selves to philosophy or history. A work embodying these opinions, entitled "The School of Abuse," was written by Stephen Gosson in 1579, and dedicated to Sidney; and it seems not improbable that this work was the immediate occasion which called forth "The Defence of Poesy." In this really noble and beautiful treatise, which, moreover, has the merit of being very short, Sir Philip seeks to call his countrymen to a better mind, and vindicates the pre-eminence of the poet, as a seer, a thinker, and a maker.1

It has been discovered that from this period dates the first regular newspaper, though it did not as yet contain domestic intelligence. "The first news-pamphlet which came out at regular intervals appears to have been that entitled The News of the Present Week,' edited by Nathaniel Butler; which was started in 1622, in the early days of the Thirty Years' War, and was continued, in conformity with its title, as a weekly publication."

2

History: Holinshed, Camden, Lord Bacon, Speed, Knolles, Raleigh, Foxe.

66

Continuing in the track of the chroniclers mentioned in the last chapter, Raphael Holinshed, and his colleague William Harrison, produced their well-known Description and History of England, Scotland, and Ireland," in 1577. Since the revival of learning, familiarity with the works of Strabo and other Greek geographers had caused geography to become a popular study; and, among the evidences of this in England, the topographical portions of this chronicle are perhaps the most important that we have come to since the “Itinerarium" of Leland, though superseded a few years later by the far more celebrated and valuable work known as 2 Craik, vol. iv. p. 97.

1 See p. 516.

Camden's "Britannia." It would be unfair to say a word in dispraise of the style of this Description, since its author, Harrison, throws himself ingenuously on the reader's mercy, in words which remind one of the immortal Dogberry's anxiety to be to be "written down. an ass." "If your honour," he says (the book is addressed to Lord Cobham), "regard the substance of that which is here declared, I must needs confesse that it is none of mine owne; but, if your lordship have consideration of the barbarous composition showed herein, that I may boldly claime and challenge for mine owne; sith there is no man of any so slender skill, that will defraud me of that reproach, which is due unto me, for the meere negligence, disorder, and evil disposition of matter comprehended in the same." Of Holinshed, the author of the historical portions, very little is known; but the total absence of the critical spirit in his work seems to show that he could not have belonged to the general literary fraternity of Europe, since that spirit was already rife and operative on the Continent. Ludovicus Vives, for instance, a Spaniard, and a fellowworker with Erasmus and other emancipators of literature and taste, had expressed disbelief in the fable of Brute, the legendary founder of the British monarchy, many years before; yet Holinshed quietly translates all the trash that he found in Geoffrey of Monmouth, about that and other mythical personages, as if it were so much solid history. The extent to which, in the sixteenth century, credulity still darkened the historic field, may be judged of from a few facts. Thus Holinshed lays it down as probable that Britain was peopled long before the deluge. These primitive Britons he supposes to have been all drowned in the flood; he then attributes the re-peopling of the island to Samothes, the son of Japhet, son of Noah. The population

being scanty, it was providentially recruited by the arrival of the fifty daughters of Danaus, a king of Egypt, who, having all killed their husbands, were sent adrift in a ship, and carried by the winds to Britain. This, however, Holinshed admits to be doubtful; but the arrival of Ulysses on our shores he is ready to vouch for; and he favorably considers the opinion that the name of Albion was derived from a huge giant of that name, who took up his abode here, the son of Neptune, god of the seas. Then as to Brute, the great-grandson of Æneas, Holinshed no more doubts about his existence, nor that from him comes the name of Britain, than he doubts that Elizabeth succeeded Mary. Such were among the consequences of the manner in which the uncritical writers of the middle ages had jumbled history, theology, and philosophy all up together. Nevertheless the chronicles of Holinshed, being written in an easy and agreeable style, became a popular book. They were reprinted, with a continuation, in 1587; they found in Shakspeare a diligent reader; and they were again reprinted in 1807.

It was not long before the judicial office of the historian began to be better understood. William Camden, now scarcely thought of except as an antiquary, was in truth a trained and ripe scholar, and an intelligent student of history. England has more reason to be proud of him than of many whose names are more familiar to our ears. The man who won the friendship of the president De Thou, and corresponded on equal terms with that eminent historian, as also with Casaubon and Lipsius abroad, and Usher and Spelman at home, must have possessed solid and extraordinary merits. His "Britannia," a work on the topography of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with the isles adjacent, enriched with historical illustrations, first appeared

in 1586, while he was an under-master at Westminster School. In 1604 he published his “Reliquiæ Britannicæ," a treatise on the early inhabitants of Britain. In this work, undeterred by the sham array of authorities which had imposed upon Holinshed, he "blew away sixty British kings with one blast." Burleigh, the great statesman of the reign of Elizabeth, the Cavour of the sixteenth century, singled out Camden as the fittest man in all England to write the history of the first thirty years of the queen's reign, and intrusted to him, for that purpose, a large mass of state papers. Eighteen years elapsed before Camden discharged the trust. At last, in 1615, his "History, or Annals of England during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth," made its appearance. "The love of truth," he says in the preface, "has been the only incitement to me to undertake this work." The studied impartiality of De Thou had made this language popular among historians, and Camden probably fancied at the moment that he had no other motive; but, to say nothing of the "incitement” administered by Lord Burleigh, his own words, a little farther on, show that the "scandalous libels" published in foreign parts against the late queen and the English Government, formed a powerful stimulus. In short, his history must be taken as a vindication, but in a more moderate tone than was then usual, of the Protestant policy of England since the accession of Elizabeth. Its value would be greater than it is, but for his almost uniform neglect to quote his authorities for the statements he makes. This fact, coupled to the discovery, in our own times, of many new and independent sources of information, to him unknown, has caused his labors to be much disregarded.

Lord Bacon's "History of the Reign of Henry VII.,”

Speed.

1

་པ*

published in 1622, is in many ways a masterly work. With the true philosophic temper, he seeks, not content with a superficial narrative of events, to trace out and exhibit their causes and connections; and hence he approaches to the modern conception of history, as the record of the development of peoples, rather than of the actions of princes and other showy personages.1

The writers of literary history have been unjust to John Speed, whom it is the custom to speak of as a dull, plodding chronicler. Speed was much more than this. His "Historie of Great Britain" exhibits, in a very striking way, the rapid growth of that healthy scepticism which is one of the essential qualifications of the historian. The nonsense which Holinshed, as we have seen, had received from his predecessors, and innocently retailed, respecting the early history of Britain, Speed disposes of with a few blunt words. A supposed work of Berosus, on which Holinshed, following Bishop Bale, relied for the details he entered into respecting the antediluvian period, had been proved to be an impudent forgery: Speed therefore extinguishes Samothes, the daughters of Danaus, Ulysses, &c., without ceremony. Next he presumes to doubt, if not to deny, the existence of "Albion the giant." But a more audacious piece of scepticism remains. Speed does not believe in Brute, and by implication denies that we English are descended from the Trojans ; an article which, all through the middle ages, was believed in with a firm, undoubting faith. After giving the evidence for and against the legend in great detail, and with perfect fairness, he gives judgment himself on the side of reason; and, with regard to the Trojan descent, advises Britons to "disclaim that which bringeth no honor to so renowned a nation." The same rationality displays 1 See p. 487.