beheaded on the 29th of October 1618. On the scaffold his behaviour was firm and calm; after addressing the people in justification of his character and conduct, he took up the axe, and observed to the sheriff, This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases.' Having tried how the block fitted his head, he told the executioner that he would give the signal by lifting up his hand; 'and then,' added he, 'fear not, but strike home!' He then laid himself down, but was requested by the executioner to alter the position of his head: 'So the heart be right,' was his reply, it is no matter which way the head lies.' On the signal being given, the executioner failed to act with promptitude, which caused Raleigh to exclaim, 'Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!' By two strokes, which he received without shrinking, the head of this intrepid man was severed from his body. The night before his execution, he composed the following verses in prospect of death : Even such is Time, that takes on trust Who in the dark and silent grave, While in prison in expectation of death, either on this or the former occasion, he wrote also a tender and affectionate valedictory letter to his wife, of which the following a portion: You shall receive, my dear wife, my last words in these my last lines; my love I send you, that you may keep when I am dead, and my counsel, that you may remember it when I am no more. I would not with my will present you sorrows, dear Bess; let them go to the grave with me, and be buried in the dust. And seeing that it is not the will of God that I shall see you any more, bear my destruction patiently, and with a heart like yourself. First, I send you all the thanks which my heart can conceive, or my words express, for your many travails and cares for me, which, though they have not taken effect as you wished, yet my debt to you is not the less; but pay it I never shall in this world. Secondly, I beseech you, for the love you bear me living, that you do not hide yourself many days, but by your travails seek to help my miserable fortunes, and the right of your poor child; your mourning cannot avail me, that am but dust. * * I can say no more, time and death calleth me away. The everlasting God, powerful, infinite, and inscrutable God Almighty, who is goodness itself, the true light and life, keep you and yours, and have mercy upon me, and forgive my persecutors and false accusers, and send us to meet in his glorious kingdom. My dear wife, farewell; bless my boy, pray for me, and let my true God hold you both in his arms. Besides the works already mentioned, Raleigh composed a number of political and other pieces, those best known are his Maxims of State, the some of which have never been published. Among Cabinet Council, the Sceptic, and Advice to his Son. The last contains much admirable counsel, sometimes tinctured, indeed, with that worldliness and caution which the writer's hard experience had strengthened in a mind naturally disposed to be advises his son are the choice of friends and of a mindful of self-interest. The subjects on which he wife, deafness to flattery, the avoidance of quarrels, the preservation of estate, the choice of servants, the avoidance of evil means of seeking riches, the bad effects of drunkenness, and the service of God. We extract his Three Rules to be observed for the Preservation of a Amongst all other things of the world, take care of thy estate, which thou shalt ever preserve if thou observe three things: first, that thou know what thou hast, what every thing is worth that thou hast, and to see that thou art not wasted by thy servants and officers. The second is, that thou never spend anything before thou have it; for borrowing is the canker and death of every man's estate. The third is, that thou suffer not thyself to be wounded for other men's faults, and scourged for other men's offences; which is, the surety for another, for thereby millions of men have been beggared and destroyed, paying the reckoning of other men's riot, and the charge of other men's folly and prodigality; if thou smart, smart for thine own sins; and, above all things, be not made an ass to carry the burdens of other men: if any friend desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of what thou hast to spare; if he press thee farther, he is not thy friend at all, for friendship rather chooseth harm to itself than offereth it. If thou be bound for a stranger, thou art a fool; if for a merchant, thou puttest thy estate to learn to swim; if for a churchman, he hath no inheritance; if for a lawyer, he will find an invasion by a syllable or word Paylie oweth me a thousand pounds, and Aryan six to abuse thee; if for a poor man, thou must pay it hundred; in Jersey, also, I have much owing me. Dear thyself; if for a rich man, he needs