Following the poetic texts and their apparatus, they provide a second introduction, this time treating published commentary on the verse letters from Donne’s lifetime through 2013, a date that Digital Donne will extend. Next, each letter receives its own critical introduction, followed by detailed notes and glosses. The general introduc- tion to this section discusses dates and circumstances, the occasionally disputable sub- ject of genre, versification, religious and philosophical themes, letters to men, letters to women, and, finally, under a separate heading, eight letters to the Countess of Bedford. Claiming more of Donne’s poetic correspondence than any other addressee, the poet and patroness Lucy of Bedford has drawn the most contradictory commentaries over the years, as critics guess at the relationship of the poet—or his fictive persona—to the woman to whom he directs his lines—or to the personas he invents for her. Through her marriage at age thirteen, Lucy Harrington became Countess of Bedford in 1595; she died four years before Donne in 1627. Of Sidney/Essex/Dudley heredity, she was an educated and distinguished figure of the Jacobean court as well as the patron- ess of several poets, Donne included. She served as godmother to his second daughter. Donne’s verses praise her beauty and intellect and make her a model of moral and spir- itual virtue. But how should critics perceive his laudatory phrases? A century ago, a few suggested erotic or avaricious motivations for Donne’s extraordinary flattery of his aris- tocratic patroness, while others defended the poet’s sincere admiration and gratitude. Later, some found subtle expression of misogynistic irony while others discovered embarrassingly abject expressions of self-abasement. More recently, those who exam- ined the classical verse epistle genre have regarded the letters as didactic representations of a Platonic ideal directed to a readership far greater than a single addressee. The Verse Letters, like the rest of the variorum, belongs in all libraries that accom- modate Donne scholars. An encyclopedic reference work of nearly 1,500 pages, it is necessarily repetitious as it moves from general commentary to single analyses and glosses in order to accommodate exacting research. A reader’s casual glance from any single epistle to other poems and commentaries, however, may inspire serendipitous discoveries that launch Donne scholarship in ever new directions of inquiry. Gayle Gaskill, St. Catherine University doi:10.1017/rqx.2021.204 Living under the Evil Pope: The Hebrew “Chronicle of Pope Paul IV” by Benjamin Nehemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (16th Cent.). Martina Mampieri. Studies in Jewish History and Culture 58. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xx + 400 pp. €168. This thorough volume makes available for the first time the diplomatic edition and English translation of an extraordinary sixteenth-century Hebrew source on the REVIEWS 1265 https://doi.org/10.1017/rqx.2021.205 Published online by Cambridge University Press