Letters.
Poems.
I shall give a specimen of Sir Walter's poetry in a piece called the
Vision of the Fairy Queen.
Methought I sawe the grave where Laura lay;
Within that temple, where the vestal flame;
Was wont to burne: and passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tombe fair love, and fairer virtue kept,
All suddenly I sawe the Fairy Queene:
At whose approach the soul of Petrarche wept
And from henceforth, those Graces were not scene;
For they this queen attended; in whose steede
Oblivion laid him down in Laura's hearse:
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed.
And grones of buried ghosts the Heavens did perse;
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for 'griefe,
And curst th' accesse of that celestial thief.
But the most extraordinary work of Sir Walter's is his History of the World, composed in the Tower; it has never been without its admirers; and I shall close the account of our author's works, by the observation of the ingenious author of the Rambler upon this history, in a paper in which he treats of English Historians, No. 122.—"Raleigh (says he) is deservedly celebrated for the labour of his researches, and the elegance of his stile; but he has endeavoured to exert his judgment more than his genius, to select facts, rather than adorn them. He has produced a historical dissertation, but has seldom risen to the majesty of history."
[Footnote 1: Prince's Worthies of Devon.]
[Footnote 2: Camdeni Annales Elizabethæ, p. 172. Edit. Batav. 1625.]
[Footnote 3: Hooker, fol. 167.]
[Footnote 4: Case's History of Ireland, fol. 367.]
[Footnote 5: Captain Haynes's Report of Sir Humphry Gilbert's voyage to Newfoundland, vol. iii. p. 149.]