not: therefore wife, I beseech you, for my soul's sake, pay all poor from suretyship, as from a man-slayer or enchanter, men. When I am dead, no doubt you shall be much bless thyself; for the best profit and return will be sought unto; for the world thinks I was very rich; this, that if thou force him for whom thou art bound, have a care to the fair pretences of men, for no greater to pay it himself, he will become thy enemy; if thou misery can befall you in this life than to become a use to pay it thyself, thou wilt be a beggar; and beprey unto the world, and after to be despised. Ilieve thy father in this, and print it in thy thought, speak, God knows, not to dissuade you from marriage, that what virtue soever thou hast, be it never so mafor it will be best for you, both in respect of God nifold, if thou be poor withal, thou and thy qualities and the world. As for me, I am no more yours, nor shall be despised. Besides, poverty is ofttimes sent you mine; death hath cut us asunder, and God hath as a curse of God; it is a shame amongst men, an divided me from the world, and you from me. Re-imprisonment of the mind, a vexation of every worthy member your poor child for his father's sake, who spirit: thou shalt neither help thyself nor others; loved you in his happiest estate. I sued for my life, thou shalt drown thee in all thy virtues, having no but, God knows, it was for you and yours that I de- means to show them; thou shalt be a burden and an sired it for know it, my dear wife, your child is the eyesore to thy friends, every man will fear thy comchild of a true man, who, in his own respect, despiseth pany; thou shalt be driven basely to beg and depend death, and his mis-shapen and ugly forms. I cannot on others, to flatter unworthy men, to make dishonest write much (God knows how hardly I steal this time shifts: and, to conclude, poverty provokes a man to when all sleep), and it is also time for me to separate do infamous and detested deeds; let no vanity, theremy thoughts from the world. Beg my dead body, fore, or persuasion, draw thee to that worst of worldly which living was denied you, and either lay it in miseries. Sherburn or Exeter church, by my father and mother. If thou be rich, it will give thee pleasure in health, age of eighty years. His works, though possessing few graces of style, have always been esteemed for accuracy and research. He often declared that, in composing them, he had never allowed himself to be swayed either by fear, favour, or malice; but that he had impartially, and to the best of his knowledge, delivered the truth. So highly was his accuracy esteemed by contemporary authors, that Bacon and Camden took statements upon his sole credit. The following extract is taken from the 'Survey of London:' [Sports upon the Ice in Elizabeth's Reign.] quarto, published in London in 1807-8. It was from the translation of Boece that Shakspeare derived the ground-work of his tragedy of Macbeth.' As a specimen of these chronicles, we are tempted to quote some of Harrison's sarcastic remarks on the degeneracy of his contemporaries, their extravagance in dress, and the growth of luxury among them. His account of the languages of Britain, however, being peculiarly suited to the object of the present work, and at the same time highly amusing from the quaintness and simplicity of the style, it is here given in preference to any other extract. [The Languages of Britain.] When that great moor which washeth Moorfields, at the north wall of the city, is frozen over, great com- The British tongue called Cymric doth yet repanies of young men go to sport upon the ice; then main in that part of the island which is now called fetching a run, and setting their feet at a distance, Wales, whither the Britons were driven after the and placing their bodies sidewise, they slide a great Saxons had made a full conquest of the other, which way. Others take heaps of ice, as if it were great we now call England, although the pristine intemill-stones, and make seats; many going before,grity thereof be not a little diminished by mixture of draw him that sits thereon, holding one another by the Latin and Saxon speeches withal. Howbeit, many the hand in going so fast; some slipping with their poesies and writings (in making whereof that nation feet, all fall down together: some are better practised hath evermore delighted) are yet extant in my time, to the ice, and bind to their shoes bones, as the legs whereby some difference between the ancient and of some beasts, and hold stakes in their hands headed present language may easily be discerned, notwithwith sharp iron, which sometimes they strike against standing that among all these there is nothing to be the ice; and these men go on with speed as doth a found which can set down any sound and full testibird in the air, or darts shot from