The introduction to the Scottish section is in a queer tone of banter; Camden knows little and cares less about the “commonwealth of the Scots,” and “withall will lightly pass over it.”  In point of fact, he gets to Duncansby Head in fifty-two pages, and not without some considerable slips of information.  Ireland interests him more, and he finally closes with a sheet of learned gossip about the outlying islands.

The scope of Camden’s work did not give Philemon Holland much opportunity for spreading the wings of his style.  Anxious to present Camden fairly, the translator is curiously uneven in manner, now stately, now slipshod, weaving melodious sentences, but forgetting to tie them up with a verb.  He is commonly too busy with hard facts to be a Euphuist.  But here is a pretty and ingenious passage about Cambridge, unusually popular in manner, and exceedingly handsome in the mouth of an Oxford man: 

“On this side the bridge, where standeth the greater part by far of the City, you have a pleasant sight everywhere to the eye, what of fair streets orderly ranged, what of a number of churches, and of sixteen colleges, sacred mansions of the Muses, wherein a number of great learned men are maintained, and wherein the knowledge of the best arts, and the skill in tongues, so flourish, that they may rightly be counted the fountains of literature, religion and all knowledge whatsoever, who right sweetly bedew and sprinkle, with most wholesome waters, the gardens of the Church and Commonwealth through England.  Nor is there wanting anything here, that a man may require in a most flourishing University, were it not that the air is somewhat unhealthful, arising as it doth out of a fenny ground hard by.  And yet, peradventure, they that first founded a University in that place, allowed of Plato’s judgment.  For he, being of a very excellent and strong constitution of body, chose out the Academia, an unwholesome place of Attica, for to study in, and so the superfluous rankness of body which might overlay the mind, might be kept under by the dis-temperature of the place.”

The poor scholars in the mouldering garrets of Clare, looking over waste land to the oozy Cam, no doubt wished that their foundress had been less Spartan.  Very little of the domestic architecture that Camden admired in Cambridge is now left; and yet probably it and Oxford are the two places of all which he describes that it would give him least trouble to identify if he came to life again three hundred years after the first appearance of his famous Britannia.

A MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES

A MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES:  being a true Chronicle Historie of the untimely falles of such unfortunate Princes and men of note, as have happened since the first entrance of Brute into this Iland, untill this our latter Age.  Newly enlarged with a last part, called A WINTER NIGHTS VISION, being an addition of such Tragedies, especially famous, as are exempted in the former Historie, with a Poem annexed, called ENGLAND’S ELIZA. At London.  Imprinted by Felix Kyngston, 1610.