is a teacher, a dubious remembrance may rise in his mind that a certain course of bib- liographical lectures will have to be rewritten, now that so much of its contents is in a shape to which his students can be referred once for all. He may guess that the pleasant sense of indispensableness to a group of colleagues and students from being the sole source of information about a little special field is a sensation to be experienced no more, now that Dr. Gross is at everybody's service. But after all these are part of the price we pay for progress, familiar in the history of the race as of the in- dividual, and in material as well as intellectual fields. What is really important is that we have at last a full, scholarly, well classified bibli- ography of English medieval history, quite equal to anything that exists for the continental countries. Wattenbach's Deutschlands Gesihichtsqiiellen, Lorenz's continuation of the same work, and Franklin's Sources de V Histoire de France, which suggest themselves from the similarity of the period they cover in their respective countries, are really not similar works, since they discuss only primary sources, while Dr. Gross's bibliography includes a description of secondary works also. The three works with which it is most distinctly comparable are therefore, Dahlmann-Waitz-Steindorff, Quellenhuch der deutschen Geschi elite, Monod's Bibliographic de l' Histoire de France, and Pirenne's Bibliograpliie dc I' Histoire de Belgi(]ue. Dr. Gross's bibliography does not cover as long a period as either of these works, Dahlmann-Waitz in its latest edition coming all the way down to 1890, Monod to 1789, and Pirenne to 1598 for all of the Nether- lands, and to 1830 for the Belgian provinces. Correspondingly the Eng- lish bibliography contains only a few more than 3000 items, while that of Germany contains more than 6500, that of France more than 4500, and even that of the Netherlands, 2084. On the other hand, for the period which his work does cover. Gross includes articles in periodicals and in transactions of societies, not merely independent works, as do the other three books. Again, Gross distributes his titles into a much more de- tailed classification in groups and subjects, although the general twofold distinction into works which can be grouped under successive chrono- logical periods, and those which are not so grouped are alike in all four works. But the most fundamental and important of all points of com- parison is that Dr. Gross gives descriptions, analyses, criticisms or esti- mates of a large proportion of the books he names, while all the other bibliographies restrict themselves to a mere statement of the title, place and date of publication, editions, size and form. There can be no doubt of the superiority of this method of treatment. A mere list of titles leaves all but the barest fact of publication still to be looked up by the searcher, whereas some further information as to character, contents and relations to other books, and some expert judgment as to merits, often in- dicates the value or valuelessness of the book for the purposes for which the student wishes the references. In addition there is the innate inter- VOL. VI. — 36.