some warlike enmony of their own original, in remembrance whereof gine: sometimes two men set themselves at a distance, their bards and cunning men have been most slack and run one against another, as it were at tilt, with and negligent. these stakes, wherewith one or both parties are thrown down, not without some hurt to their bodies; and after their fall, by reason of the violent motion, are carried a good distance from one another; and wheresoever the ice doth touch their head, it rubs off all the skin, and lays it bare; and if one fall upon his leg or arm, it is usually broken; but young men greedy of honour, and desirous of victory, do thus exercise themselves in counterfeit battles, that they may bear the brunt more strongly when they come to it in good earnest. RAPHAEL HOLINSHED-WILLIAM HARRISON-JOHN Among all the old chroniclers, none is more frequently referred to than RAPHAEL HOLINSHED, of whom, however, almost nothing is known, except that he was a principal writer of the chronicles which bear his name, and that he died about the year 1580. Among his coadjutors were WILLIAM HARRISON, a clergyman, JOHN HOOKER, an uncle of the author of the Ecclesiastical Polity,' and FRANCIS BOTEVILLE, an individual of whom nothing has been recorded, but that he was a man of great learning and judgment, and a wonderful lover of antiquities.' John Stow, also, was among the contributors. Prefixed to the historical portion of the work is a description of Britain and its inhabitants, by William Harrison, which continues to be highly valued, as affording an interesting picture of the state of the country, and manners of the people, in the sixteenth century. This is followed by a history of England to the Norman Conquest, by Holinshed; a history and description of Ireland, by Richard Stanihurst; additional chronicles of Ireland, translated or written by Hooker, Holinshed, and Stanihurst; a description and history of Scotland, mostly translated from Hector Boece, by Holinshed or Harrison; and, lastly, a history of England, by Holinshed, from the Norman Conquest to 1577, when the first edition of the 'Chronicles' was published. In the second edition, which appeared in 1587, several sheets containing matter offensive to the queen and her ministers were omitted; but these have been restored in the excellent edition in six volumes ** Next unto the British speech, the Latin tongue was brought in by the Romans, and in manner generally planted through the whole region, as the French was after by the Normans. Of this tongue I will not say much, because there are few which be not skilful in the same. Howbeit, as the speech itself is easy and delectable, so hath it perverted the names of the ancient rivers, regions, and cities of Britain, in such wise, that in these our days their old British denominations are quite grown out of memory, and yet those of the new Latin left as most uncertain. This remaineth, also, unto my time, borrowed from the Romans, that all our deeds, evidences, charters, and writings of record, are set down in the Latin tongue, though now very barbarous, and thereunto the copies and court-rolls, and processes of courts and leets registered in the same. The third language apparently known is the Scythian,* or High Dutch, induced at the first by the Saxons (which the Britons call Saysonace,+ as they do the speakers Sayson), a hard and rough kind of speech, God wot, when our nation was brought first into acquaintance withal, but now changed with us into a far more fine and easy kind of utterance, and so polished and helped with new and milder words, that it is to be avouched how there is no one speech under the sun spoken in our time that hath or can have more variety of words, copiousness of phrases, or figures and flowers of eloquence, than hath our English tongue, although some have affirmed us rather to bark as dogs than talk like men, because the most of our words (as they do indeed) incline unto one syllable. This, also, is to be noted as a testimony remaining still of our language, derived from the Saxons, that the general name, for the most part, of every skilful artificer in his trade endeth in here with us, albeit the h be left out, and er only inserted, as, scrivenhere, writehere, shiphere, &c.