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BOOK REVIEWS 661 Students of comparative law and legal history will undoubtedly enjoy Allen's brief discussion of the medieval writ of Assumpsit (once brought against a defendant not primarily because he had broken a promise, but because he had done wrongful harm in attempting to carry out his agreement with the plaintiff) as a common law ancestor of the modern law of contract. Allen's translations of the Apology and the Crito are smooth and clear. Appropriately subdivided, they are a joy to read and are fine additions to the ever-lengthening list of translations of Plato's dialogues. Because Allen also subdivides the introductory essays and appends to the entire volume a selected bibliography, an index of passages cited, and an index of names, the need for an index of topics is obviated. This is a book which should be read by all students of philosophy, classics, legal history, and comparative law. It is appropriate reading not only for insight into the problem of legal obligation but also for careful reflection on two of the most fundamental of Plato's dialogues. It is indeed a remarkable addition to the short shelf of genuinely significant interdisciplinary studies. STEPHEN J. SELEMAN Boston College Law School Newton Centre, Massachusetts. Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Vol. IV. Edited by IAN KER and THOMAS GoRNALL, S.J. Oxford: The Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Pp. xv + 4rn. $55.00. Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Vol. V. Edited by THOMAS GoRNALL, S.J. Oxford: The Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Pp. xv + 423. $65.00. The projected thirty-one volume edition of Newman;s letters and diaries nears completion with the publication of these two volumes, the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth to appear. As the first of those covering the Oxford Movement, these two volumes will undoubtedly contain the most familiar letters of the whole series, many of them having been seen already (at least in part) in various studies both of Newman and of the Oxford Movement. Nevertheless, to have them all, and to have them in full, alongside significant letters to Newman and relevant public documents, is something for which scholars should be grateful. The leitmotif of Volume IV (July 1833-December 1834), the tension of Church-State 'relations, expressed itself for Newman in events as nationally significant as the suppression of the Irish bishoprics and the .agitati~Ii for admillsion of dissenters to Oxford, and as parochial as the " scrape " result.. 66~ BOOR'. REVIEWS ing from his refusal to marry in church the unbaptized Ms. Jubber. The result was that Newman found himself beginning "to be a Radical practically " (35), determined that " the Church shall not crumble away without my doing in my place what I can to hinder it " (302) . The letters give full scope to the various facets of Newman's response: sometimes bold ("Men are made of glass-the sooner we break them and get it over, the better-52) or idealistic (" What is it to those who follow the Truth, whether their cause succeeds in their actual lifetime or not? We are laboring for that which is eternal, for that which must succeed at length "~ 166); at other times unsure ("for attacks make one timid "-253) or weary ("0 that we had one Bishop for us! ... this is what Satan has been toiling at this 300 years ... and now his day is coming "-312) . Overall, however, Newman would seem to have agreed with Samuel Rickards's judgment that the situation was " frightful: not because the enemies of the Church are so strong, but because its friends, if one may so say, are no friends at all" (119) . Volume V (Liberalism in Oxford, January 1885-December 1886) continues Newman's challenge to a "Church of England" whose "very title is an offence . . . for it implies that it holds, not of the Church Catholic but of the State" (801-2). The controversy over the appointment of R. D. Hampden as Regius Professor of Divinity is documented at great length, as is the debate over Subscription to the Articles. The latter will obviously be of interest to those concerned...

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