policy against the Presbyterians. His 'Defence of his Answer to Cartwright's Admonition,' first published in 1574, is reprinted by the Parker Society. A strenuous, sagacious man, he writes a vigorous, straightforward, and clear style, seasoned with open personal invective and ridicule. His sentences, without being made after any peculiar form, are short and simple: he keeps too close a grasp on the argument, and is too eagerly bent upon refuting, to have time for the elaboration of periods.

Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603), "the incarnation of Presbyterianism," and for some time a thorn in the side of Whitgift, was born in Hertfordshire. He encountered Whitgift at Cambridge, and was worsted, being deprived of the Lady Margaret Professorship and of his fellowship in Trinity, and thus driven from the University in 1572. After spending some years as English Chaplain at Antwerp, he returned, got into trouble with the Church, and was imprisoned. In his later years he seems to have been conciliated by Whitgift, and to have made a less violent opposition. His works are 'An Admonition to Parliament,' 1572; 'An Admonition to the People of England,' 1589; ‘A Brief Apology,' 1596; also 'A Directory of Church Government,' and 'A Body of Divinity,' published after his death. Cartwright was a very popular preacher. He writes with great fervour, but his style is much more involved and antiquated than Whitgift's, and he has much less argumentative force.

Martin Marprelate wrote some virulent, coarsely humorous personal tracts on the Puritan side about the time of the Spanish Armada (1588). Martin's real name is a greater mystery than Junius; the latest conjecture is that he was a Jesuit. At one time he was identified with John Penry, who seems to have been a mild, much-suffering Puritan Welshman, quite incapable of anything so boisterous. The titles of the tracts are such as "The Epitome," "The Supplication," "Hay any Work for a Cooper?" Martin was answered in an equally personal strain by "witty Tom NASH," who chose such titles as An Almond for a Parrot " (equivalent to "A sop for Cerberus "), and "Pap with a Hatchet" expression for doing a kind thing in an unkind way).

1

(an

Robert Parsons or Persons (1546-1610), the daring and skilful pioneer of the Jesuits in England, is praised by Swift for the purity and vigour of his English style. A native of Somersetshire, he was educated at Oxford, and became a celebrated tutor. Being expelled from his College in 1574 (according to Fuller, for embezzlement of College money), he joined the Jesuits, and was the moving spirit of the Popish plots against Elizabeth before the Spanish Armada. In his later years he presided over the English College at Rome.

1 Sometimes ascribed to Lyly, the Euphuist.

CHRONICLES, HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES.

The series of Chroniclers is continued in this period by John Stow (1525-1605) and John Speed (1552-1629), both tailors by trade. Stow, a genial industrious creature, after publishing a 'Summary of English Chronicles' in 1565, became ambitious to write a great chronicle of England that should surpass every other in number and accuracy of facts, quitted his tailor's board, and walked through England searching for documents that had been dispersed by the suppression of the monasteries. His great work was never published, but in 1598 he brought out a Survey of London,' which was the basis of subsequent accounts of the metropolis, and in 1600 Flores Historiarum,' The Flowers of the Histories (of England). In his last years he received from King James a recommendation to the charity of the public, and stood in churches to receive alms-so ill was his bumble industry rewarded. With all his diligence he is said to have been able to add little to the stock of chronicled facts.-Speed seems to have lived more comfortably, and, working with equal industry, to have been more discriminating in his choice of authorities. He published a ' History of Great Britain' in 1614. Previously, in 1606, he had published a Collection of Maps, including maps of the English shires, each map curiously bordered with drawings of inhabitants, towns, notable buildings, &c. The balanced structure of his titles is characteristic of the time. His Map of the World is "drawn according to the truest descriptions, latest discoveries, and best observations that have been made by English or strangers; " the outlines of the Great Southern Continent "rather show there is a land, than descry either land, people, or commodities."

Three writers, who pretend to a weightier style than Stow or Speed, may be called HISTORIANS. Sir John Hayward (15601627), LL.D. of Cambridge, was patronised by Essex, imprisoned by Elizabeth, knighted by James, and made one of the two historiographers of the abortive Chelsea College. He wrote a 'Life and Reign of Henry IV.' (1599); 'Lives of the three Norman Kings of England' (1613); and a 'Complete History of Edward IV.,' with Certain Years of Queen Elizabeth's Reign,' published in 1630, after his death. Hayward was the subject of one of Bacon's apothegms. Elizabeth, much incensed at his history, asked "Whether there were no treason contained in it?" 66 'No, madam," answered Bacon, "for treason, I cannot deliver opinion that there is any, but very much felony." "How and wherein?"

6

1 Speed's superior accuracy and rejection of fables is no doubt partly due to his having had the advice of Sir Robert Cotton (1570-1631), a man of property and good position, who made it his hobby to collect every sort of document relating to the history of England.

