nary by
the same hand, and the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James the First in
Hume's History of England." Beriton, January 1762. (In a month's absence
from the Devizes.)--"During this interval of repose, I again turned
my thoughts to Sir Walter Raleigh, and looked more closely into my
materials. I read the two volumes in quarto of the Bacon Papers,
published by Dr. Birch; the Fragmenta Regalia of Sir Robert Naunton,
Mallet's Life of Lord Bacon, and the political treatises of that great
man in the first volume of his works, with many of his letters in the
second; Sir William Monson's Naval Tracts, and the elaborate life of Sir
Walter Raleigh, which Mr. Oldys has prefixed to the best edition of his
History of the World. My subject opens upon me, and in general improves
upon a nearer prospect."

Beriton, July 26, 1762. (During my summer residence.)--"I am afraid of
being reduced to drop my hero; but my time has not, however, been lost
in the research of his story, and of a memorable aera of our English
annals. The life of Sir Walter Raleigh, by Oldys, is a very poor
performance; a servile panegyric, or flat apology, tediously minute,
and composed in a dull and affected style. Yet the author was a man of
diligence and learning, who had read everything relative to his subject,
and whose ample collections are arranged with perspicuity and method.
Excepting some anecdotes lately revealed in the Sidney and Bacon Papers,
I know not what I should be able to add. My ambition (exclusive of the
uncertain merit of style and sentiment) must be confined to the hope
of giving a good abridgment of Oldys. I have even the disappointment of
finding some parts of this copious work very dry and barren; and these
parts are unluckily some of the most characteristic: Raleigh's colony
of Virginia, his quarrels with Essex, the true secret of his conspiracy,
and, above all, the detail of his private life, the most essential and
important to a biographer. My best resource would be in the circumjacent
history of the times, and perhaps in some digressions artfully
introduced, like the fortunes of the Peripatetic philosophy in the
portrait of Lord Bacon. But the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First
are the periods of English history, which have been the most variously
illustrated: and what new lights could I reflect on a subject, which
has exercised the accurate industry of Birch, the lively and curious
acuteness of Walpole, the critical spirit of