Walter Raleigh, born at Hayes, near Budleigh, in Devonshire, in 1552, entered Oriel College, Oxford, in 1568, went as a volunteer to France in 1569, and served in the continental wars for several years. Received with favour at Court, he was knighted, and took part in expeditions for planting colonies in North America. Raleigh distinguished himself in various engagements with the Spanish Armada in 1588. In 1595 he sailed in search of the fabulous El Dorado, and having made some conquests in South America, on his return in 1595 published an account of his voyage, under the title “The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana.” He distinguished himself at the capture of Cadiz in 1596, and took Fayal in 1597; but on the death of Elizabeth he fell out of favour, and was tried for high treason at Winchester, and found guilty in September, 1603. Though reprieved, he remained a prisoner in the Tower thirteen years, during which time he wrote the fragment of “The History of the World,” published in 1614. Having obtained his release, he sailed for Guiana in 1617, and on his return to England in July, 1618, was arrested at the instigation of the Spaniards, whose possessions in the new world he had assailed. On the 28th of October, 1618, the sentence was passed upon him, and he was beheaded, Oct. 29.

Personal

  Good Mr. Vice Chamberlaine;—As soon as I came on boarde the Carick on Wednesday at one of clock, with the rest of Her Majesty’s commissioners, within one halfe houre Sir Walter Ralegh arrived with hys keper Mr. Blunt; I assure you, Sir, hys poore servants, to the number of 140 goodly men, and all the mariners, came to him with such shouts and joy as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them in my life. But his hart is broken, for he is very extreamly pensive longer than he is busied, in w^h he can toil terribly. But if you dyd heare him rage at the spoiles, finding all the short wares utterly devoured, you would laugh, as I do w^h I can not choose. The meeting betweene him and Sir John Gilbert, was with teares on S^r John’s part; and he, belike finding it is knowen he hath a keper, whensoever he is saluted with congratulations for liberty, he doth answer no, I am stylle y^e Queen of England’s poore captive. I wished him to conceale it, because here it diminisheth his credite, w^h I do vowe to you before God is greater amongst the mariners than I thoght for: I do grace him as much as I may, for I find him marveilously greedy to do any thing to recover y^e conceit of his brutish offence.

  Sir Walter Ralegh did (in my judgment) no man better; and his artillery [had] most effect. I never knew the gentleman till this time: and I am sorry for it, for there are in him excellent things, besides his valour. And the observation he hath in this voyage used with my Lord of Essex hath made me love him.

  We see that theas two gallants, having one chosen to converse inter αμφιβία,… devide their provinces at this day, touching traffick of the State, with so great artifice, as, if the Peac goo forward, COBHAM prospers by his industri; if it doo not, RAWLIE by his opposition. In matter of intelligence COBHAM is commended as most secret; in matter of action RAWLIE blazed as most sufficient. COBHAM in discoursing hath holden a kind of privelege to vent his passions; RAWLY, to temporize. COBHAM must have the rough hand of ESAU, in exeqution of rigor; RAWLIE, the softe voic of JACOB in courtlye hypocrisy. COBHAM must delight, seconde, inveigle, and possesse the Queene’s opinion,—by improving dangers, casting figurs, and contrivinge invectives against the Scottish hopes, pretensions, and actions. RAWLY must insinuat his own affection, applaud their expectations, and concurr with them. COBHAM must in all things tender the consirvation of the present State, to maintayn his owne tenur. RAWLIE must perswad anticipation, for prouf of knowne destini. COBHAM must exclayme against the small account and reckininge that is made of noblemen. RAWLIE must in all discoursis hold them to bee fooles, and therby unsufficient for charge; or cowhards, and therefore uncapable of lieutenancye. COBHAM must relate, and gain the credit of the Queen’s satisfaction; RAWLY must inspir and romanc; secur from justification. COBHAM must be the block almighte, that gives oracles; RAWLIE must (be) the cogginge spirit that still prompteth it.

  Cecil dothe beare no love to Raleighe, as you well understande, in the matter of Essex. I wyste not that he hathe evyll desygn, in pointe of faithe or relygion. As he hath often discoursede to me wyth moch lernynge, wysdom, and freedome, I knowe he dothe somewhat dyffer in opynyon from some others; but I thynke alsoe his hearte is welle fixed in everye honeste thynge, as farre as I can looke into hym. He seemethe wondrouslie fitted, bothe by arte and nature, to serve the state, especiallie as he is versede in foraign matters, his skyll theryn being alwaies estimable and prayse-worthie. In relygion, he hathe showne (in pryvate talke) great depthe and goode readynge, as I once experyencede at hys owne howse, before manie lernede men.

  I will prove you the notoriest Traitor that ever came to the bar…. Thou art a monster; thou hast an English face, but a Spanish heart…. We have to deal to-day with a man of wit…. Thou hast a Spanish heart, and thyself art a Spider of Hell.

  For myself, I am left of all men that have done good to many. All my good turns forgotten; all my errors revived and expounded to all extremity of ill. All my services, hazards, and expenses for my country—plantings, discoveries, fights, councils, and whatsoever else—malice hath now covered over. I am now made an enemy and traitor by the word of an unworthy man. He hath proclaimed me to be a partaker of his vain imaginations, notwithstanding the whole course of my life hath approved the contrary, as my death shall approve it. Woe, woe, woe be unto him by whose falsehood we are lost. He hath separated us asunder. He hath slain my honor; my fortune. He hath robbed thee of thy husband, thy child of his father, and me of you both. O God! thou dost know my wrongs. Know, then, thou my wife, and child;—know, then, thou my Lord and King, that I ever thought them too honest to betray, and too good to conspire against.

