There never was a time in which anecdotes, especially literary anecdotes, were read with greater eagerness than they are now. Such reading suits extremely well with the spirit of indolent curiosity and learned loitering, which is so much the character of these times. The present work is certainly one of the best of that kind. By confining himself to these noble and royal personages who have applied their leisure to literature, he has certainly not given us the account of those authors whose works are the most valuable. But the large share which many of them have had in the transactions of public life, affords a greater variety of materials for agreeable biography, than could be expected from the lives of far better authors of lower rank. Very few writers, however, could have had the happy secret of making out of so dry a matter so agreeable an entertainment; and of uniting so much laborious industry in the compiling, with so much wit and spirit in the execution. It were to be wished that the author had indulged himself less in points and turns.
Some of the most remarkable lives which may serve to mark the most striking æras in literature, are
Anthony Widville Earl Rivers.
"Though Caxton knew 'none like to the Erle of Worcester,' and though the author last quoted thinks that all learning in the nobility perished with Tiptoft, yet there flourished at the same period a noble gentleman, by no means inferior to him in learning and politeness, in birth his equal, by alliance his superior, greater in feats of arms, and in pilgrimages more abundant: this was Anthony Widville earl Rivers, Lord Scales, and Newseils, lord of the isle of Wight, 'defenseur and directeur of the causes Apostolique for our holy fader the Pope in his royame of Englond, and uncle and governour to my Lord Prince of Wales.'
He was son of Sir Richard Widville by Jaqueline of Luxemburgh duchess dowager of Bedford, and brother of the fair lady Gray, who captivated that monarch of pleasure Edward the fourth. When about seventeen years of age he was taken by force from Sandwich with his father, and carried to Calais by some of the opposite faction. The credit of his sister, the countenance and example of his prince, the boisterousness of the times, nothing softened, nothing roughened the mind of this amiable Lord, who was as gallant as his luxurious brother-in law, without his weaknesses; as brave as the heroes of either rose, without their savageness; studious in the intervals of business, and devout after the manner of those whimsical times, when men challenged others whom they never saw, and went barefooted to visit shrines in countries of which they had scarce a map. In short, Lord Anthony was, as Sir Thomas More says, 'Vir haud facile difcernas, manuve aut consilio promptior.'
He distinguished himself both as a warrior and a statesman: The Lancastrians making an insurrectionin
