Sir Walter Raleigh occupies a distinguished place in literature, both as a poet and an historian. It is probable that only a small portion of his poetry has come down to us. He seems to have regarded it but lightly himself, and many very beautiful pieces, which there is no reason to doubt owe their origin to his creative brain, are without name, and only preserved in some obscure miscellaneous collections, under the modest signature ‘Ignoto.’ One of these, sometimes entitled “The Lie,” and sometimes “The Soul’s Errand,” is as beautiful, as Christian, and as philosophic a poem as any in the language; yet so little pains did he take to secure to himself the literary fame of the words with which he had relieved his labouring soul, that it has been attributed to divers poetasters, and, among others, to that most wretched inharmonious scribe, Joshua Sylvester. Spenser eulogizes Raleigh’s poetic powers as those of one “... as skilful in that art as any.”[19] He likewise entitles him ‘the summer’s nightingale,’ and hints that he had in store a poem on Queen Elizabeth, which might rival “The Faerie Queene:”— “To taste the streames, that like a golden showre, Flow from thy fruitful head, of thy Love’s praise— Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stowre— When so thee list thy lofty Muse to raise; _Yet till that thou thy poem wilt make known_, Let thy faire Cynthia’s praises be thus rudely shown.” But poetic effusions are not the only contributions of Raleigh to literature. During his long confinement in the Tower, on charge of treason, he relieved his solitude by compiling a “History of the World;” an undertaking sufficient to appal the most active and learned man under the most favourable circumstances, but which appears something superhuman when attempted and almost accomplished by a wretched prisoner lying under an unjust sentence of death. This History commences at the Creation, and descends as far as the end of the second Macedonian War; when, in consequence of the death of Prince Henry, for whose instruction it was intended, he ceased from his arduous labours. The work displays a vast extent of reading in history, philosophy, theology, and Rabbinical learning. Like Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney combined the characters of the warrior and the author. His Arcadia was a work of poetic prose, better suited to the time in which he lived than to any subsequent period, and is almost forgotten; and the stiffness and hard formality of his poetry has almost sunk it in like oblivion. A writer who is not an author for all time, may be a very useful and agreeable one in his day, but lacks power and thoughtfulness. It is only those who have the “one touch of Nature” which “makes the whole world kin,” that are independent of time, and live with the kindred spirits of all ages.