  No man denies but he had many sufficiencies in him; but what were these but so many weapons of practice and danger against the state, if he escaped? being so deeply tainted in so many points of discontent, dishonesty, and disloyalty. He knew, as he had written, that as in nature, so in policy, a privatione ad habitum not fit regressio. And therefore being desperate of any fortune here, agreeable to the height of his mind, who can doubt but he would have made up his fortune elsewhere, upon any terms against his sovereign and country?

  MY KIND DOGGE, If I have any power or credit with you, I pray you let me have a trial of it, at this time, in dealing sincerely and ernestly with the King that Sir WALTER RALEGH’S life may not be called in question. If you do it so that the success answer my expectation, assure yourself that I will take it extraordinarily kindly at your hands; and rest one that wisheth you well, and desires you to continew still, as you have been, a true servant to your Master.

  I was commaunded by the Lords of the Counsayle to be with him, both in prison and att his death, and so sett downe the manner of his death as nere as I could…. He was the most fearlesse of death that ever was knowen; and the most resolute and confident, yet with reverence and conscience. When I begann to incourage him against the feare of death, he seemed to make so light of itt, that I wondered att him, and when I told him, that the deare servants of God, in better causes than his, had shrunke backe and trembled a litle, he denyed not, but yet gave God thankes, he never feared death, and much lesse then, for it was but an opinion and imagination; and the manner of death though to others might seeme greevous, yet he had rather dye so then of a burning fever…. He was very cheerefull that morning he dyed, eate his breakefast hertily, and tooke tobacco, and made no more of his death, then if he had bene to take a journey, and left a great impression in the minds of those that beheld him, inasmuch that Sir Lewis Stukely and the French man grow very odious. This was the newes a weeke since: but now it is blowen over, and he allmost forgotten.

  Sir Walter Ralegh had the favour to be beheaded at Westminster, where he died with great applause of the beholders, most constantly, most Christianly, most religiously.

  A man known and well deserving to be known; a man endued not with common endowments, being stored with the best of nature’s furniture; taught much by much experience, experienced in both fortunes so feelingly and apparently, that it may truly be controverted whether he were more happy or miserable; yet behold in him the strange character of a mere man, a man subject to as many changes of resolution as resolute to be the instrument of change; politic, and yet in policy so unsteady, that his too much apprehension was the foil of his judgment.

  Sir Walter Rawleigh was one, that (it seems) Fortune had pickt out of purpose, of whom to make an example, or to use as her Tennis-Ball, thereby to shew what she could doe; for she tost him up of nothing, and too and fro to greatnesse, and from thence down to little more than to that wherein she found him, (a bare Gentleman). Not that he was lesse, for he was well descended, and of good alliance, but poor in his beginnings…. He had in the outward man, a good presence, in a handsome and well compacted person, a strong naturall wit, and a better judgement, with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage; and to these he had the adjuncts of some generall Learning, which by diligence he enforced to a great augmentation, and perfection; for he was an indefatigable Reader, whether by Sea or Land, and none of the least observers both of men and the times.

  Shall I not add, as parallel to this, a wonder and example of our own; such as if that old philosopher were yet living, without dishonour he might acknowledge as the equal of his virtue? Take it in that—else unmatched—fortitude of our RALEIGH! the magnanimity of his sufferings, that large chronicle of fortitude! All preparations that are terrible were presented to his eye; guards and officers were about him, the scaffold and the executioner, the axe, and the more cruel expectation of his enemies. And what did all this work on the resolution of our Raleigh? Made it an impression of weak fear, or a distraction of his reason? Nothing so little did that great soul suffer. He gathered only the more strength and advantage; his mind became the clearer, as if already it had been freed from the cloud and oppression of the body; and such was his unmoved courage and placid temper, that while it changed the affection of the enemies who had come to witness it and turned their joy to sorrow, it filled all men else with admiration and emotion, leaving with them only this doubt, whether death were more acceptable to him or he more welcome unto death.

  I have heard his enemies confess, that he was one of the weightiest and wisest men that this island ever bred; Mr. Nath. Carpenter, a learned and judicious author, was not in the wrong when he gave this discreet character of him, “Who hath not known or read of this prodigy of wit and fortune, sir Walter Rawleigh, a man infortunate in nothing else but in the greatness of his wit and advancement, whose eminent worth was such, both in domestic policy, forren expeditions, and discoveries in arts and literature, both practic and contemplative, that it might seem at once to conquer example and imitation.”

	I dare not then so blast thy memory,
	As say I do lament or pity thee.
	Were I to choose a subject to bestow
	My pity on, he should be one as low
	In spirit as desert; that durst not die,
	But rather were content by slavery
	To purchase life: or I would pity those,
	Thy most industrious and friendly foes,
	Who, when they thought to make thee scandal’s story,
	Lent thee a swifter flight to heaven and glory;
	That thought, by cutting off some withered days
	Which thou could’st spare them, to eclipse thy praise;
	Yet gave it brighter foil; made thy ag’d fame
	Appear more white and fair than foul their shame;
	And did promote an execution
	Which, but for them, nature and age had done.

  Coming to the Court, found some hopes of the Queen’s favours reflecting upon him. This made him write in a glasse window, obvious to the Queen’s eye,—“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.” Her Majesty, either espying or being shown it, did under-write—“If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”… Captain Raleigh, coming out of Ireland to the English court in good habit (his cloaths being then a considerable part of his estate), found the Queen walking till meeting with a plashy place, she seemed to scruple going thereon. Presently Raleigh cast and spread his new plush cloak on the ground; whereon the Queen trod gently, rewarding him afterwards with many suits, for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a foot-cloath. Thus an advantageous admission into the first notice of a Prince is more than half a degree to preferment.

