[80] I draw my information from a very singular manuscript in the Lansdowne collection, which I think has been mistaken for a boy's ciphering book, of which it has much the appearance, No. 741, fo. 57, as it stands in the auctioneer's catalogue. It appears to be a collection closely written, extracted out of Anthony Wood's papers; and as I have discovered in the manuscript numerous notices not elsewhere preserved, I am inclined to think that the transcriber copied them from that mass of Anthony Wood's papers, of which more than one sackful was burnt at his desire before him when dying. If it be so, this MS. is the only register of many curious facts. Ben Jonson has been too freely censured for his own free censures, and particularly for one he made on Sir Walter Rawleigh, who, he told Drummond, "esteemed more fame than conscience. _The best wits in England were employed in making his History_; Ben himself had written a piece to him of the Punic War, which he altered and set in his book." Jonson's powerful advocate, Mr. Gifford, has not alleged a word in the defence of our great bard's free conversational strictures; the secret history of Rawleigh's great work had never been discovered; on this occasion, however, Jonson only spoke what he knew to be true--and there may have been other truths, in those conversations which were set down at random by Drummond, who may have chiefly recollected the satirical touches. [81] I find this quotation in a sort of polemical work of natural philosophy, entitled "Saggio di Storia Litteraria Fiorentina del Secolo XVII. da Giovanne Clemente Nelli," Lucca, 1759, p. 58. Nelli also refers to what he had said on this subject in his _Piante ad alzati di S.M. del Fiore_, p. vi. e vii.; a work on architecture. See Brunet; and Haym, _Bib. Ital. de Libri rari_. [82] MR. PATRICK FRASER TYTLER, in his recent biography of Sir Walter Rawleigh, a work of vigorous research and elegant composition, has dedicated to me a supernumerary article in his Appendix, entitled _Mr. D'Israeli's Errors_! He has inferred from the present article, that I denied that Rawleigh was the writer of his own great work!--because I have shown how great works may be advantageously pursued by the aid of "Literary Union." It is a monstrous inference! The chimera which plays before his eyes is his own contrivance; he starts at his own phantasmagoria, and leaves me, after all, to fight with his shadow. Mr. Tytler _has not contradicted a single statement of mine_. I have carefully read his article and my own, and I have made no alteration.