ook is brilliant almost without a rival in its best
passages, but these are comparatively few, and they are divided from one
another by tracts of pathless desert. The narrative sometimes descends
into a mere slough of barbarous names, a marish of fabulous genealogy,
in which the lightest attention must take wings to be supported at all.
For instance, the geographical and historical account of the Ten Tribes
occupies a space equivalent to a modern octavo volume of at least four
hundred pages, through which, if the conscientious reader would pass
'treading the crude consistence' of the matter, 'behoves him now both
sail and oar.' It is not fair to dwell upon the eminent beauties of the
_History of the World_ without at the same time acknowledging that the
book almost wilfully deprives itself of legitimate value and true human
interest by the remoteness of the period which it describes, and by the
tiresome pedantry of its method. It is leisurely to the last excess. The
first chapter, of seven long sections, takes us but to the close of the
Creation. We cannot proceed without knowing what it is that Tostatus
affirms of the empyrean heavens, and whether, with Strabo, we may dare
assume that they are filled with angels. To hasten onwards would be
impossible, so long as one of the errors of Steuchius Eugubinus remains
unconfuted; and even then it is well to pause until we know the opinions
of Orpheus and Zoroaster on the matter in hand. One whole chapter of
four sections is dedicated to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,
and the arguments of Goropius Becanus are minutely tested and found
wanting. Goropius Becanus, whom Raleigh is never tired of shaking
between his critical teeth, was a learned Jesuit of Antwerp, who proved
that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch in Paradise. It is not until he reaches
the Patriarchs that it begins to occur to the historian that at his
present rate of progress it will need forty folio volumes, and not four,
to complete his labours. From this point he hastens a little, as the
compilers of encyclopaedias do when they have passed the letter B.

With all this, the _History of the World_ is a charming and delightful
miscellany, if we do not accept it too seriously. Often for a score of
pages there will be something brilliant, something memorable on every
leaf, and there is not a chapter, however arid, without its fine things
somewhere. It is impossible to tell where Raleigh's pen will take fire.
He is mos