Dictionary of National Biography, whose delightful quarterly volumes cost me so many good working days in the year, in so much as, being consulted, they prove so much more fascinating than any mere work of reference has a right to be. Brie?y Macfarlane, the author of The Dutch in the Medway, was a wandering Scot, who, after travelling through half the countries of Europe (not in the desultory ten days out-and-home fashion of modern times, but devoting no less than eleven years to Italy and sixteen months to Turkey), settled down in London to a life of steady industry as a man of letters and a writer of history and historical fiction.