t, after
all allowances and deductions, we cannot reconcile ourselves to the
mortification of having found but one volume in the series to be even
tolerably edited, and that one to be edited by a gentleman to whom
England is but an adopted country--Sir Robert Schomburgk. Raleigh's
'Conquest of Guiana,' with Sir Robert's sketch of Raleigh's history and
character, form in everything but its cost a very model of an excellent
volume. For the remaining editors,[V] we are obliged to say that they
have exerted themselves successfully to paralyse whatever interest was
reviving in Hakluyt, and to consign their own volumes to the same
obscurity to which time and accident were consigning the earlier
editions. Very little which was really noteworthy escaped the industry
of Hakluyt himself, and we looked to find reprints of the most
remarkable of the stories which were to be found in his collection. The
editors began unfortunately with proposing to continue the work where he
had left it, and to produce narratives hitherto unpublished of other
voyages of inferior interest, or not of English origin. Better thoughts
appear to have occurred to them in the course of the work; but their
evil destiny overtook them before their thoughts could get themselves
executed. We opened one volume with eagerness, bearing the title of
'Voyages to the North-west,' in hope of finding our old friends Davis
and Frobisher. We found a vast unnecessary Editor's Preface: and instead
of the voyages themselves, which with their picturesqueness and moral
beauty shine among the fairest jewels in the diamond mine of Hakluyt, we
encountered an analysis and digest of their results, which Milton was
called in to justify in an inappropriate quotation. It is much as if
they had undertaken to edit 'Bacon's Essays,' and had retailed what they
conceived to be the substance of them in their own language; strangely
failing to see that the real value of the actions or the thoughts of
remarkable men does not lie in the material result which can be gathered
from them, but in the heart and soul of the actors or speakers
themselves. Consider what Homer's 'Odyssey' would be, reduced into an
analysis.

The editor of the 'Letters of Columbus' apologises for the rudeness of
the old seaman's phraseology. Columbus, he tells us, was not so great a
master of the pen as of the art of navigation. We are to make excuses
for him. We are put on our guard, and warned not to be offended, befor