-for scrivener, writer, and shipper, &c.; beside many other relics of that speech, never to be abolished. After the Saxon tongue came the Norman or French It is scarcely necessary to remark, that this term is here misapplied. The Highlanders of Scotland still speak of the English as Sassenach (meaning Saxons). language over into our country, and therein were our laws written for a long time. Our children, also, were, by an especial decree, taught first to speak the same, and thereunto enforced to learn their constructions in the French, whensoever they were set to the grammar-school. In like sort, few bishops, abbots, or other clergymen, were admitted unto any ecclesiastical function here among us, but such as came out of religious houses from beyond the seas, to the end they should not use the English tongue in their sermons to the people. In the court, also, it grew into such contempt, that most men thought it no small dishonour to speak any English there; which bravery took his hold at the last likewise in the country with every ploughman, that even the very carters began to wax weary of their mother-tongue, and laboured to speak French, which as then was counted no small token of gentility. And no marvel; for every French rascal, when he came once hither, was taken for a gentleman, only because he was proud, and could use his own language. And all this (I say) to exile the English and British speeches quite out of the country. But in vain; for in the time of king Edward I., to wit, toward the latter end of his reign, the French itself ceased to be spoken generally, but most of all and by law in the midst of Edward III., and then began the English to recover and grow in more estimation than before; notwithstanding that, among our artificers, the most part of their implements, tools, and words of art, retain still their French denominations even to these our days, as the language itself is used likewise in sundry courts, books of record, and matters of law; whereof here is no place to make any particular rehearsal. Afterward, also, by diligent travail of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, in the time of Richard II., and after them of John Scogan and John Lydgate, monk of Bury, our said tongue was brought to an excellent pass, notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfection until the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewel, bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and sundry learned and excellent writers, have fully accomplished the ornature of the same, to their great praise and immortal commendation; although not a few other do greatly seek to stain the same, by fond affectation of foreign and strange words, presuming that to be the best English which is most corrupted with external terms of eloquence and sound of many syllables. But as this excellency of the English tongue is found in one, and the south part of this island, so in Wales the greatest number (as I said) retain still their own ancient language, that of the north part of the said country being less corrupted than the other, and therefore reputed for the better in their own estimation and judgment. This, also, is proper to us Englishmen, that since ours is a middle or intermediate language, and neither too rough nor too smooth in utterance, we may with much facility learn any other language, beside Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and speak it naturally, as if we were home-born in those countries; and yet on the other side it falleth out, I wot not by what other means, that few foreign nations can rightly pronounce ours, without some and that great note of imperfection, especially the Frenchmen, who also seldom write anything that savoureth of English truly. But this of all the rest doth breed most admiration with me, that if any stranger do hit upon some likely pronunciation of our tongue, yet in age he swerveth so much from the saine, that he is worse therein than ever he was, and thereto, peradventure, halteth not a little also in his own, as I have seen by experience in Reginald Wolfe, and others, whereof I have justly marvelled. The Cornish and Devonshire men, whose country the Britons call Cerniw, have a speech in like sort of their own, and such as hath indeed more affinity with the Armorican tongue than I can well discuss of. Yet in mine opinion, they are both but a corrupted kind of British, albeit so far degenerating in these days from the old, that if either of them do meet with a Welshman, they are not able at the first to understand one another, except here and there in some odd words, without the help of interpreters. And no marvel, in mine opinion, that the British of Cornwall is thus corrupted, since the Welsh tongue that is spoken in the north and south part of Wales doth differ so much in itself, as the English used in Scotland doth from that which is spoken among us here in this side of the island, as I have said already. The Scottish-English hath been much broader and less pleasant in utterance than ours, because that nation hath not, till of late, endeavoured to bring the same to any perfect order, and yet it was such in manner as Englishmen themselves did speak for the most part beyond the Trent, whither any great amendment of our language had not, as then, extended itself. Howbeit, in our time the Scottish language endeavoureth to come near, if not altogether to match, our