xvii. p. 539-607) and abstracted them. I likewise finished this day a dissertation in which I examine the right of Charles VIII to the crown of Naples; and the rival claims of the houses of Anjou and Arragon: it consists of ten folio pages, besides large notes." BERITON, AUGUST 4, 1761 (In a week's excursion from Winchester camp.) "After having long_revolved subjects for my intended historical essay, I renounced my first thought of the expedition of Charles VIII, as too remote from us, and rather an introduction to great events than great and important in itself. I successively chose and rejected the crusade of Richard the first, the barons' wars against John and Henry the third, the history of Edward the Black Prince, the lives and comparisons of Henry the fifth and the emperor Titus, the life of sir Philip Sidney, and that of the marquis of Montrose. At length I have fixed on sir Walter Raleigh for my hero. His eventful story is varied by the characters of the soldier and sailor, the courtier and historian; and it may afford such a fund of materials as I desire, which have not yet been properly manufactured. At present I cannot attempt the execution of this work. Free leisure, and the opportunity of consulting many books, both printed and manuscript, are as necessary as they are impossible to be attained in my present way of life. However, to acquire a general insight into my subject and resources, I read the Life of sir Walter Raleigh by Dr Birch, his copious article in the General Dictionary by the same hand, and the reigns of queen Elizabeth and James the first in Hume's History of Eng. land." BERITON, JANUARY 1762. (In a month's absence from Devizes.) During this interval of repose, I again turned my thoughts to sir Walter Raleigh, and looked more closely into my materials. I read the two volumes in quarto of the Bacon papers, published by Dr Birch; the Fragmenta Regalia of sir Robert Naunton, Mallet's Life of lord Bacon, and the political treatises of that great man in the first volume of his works, with many of his letters in the second; sir William Monson's Naval Tracts; and the elaborate Life of sir Walter Raleigh, which Mr Oldys has prefixed to the best edition of his History of the World. My subject opens upon me, and in general improves upon a nearer prospect." BERITON, JULY 26, 1762. (During my summer residence.) I am afraid of being reduced to drop my hero; but my time has not however been lost in the research of his story, and of a memorable era of our English annals. The Life of sir Walter Raleigh, by Oldys, is a very poor performance; a servile panegyric, or flat apology, tediously minute, and composed in a dull and affected style. Yet the author was a man of diligence aad learning, who had read everything relative to his subject, and whose ample collections are arranged with perspicuity and method. Excepting some anecdotes lately revealed in the Sidney and Bacon papers, I know not what I should be able to add. My ambition (exclusive of the uncertain merit of style and sentiment) must be confined to the hope of giving a good abridgment of Oldys. I have even the disappointment of finding some parts of this copious work very dry and barren; and these parts are unluckily some of the most characteristic: Raleigh's colony of Virginia, his quarrels with Essex, the true secret of his conspiracy, and, above all, the detail of his private life, the most essential and important to a biographer. My best resource would be in the circumjacent history of the times, and perhaps in some digressions artfully introduced, like the fortunes of the Peripatetic philosophy in the portrait of lord Bacon. But the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First are the periods of English history which have been the most variously illustrated: and what new lights could reflect on a subject which has exercised the accurate industry of Birch, the lively and curious acuteness of Walpole, the critical spirit of Hurd, the vigorous sense of Mallet and Robertson, and the impartial philosophy of Hume? Could I even surmount these obstacles, I should shrink with terror from the modern history of England, where every character is a problem, and every reader a friend or an enemy; where a writer is supposed to hoist a flag of party, and is devoted to damnation by the adverse faction. Such would be my reception at home and abroad the historian of Raleigh must encounter an indifference far more bitter than censure or reproach. The events of his life are interesting; but his character is ambiguous, his actions are obscure, his writings are English, and his fame is confined to the narrow limits of our language and our island. I must embrace a safer and more extensive theme. : "There is one which I should prefer to all others, The History of the Liberty of the Swiss,' of that independence which a brave people rescued from the house of Austria, defended against a dauphin of France, and finally sealed with the blood of Charles of Burgundy. From such a theme, so full of publicspirit, of military glory, of examples of virtue, of lessons of government, the dullest stranger would catch fire: what might not I hope, whose talents, whatsoever they may be, would be inflamed with the zeal of patriotism? But the materials of this history are inaccessible to me, fast locked in the obscurity of an old barbarous German dialect, of which I am totally ignorant, and which I cannot resolve to learn for this sole and peculiar purpose. "I have another subject in view, which is the contrast of the former history: the one a poor, warlike, virtuous republic, which emerges into glory and freedom; the other a commonwealth, soft, opulent, and corrupt, which by just degrees is precipitated from the abuse to the loss of her liberty: both lessons are perhaps equally instructive. This second subject is, The History of the Republic of Florence under the House of Medicis,' a period of one hundred and fifty years, which rises or descends from the dregs of the Florentine democracy to the title and dominion of Cosmo de Medicis in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. I might deduce a chain of revolutions not unworthy of the pen of Vertot; singular men and singular events; the Medicis four times expelled and as often recalled; and the Genius of Freedom reluctantly yielding to the arms of Charles V and the policy of Cosmo. The character and fate of Savanerola, and the revival of arts and letters in Italy, will be essentially connected with the elevation of the family and the fall of the republic. The Medicis, "stirps quasi fataliter nata ad instauranda vel fovenda studia," (Lipsius ad Germanos et Gallos, Epist. viii.) were illustrated by the patronage of learning; and enthusiasm was the most formidable weapon of their adversaries. On this splendid subject I shall most probably fix; but when, or where, or how, will it be executed? I behold in a dark and doubtful perspective; 'Res altâ terrâ, et caligine mersas.*'" * JOURNAL, July 27, 1762.]-The reflections which I was making yesterday I continued and digested to day. I don't absolutely look on that time as lost, but that it might have been better employed than in revolving schemes, the execution of which is so far distant. I must learn to check these wanderings of my imagination. The youthful habits of the language and manners of France had left in my mind an ardent desire of re Nov. 24]-I dined at the Cocoa Tree with Holt, who, under a great appearance of oddity, conceals more real honour, good sense, and even knowledge, than half those who laugh at him. We went thence to the play (the Spanish Friar;) and when it was over, returned to the Cocoa Tree. That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom in point of fashion and fortune, supping at little tables covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffeeroom, upon a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch. At present we are full of king's counsellors and lords of the bed-chamber, who, having jumped into the ministry, make a very singular medley of their old principles and language with their modern ones. Nov. 26.]-I went with Mallet to breakfast with Garrick; and thence to Drury-lane house, where I assisted at a very private rehearsal, in the green-room, of a new tragedy of Mallet's, called Elvira. As I have since seen it acted, I shall defer my opinion of it till then; but I cannot help mentioning here the surprising versatility of Mrs Pritchard's talents, who rehearsed, almost at the same time, the part of a furious queen in the green-room, and that of a coquette on the stage and passed several times from one to the other with the utmost ease and happiness. Dec. 30.]-Before I close the year I must balance my accounts-not of money, but of time. I may divide my studies into four branches: 1. Books that I have read for themselves, classic writers, or capital treatises upon any science; such books as ought to be perused with attention, and meditated with care. Of these I read the twenty last books of the Iliad twice, the three first books of the Odyssey, the life of Homer, and Longinus map Yous. 2. Books which I have read, or consulted, to illustrate the former. Such as, this year, Blackwall's Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, Burke's Sublime and Beautiful, Hurd's Horace, Guichardt's Mémoires Militaires, a great variety of passages of the ancients, occasionally useful: large extracts from Mezeriac, Bayle, and Potter; and many m‹ |