  He was a tall, handsome, and bold man: but his naeve was that he was damnable proud. Old Sir Robert Harley of Brampton-Brian Castle, who knew him, would say ’twas a great question who was the proudest, Sir Walter, or Sir Thomas Overbury, but the difference that was, was judged on Sir Thomas’ side…. His beard turnd up naturally.—I have heard my grandmother say that when she was young, they were wont to talke of this rebus, viz.,

	The enemie to the stomack, and the word of disgrace,
	Is the name of the gentleman with a bold face.

… Old Sir Thomas Malett, one of the justices of the King’s Bench tempore Caroli I et II, knew Sir Walter; and I have heard him say that, notwithstanding his so great mastership in style and his conversation with the learnedst and politest persons, yet he spake broad Devonshire to his dyeing day. His voice was small, as likewise were my schoolfellowes’, his grandnephewes…. Sir Walter Ralegh was a great chymist; and amongst some MSS. receipts, I have seen some secrets from him. He studyed most in his sea-voyages, where he carried always a trunke of bookes along with him, and had nothing to divert him…. Memorandum:—he made an excellent cordiall, good in feavers, etc.; Mr. Robert Boyle haz the recipe, and makes it and does great cures by it…. A person so much immerst in action all along and in fabrication of his owne fortunes, (till his confinement in the Tower) could have but little time to study, but what he could spare in the morning. He was no slug; without doubt, had a wonderfull waking spirit, and great judgment to guide it.

	Jealous of virtue that was so sublime,
	His country damn’d his merit as a crime.
	The traitor’s doom did on the patriot wait;
	He sav’d—and then he perish’d by the state.

  He shone in the senate as a patriot, and the remains we have of his speeches, leave us in doubt which we ought most to admire, the beauty of his eloquence, or the strength of his understanding…. In regard to his private life, a beneficent master, a kind husband, an affectionate father; and, in respect to the world, a warm friend, a pleasant companion, and a fine gentleman. In a word, he may be truly styled the English Xenophon; for no man of his age did things more worthy of being recorded, and no man was more able to record them than himself; insomuch, that we may say of him, as Scaliger did of Cæsar, “that he fought, and wrote, with the same inimitable spirit.” And thus I take my leave of one, whom it is impossible to praise enough.

  He was accused by Cobham alone, in a sudden fit of passion, upon hearing that Raleigh, when examined, had pointed out some circumstances, by which Cobham’s guilt might be known and ascertained. This accusation Cobham afterwards retracted; and soon after he retracted his retraction. Yet upon the written evidence of this single witness, a man of no honour or understanding, and so contradictory in his testimony, not confronted with Raleigh, not supported by any concurring circumstance, was that great man, contrary to all law and equity, found guilty by the jury. His name was at that time extremely odious in England; and every man was pleased to give sentence against the capital enemy of Essex, the favourite of the people.

  The character of sir Walter Ralegh is a combination of so many eminent qualities, of the statesman, the commander both at sea and land, and the writer; and the course of his life was so full of remarkable and interesting scenes at home and abroad, and of all the varieties of fortune, which could shew the extent and vigour of his mind in every situation; that, had he flourished in the earlier ages of the world, the history of him would unquestionably have been the choice of the Roman Nepos and the Grecian Plutarch; nor could that latter have found juster parallels to him, than two of the most illustrious names of antiquity, Xenophon and Cæsar, who were, like him, equal masters of the sword and the pen, and equally capable of performing the greatest actions, and recording them with dignity.

  In this mighty genius there lies an unsuspected disposition, which requires to be demonstrated, before it is possible to conceive its reality. From his earliest days, probably by his early reading of the romantic incidents of the first Spanish adventurers in the New World, he himself betrayed the genius of an adventurer, which prevailed in his character to the latest; and it often involved him in the practice of mean artifices and petty deceptions; which appear like folly in the wisdom of a sage; like ineptitude in the profound views of a politician: like cowardice in the magnanimity of a hero; and degrade by their littleness the grandeur of character which was closed by a splendid death, worthy the life of the wisest and the greatest of mankind!

  The character of Raleigh was not without dark shades; nor had his conduct in the prosperous and active part of his career been free from the blemishes of pride towards his inferiors, immoderate adulation towards the princess whose smile had called him forth from obscurity, a rapacious desire of wealth and power, and an unhesitating employment of the courtly arts of intrigue and corruption. But a genius, equally comprehensive and lofty, had redeemed him from these unworthinesses…. His piety, which had been rashly called in question by persons incapable of making allowance for any deviation from popular opinions, shone forth in the last solemn scene in admirable union with manly courage and philosophical composure.

  Raleigh, the soldier, the sailor, the scholar, the courtier, the orator, the poet, the historian, the philosopher, sometimes reviewing the queen’s guards, sometimes giving chase to a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party in the House of Commons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love-songs too near the ears of her highness’s maids of honour, and soon after poring over the Talmud, or collating Polybius with Livy.

  The name of Raleigh stands highest among the statesmen of England who advanced the colonization of the United States…. In his civil career he was jealous of the honor, the prosperity, and the advancement of his country. In parliament he defended the freedom of domestic industry. When, through unequal legislation, taxation was a burden upon industry rather than wealth, he argued for a change; himself possessed of a lucrative monopoly, he gave his voice for the repeal of all monoplies; he used his influence with his sovereign to mitigate the severity of the judgments against the non-conformists, and as a legislator he resisted the sweeping enactment of persecuting laws. In the career of discovery, his perseverance was never baffled by losses…. After a lapse of nearly two centuries, the state of North Carolina, in 1792, revived in its capital “THE CITY OF RALEIGH,” in grateful commemoration of his name and fame.