tongue in fineness of phrase and copiousness of words, and this may in part appear by a history of the Apocrypha translated into Scottish verse by Hudson, dedicated to the king of that country, and containing six books, except my memory do fail me. RICHARD HAKLUYT. RICHARD HAKLUYT is another of the laborious com pilers of this period, to whom the world is indebted for the preservation, in an accessible form, of narratives which would otherwise, in all probability, have fallen into oblivion. The department of history which he chose was that descriptive of the naval advenwas born in London about the year 1553, and received tures and discoveries of his countrymen. Hakluyt his elementary education at Westminster school. He afterwards studied at Oxford, where he engaged in on geographical and maritime subjects, for which an extensive course of reading in various languages, he had early displayed a strong liking. So much reputation did his knowledge in those departments acquire for him, that he was appointed to lecture at Oxford on cosmography and the collateral sciences, and carried on a correspondence with those celebrated continental geographers, Ortelius and Mercator. At a subsequent period, he resided for five years in Paris as chaplain to the English ambassador, during which time he cultivated the acquaintance of persons eminent for their knowledge of geography and maritime history. On his return from France in 1588, Sir Walter Raleigh appointed him one of the society of counsellors, assistants, and adventurers, to whom he assigned his patent for the prosecution of discoveries in America. viously to this, he had published, in 1582 and 1587, two small collections of voyages to America; but these are included in a much larger work in three volumes, which he published in 1598, 1599, and 1600, entitled The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traf fiques, 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. In the first volume are contained voyages to the north and north-east; the true state of Iceland; the defeat of the Spanish Armada; the expedition under the Earl of Essex to Cadiz, &c. In the second, he relates voyages to the south and southeast; and in the third, expeditions to North America, the West Indies, and round the world. Narratives are given of nearly two hundred and twenty voyages, besides many relative documents, such as patents, instructions, and letters. To this collection all the subsequent compilers in this department have Pre 6 been largely indebted. In the explanatory catalogue prefixed to 'Churchill's Collection of Voyages,' and of which Locke has been said to be the author, Hakluyt's collection is spoken of as valuable for the good there to be picked out: but it might be wished the author had been less voluminous, deli- | vering what was really authentic and useful, and not stuffing his work with so many stories taken upon trust, so many trading voyages that have nothing new in them, so many warlike exploits not at all pertinent to his undertaking, and such a multitude of articles, charters, privileges, letters, relations, and other things little to the purpose of travels and discoveries." The work having become very scarce, a new edition, in five volumes quarto, was published in 1809. Hakluyt was the author, also, of translations of two foreign works on Florida; and, when at Paris, published an enlarged edition of a history in the Latin language, entitled De Rebus Oceanicis et Orbe Novo, by Martyr, an Italian author; this was afterwards translated into English by a person of the name of Lok, under the title of The History of the West Indies, containing the Acts and Adventures of the Spaniards, which have Conquered and Peopled those Countries; enriched with Variety of Pleasant Relation of Manners, Ceremonies, Laws, Governments, and Wars, of the Indians. In 1601 Hakluyt published the Discoveries of the World, from the First Original to the Year of our Lord 1555, translated, with additions, from the Portuguese of Antonio Galvano, governor of Ternate, in the East Indies. At his death, in 1616, his papers, which were numerous, came into the hands of SAMUEL PURCHAS, another English clergyman, who made use of them in compiling a history of voyages, in four volumes, entitled Purchas his Pilgrims. This appeared in 1625; but the author had already published, in 1613, before Hakluyt's death, a volume called Purchas his Pilgrimage; or, Relations of the World, and the Religions Obserced in all Ages and Places Discovered from the Creation unto this Present. These two works (a new edition of the latter of which was published in 1626) form a continuation of Hakluyt's collection, but on a more extended plan.