Reviews.

students of Masonic history found neither the materials nor the means of scientific study , of its history , its archaeology or its traditions . For many years until quite lately without any few exceptions , and even now with comparatively a limited

number of students , the older histories of Anderson , and Preston , and Laurie , and Oliver are accepted as the tost books of Masonic history and enquiry . About twenty years ago there arose in this country among a very small band of

enthusiastic Masons , a desire to see the history of Freemasonry treated entirely on tho principles of critical consideration and literary truth . They thought that too much credit was given to dates , and statements , and " oxcerpta" and " fragmenta " which

, seemed to them of somewhat dubious authority . Tho dates given in all Masonic books seemed to them marked by suspicion , and certainly abounding in anachronisms . Tho facts asserted and tho persons named did not exactly tally with the known facts

and persons of authentic history . While some of the evidences so often quoted seemed to bear externally and internally the tokens of grave unsatisfactoriness , and

in one or two osriecial instances appeared too clearly to be the " fraus pia " of some zealous but most mistaken brother . Such a view necessarily was not a popular view then , and it is not a popular view now . As a general rule the " quieta non

movere " is the foremost vieAv of the historical student , as it is of some contented corporation , or of the political optimist . And no doubt a good deal my be said for it , and the same great authority , who gave us our adage at the beginning of this

review , was quite right in a general way when he advised his son not to " meddle with those that are given to change . " But historic truth , like water , will always find its level , and thus in Masonic enquiry tho genius of critical treatment and scientific

study , seems to bo as it were snapping insunder the ligatures with which carelessness or indifference have bound it down to routine tradition , and to be emancipating herself from the swaddling clothes , of a too easy acquiesence in long credited

associations , a far too uncritical acceptance of our older annals . But yet here , also , comes in again that formal law of all historical research , which we lately alluded to . The most modern

view of our true Masonic history is , after all only that of Anderson and Preston , certainly , and to some extent of Laurie and Oliver , though reproduced to-day in the brighter colours and newer garniture of this nineteenth century .

The modern and critical view of our history is , that , it is to be traced back to the operative guilds . "Well such is really tho contention alike of Anderson and Preston , substantially , and Anderson ' s much blamed history of 1723 , is but the legend

of tho guilds put into English prose . No doubt it is true , that Anderson gravely assorts as a fact in history , much that can be after all only looked upon as a traditionary legend which percolating through many ages and many mindswith much of

un-, avoidable error and none of [ Lidos attaching to it , confronts our colder and critical gaze to-day . And what Anderson reproduced somewhat expanded in 1738 , and Uoorthouck again treated more diffusively hi 1784 , Preston in his later editions altered

and reduced to a deliberate system of history , appending several documents and illustrative authorities . Where Anderson drew his main authority from is not so far decisively ascertained , he seems to have used more than one Constitution , and ono which so far has escaped research , but which was hi all probability the original of that one which forms the basis of the

so-called York Constitution originally published by Krause . Anderson may have seen and probably did what is now generally termed Matthew Cooke ' s MS ., though whether he was acquainted with the Masonic MS . Poem seems

a little doubtful . Preston studied carefully the Antiquity Constitution , and . alludes to others , and probably saw one or more of these in the Grand Lodge archives . He had also " excerpta " from sources which are now hidden from usand gave in

, general a correct account of a Latin MS . in Christ Church Library , the Register of Wm . Molash , though he curiously enough gives a wrong name and makes an uncritical use of the MS . All that it does prove and that is a good deal , is , that a lodge of which

the names are given , was attached to the monastery at Canterbury . Preston ' s view is clearly that Freemasonry is only the perpetuation of the old guilds . Laurie partly accepts it , and partly disavows it , and Oliver having in his earlier histories clearly