and yet to him with a voice like a clarion. There are books that have
lain silent for a century, and then have spoken with the trumpet of a
prophecy. We shall disdain nothing; we shall have a little criticism,
a little anecdote, a little bibliography; and our old book shall
go back to the shelves before it has had time to be tedious in its
babbling.




CAMDEN'S "BRITANNIA"

BRITAIN: _or a chorographical description of the most flourishing
Kingdomes, England, Scotland and Ireland, and the Ilands adioyning;
out of the depth of Antiquitie: beautified with Mappes of the severall
Shires of England; Written first in Latine by William Camden,
Clarenceux K. of A. Translated newly into English by Philémon Holland.
Londini, Impensis Georgii Bishop & Joannis Norton, M.DC.X_.


There is no more remarkable example of the difference between the
readers of our light and hurrying age and those who obeyed "Eliza and
our James," than the fact that the book we have before us at this
moment, a folio of some eleven hundred pages, adorned, like a fighting
elephant, with all the weightiest panoply of learning, was one of the
most popular works of its time. It went through six editions, this
vast antiquarian itinerary, before the natural demand of the vulgar
released it from its Latin austerity; and the title-page we have
quoted is that of the earliest English edition, specially translated,
under the author's eye, by Dr. Philémon Holland, a laborious