"Because he has stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus." Jeremy Taylor in return did Hayward the honour to steal some ideas from his 'Sanctuary of a Troubled Soul.' Richard Knolles (1549-1610), Fellow of Lincoln, Oxford, and Master of the Free School at Sandwich, wrote a 'History of the Turks,' and other works relating to the Ottoman Empire. Johnson, who read Knolles for his 'Irene,' in a paper on History (Rambler,' 122), says: "None of our writers" (of history) "can, in my opinion, justly contest the superiority of Knolles, who, in his ‘History of the Turks,' has displayed all the excellencies that narration can admit. His style, though somewhat obscured by time, and sometimes vitiated by false wit, is pure, nervous, elevated, and clear. A wonderful multiplicity of events is so artfully arranged, and so distinctly explained, that each facilitates the knowledge of the next. Whenever a new personage is introduced, the reader is prepared by his character for his actions; when a nation is first attacked, or city besieged, he is made acquainted with its history or situation; so that a great part of the world is brought into view." The estimate is excessive, even as made in Johnson's time. The distinctness of arrangement, and the geographical sketches, were due more to the character of the subject than to any superiority of method: these "excellencies" were easy in narrating the steps of a conquest through a foreign country. Knolles's sentences are long and rambling-prolonged by successive relative clauses starting each from the one that goes before. Samuel Daniel

(1562-1619), the poet, wrote a 'History of England from the Conquest to the Accession of Henry VII.' It is praised by Hallam for its purity of diction, being written in the current English of the Court, and free from scholarly stiffness and pedantry. The structure of the sentences is easy to the extent of negligence.

Two or three ANTIQUARIES are usually mentioned among the prose writers of this period; perhaps because, though they wrote chiefly in Latin themselves, they furnished materials for the English prose of other writers. William Camden (1551-1623), Headmaster of Westminster School, wrote the 'Britannia,' and founded a Chair of History in Oxford. Sir Henry Spelman (1562-1604), Sheriff of Norfolk, a legal and ecclesiastical antiquary, is famed as a restorer of Saxon literature, having founded a Saxon Professorship at Cambridge. Sir Robert Cotton has been already mentioned as a collector of historical documents; he is not said to have written anything.

CHRONICLERS OF MARITIME DISCOVERY.-The enterprising naval worthies in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, if they had no poet, were not without their chroniclers. Many of their voyages to "descry new lands" in America, or in the Southern Continent, have been put on record. The chief of this department of history

is Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616), Lecturer on Cosmography at Oxford, and an active correspondent with the foreign geographers, Ortelius and Mercator. In 1598, 1599, and 1600, he published "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, within the compass of these 1500 years.' Very interesting reading for persons with the proper taste for their subject-matter, Hakluyt's narratives have no charms of style. The same may be said of Samuel Purchas (15771628), Hackluytus Posthumus,' B.D. of Cambridge, who continued Hackluyt, and wrote 'Purchas his Pilgrimage,' containing an account of all the religions of the world.

Some of the hardy mariners told their own story-as John Davis (of Davis Straits, an early searcher for the North-West Passage), and Sir Richard Hawkins, who went in quest of land to the south. Sir Walter Raleigh, the "discoverer of Guiana," will be mentioned presently.

MISCELLANEOUS.

The versatile Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) wrote some of the most flowing and modern-looking prose of this period; and had his subject-matter been less antiquated, we should have gone over his peculiarities at some length. He is, perhaps, the most dazzling figure of his time: his high position at the Court of Elizabeth, gained not by birth, but by personal charms and merits; his conduct against the Armada and at Cadiz; his American enterprises; his two new imports, tobacco and the potato; his unjust imprisonment by King James,-made him to the people of London the most wonderful of living men; and he still holds the highest rank

among our traditional heroes. His principal writings are- The Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana,' published in 1596, and his History of the World,' composed during his imprisonment. The 'Discovery' is a matter-of-fact record of his own voyage, his dealings with the natives, and his impressions of the scenery. It was much ridiculed at the time by his jealous enemies, but there is nothing incredible in what he professes to have seen, though he was too sanguine in his beliefs as to the splendour of the parts of the empire that he had not seen. As regards the style, he "neither studied phrase, form, nor fashion; yet at times he shows his natural power of graphic description. The following is perhaps his best; he describes the "overfalls of the river of Caroli, which roared so far off":

"When we ran to the tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining to the river, we beheld that wonderful breach of waters, which ran down Caroli; and might from that mountain see the river how it ran in three parts, above twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight,

every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury, that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been covered all over with a great shower of rain; and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had risen over some great town."

The History of the World' is a work of erudition rather than a narrative—going off into general dissertations on the origin of government, the nature, use, and abuse of magic, &c.; comparing the personages of Scripture with the personages of heathen mythology; discussing at great length such vexed questions as the site of Paradise, the place where the ark rested, the local dispersion of the sons of Noah, &c.; and in the classical history criticising accounts of battles and campaigns with the sagacity of a practical man. The only parts of the book that any modern reader would care to peruse are some parts of the Greek, Macedonian, and Roman history-where his estimates of events in war and in policy are entitled to respect ;-the preface to the work; and the conclusion. Only the preface and the conclusion have much literary value; they are among the finest remains of Elizabethan prose. Critics often incautiously speak as if the whole work were written in the same strain. A grave melancholy runs through them, the natural mood of an ambitious spirit and a strong confident wit chastened but not broken by slander and imprisonment, writing in "the evening of a tempestuous life." Especially remarkable are the passages on Death. In the preface he says:—

"But let every man value his own wisdom, as he pleaseth. Let the rich man think all fools, that cannot equal his abundance; the Revenger esteem all negligent that have not trodden down their opposites; the Politician, all gross that cannot merchandise their faith: Yet when we once come in sight of the Port of death, to which all winds drive us, and when by letting fall that fatal Anchor, which can never be weighed again, the navigation of this life takes end: Then it is, I say, that our own cogitations (those sad and severe cogitations, formerly beaten from us by our health and felicity) return again, and pay us to the uttermost for all the pleasing passages of our life past.

In the same strain he concludes his history:

"It is therefore death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but Abjects, and humbles them at the instant; makes them cry, complain, and repent; yea, even to hate their forepassed happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar; a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing, but in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a Glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness; and they acknowledge it.

"O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, culty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet."