being often reprinted and a thousand times more widely known than it is, except the long and dull historical and topographical Book I.[2]—The Description of Britaine—set before the interesting account in Books II. and III., of the England under Harrison’s eyes in 1577-87.

How Harrison came to write his book[3] was on this wise. Reginald Wolfe, the Printer to Queen Elizabeth, meant to publish “a universall Cosmographie of the whole world,[4] and therewith also certaine particular histories of every knowne nation.” For the Historical part of the work, he engagd Raphael Holinshed, among other men; and when the work was nearly done, Wolfe died, after twenty-five years’ labour at his scheme. Then the men who were to have borne the cost of printing the Universall Cosmographie were afraid to face the expense of the whole work, and resolvd to do only so much of it as related to England, Scotland, and Ireland.[5]

Holinshed having the History of these countries in hand, application was made to Harrison, who had long been compiling a Chronologie[6] of his own, to furnish the Descriptions of Britain and England. He was then Household Chaplain to the well-known Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham (so praisd by Francis Thynne[7]), and was staying in London, away from his rectory of Radwinter in Essex, and his Library there. He had also travelld little himself, only into Kent, to Oxford and Cambridge, etc., as he honestly tells Lord Cobham.

Still, mainly by the help of Leland—“and hitherto Leland, whose words I dare not alter”—as well as of “letters and pamphlets from sundrie places & shires of England,” and “by conference with diuers folk,”[8] and “by mine owne reading,”[9] together with Master Sackford’s charts or Maps,”[10] Harrison—notwithstanding the failure of his correspondents[11] and the loss of part of his material—“scambled up,” what he depreciatingly calls “this foule frizeled Treatise of mine,” to “stand in lieu of a description of my Countrie.” But, he says, “howsoeuer it be done, & whatsoeuer I haue done, I haue had an especiall eye vnto the truth of things.” And this merit, I think every reader will allow Harrison. Though he swallowd too easily some of the stories told in old chronicles,[12] etc., though (in his 2nd ed. only) he put Chertsey above, instead of below, Staines, on the Thames,[13] etc., yet in all the interesting home-life part, he evidently gives both sides of the case, “speaks of it as it was; nothing extenuates, nor sets down aught in malice” (Oth., V. ii. 341). When he tells with pride, on the one hand, of the grand new buildings and the many chimnies put up in his day; on the other hand, he brings in the grumble:

—when he describes the beauty, virtue, learning, and housewifery, of Queen Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour, he yet acknowledges that as the men

Even the Papist Monks,[15] whom—as a marrid Protestant parson and vicar—he hates, he praises for their buildings. And when he does abuse or chaff heartily any absurdity, like Englishmen’s dress,—“except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see anie so disguised as are my countrie men of England,”—we may be sure it was deservd; Shakspere does it too[16] (Merchant, I. ii. 80; Much Ado, III. ii. 36, etc.).

Harrison’s book will inform and amuse the reader.

Besides writing the Descriptions of Britaine and England for Holinshed’s Chronicle, William Harrison also translated for it, from Scotch into English, Archdeacon Bellenden’s version of Hector Boetius’s Latin Description of Scotland. This work took him only “three or foure daies” he says: “Indeed, the trauell taken heerein is not great, bicause I tie not my translation vnto his [Bellenden’s] letter.” Harrison dedicated this translation—the Description of Scotland—to the Maister Sackford, or Secford, whose “cards,” charts, or Maps, had been of such use to him in his account of the English rivers in his Description of Britaine.

Happily for us, William Harrison was not one of those dignified prigs who are afraid of writing about themselves in their books. He tells us that he was born in London