years as prisoners in the Tower, where they occupied the same rooms in the Bloody Tower which shortly before had been tenanted by the wife’s victim. Sir Thomas Overbury was buried in St Peter’s Chapel, his grave lying next to that of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. Prince Henry’s death in 1612 was a terrible loss to Raleigh. The Queen had already tasted Sir Walter’s famous cordial or elixir, and when her son was given up by the physicians, Anne implored them to try Raleigh’s specific medicine, which, according to its inventor, was safe to cure all diseases save those produced by poison. Henry was already speechless when the elixir was administered to him, but after he had swallowed one or two drops he was able to utter a few words before he expired. What was the nature of this wonderful mixture of Raleigh’s cannot now be ascertained, although Charles II.’s French physician, Le Febre, prepared what was believed to be the actual concoction and wrote a treatise upon it. Some of its ingredients were indeed awful, the flesh of vipers forming one of them, and it speaks much for the strength of James’s Queen that she survived the taking of this terrible physic. [Illustration: VERA EFFIGIES CLARISSᴹᴵ VIRI DOMᴺᴵ GUALTHERI RALEGH EQV AUR. etc AMORE ET VIRTVTE _The true and lively portraiture of the honourable and learned Knight Sʳ. Walter Ralegh._] Raleigh had intended dedicating his history to Prince Henry, but after that young Prince’s death he seems to have lost his former zest in the work. There is a story told that he threw part of the manuscript into the fire on hearing that Walter Burr, the publisher of the first edition in 1614, had been a loser by bringing it out. Of that first part Mr Hume, in his “Life of Raleigh,” writes, “The history, as it exists, is probably the greatest work ever produced in captivity, except Don Quixote. The learning contained in it is perfectly encyclopædic. Raleigh had always been a lover and a collector of books, and had doubtless laid out the plan of the work in his mind before his fall. He had near him in the Tower his learned Hariot, who was indefatigable in helping his master. Ben Jonson boasted that he had contributed to the work, and such books or knowledge as could not be obtained or consulted by a prisoner, were made available by scholars like Robert Burhill, by Hughes, Warner, or Hariot. Sir John Hoskyns, a great stylist in his day, would advise with regard to construction, and from many other quarters aid of various sorts was obtained. But, withal, the work is purely Raleigh’s. No student of his fine, flowing, majestic style will admit that any other pen but his can have produced it. The vast learning employed in it is now, for the most part, obsolete, but the human asides where Raleigh’s personality reveals itself, the little bits of incidental autobiography, the witty, apt illustrations, will prevent the work itself from dying. To judge