attained this pinnacle; and the _Britannia_ had been his alpenstock.

This first English edition has the special interest of representing
Camden's last thoughts. It is nominally a translation of the sixth
Latin edition, but it has a good deal of additional matter supplied
to Philémon Holland by the author, whereas later English issues
containing fresh material are believed to be so far spurious. The
_Britannia_ grew with the life of Camden. He tells us that it was
when he was a young man of six-and-twenty, lately started on his
professional career as second master in Westminster School, that the
famous Dutch geographer, Abraham Ortelius, "dealt earnestly with me
that I would illustrate this isle of Britain." This was no light task
to undertake in 1577. The authorities were few, and these in the
highest degree occasional or fragmentary. It was not a question of
compiling a collection of topographical antiquities. The whole process
had to be gone through "from the egg."

As a youth at Oxford, Camden had turned all his best attention to this
branch of study, and what the ancients had written about England was
intimately known to him. Any one who looks at his book will see that
the first 180 pages of the _Britannia_ could be written by a scholar
without stirring from his chair at Westminster. But when it came to
the minute description of the counties there was nothing for it but
personal travel; and accordingly Camden spent what holidays he could
snatch from his labours as a schoolmaster in making a deliberate
survey of the divisions of England. We possess some particulars of one
of these journeys, that which occupied 1582, in which he started by
Suffolk, through Yorkshire, and returned through Lancashire. He was a
very rapid worker, he spared no pains, and in 1586, nine years after
Ortelius set him going, his first draft was issued from the press. In