1922 SHORT NOTICES 139 work of recent years in foreign periodicals, no comparison with other texts. If Miss Smith were dealing with well-known authorities or with a society whose workings were fairly familiar to the ordinary reader, these omissions, though regrettable, would not be so serious ; but she is dealing with one of the most difficult, as well as one of the formative, periods in European history. One who is no specialist in this field can only say that her book, which abounds in interesting matter, presents many of the perplexities of an original authority. Historical scholars often show a self-important and ostentatious sense of their obligations to others ; Miss Smith runs to the opposite extreme. Her attitude is not unfairly revealed in a note on p. 9 : ' That St. Maur ever came to Gaul has been disputed.' The casual reader would be surprised to learn that the ' story ' of St. Maur was the cause of one of the longest battles of scholars in modern times, a battle which may now be regarded as ended. F. M. P. Two years ago we called attention to the sumptuous reissue at the Cambridge University Press of The Collected Historical Works of Sir Francis Palgrave. 1 The third and fourth volumes which have now appeared (1921) complete The History of Normandy and of England. Unlike the earlier volumes, they include work of Palgrave's which has never been published before. The third volume opens with three introductory chapters (71 pages) on the ' General Relations of Mediaeval History ', in continuation of the three chapters bearing the same title at the beginning of volume. These were privately printed before the author's death in 1861. The fact that they were written separately and are only now incorporated with the History explains a good deal of repetition, not merely of matter but of phrase, which will be found on comparing them with book v, chap, iv (iv. 448 ff.). Of far greater importance is the history of Henry I and Stephen, filling three hundred pages of vol. iv. Its appearance sixty years after Palgrave's death reminds one of the way in which Leibniz's Annales were exhumed and printed by Pertz in 1843. It displays the author's immense and profound learning. He had no rival, unless perhaps Stapleton, in his knowledge of the Anglo-Norman families, and he writes of them with the intimacy of personal acquaintance. Age had not abated his vigour in narrative or the prodigality of his imagination. But it must be said that his habit of dictating his work to an amanuensis led to an undue reliance upon memory, and imagination plays too large a part in the history. Still one cannot but be amazed at the penetration with which Palgrave read his authorities. One example must suffice. He inferred from a letter of Gilbert Foliot that the Empress Matilda and Stephen both submitted their claims to the judgement of the pope in 1136, though this was ' totally unnoticed by the chroniclers ' (iv. 610). Some years after Palgrave's death the Historia Pontificalis, since proved to have been written by John of Salisbury, was discovered and published by Arndt in 1868, and the fact discerned by Palgrave was fully established. But oddly enough the appeal was placed by accredited historians at various dates between 1148 and 1152 ; and the true date, which we now know 1 Ante, vol. xxxiv, p. 447.
