Melancholy," the intrigue being excepted, but it is not the most important among them, far from it. Burton thus deserves to be quoted apart in the long line of the predecessors of illustrious English novelists, and a place of honour should always be reserved for his portrait in their galleries of ancestors.

III.

Readers numerous, well disposed, anxious for instruction, encourage also those explorers and observers who try to unravel origins, and examine what had been, in the past, man, society, empires and successive civilisations. Learned writers and historians of the time of Elizabeth who survive under James enjoy an unbroken favour and practise their art with more ardour than ever. The illustrious Camden, who had given his "Britannia" in 1586, published his "Remaines" in 1605, we know with what success. It was a simple bundle of notes, excerpts, and observations, but it just happened they were more and more liked as bringing one, in a way, nearer to realities. Daniel the poet and Speed the chronicler print their histories of England in 1611 1611 and and 1612. William Habington, father of the poet who sang of "Castara," amasses documents in view of a history of Edward IV., which will be published by his son; Knollys continues his researches on the Turks and their emperors. During the same period shine Bacon, Raleigh, Selden; Drummond of Hawthornden prepares a history of Scotland, Heylyn a history of the Reformation in England, John Spottiswoode a history of the church of Scotland, Lord Herbert of Cherbury a life of Henry VIII.: D'Ewes, sifting carefully his facts and dates, compiles a journal of Elizabeth's Parliaments, and takes daily notes which he will use to write his memoirs. Fuller publishes his

history of the Crusades, and collects the materials for his "Church History of Britain from the birth of Jesus Christ," and for his ample and famous "History of the Worthies of England," destined to see the light during the following period. 1

I

More and more important and numerous historical texts and archæological works are now printed, while the connection between the genres cultivated by moralists, essayists, historians, and antiquaries, is evidenced by the alacrity and success with which most of them pass from one to another of these styles. Besides his "Henry VIII.," his verses, his philosophical works, Lord Herbert of Cherbury will leave an autobiography, partaking at once of the psychological essay, of history, and above all of

"The Holy Warre," 1639; "The Church History of Britain from the birth of Jesus Christ untill the year 1648,” London, 1655, fol. (a considerable work with many documents included; Fuller's usual blemishes of bad taste and misapplied wit); "The History of the Worthies of England," London, 1662 (a sort of dictionary, the fruit of enormous researches, and in which Fuller gives for each shire the biography of all the famous-not always very famous-men born there, and a quantity of other details. Proportions cannot always be commended: Shakespeare occupies the same space as an obscure Mr. Byfield on the opposite page, iii. 127). On historical art, as practised previously, see above, I. pp. 113, 166, 197, 522; II. 93, 322.

2 See e.g. H. Spelman. “Archæologus in modum Glossarii," 1626 (a first attempt at a dictionary of the Du Cange type; not carried further than the word luto), “Concilia, Decreta, Leges" (1066-1531), London, 1639, ff.; W. Wats,

Matthæi Paris. . . Historia," London, 1640; Roger Twysden, "Historiæ Anglicane Scriptores Decem," London. 1652; Dugdale, "Monasticon Anglicanum," 1655, ff. 3 vols., " Antiquities of Warwickshire," 1656; treatises and publications of Selden (further, p. 512), of Ussher (1581-1656), the learned Archbishop of Armagh: "A Discourse of the Religion anciently professed by the Irish," Dublin, 1623, "Britanniarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates," 1639, "Annales Veteris Testamenti," 1659, etc., Works," Dublin, 1847 ff., 17 vols.; painstaking researches of Weever who, says he, "travailed over the most parts of all England and some part of Scotland," and published the results of his labours under the title of: "Ancient funeral Monuments with in the united Monarchie of Great Britaine and Ireland and the Ilands adjacent, with the dissolved monasteries therein contained; their Founders and what eminent persons have beene in the same interred," London, 1631, fol.; long preliminary discourse on the burial customs of the past.

the heroical novel. Fuller compiles a book made up of historical biographies, essays and characters grouped together. The celebrated Selden, liberal, sarcastic, indifferent to honours, of prodigious learning, one of the few Englishmen who attained European fame before the eighteenth century,3 examines the origins of British laws and customs, edits old texts, studies Oriental languages, searches some of the most distant and least trodden fields of knowledge, and, in all his works, pays special attention to the manners of peoples and the movements of the human mind.

This learned historian, this legist, this bold observer, talked as willingly as he wrote. His conversations with his friends abounded in aphorisms, satirical portraits, ironical or serious advice, striking and witty thoughts, easy to remember. One of his secretaries collected them, and the great man, of boundless fame, owes it to this tiny

I

"The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury," ed. S. Lee, London. 1886, 8vo; the first ed. had been given by Horace Walpole in 1764; to be compared with Sir Kenelm Digby's even more mirific account of himself (1603-65): "Private Memoirs written by himself," ed. Nicolas, London, 1827, Evo, composed under the guise of a novel with a key, a kind of writing very much in fashion then, but more properly belonging to a later period; the part played by these two men in the philosophical movement of the century also connects them with later times.

