one or two which rank among the most characteristic fruits of their writer's mind. Several of them contain passages which it is painful to read; but they are among the most precious materials of biography.

Of two other letters, purporting to have been written by RALEGH, I entertain doubts of a different sort from those which apply to the fragments in the JONES MS. They were printed, more than two hundred years ago,1 in the volume entitled "A Collection of Letters made by Sir TOBIE MATHEWS." TOBIAS MATHEW was the well-known son of that Bishop of Durham who became RALEGH's successor in the possession of Durham House, and therefore he was himself Sir WALTER's contemporary. But his character in literature, as in life, is such as to give very small authority to his statements. He was made up of crotchets and affectations. He had a special fondness, I believe, for treating correspondence somewhat in the way in which it was treated by his contemporary JAMES HOWELL, or-still more conspicuously-by a famous poet of the next century. He gave, it would seem, to his letters fictitious addresses, fictitious dates, fictitious headings, and fictitious interpolations. It is possible, of course, that the two letters assigned by him to RALEGII, and published by his editor, Dr.

1 In November 1659, but with the imprint, Lond. 1660.'

JOHN DONNE, four years after MATHEW's own death,—are genuine; but the authority is eminently unsatisfactory, and to the best of my knowledge neither of them derives confirmation from external sources. I therefore print them in this place, rather than in the body of the volume. I print them literally as they were printed in 1659, and with the fantastical headings which TOBIE MATHEW, or Dr. DONNE, was pleased to prefix to them. The first letter-if it be genuine-does not, it is obvious, relate (as has been suggested) to the sale of the house at Mitcham in Surrey, in order to raise money towards the expenses of the fatal expedition to Guiana. That house was purchased from Lady RALEGH by Sir THOMAS PLUMER (an ancestor of the PLUMERS of Hertfordshire), to whom assuredly the expressions "the gentleman who is so greatly in favour," and who "hath many faire fortunes before him," have no relevancy. If those phrases be not mere imitations of similar phrases in the well-known letter to Sir ROBERT CARR, they are, at least, reiterations of them, plainly pointed at the same Court favourite; neither is it possible that the phrase, "we have nothing to look for but misery," howsoever true potentially, and in the event, could have been used by RALEGH, of himself and his family, at a date immediately prior to his outset for Guiana, when he was full of great schemes of enterprise, if not full of hopes.

1609?

Letter alleged (by Tobias

Mathew or by John Donne) to have been written by Sir W. Ralegh to

some

nobleman unnamed.

If this letter be indeed genuine, and be faithfully printed, it obviously must relate to the negotiation with CARR about the Sherborne estate, and must belong to the year 1609, not to 1616. The subject-matter of the other letter refers it, just as evidently, to the year 1618, and to some late period of the year, almost immediately before Sir WALTER'S execution.

The undated letter of 1609 is thus headed in the collection of 1659:—

"SIR W. RAWLEY TO A GREAT LORD WHOM ENTREATES TO GIVE HIM JUST ASSISTANCE IN HIS BUSINESSE.

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIP

"I HUMBLY beseech your Lordship to give me leave, and pardon to[o], if I need it, for the answering of those things which you were lately pleased to object against me; and that you will, charitably, also consider of my demands, and of the reasons which embolden me to make them.

1 This form of address, to other than the Sovereign, it may here be observed, does occur in the course of the correspondence hereinafter printed, but it is extremely unusual with Ralegh. I do not remember that it is once used by him in addressing the Lord Treasurer Burghley. It occurs, once-in 1604-in a letter to Lord Cecil, relative to the delivery of the Seal of the Duchy of Cornwall. If this letter of 1609 be genuine, the person most likely to be asked by the writer to "consider charitably of my demands, and of the reasons which embolden me to make them," is evidently the Lord Treasurer Salisbury. But I see no trace of such a letter among the Hatfield MSS.

"Those answers go here, in a paper which is enclosed apart, and my letter shall say but thus much That the gentleman who is so greatly in favour hath many faire fortunes before him; and we, nothing to look for but misery; and that he is better able to give us above the worth of the land, than we in condition to abate any part thereof. And therefore we humbly beseech your Lordship that your compassion and care of honour may be the judge between his prosperous navigation and our shipwrack, and that your charity for us, and your desire of satisfaction for him, may equal the ballance between us.

"I hope so heartily to find as just favour at your hands, as I will venture upon this to assure you that I will do all my uttermost to make my wife and my son forget their misery in themselves, and to be ever mindful of their duty to your Lordship, to whom I hope they will be, as I am sure myself have been, and am, a most faithfull humble servant, &c."

The undated letter of 1618 is thus headed :

[1618.]

Letter

"SIR WALTER RAULEIGH TO KING JAMES; WHICH SEEMES RATHER TO ACKNOWLEDGE FAVOURS, T. Mathew

THAN TO DESIRE THEM.

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY,

"My sad destiny hath been such, that I could never present Your Majesty but with

alleged (by

or by J.
Donne) to
have been
written by
Sir W.

Ralegh to
King

James.

a prospect upon my complaints and miseries, in stead of doing You services which might have been acceptable to You. I have not spared my labour, my poor estate, and the howerly hazard of my life; but God hath otherwise disposed of all; and now end the dayes of my hope.

"I must neverthelesse, in this little time in which I am to live, acknowledge and admire your goodnesse, and in all my thoughts and even with my last breath confesse that You have beheld my affliction with compassion. And I am yet in nothing so miserable, as in that I could never meet an occasion wherein to be torn in pieces for Your Majestie's service; I, who am still Your," &c.

I am bound to add that, for myself, I wholly decline to believe that RALEGH wrote thus to King JAMES in October 1618. RAlegh was sometimes a flatterer, and there had been a time when he had shown himself very capable of flattering (even fulsomely) that shame of our English throne; possible as it may be that some of his panegyric is but irony. I venture to think, nevertheless, that in the very last days of life he could scarcely write to the King who, at the express bidding of PHILIP the Third's Cabinet, had already commanded him to be put presently to death, for a conspiracy,