  The versatility of Raleigh’s genius and pursuits were strikingly exemplified in his acquaintance with the mechanical arts, and his addiction to experimental inquiries. His discourses on shipbuilding, the navy, and naval tactics, are, we believe, the earliest productions of the kind in the English language. We never have been able to account for his great knowledge of seamanship, in which he had but little practical training, nor had he made many considerable voyages. His favour at court, his captures at sea, and his brilliant courage, procured him the rank of admiral, and employment as such on several important occasions; for naval rank was not yet regulated by any fixed rules of promotion; but, in point of fact, he rose to a reputation as a seaman not surpassed by any man of his day. After Drake and Hawkins disappeared from the scene, he seems, indeed, to have enjoyed a pre-eminence over all his contemporaries. Strong native predilections, and a wonderfully versatile mind, can alone explain his extraordinary proficiency in maritime affairs.

  MY DEAR N.,—I have now read your Raleigh with great pleasure, and I hope profit. I do not think you have quite escaped the common snare of biographers, partiality and over-admiration of your hero, whom I think you very satisfactorily make out to have been both a traitor and a pirate—au reste, tres honnête homme. I think you overpraise his History too, considering how much of it is a mere réchauffé of biblical trash. However, he was a dashing fellow, no doubt, and would probably have been a better man in a better age. What I can least forgive in him is being truly loved by nobody, with all his gifts and graces.

  The abominable injustice of executing a man for political purposes, was not without many parallels in the reigns of his predecessors; but the singular and peculiar baseness of prostrating the law of England to the will of a foreign power, of delivering the sword of English Justice into the hand of the King of Spain, to enable him to wreak his vengeance on an English subject, and destroy one of the most distinguished men of the age, was reserved for a monarch so mean and pusillanimous as James the First.

  Near Elizabeth’s Armory is the dungeon of Sir Walter Raleigh. There he was confined twelve years, and within those dark walls he wrote his “History of the World.” Gallant Raleigh! I crept into the cell, and touched with reverence the cold stones upon which that noble head had so often rested.

  In all the everyday affairs of life, he remains without a blot; a diligent, methodical, prudent man, who, though he plays for great stakes, ventures and loses his whole fortune again and again, yet never seems to omit the “doing the duty which lies nearest him;” never gets into mean money scrapes; never neglects tenants or duty; never gives way for one instant to “the eccentricities of genius.” If he had done so, be sure that we should have heard of it.

  His fame was rising, instead of falling. Great ladies from the court cast wistful glances at his room. Men from the streets and ships came crowding to the wharf whence they could see him walking on the wall. Raleigh was a sight to see; not only for his fame and name, but for his picturesque and dazzling figure. Fifty-one years old; tall, tawny, splendid; with the bronze of tropical suns on his leonine cheek, a bushy beard, a round moustache, and a ripple of curling hair, which his man Peter took an hour to dress. Appareled as became such a figure, in scarf and band of the richest color and costliest stuff, in cap and plume worth a ransom, in jacket powdered with gems; his whole attire, from cap to shoe-strings, blazing with rubies, emeralds, and pearls; he was allowed to be one of the handsomest men alive.

  Few greater men have ever lived in England, or anywhere else, than Raleigh. No man contributed more, if so much, towards the earliest American Colonization.

  Ralegh combined in his own person the aspirations of the age in a most vivid manner. He was ambitious, fond of show, with high aims, deeply engaged in the factions of the court; but at the same time he had a spirit of noble enterprise, was ingenious and thoughtful. In everything new that was produced in the region of discoveries and inventions, of literature and art, he played the part of a fellow worker: he lived in the circle of universal knowledge, its problems and its progress, in his appearance he had something that announced a man of superior mind and nature.

  He went to his trial a man so unpopular that he was hooted and pelted on the road; he came out an object of general pity and admiration, and has held his place ever since as one of England’s favorite and representative heroes; and yet, if we except his gallant bearing and splendid abilities (which were no new revelations), there was nothing in his case which could have tended either to excite popular sympathy or to command popular respect; nor has anything been discovered since that enables us to explain his connection with the plot in a way at all favorable to his character. By his own showing he had been in intimate and confidential relation with a man whom nobody liked or respected, and who was secretly seeking help from the hated Spaniard in a plot to dispossess James in favor of the Lady Arabella. By his own admission he had at least listened to an offer of a large sum of money, certainly Spanish, and therefore presumably in consideration of some service to be rendered to Spain. And though it is true that we do not know with what purposes he listened, how much he knew, how far he acquiesced, or what he intended to do, it is impossible to believe that his intentions (whether treasonable or not) were, or were then supposed to be, either popular or patriotic. He did not himself attempt to put any such color upon his proceedings; declaring only that he did not know of the plot in which his confidential friends were engaged. His blindest advocates have not succeeded in doing it for him. And those who, though partial, have taken pains to examine and felt bound to respect the evidence, have scarcely succeeded even in believing him innocent.

  God has made nobler heroes, but he never made a finer gentleman than Walter Raleigh.

	The New World’s sons, from England’s breasts we drew
	Such milk as bids remember whence we came;
	Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew,
	This window we inscribe with Raleigh’s name.