2 66

'The Holy State; The Profane State,” Cambridge, 1642, fol., a mixture of biographies and essays: "Of Travelling, of Company, the Good Husband, the Hariot, the Atheist." etc.; picturesque and pleasant style, marred at times by bad taste and ridiculous conceits; unpardonable biography of Joan of Arc, classed with the "profane" ones, in company with Cæsar Borgia and that Joan of Naples whose "sinnes," Fuller says in his affected style, were almost hoarse with crying to heaven for revenge."

3 “Le plus grand homme que 1 Angleterre ait jamais eu pour les Belles Lettres" Colomies, “Recueil de Particularités," 1665. John Selden, born in 1584, studied at Oxford, was called to the bar in 1612, became the friend of Jonson, Camden, Sir Robert Cotton, Drayton, William Browne, and others. Long a member of Parliament, from 1623, he was opposed to the extremists of both parties; his knowledge of Eastern languages was a very rare accomplishment at that date; he died in 1654. "Opera omnia," London, 1726, 34 vols. fol.

booklet that he ranks among authors still reprinted and generally read. Specialists alone continue to consult, when bound to do so, his thick folios, most of them in Latin, on Briton or Saxon laws, on "Titles of Honour," where he treats of dignities and precedence, and learnedly discusses the problem of whether there were kings before the flood; on the story of "Tithes" from the time of Abraham; on the "Arundel Marbles," an antiquary and epigraphist's work, remarkable at its date; on Semitic antiquities; on the "Closed Sea," that famous work of his which could not prevail against Grotius. But his “Table Talk... or his sence of various matters of weight and high consequence," is still read 2; if it does not give a complete idea of Selden's mind, it shows at least with what boldness thinkers were beginning to speak of things held holy and of accepted truths. Ironical and destructive, he takes special pleasure, as Voltaire will do later, in deriding generally admitted ideas, respected notions, revered beliefs, all that which habit has so long caused to be accepted that good people do not dream of discussing it religion, priesthood, kinghood. Those great statues, bordering the road followed by mankind, seem carved in imperishable marble; Selden touches them with his fingertip and the figure is cracked. The case is alarming

1

"Jani Anglorum facies altera," 1610, on the survival of the Briton and Saxon Laws; Titles of Honour," 1614; History of Tythes," 1617, to which he owed serious difficulties with the clergy; "De Diis Syris,” 1617, on the Asiatic idols mentioned in the Bible; "Marmora Arundeliana,” 1629, on the antique statues and inscriptions collected in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor for the Earl of Arundel, and placed by him in the gardens of Arundel House, Strand; Selden's interpretation of the inscriptions was not faultless, but was very creditable for the time; part of the marbles are now in Oxford; "Mare Clausum seu de Dominio Maris libri duo," 1635, in English, “with additional discourses" by M. Nedham, 1652, in answer to the (unanswerable) "Mare Liberum" of Grotius, 1609.

2 "Table Talk, being the discourses of J. Selden, or his sence," etc. London, 1689, 4to, ed. by his secretary, R. Milward; reprinted by Arber,

and may encourage other profanations; a sacrilegious hand has been laid on the hallowed statue, and yet the thunderbolt has not fallen.

He speaks without reverence of baptism, of the authority of the Scriptures, of the doings of divines and preachers, whatever be their sect; of kings, who are "a thing men have made for their own sake, for quietness' sake." He excels in ironical comparisons and striking aphorisms: "Marriage is a desperate thing; the frogs in Æsop were extream wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again." Men in power should govern noiselessly: "You see when they row in a barge, they that do drudgery work, flash, and puff, and swear, but he that governs sits quietly at the stern, and scarce is seen to stir."

The historical writings composed during this period differ in several respects from the previous ones. First, the point of view, so conspicuously particularist, of the authors who wrote under the Tudors, broadens in a marked degree: the main work of that class during the reign of James I. will not be a chronicle of England but a history of the world. A writer, Edward Grimeston, will devote his whole life to turning into English, histories of the Indies, of the French, the Dutch, the Spaniards, the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks, as well as descriptions of "the Estates, Empires, and Principallities of the World," China, Peru, and Monomotapa not being forgotten; each of these voluminous compositions found readers in plenty, and most of them had several editions.1 More and more importance is attributed to sources, exactitude, reference to original records. Sir Simonds.

On Edward Grimeston, "translator and sergeant-at-arms," who wrote under the two first Stuarts, see Mr. F. S. Boas's notice in Modern Philology, Chicago. April, 1906.

* And authors pride themselves on such researches: prefaces of Camden (guilty, however, of an unpardonable chapter 836 in his "Britannia," ed. of