† The publication of this voluminous work involved the author in debt: it was, however, well received, and has been of much utility to later compilers. The writer of the catalogue in Churchill's collection says of Purchas, that he has imitated Hakluyt too much, swelling his work into five volumes in folio;' yet, he adds, 'the whole collection is very valuable, as having preserved many considerable voyages that might otherwise have perished. But, like Hakluyt, he has thrown in all that came to hand, to fill up so many volumes, and is excessive full of his own notions, and of mean quibbling and playing upon words; yet for such as can make choice of the best, the collection is very valuable.' Among his peculiarities is * Churchill's Collection, vol. i., p. xvii. The contents of the different volumes are as follow:Vol. I. of the Pilgrims' contains Voyages and Travels of Ancient Kings, Patriarchs, Apostles, and Philosophers; Voyages of Circumnavigators of the Globe; and Voyages along the coasts of Africa to the East Indies, Japan, China, the Philippine Islands, and the Persian and Arabian Gulfs. Vol. II. contains Voyages and Relations of Africa, Ethiopia, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, and other parts of Asia. Vol. III. contains Tartary, China, Russia, North-West America, and the Polar Regions. Vol. IV. contains America and the West Indies. Vol. V. contains the Pilgrimage, a Theological and Geographical History of Asia, Africa, and America. Vol. i., p. xvii. that of interlarding theological reflections and discussions with his narratives. Purchas died about 1628, at the age of fifty-one. His other works are, Microcosmus, or the History of Man (1619); the King's Tower and Triumphant Arch of London (1623); and a Funeral Sermon (1619). His quaint eulogy of the sea is here extracted from the Pilgrimage:" [The Sea.] As God hath combined the sea and land into one globe, so their joint combination and mutual assistance is necessary to secular happiness and glory. The sea covereth one-half of this patrimony of man, whereof God set him in possession when he said, 'Replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.' * Thus should man at once lose half his inheritance, if the art of navigation did not enable him to manage this untamed beast, and with the bridle of the winds and saddle of his shipping to make him serviceable. Now for the services of the sea, they are innumerable: it is the great purveyor of the world's commodities to our use; conveyer of the excess of rivers; uniter, by traffick, of all nations: it presents the eye with diversified colours and motions, and is, as it were, with rich brooches, adorned with various islands. It is an open field for merchandise in peace; a pitched field for the most dreadful fights of war; yields diversity of fish and fowl for diet; materials for wealth, medicine for health, simples for medicines, pearls, and other jewels for ornament; amber and ambergrise for delight; the wonders of the Lord in the deep' for instruction, variety of creatures for use, multiplicity of natures for contemplation, diversity of accidents bodies healthful evacuation, to the thirsty earth fertile for admiration, compendiousness to the way, to full moisture, to distant friends pleasant meeting, to weary minds a map of knowledge, mystery of temperance, persons delightful refreshing, to studious and religious exercise of continence; school of prayer, meditation, devotion, and sobriety; refuge to the distressed, portage to the merchant, passage to the traveller, customs to the prince, springs, lakes, rivers, to the earth; it hath on it tempests and calms to chastise the sins, to exercise the faith, of seamen; manifold affections in itself, to affect and stupify the subtlest philosopher; sustaineth moveable fortresses for the soldier; maintaineth (as in our island) a wall of defence and watery garrison to guard the state; entertains the sun with vapours, the moon with obsequiousness, the stars also with a natural looking-glass, the sky with clouds, the air with temperateness, the soil with suppleness, the rivers with tides, the hills with moisture, the valleys with fertility; containeth most diversified matter for meteors, most multiform shapes, most various, numerous kinds, most immense, difformed, deformed, unformed monsters; once (for why should I longer detain you?) the sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts, navigation. JOHN DAVIS. Among the intrepid navigators of Queen Elizabeth's reign, whose adventures are recorded by Hakluyt, one of the most distinguished is JOHN DAVIS, following years, made three voyages in search of a a native of Devonshire, who, in 1585, and the two north-west passage to China, and discovered the well-known straits to which his name has ever since been applied. In 1595 he himself published a small and now exceedingly rare volume, entitled The World's Hydrographical Description, wherein,' as we are told in the title-page, is proued not onely |