  Sir Walter Raleigh, in whose honour this window is given, was not one of the world’s simple, blameless characters, like William Caxton of whom we spoke so recently. Men of splendid physique and genius, children of a splendid and passionate age, have temptations more intense and terrible than we who live our small humdrum lives in the petty routine of commonplace. Our faults may be as bad as theirs, though they are meaner and smaller faults. Their sins show large in the largeness of their lives, and in the fierce light which beats upon them…. If Walter Raleigh, in some things, sinned greatly, God loved him so well that he also suffered greatly and out of much tribulation washed his robes white in the blood of the Lamb…. Remember also that he must be ranked forever among the benefactors of his race, and that there are very few of us who have not done worse deeds than he, and have never done as good ones. It is strange to me that one paltry tablet should hitherto have been almost the only memorial of such a man. Great nations should have more pride in their few great sons. I think that Americans will rejoice with us that, after more than 280 years, he should have a worthier memorial of his immortal deeds in the Church under whose altar lies his headless corpse.

  It is difficult for us at this distance of time to realise the feelings with which Raleigh was regarded by the great mass of his contemporaries. To us he is the man who had more genius than all the Privy Council put together. At the first mention of his name, there rises up before us the remembrance of the active mind, the meditative head, and the bold heart, which have stamped themselves indelibly upon the pages of the history of two continents. Above all, we think of him as the victim of oppression, sobered down by the patient endurance of an undeserved imprisonment, and as finally passing into his bloody grave, struck down by an unjust sentence. To the greater number of the men amongst whom he moved, he was simply the most unpopular man in England. Here and there were to be found a few who knew his worth. Those who had served under him, like his faithful Captain Keymis, and those who, like Sir John Harington, merely met him occasionally in social intercourse, knew well what the loyal heart of the man really was. But by the multitude, whom he despised, and by the grave statesmen and showy courtiers with whom he jostled for Elizabeth’s favour, he was regarded as an insolent and unprincipled wretch, who feared neither God nor man, and who would shrink from no crime if he could thereby satisfy his ambitious desires. There can be no doubt that these charges, frivolous as they must seem to those who know what Raleigh’s true nature was, had some basis in his character. Looking down as he did from the eminence of genius upon the actions of lesser men, he was too apt to treat them with the arrogance and scorn which they seldom deserved, and which it was certain that they would resent.

  There is a proposal now in the United States to erect a monument to Sir Walter Raleigh…. Such a man, such principles, such a career, ought not to be given to the youth of the American republic as ideally correct and æsthetically beautiful. Raleigh was a man of versatile talents, possessing in a high degree the gifts of courtiership; fond of power, of land, of money, of luxury, of adventure; unscrupulous, of low standard of morality, and in many respects more like our Aaron Burr than like the Bayard of France, without fear and without reproach. That the great empire of America is under the least obligation to him is not susceptible of proof. His motive in sending an expedition out here was purely commercial and selfish, so far as the proofs go. He was actuated by the same motives in going to Ireland. He was no worse a man than his time and the standards of the age in which he lived made it inevitable that he should be.

  In all the pictures we have of him there is almost nothing to suggest the typical Englishman, burly and robust. About six feet in height, he is rather thin than corpulent, and in the vivacity of expression and the nervous cast of his features he resembles rather the modern New-Englander than the old-time Englishman. There was a peculiar fascination in his address, and it is certain from all accounts that the Queen was thoroughly taken with him from the very first.

  He was essentially an acrid and despotic nature. Among the eminent men of his day he scarcely had a true friend, and it is painful to read in the letters of his contemporaries how frequent were the disparaging remarks his petulent and grasping disposition called forth. Yet, in spite of the faults and vices of his character, the name of Raleigh is one which the history of this island will never attempt to erase from its list of celebrities. The man was, in every sense of the word, a true patriot, confident in the prowess of his country, and keenly sensitive as to her honour. It was the staunchness of his English instincts that made him wax so wroth when he saw a miserable creature, like our first James truckle to foreign Powers and drag the flag of England through the mire of a base servility.

  His face had neither the ethereal beauty of Sidney’s nor the intellectual delicacy of Spenser’s; it was cast in a rougher mould than theirs. The forehead, it is acknowledged, was too high for the proportion of the features, and for this reason, perhaps, is usually hidden in the portraits by a hat. We must think of Raleigh … as a tall, somewhat bony man, about six feet high, with dark hair and a high colour, a facial expression of great brightness and alertness, personable from the virile force of his figure, and illustrating these attractions by a splendid taste in dress. His clothes were at all times noticeably gorgeous; and to the end of his life he was commonly bedizened with precious stones to his very shoes. When he was arrested in 1603 he was carrying 4,000l. in jewels on his bosom, and when he was finally captured on August 10, 1618, his pockets were found full of the diamonds and jacinths which he had hastily removed from various parts of his person.

  When I consider his busy and brilliant and perturbed life, with its wonderful adventures, its strange friendships, its toils, its quiet hours with Spenser upon the Mulla shore, its other hours amidst the jungles of the Orinoco, its lawless gallantries in the court of Elizabeth, its booty snatched from Spanish galleons he has set ablaze, its perils, its long captivities—it is the life itself that seems to me a great Elizabethan epic, with all its fires, its mated couples of rhythmic sentiment, its poetic splendors, its shortened beat and broken pauses and blind turns, and its noble climacteric in a bloody death that is without shame and full of the largest pathos.

  It will scarcely be denied that there has always been room for a new presentment of Ralegh’s personality. That the want has remained unsatisfied after all the efforts made to supply it is to be imputed less to defects in the writers, than to the intrinsic difficulties of the subject. Ralegh’s multifarious activity, with the width of the area in which it operated, is itself a disturbing element. It is confusing for a biographer to be required to keep at once independent and in unison the poet, statesman, courtier, schemer, patriot, soldier, sailor, freebooter, discoverer, colonist castle-builder, historian, philosopher, chemist, prisoner, and visionary. The variety of Ralegh’s powers and tendencies, and of their exercise, is the distinctive note of him, and of the epoch which needed, fashioned, and used him. A whole band of faculties stood ready in him at any moment for action. Several generally were at work simultaneously. For the man to be properly visible, he should be shown flashing from more facets than a brilliant. Few are the pens which can vividly reflect versatility like his…. Never surely was there a career more beset with insoluble riddles and unmanageable dilemmas. At each step, in the relation of the most ordinary incidents, exactness of dates, or precision of events, appears unattainable. Fiction is ever elbowing fact, so that it might be supposed contemporaries had with one accord been conspiring to disguise the truth from posterity. The uncertainty is deepened tenfold when motives have to be measured and appraised. Ralegh was the best hated personage in the kingdom.

