1828.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



639 



nicle as possible, and can interest no soul 

 breathing but an antiquary ; but then 

 Mr. Nicolas thinks there is no soul breath- 

 ing who is not an antiquary. Almost the 

 whole baronage of England assembled for 

 this splendid expedition, and they are in- 

 dividually enumerated, with a word or two 

 thrown in, sometimes gaily enough, de- 

 scriptive of character, and the arms of each 

 carefully and scientifically blazoned. 



This blazonry, indeed, is evidently, in 

 Mr. Nicolas's eyes, the chief charm of the 

 poem affording evidence, as it does, that 

 the SCIENCE of heraldry was in a state of 

 maturity and perfection, at a time when 

 some have thoughtlessly supposed it to have 

 been in its infancy. The text is framed 

 from an autograph copy of Glover's, the 

 celebrated herald, compared with another 

 in the Museum and a third, it seems, is 

 deposited in the office of Ulster King 

 of Arms at Dublin, and modern copies are 

 in the hands of sundry individuals. Be- 

 sides, about fifty years ago the poem was 

 actually printed in the Antiquarian Reper- 

 tory, with a translation. " But the text," 

 says Mr. Nicolas, "was corrupt, and the 

 translation unfortunate ;" and his fate it 

 has been to remedy both and no man in 

 the country, by ability, acquirements, and 

 diligence could be more competent to the 

 task. Aided and advised, too, as he has 

 been by a learned brother, Dr. Meyrick, 

 we have no doubt the thing is as pure as 

 {silver seven times tried in the fire every 

 stain burnt out in the critical crucible ; and, 

 if occasion require it, we ourselves, such is 

 our confidence in the parties, shall be ready 

 to swear by its immaculateness. But Mr. 

 Nicolas has not contented himself with a 

 simple translation, though that was no 

 slight labour obsolete as is much of the 

 language ; but has filled half a quarto with 

 excavations from the mines of Dugdale's 

 Baronage, and fifty others, to illustrate 

 every one of the hundred names which 

 cover the poem of which we must confess 

 we have not read a great deal, but the little 

 we have read satisfies us much research and 

 labour has been successfully spent in this 

 way we add not more than the subject 

 was worth the setting often easily surpasses 

 the picture. 



Mornings in Spring, by Dr. Drake. 



2 vols. ; 1828 Dr. Drake has no new 



materials within, at command nor any ex- 

 traordinary shrewdness or sagacity to elicit 

 new developments from without no, nor 

 any peculiar adroitness in making the old 

 look new ; but he is an indefatigable reader, 

 and a retrospective one. While all around 

 are perhaps too much bent upon the pre- 

 sent, he reminds us agreeably of much 

 that we should otherwise forget but he is 

 too confiding to sift ; and though his very 

 amiable qualities are a pledge that he will 

 set down nought in malice, those same qua- 

 lities occasionally prompt him to extenuate. 



If we were disposed to find fault with Dr. 

 Drake, which we certainly are not, it would 

 be for the leaning he evidently has, with 

 an unreasoning admiration, to paint every 

 body en beau to make little, or rather not 

 little deities of his fellow mortals to throw 

 a veil but he does it insensibly over the 

 frailties that might diminish his own vene- 

 ration, or that of other worshippers. Dr. 

 Drake would be shocked at any charge of 

 misrepresentation, and yet it is as easy to 

 misrepresent by suppressing as by fabri- 

 cating as easy to do so by over-colouring 

 as by under-colouring. In speaking of 

 Drummond of Hawthornden, he expresses 

 an ardent wish that Drummond's account 

 of Ben Jonson's visit and conversation had 

 never seen the light simply because it 

 gives a less favourable impression of the 

 character of the old dramatist than the fancy 

 of admirers leads them to assign him. Now 

 this is really worse than nonsense. Let us 

 have things as they are with all the bene- 

 fits and there are benefits from the bad as 

 well as the good to be derived from expe- 

 rience. The best use of biography is to 

 enlarge our acquaintance with mankind ; 

 but to give us nothing but the good and 

 great, is to poison the stream of truth at its 

 source. We would know all men did, and 

 why the motives, foul and fair the prin- 

 ciples, bad and good the actions, wrong 

 and right to make a true estimate we 

 are not concerned with divinities, but mor- 

 tals. The likeness is the thing the fa- 

 shion of it is nothing ; give us realities ; 

 for if we are to work on characters as an 

 artist does on the picturesque, why trouble 

 ourselves with facts at all ? the imagination 

 is fertile enough to give us all we want. 



Of the papers with which these new vo- 

 lumes of Dr. Drake present us, the most 

 agreeable by far are the Memoirs of Sir 

 Philip Sidney, and his accomplished sister, 

 the Countess of Pembroke the Cliffords of 

 Craven and the Banks of the Esk, or 

 rather the poets and men of genius who 

 have ennobled its waters. 



The Memoirs of Sidney detail the family 

 connexions the father's letter and mother's 

 postscript to him while at Shrewsbury school 

 the youth's tour on the continent, and 

 his literary acquaintance there his accom- 

 plishments his embassy to the Palatine of 

 the Rhine his patronage of Raleigh and 

 Spencer his welcome remonstrance with 

 the queen on her talked-of marriage with 

 Anjou the insult received at court from 

 the Earl of Oxford, and consequent retire- 

 ment to his sister's at Wilton the compo- 

 sition with her of the Arcadia his mar- 

 riage with Walsingham's daughter his 

 defence of Leicester's character his pre- 

 parations for accompanying Drake in one 

 of his plundering expeditions to America 

 his competition for the throne of Poland 

 (which amounted, probably, to a little idle 

 gossip among the maids of honour in Eliza- 



