MLR, 100.2, 2005 473 in her assessment ofthe 'imperial project' (p. 351), as well as ambivalent about race. Ferguson makes some odd claims, suggesting that Nathaniel Bacon, the 'outlaw' white colonist of the Widdow Ranter who likens himself to 'the black African HannibaP , is 'thereby' a symbolic double for the Black hero of the novella, Oroonoko (p. 350). However, as Derek Hughes has pointed out 'Hannibal [. . .] was not black, nor even African. The Carthaginians were Phoenician colonists in North Africa? just as the British were colonists in North America' ('Race, Gender, and Scholarly Practice: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko', Essays in Criticism, 52 (2002), 1-22 (p. 9)). No evidence is offeredthat Restoration readers understood Hannibal as a Black African, and Bacon's 'symbolic double' might just as well be Sir Walter Ralegh, or any other unfortunate militaristic adventurer, as Oroonoko. Indeed, an obvious actual 'double' for both Bacon and Oroonoko is John Allin, whose rebellion suggests both Bacon's and Oroonoko's uprisings, while the dismemberment of his body after death recalls Oroonoko's fate (William Byam, An Exact Relation of the Most Execrable Attempts ofJohn Allin (1665)). The Hannibal connection is a regrettable example of what is something of a tendency in this book, which, although offering many fine nuanced readings, also blurs and merges terms and ideas to achieve just that closure that is elsewhere deplored?and avoided. Another small instance of the desire to connect up items that perhaps do not sit well together occurs early on in the work in the opening discussion of women and language. Mrs Malaprop's desire that Lydia 'il? literate' her lover from her 'memory' in Sheridan's The Rivals is said to make her a sister-in-law to Shakespeare's Mistress Quickly, with her habit of mistaking abstract 'Latinate terms' for more homely language (p. 17). Certainly both women misuse words, but Mrs Malaprop is merely substituting one Latinate term, 'illiterate', for another, 'obliterate'. The joke here may indeed by a colonial joke about language, gen? der, subordination, and cultural dominance, but of another sort. Mockery of Irish, and Anglo-Irish, attempts to sound like mainland English, and their subsequent 'malapropisms', were a cliche of eighteenth-century comic drama. The mildly sub? versive humour here lies in the very English Mrs Malaprop speaking less accurate English than the play's Irishman, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, and one might go further, noting the significance of putting mistakes in the dominant tongue in the mouth of a woman, given the degree to which Ireland was often feminized in discursive practice. Every item of a colonial discourse exists within particular contexts, and the problem with grand narratives, and why they are so rarely undertaken nowadays, is the danger that to make one historical point, another history, irrelevant to the work's grand trajectory , is placed under erasure. Dido's Daughters is a work on a heroic (or heroinic) scale, full of information, insights, and substantial readings: the careful reader will enjoy much of the work?but may also, at times, be rather irritated. University of Denver Jessica Munns The Influence of Switzerland on the Life and Writings of Edward Gibbon. By Brian Norman. (SVEC 2002:03) Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. 2002. xvi+176 pp. ?39. ISBN 0-7294-0791-8. This study, the firstto concentrate so closely on Gibbon and Switzerland, begins by looking at Gibbon's firsttwo trips to that country (1753-5 8 and 1763-64) and his early writings, such as the Letter on the Government of Berne and the Essai sur Vetude de la litterature. Detailed discussion of the use of accents in the former work leads to con? clusions about the likely date of composition, and Brian Norman provides numerous examples of the ways in which the Swiss experience influenced both works. He then moves on to his main focus, the influence of Switzerland on The Decline and Fall ofthe 474 Reviews Roman Empire, completed during Gibbon'sresidencein Lausanne from 178310 1794, and its more general impact on his life and character. He argues that the Swiss influ? ence is greater than previously thought, since the country made him aware of ideas which enabled him to express...