JOHN LELAND [Leland, the antiquary, was born in London about 1500, and educated at St. Paul's School, at Christ's College, Cambridge, and at All Souls, Oxford. He spent several years in France and Italy, and returned to England a prodigy of learning. Taking orders, he was appointed a Royal Chaplain and King's Antiquary, with a commission (dated 1533) to examine the antiquities of the whole country, and with this end to search the libraries of all colleges and religious houses. The moment was opportune, as the dissolution of the monasteries was near at hand. After six years of travel and inquiry he settled in London to digest his materials. But before he could do more than put his vast accumulations in order, his reason became impaired, and he died in 1552. Most of his papers are preserved in the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. They were printed in many volumes in the eighteenth century.] LELAND belongs to the useful class of writers who are pioneers. They observe, collect and prepare the material with which the man of historical or scientific genius builds. Leland, whom Antony Wood calls facile princeps of English antiquaries, was almost incredibly laborious, with a faculty of intelligent observation which made him the idol of those who followed in his track. Here is an entry culled at random from his Itinerary :"Aldborough is about a quarter of a mile from Borough Bridge. This was in the Romans' time a great city on Watling Street called Isuria Brigantum, and was walled, whereof I saw vestigia quædam sed tenuia." Hundreds of pages are crammed with similar records of fact, and interspersed here and there are copies of old documents and queries for future consideration. Turning over a volume of his Collectanea, we notice in succession a list of Welsh words with their Latin equivalents, catalogues of manuscripts in various monasteries and colleges, a genealogy of the Earls of Warwick-in short an infinite medley of miscel laneous information. He thus performed single-handed, for the reign of Henry VIII., the task which various learned societies and Royal Commissions endeavour to overtake in our own day. But it would be unfair to call Leland a mere compiler of notes, although his notes, as it happens, are his best memorial. "New Year's Gift" shows him to have been a man of large conHis ceptions, full of plans for future work. A reference to his Latin commentaries De Scriptoribus Britannicis enables us to guess how he would have accomplished his projected magnum opus—a Civilis Historia or treatise in fifty books on British antiquities-had his mind not given way. Amid a wilderness of legendary bards and forgotten scholastics it is interesting to find perfectly readable essays on Wycliffe and Chaucer. The sketch of Wycliffe ends with a remark which brings home to us the feelings of the time when Leland wrote :-"Long as it is," he says (we paraphrase from his Latin) "since Wycliffe's bones were exhumed and burned, our age has not yet seen the conclusion of that tragedy-what it will be, God only knows, to Whose judgment Wycliffe may be left." The essay on Chaucer is singularly modern in its structure. Commencing with a paragraph on the poet's birth and education, it proceeds to trace his connection with the contemporary poetry of Italy and France; claims for him that he brought "our tongue to such a pitch of purity and eloquence, of brevity and grace, that it could at last be reckoned one of the languages of civilisation"; quotes various laudatory verses; praises Caxton for his edition of the poet; gives a list of Chaucer's works; and ends, in the most approved style, with his epitaph. Leland's Latin style is fluent and copious, but not elegant. Of his English there is little to be said, except that it is clear and straightforward. JAMES MILLER Dodds. THE LABORIOUS JOURNEY AND SEARCH OF JOHN LELAND FOR ENGLAND'S ANTIQUITIES, GIVEN WHEREFORE after that I had perpended the honest and profitable studies of these historiographs, I was totally inflamed with a love to see thoroughly all those parts of this your opulent and ample realm, that I had read of in the aforesaid writers: in so much that all my other occupations intermitted, I have so travelled in your dominions both by the sea coasts and the middle parts, sparing neither labour nor costs, by the space of these six year's past, that there is almost neither cape, nor bay, haven, creek or pier, river or confluence of rivers, breaches, washes, lakes, meres, fenny waters, mountains, valleys, moors, heaths, forests, chases, woods, cities, burghs, castles, principal manor places, monasteries, and colleges, but I have seen them; and noted in so doing a whole world of things very memorable. Thus instructed I trust shortly to see the time that like as Carolus Magnus had among his treasures three large and notable tables of silver