The books which I have chosen to head this review are all of them more or less good, with one exception, and that is Bishop Goodman’s Memoirs, on which much stress has been lately laid, as throwing light on various passages of Raleigh, Essex, Cecil, and James’s lives. Having read it carefully, I must say plainly, that I think the book an altogether foolish, pedantic, and untrustworthy book, without any power of insight or gleam of reason; without even the care to be self-consistent; having but one object, the whitewashing of James, and of every noble lord whom the bishop has ever known: but in whitewashing each, the poor old flunkey so bespatters all the rest of his pets, that when the work is done, the whole party look, if possible, rather dirtier than before. And so I leave Bishop Goodman. Mr. Fraser Tytler’s book is well known; and it is on the whole a good one; because he really loves and admires the man of whom he writes: but he is sometimes careless as to authorities, and too often makes the wish father to the thought. Moreover, he has the usual sentiment about Mary Queen of Scots, and the usual scandal about Elizabeth, which is simply anathema; and which prevents his really seeing the time in which Raleigh lived, and the element in which he moved. This sort of talk is happily dying out just now; but no one can approach the history of the Elizabethan age (perhaps of any age) without finding that truth is all but buried under mountains of dirt and chaff—an Augæan stable, which, perhaps, will never be swept clean. Yet I have seen, with great delight, several attempts toward removal of the said superstratum of dirt and chaff from the Elizabethan histories, in several articles, all evidently from the same pen (and that one, more perfectly master of English prose than any man living), in the ‘Westminster Review’ and ‘Fraser’s Magazine.’ {95} Sir Robert Schomburgk’s edition of the Guiana Voyage contains an excellent Life of Raleigh, perhaps the best yet written; of which I only complain, when it gives in to the stock-charges against Raleigh, as it were at second-hand, and just because they are stock-charges, and when, too, the illustrious editor (unable to conceal his admiration of a discoverer in many points so like himself) takes all through an apologetic tone of ‘Please don’t laugh at me. I daresay it is very foolish; but I can’t help loving the man.’ Mr. Napier’s little book is a reprint of two ‘Edinburgh Review’ articles on Bacon and Raleigh. The first, a learned statement of facts in answer to some unwisdom of a ‘Quarterly’ reviewer (possibly an Oxford Aristotelian; for ‘we think we do know that sweet Roman hand’). It is clear, accurate, convincing, complete. There is no more to be said about the matter, save that facts are stubborn things.