  One of the finest answers given in an examination was that of the boy who was asked to repeat all he knew of Sir Walter Raleigh. This was it: “He introduced tobacco into England, and while he was smoking he exclaimed, ‘Master Ridley, we have this day lighted such a fire in England as shall never be put out.’” Can that, with any sort of justice, be styled a blunder?

  During the reign of Queen Elizabeth no Englishman lived a more complete life than Sir Walter Ralegh. Country gentleman, student, soldier, sailor, adventurer, courtier, favorite and spoilsman, colonizer, fighter, landlord, agriculturist, poet, patron of letters, state prisoner, explorer, conqueror, politician, statesman, conspirator, chemist, scholar, historian, self-seeker, and ultimately a martyr to patriotism, he acquired through the latter half of Elizabeth’s reign the most comprehensive experience ever known to an Englishman.

  Probably his persuasive eloquence was one of his greatest gifts, and his personal fascination must have been marvellous; for when he chose, which in his arrogance he rarely did, he could bring even those who hated him to his side. He took no care, however, to be popular, for he always scorned and contemned the people, and on the death of Elizabeth he was probably the best hated man in England.

  Spain drank a deep draught of revenge when the hero of Cadiz and Fayal was beheaded in the Palace Yard at Westminster; a scene fit to have made Elizabeth turn in her grave in the Abbey hard by. A fouler judicial murder never stained the annals of any country.

Poems

  For dittie and amourous Ode I finde Sir Walter Rawleyghs vayne most loftie, insolent, and passionate.

	And there that shepheard of the Ocean is,
	That spends his wit in loves consuming smart:
	Full sweetly tempred is that Muse of his,
	That can empierce a princes mightie hart.

  The English poems of Sir Walter Raleigh … are not easily to be mended.

  Sir Walter Raleigh, a person both sufficiently known in history and by his “History of the World,” seems also by the character given him by the author of the “Art of English Poetry” to have exprest himself more a poet than the little we have extant of his poetry seems to import.

  Do I pronounce Raleigh a poet? Not, perhaps, in the judgment of a severe criticism. Raleigh, in his better days, was too much occupied in action to have cultivated all the powers of a poet, which require solitude and perpetual meditation, and a refinement of sensibility, such as intercourse with business and the world deadens!… The production of an Heroic Poem would have nobly employed this illustrious Hero’s mighty faculties, during the lamentable years of his unjust incarceration. But how could He delight to dwell on the tale of Heroes, to whom the result of Heroism had been oppression, imprisonment, ruin, and condemnation to death? We have no proof that Raleigh possessed the copious, vivid, and creative powers of Spenser; nor is it probable that any cultivation would have brought forth from him fruit equally rich. But even in the careless fragments now presented to the reader, I think we can perceive some traits of attraction and excellence which, perhaps, even Spenser wanted. If less diversified than that gifted bard, he would, I think, have sometimes been more forcible and sublime; his images would have been more gigantic, and his reflections more daring. With all his mental attention keenly bent on the best state of existing things in political society, the range of his thoughts had been lowered down to practical wisdom; but other habits of intellectual exercise, excursions into the ethereal fields of fiction, and converse with the spirits which inhabit those upper regions, would have given a grasp and a colour to his conceptions as magnificent as the fortitude of his soul.

  For amatory sweetness, and pastoral simplicity, few efforts will be found to surpass the poems distinguished as “Phillida’s Love-Call,” “The Shepherd’s Description of Love,” the “Answer to Marlow,” and “The Silent Lover.”

  A higher strain of compliment cannot well be conceived than this, [sonnet] which raises your idea even of that which it disparages in the comparison, and makes you feel that nothing could have torn the writer from his idolatrous enthusiasm for Petrarch and his Laura’s tomb, but Spenser’s magic verses and diviner “Faery Queen”—the one lifted above mortality, the other brought from the skies!

  As a poet, Sir Walter Raleigh appears not to be appreciated as he deserves to be…. Had Raleigh cultivated his talent for Poetry, there can be no doubt that he would have attained a high rank among the bards of that poetical age; but his genius was too universal to admit of being confined to any one particular pursuit.

  Spenser’s friend Raleigh left us so excellent a sonnet on the “Faerie Queene,” that it makes us wish he had written a thousand; or rather, that he had devoted his whole life to poetry, instead of the pursuits that ruined him…. His pen was very like a sword. You see, in this one little sonnet, what possession he takes of the whole poetical world, in favor of the sovereignity of his friend Spenser. He was not exactly in the right; but when did conquerors consider the right? The sonnet is of the least artistical order, as to construction, consisting only of the three elegiac quatrains and a couplet; and it has the fault of monotonous assonance in the rhymes; yet it flows with such nerve and will, and is so dashing and sounding in the rest of its modulation, that no impression remains upon the mind but that of triumphant force.