richly enamelled, one of the site and description of Constantinople, another of the site and figure of the magnificent city of Rome, and the third of the description of the world; so shall your Majesty have this your world and impery of England so set forth in a quadrate table of silver, if God send me life to accomplish my beginnings, that your grace shall have ready knowledge at the first sight of many right delectable, fruitful, and necessary pleasures, by the contemplation thereof as often as occasion shall move you to the sight of it. And because that it may be more permanent, and farther known than to have it engraved in silver or brass, I intend (by the leave of God) within the space of twelve months following such a description to make of your realm in writing, that it shall be no mastery after for the graver or painter to make a like by a perfect example. Yea and to wade farther in this matter, whereas now almost no man can well guess at the shadow of the ancient names of havens, rivers, promontories, hills, woods, cities, towns, castles, and variety of kinds of people, that Cæsar, Livy, Strabo, Diodorus, Fabius Pictor, Pomponius Mela, Plinius, Cornelius Tacitus, Ptolemæus, Sextus Rufus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Solinus, Antoninus, and divers other make mention of, I trust so to open this window that the light shall be seen, so long, that is to say by the space of a whole thousand years stopped up, and the old glory of your renowned Britain to reflourish thorough the world. This done I have matter at plenty already prepared to this purpose, that is to say, to write an history, to the which I intend to ascribe this title, De Antiquitate Britannicâ, or else Civilis Historia. And this work I intend to divide into so many books as there be shires in England, and sheres and great dominions in Wales. So that I esteem that this volume will include a fifty books, whereof each one severally shall contain the beginnings, increases, and memorable acts of the chief towns and castles of the province allotted to it. Then I intend to distribute into six books such matter as I have already collected concerning the isles adjacent to your noble realm and under your subjection. Whereof three shall be of these isles, Vecta, Mona, and Menavia, sometime kingdoms. And to superadd a work as an ornament and a right comely garland to the enterprises aforesaid, I have selected stuff to be distributed into three books, the which I purpose thus to entitle, De Nobilitate Britannicâ. Whereof the first shall declare the names of kings, queens, with their children, dukes, earls, lords, captains, and rulers in this realm to the coming of the Saxons and their conquest. The second shall be of the Saxons and Danes to the victory of King William the Great. The third from the Normans to the reign of your most noble Grace, descending lineally of the Briton, Saxon, and Norman kings. So that all noble men shall clearly perceive their lineal parentele. (From Preface.) THE COMPLAINT OF SCOTLAND 1549 THE Complaint of Scotland, the earliest book in Scottish prose, a discourse written immediately after the battle of Pinkie to strengthen the Scottish hatred of their "old enemies of England" and confirm the national sentiment of independence, is worth reading on various accounts. It has a style, and, though not a great work, is both representative of its period and also possessed of some individuality. A good deal both of the matter and form is commonplace. The "machinery" of the vision in which Dame Scotia and her three sons (the three Estates) appear to the author, as he sleeps after his wanderings on a summer morning, is borrowed, a little the worse for wear, from the stock of the Chaucerian poets; and the examples and illustrations are of the usual medieval sort from the usual ancient authors. Further, there is the ordinary medieval incontinence of general information; the author cannot keep the sciences out of his argument. Part of the diversion of the summer morning is a shepherd's oration, in considerable detail, on the constitution of the universe, the spheres, the primum mobile, the retrograde movement of the planets from Occident to Orient, the antipodes, the tropics, and other branches of learning. It is true that this is styled (by the shepherd's wife) a 66 tedious, melancholic orison," but the author enjoys it thoroughly. On the other hand the book, for all these drawbacks, by some means is enabled to escape the dulness of the medieval expositor in his prime. The Complaint of Scotland belongs to the revival of learning. It is full of the new delight in eloquent and ornate language, which filled all the literatures of Europe with Latin and Greek; the author's hypocritical apology for his use of "agrest termis" in itself sufficiently bewrays him. In this he is the follower of the Scottish |