Monthly Review of Literature, 



640 



bcth's court) and his command, under 

 Leicester, of the forces sent to aid the Pro- 

 testants in the Netherlands not forgetting, 

 of course, " thy neces.sity is greater than 

 mine." .Dr. Drake neither questions nor 

 qualifies ; and we were even surprised that 

 he ventures to think it " an unfortunate 

 hour when Sidney undertook his uncle's 

 defence. While exhibiting much talent 

 and ingenuity (it was in reply to ' Leices- 

 ter's Commonwealth,' by Parsons, the 

 Jesuit) he left," says Dr. D., " as might 

 have been anticipated, the most heinous 

 charges unrefuted." " No doubt," he con- 

 tinues, " Sir Philip believed his uncle less 

 criminal than he was represented, but he 

 wiyht not to have undertaken the exculpa- 

 tion without sufficient data adequate to en- 

 sure success" which is surely very gentle 

 censure and, from a man of Dr. D.'s 

 generally sound discernment of moral rec- 

 titude not censure of the right kind. The 

 fact proves that Sidney acted like many 

 other men like the ordinary run, indeed, 

 of common men prompted or compelled 

 by family considerations and circumstances, 

 to do what they cannot perhaps altogether 

 approve, and would rather leave undone, 

 but want nerve and resolution to refuse 

 what delicacy of feeling forbids. It proves, 

 too, that the romance of Sidney's character 

 lies more in the imagination of admirers, 

 than in the conduct of the man. Sidney 

 is obviously very largely indebted to the pa- 

 negyrics of poetry, and poetry patronized ; 

 and men of sixty are yet alive, it seems, to 

 interpret the language of Spencer like a 

 spinster of sixteen. The paper on the 

 sister is much more agreeable. The Coun- 

 tess had more of the natural about her, 

 and the evidences of her qualities and abili- 

 ties are, some of them, of a more unsus- 

 picious cast. She appears to have made 

 much of the Arcadia her own; and the 

 versification of the Psalms, which has been 

 recently published many of which have quite 

 a modern air about them is almost wholly 

 hers. 



The materials for the papers on the Clif- 

 fords are taken chiefly from Whitaker's 

 History of Craven. The history of this 

 conspicuous family is traced, from the first 

 lord of the Honour of Skipton, in the reign 

 of Edward II., successively, but briefly, to 

 the tenth lord, who was the son of " Black- 

 faced Clifford," the murderer of young Rut- 

 land. This tenth lord, in consequence of 

 his father's atrocity, was in imminent peril 

 during the triumph of the Yorkists ; was 

 secreted by his mother and his nurse, and 

 brought up ostensibly as a shepherd, till the 

 age of twenty -five visited, occasionally, but 

 cautiously, by his mother ; and every thing 

 was of course done, consistently with his 

 safety, to secure his comforts, and keep up 

 the dignity of his feelings. On the acces- 

 sion of Henry VII. he recovered his in- 

 heritance, and, though utterly without the 



[JUNE, 



education of books, he did no discredit to 

 his birth and station. This lord is sup- 

 posed, by Dr. Whitaker, to be the hero of 

 the old ballad of the " Nut Browne Maide," 

 and, as Dr. Drake thinks, with great pro- 

 bability. The lover specifically describes 

 Westmoreland as his heritage, and himself 

 as a banished man and an outlaw ; and the 

 great " lynage" of the lady, and her being 

 a baron's childe, agree perfectly with the 

 descent of his first wife, Anne, daughter of 

 Sir John St. John of Bletsoe. " Interest- 

 ing," says Dr. D., " as the ballad of the 

 Nut Brown Maid must assuredly be deem- 

 ed, merely as a work of fiction, yet does it 

 become incomparably more striking and 

 affecting, when it is discovered to have been 

 b uilt on the basis of reality ; and a reality, 

 too, of which the circumstances are, at the 

 same time, in a high degree romantic and 

 extraordinary." 



The son of the shepherd Clifford was the 

 favourite of Henry VIII. ; and the grand- 

 son, the one whose contests with the Nor- 

 tons has been told by Wordsworth, in the 

 " White Doe of Rylstone." On the failure 

 of male descendants in the right line, the 

 property fell into the hands of the well 

 known queen of the north, Anne Clifford, 

 the wife successively of the Earls of Dorset 

 and Pembroke, with whom and whose families 

 she lived, as she herself poetically expresses 

 it, " as the river of Roan or Rhodanus runs 

 through the Lake of Geneva, without ming- 

 ling any part of its stream with that lake- 

 for I gave myself up to retiredness," &c. 

 On her second widowhood she withdrew to 

 her estates, and rebuilt her castles ; and be- 

 ing cautioned against doing so while Crom- 

 well ruled " Let him," said she, " destroy 

 them if he will I will rebuild as long as 

 he leaves me a shilling in my pocket." In 

 Charles II. 's reign, the secretary of state 

 wrote to her, and named the member for 

 Appleby " I have been bullied by an 

 usurper," was her laconic reply " I have 

 been neglected by a court ; but I will not 

 be dictated to by a subject your man shan't 

 stand." Her reign lasted for twenty -six 

 years. " She could talk of all things," 

 said Dr. Donne, in the style of the times, 

 " from predestination to slea-silk." 



The Annals of Jamaica, by the Rev. G. 

 W. Bridges, Rector of the Parish of St. 

 Ann, Jamaica, vol. 1 ; 1827. Mr. Bridges 

 is a thorough -going partizan ; though mis- 

 taking the fervours of party connexions for 

 the zealous pursuit of truth, he has, perhaps 

 insensibly, fallen into the delusion, that con- 

 viction the most unshakeable must infallibly 

 follow such manifestly disinterested and un- 

 biassed researches as his. Commencing ab 

 ovo, he proposes to trace the history of this, 

 the chief seat of negro slavery ; and by 

 shewing, thus historically, that the condition 

 of the slave was once worse, to prove it can- 

 not now be bad. Upon this laudable task 