  The biographers and editors of Raleigh have been sorely puzzled by finding that a poem, usually called “The Silent Lover,” and assigned to Raleigh, was attributed in one of the Ashmolean MSS. (No. 781, p. 143) to Lo. Walden. In the index to the MSS. they are called “Lo Walden’s verses;” and Ritson, on the authority of this name only, inserts Lord Walden (afterwards Earl of Suffolk) in his “Bibliotheca Poetica,” p. 383. Park goes even farther; for, upon the strength of the Ashm. MS. and Ritson, he actually converts Lord Walden into one of his “Royal and Noble Authors,” and writes his life accordingly. What is the fact? The reader will hardly require it to be pointed out. “The Silent Lover” is unquestionably by Raleigh; but at the time it was written, or got abroad, its author was Lord Warden, i.e., Lord Warden of the Stannaries; and because Lord Warden was miswritten Lo. Walden, an attempt has been made to deprive the real owner of his undoubted property. Our neighbours of Edinburgh have not scrupled, not merely to rob Raleigh of a lovely addition to his few poetical remains, but to attribute the poem to their countryman Sir Robert Aytoun, in an edition of his works published in 1844. For “Lord Walden” we have only to read Lord Warden and the difficulty is at an end—a curious instance of the important consequence of a very slight corruption.

  I am persuaded that he wrote “The Lie;” for I do not believe that any one then living, except Shakspeare, was so capable of having written it.

  For a long time Raleigh’s claim to this poem seemed unusually doubtful; it is now established at least as conclusively as in the case of any of his poems. We have the direct testimony of two contemporary MSS., and the still stronger evidence of at least two contemporary answers, written during Raleigh’s lifetime, and reproaching him with the poem by name or implication. An untraced and unauthorized story, that he wrote the poem the night before his death, is contradicted by the dates—it was printed ten years before that time, in 1608; and it can be found in MSS. more than ten years earlier still, in 1596, 1595, or 1593. But the question of the authorship is not touched by the refutation of the legend, when so many independent witnesses assert the one without the other. There are five other claimants, but not one with a case that will bear the slightest examination. For the claim of Richard Edwards we are indebted to a mere mistake of Ellis’s; for that of F. Davison to a freak of Ritson’s; that of Lord Essex is only known from the correspondence of Percy, who did not believe it; and those of Sylvester and Lord Pembroke are sufficiently refuted by the mutilated character of the copies which were printed among their posthumous writings.

  Raleigh was a master in the art of verse, though his superiority in other respects has somewhat detracted from his fame in this…. Stately and vigorous is his language, bearing the impress of an unbending will, a will that did not quail when the block even was in view. Many poems which were once associated with his name have been discovered not to be his workmanship, but those which remain, and which have been unquestionably authenticated, bear witness to the variety of his gifts. He was certainly a writer of vers de société, but being naturally a man of a grave and strong spirit, rather than a laughing and volatile one, his verse is now and again heavy and sententious.

  As a matter of fact, no poem [“Cynthia”] of the like ambition had been written in England for a century past, and if it had been published, it would perhaps have taken a place only second to its immediate contemporary, “The Faery Queen.”

  His poetry, which is not so commonly read as it deserves to be, is a striking testimony both of the social habits of the time, and of the character of the man himself. It is conspicuous for amatory sweetness coupled with pastoral simplicity. Raleigh was the most polished courtier who ever adorned the precincts of English royalty; fond perhaps, as Macaulay says, of whispering his love sonnets too near to the willing ears of Elizabeth’s maids of honour, but too innately refined to relapse into vulgar debauchery. In fact, the Court of the maiden Queen was one of the least dissolute of any monarch in the history of England. Raleigh’s sonnets are an admirable reflection of the manners of the society in which he lived.

  His fancy could inspire in his “Pilgrimage” one of the loftiest appeals in all literature to Heaven from the pedantry of human justice or injustice…. The Court spoilt him for a national poet, as it spoilt Cowley; as it might, if it had been more generous, have spoilt Dryden. He desired to be read between the lines by a class which loved to think its own separate thoughts, and express its own separate feelings in its own diction, sometimes in its own jargon. He hunted for epigrams, and too often sparkled rather than burned. He was afraid not to be witty, to wrangle, as he himself has said,

In tickle points of niceness.

Often he refined instead of soaring. In place of sympathising he was ever striving to concentrate men’s regards on himself.

  Himself one of the noblest of Elizabethan courtly singers, rivalling Sidney, even approaching Shakespeare in his sonnets, perhaps the greatest service he rendered to English poetry was in snatching from obscurity the poet Spenser, and promoting the publication of the “Faerie Queen.”

  Though his imagery is vivid and metaphorical, it is often homely; his thought is very plain and direct, and his poetry breathes a spirit of high disdain and fierce indignation, mixed with a strong feeling of religion, evidently the result of personal experience…. Though the authorship [“The Lie”] has been questioned, is certainly Raleigh’s.

History of the World, 1614

  That Sir W. Raughley esteemed more of fame than conscience. The best wits of England were employed for making his Historie. Ben himself had written a piece to him of the Punick warre, which he had altered and set in his booke.

  Recreate yourself with Sir Walter Raleigh’s “History;” it is a body of history, and will add much more to your understanding than fragments of stones.

  How memorable an instance has our age afforded us of an eminent person to whose imprisonment we are all obliged, besides many philosophical experiments, for that noble “History of the World” now in our hands! The court had his youthful and freer years, and the Tower his latter age; the Tower reformed the courtier in him, and produced those worthy monuments of art and industry, which we should have in vain expected from his freedom and jollity.

  Sir Walter Ralegh is never to be mentioned without honour.

  His booke sold very slowly at first, and the bookeseller complayned of it, and told him that he should be a looser by it, which put Sir W. into a passion, and sayd that since the world did not understand it, they should not have his second part, which he tooke and threw into the fire, and burnt before his face.

