more or less good, with one exception, and that is Bishop Goodman's
Memoirs, on which much stress has been lately laid, as throwing light
on various passages of Raleigh, Essex, Cecil, and James's lives.
Having read it carefully, I must say plainly, that I think the book
an altogether foolish, pedantic, and untrustworthy book, without any
power of insight or gleam of reason; without even the care to be
self-consistent; having but one object, the whitewashing of James,
and of every noble lord whom the bishop has ever known: but in
whitewashing each, the poor old flunkey so bespatters all the rest of
his pets, that when the work is done, the whole party look, if
possible, rather dirtier than before. And so I leave Bishop Goodman.

Mr. Fraser Tytler's book is well known; and it is on the whole a good
one; because he really loves and admires the man of whom he writes:
but he is sometimes careless as to authorities, and too often makes
the wish father to the thought. Moreover, he has the usual sentiment
about Mary Queen of Scots, and the usual scandal about Elizabeth,
which is simply anathema; and which prevents his really seeing the
time in which Raleigh lived, and the element in which he moved. This
sort of talk is happily dying out just now; but no one can approach
the history of the Elizabethan age (perhaps of any age) without
finding that truth is all but buried under mountains of dirt and
chaff--an Augaean stable, which, perhaps, will never be swept clean.
Yet I have seen, with great delight, several attempts toward removal
of the said superstratum of dirt and chaff from the Elizabethan
histories, in several articles, all evidently from the same pen (and
that one, more perfectly master of English prose than any man
living), in the 'Westminster Review' and 'Fraser's Magazine.' {2}

Sir Robert Schomburgk's edition of the Guiana Voyage contains an