"Complete Genealogical, Historical, Chronological, and Geographical
Atlas, &c., by C.V. Lavoisne." Philadelphia, 1821.

W.J.B.

_Countess of Pembroke's letter--Drayton's Poems--A Flemish
Account--Bishop Burnet._

Your correspondent, at p. 28., asks whether there is any contemporary
copy of the celebrated letter, said to have been written by Anne,
Countess of Pembroke, to Sir Joseph Williamson? I would refer him to Mr.
Hartley Coleridge's _Lives of Distinguished Northerns_, 1833, p. 290.
His arguments for considering the letter _spurious_, if not conclusive,
are very forcible, but they are too copious for this paper.

Your readers, who may not be conversant with that undeservedly neglected
volume, will confess their obligation, when they have consulted its
pages, in having been directed to so valuable and so original a work. It
may be observed, that those letters of the Countess which are authentic,
are certainly written in a very different style to the one in question;
but this letter, if addressed by her to Sir Joseph Williamson, would be
written under peculiar circumstances, and being in her 84th year, she
might naturally have asked the assistance of the ablest pen within her
reach. I have the copy of an interesting letter, addressed by the late
Mr. John Baynes to Ritson, in 1785, stating his admiration of the
Countess's "spirit and industry, having seen the collections made by her
order relative to the Cliffords--such as no other noble family in the
world can show."