Reeent Wiltshire Books, Articles, &c. 117 



Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath 

 preserved at Long^leat, Wiltshire. Vol. I., His- 

 torical Manuscripts Commission. London, 1904. 



Price 1a-. 9(/. Eoyal 8vo, pp. xv., 393. 



The introduction is by Mr. J. M. Rigg. The papers, he tells us, from 

 which the present volume is compiled are a fragment of the Portland 

 collection transferred to Longleat in consequence of the marriage, in 

 1759, of Thomas Thynne, 3rd Viscount Weymouth (created Marquis of 

 Bath 1789) with Lady Elizabeth, eldest daughter of William Bentinck, 

 3rd Duke of Portland, by Lady Margaret Cavendish, only daughter of 

 Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford. They were partly inherited and 

 partly acquired by correspondence, by the 2nd Duchess of Portland. 



Of local Wiltshire interest there is almost nothing, a few references 

 to elections, &c., in letters from Henry St. John to Robert Harley, 

 eleven letters from Dr. Gilbert Burnet to Sir Edward Harley, a large 

 mass of correspondence from and to Earl Rivers relating to his command 

 of the expedition to Seville and Cadiz in 1706, in some of which he 

 roundly accuses John Methuen, formerly envoy at Lisbon, of deliberate 

 treason, and insinuates that his son Paul, who succeeded him in the post, 

 was not much better. 



The bulk of the volume is filled with letters on affairs of state from 

 and to Lord Godolphin, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, the Duke of 

 Marlborough, the Duke of Shrewsbury, Henry St. John, and Queen 

 Anne. There is a long series of letters from Edward Young, author of 

 Night Thoughts, to the Duchess of Portland, and another series from 

 Elizabeth Montagu, also a number of interesting papers and letters 

 concerning the sieges of Brampton Brian and Hopton Castles. There 

 is a good index at the end. 



Noticed, Times Literary Supplemetit, Dec. 16th, 1904. 



Thomas Moore. By Stephen Gwynn. English Men 

 of Letters Series. London : Macmillan & Co. 



1905. Cloth, 2s. net, pp. 203. 



This book consists of the following sections:— Boyhood and Early 

 Poems; Early Manhood and Marriage; " Lalla Rookh " : Period of 

 Residence abroad ; Work as Biographer and Controversialist; The Decline 

 of Life; General Appreciation ; A Bibliographical List giving the dates 

 of the first editions of his various works from a privately-circulated 

 pamphlet by Andrew Gibson ; Index. It is needless to say that it sup- 

 plies well the need of a short account of Moore's life, and an appreciation 

 of his true place In literature. After being extravagantly popular and 

 belauded, as few other poets have been, during his own lifetime, his 

 works have come to be as unreasonably belittled of late years. Mr. 

 Gwynn says : — " There is of course a fashion in verse as in anything else, 

 and Moore's excellences are precisely the least congenial to the current 

 taste in criticism." " He was never, and never wished to be, in the 

 least esoteric ; his object was to be understood by all. A poet who 

 insists upon this aim must perhaps sacrifice something, but he may also 



