n authors,
'wherein I can read any of our written antiquities, or any old French
history, wherein our nation is mentioned, or any else in what language
soever.' It is not impossible that the _Breviary_, if in any way it were
his, led him on to his gigantic enterprise, which by its expansion,
unfortunately or fortunately, usurped all the leisure he had
prospectively appropriated to his native annals. But the composition of
an elaborate history by him was no accident, though the choice of the
particular subject may have been.

[Sidenote: _Studies for the History._]

Whatever the original design, the History in its final shape demanded
encyclopaedic research and learning. Necessarily the preparation for it
and its composition employed several years. The number is not known.
Ralegh is alleged to have begun to collect and arrange his matter in
1607. The date is purely conjectural. Sir John Pope Hennessy imagines
that the preliminary investigations may be traced much farther back.
Ralegh quotes in his book Peter Comestor's _Scholastica Historia_, an
abstract of Scripture history, which has been found, with other remnants
of an old monastic library, in a recess behind the wainscot of Ralegh's
bedroom, next to his study in the house at Youghal. Mr. Samuel Hayman,
the historiographer of Youghal, writing in 1852, states that the
discovery was made a few years before, and that the books had probably
been 'hidden at the period of the Reformation.' Sir John conjectures
that Ralegh may have been taking notes from the collection 'for the
_opus magnum_ during his frequent Irish exiles.' An objection is that,
according to Mr. Hayman, the authority cited by Sir John, Comestor's
volume, with its companions, must have been secreted before Ralegh
resided at Youghal, and have remained concealed till he had been dead
for two centuries. In one sense he had been in training for the
enterprise during his whole life; in another the actual work doubtless
was accomplished after he felt that he was destined to a long term of
imprisonment. He had always been a lover of books. In the midst of his
adversities he spared L50 as a contribution towards the establishment of
the Bodleian Library. When he was most deeply immersed in affairs he had
made time for study. As Aubrey says, probably with complete truth, he
was no slug, and was up betimes to read. On every voyage he carried a
trunk full of books. During his active life, when business occupied
thirt