  Sir Walter Ralegh’s “History of the World” is a work of so vast a compass, such endless variety, that no genius, but one adventurous as his own, durst have undertaken that great design. I do not apprehend any great difficulty in collecting and common-placing an universal history from the whole body of historians; that is nothing but mechanic labour. But to digest the several authors in his mind; to take in all their majesty, strength, and beauty; to raise the spirit of meaner historians, and to equal all the excellencies of the best; this is sir Walter’s peculiar praise. His style is the most perfect, the happiest, the most beautiful of the age he wrote in; majestic, clear, and manly; and he appears every where so superior rather than unequal to his subject, that the spirit of Rome and Athens seems to be breathed into his work.

  His grand labour, I mean that ocean of history, wherein he has outdone all that went before him, and given such lights to futurity as must ever be grateful…. No work, of any author in England, has been so often reprinted that is of equal size and antiquity…. Besides his own learning, knowledge, and judgment, which many would have thought sufficient for any undertaking, he, with that caution wherewith we have beheld so many others of his great enterprises tempered, would suffer no part of this “History” to pass his own hand, before some of the most able scholars, whom he assembled, it seems, for this purpose, had debated the parts he was most doubtful of, and they most conversant in, before him. Thus in the Mosaic and Oriental antiquities, or fainter and more remote footsteps of time, he would sometimes consult the learned Dr. Robert Burhill. In all parts of chronology, geography, and other branches of mathematical science, he wanted not the opinions of the learned Hariot, and the earl of Northumberland’s three magi, long his neighbours in the Tower; and wherever he scrupled any thing in the phrase or diction, he would hear the acute and ingenious sir John Hoskyns, sometime also resident in these confines; who viewed and reviewed the said “History,” as we are told, before it went to the press, and whom Ben Johnson, proud of calling others his sons, could gratify that humour in calling father. Thus having spared for no labour, and neglected no means to bring this work to the perfection wherein we behold it, it is no wonder that some scribbler or other should, upon finding it so universally read, endeavour to raise himself a little profit or credit from it, by pretending that the world needed an abridgment of its history, as if that wherewith sir Walter Ralegh has presented us, either is or was intended for any thing more.

  The attempt of Raleigh is deservedly celebrated for the labour of his researches, and the elegance of his style; but he has endeavoured to exert his judgment more than his genius, to select facts, rather than to adorn them; and has produced an historical dissertation, but seldom risen to the majesty of history.

  If the reader of Raleigh’s “History” can have the patience to wade through the Jewish and Rabbinical learning which compose the half of the volume, he will find, when he comes to the Greek and Roman story, that his pains are not unrewarded. Raleigh is the best model of that ancient style which some writers would affect to revive at present.

  The great historians of this period, who condescended to use their native tongue, were Raleigh, Hayward, Knolles, Bacon, and Daniel, writers who in this province still hold no inferior rank among the classics of their country. The “History of the World,” by Sir Walter, exhibits great strength of style and much solidity of judgment.

  The appearance of this work turned every eye once more upon him. Men had hitherto considered him as an adventurer and a courtier; they now stood in astonishment at his multifarious acquirements, his deep research, his chronological knowledge, and his various acquaintance with the Grecian and rabbinical writers; though in reality that acquaintance appears to have been derived from versions in the Latin language. Admiration for his talents begot pity for his fate.

  That great work which will be as permanent as the English language…. An extraordinary monument of human labour and genius, and which, in the vastness of its subject, its research and learning, the wisdom of its political reflections, and the beauties of its style, has not been equalled by any writer of this, or perhaps of any other country. This will appear the more wonderful if we recollect the circumstances under which it was completed…. It is laborious without being heavy, learned without being dry, acute and ingenious without degenerating into the subtile but trivial distinctions of the schoolmen…. Perhaps its most striking feature is the sweet tone of philosophic melancholy which pervades the whole. Written in prison during the quiet evening of a tempestuous life, we feel, in its perusal, that we are the companions of a superior mind, nursed in contemplation, and chastened and improved by sorrow, in which the bitter recollection of injury, and the asperity of resentment, have passed away, leaving only the heavenly lesson, that all is vanity.

  There is little now obsolete in the words of Raleigh, nor, to any great degree, in his turn of phrase; the periods, when pains have been taken with them, show that artificial structure which we find in Sidney and Hooker; he is less pedantic than most of his contemporaries, seldom low, never affected.

  James I. put to death the famous Sir Walter Raleigh, whose Universal History is still read for Sir Walter’s own sake. If there are books which keep alive the names of the authors, there are authors whose names keep alive their books.

  It is to the Greek and Roman story that we would direct the attention of any one wishing to acquaint himself with Raleigh’s peculiar merits. The narrative is clear, spirited, and unembarrassed; replete with remarks disclosing the mind of the soldier and the statesman; and largely sprinkled and adorned with original, forcible, and graphic expressions. But this portion of the work has a still more remarkable distinction, when considered as the production of an age not yet formed to any high notions of international morality, from its invariable reprehension of wars of ambition, and its entire freedom from those illusions which have biassed both historians and their readers in regard to the perfidies and cruelties exhibited in ancient, particularly Roman history. In this respect, he appears to us to stand honourably distinguished from all preceding authors; but while he thus endeavours to moderate our admiration of the Romans by awakening us to a strong perception of their national crimes, he never fails to do justice to their manly virtues, their energy of character, and their public affections.

  The vigour of Raleigh’s mind, and the extent and the application of his intellectual acquirements, not only enabled him to support this long endurance in a prison, but to consider it as his home. “His mind to him a kingdom was;” nay more, it was to him the whole world; for there he composed that extraordinary “History of the World,” which was looked upon as a model of the English language, unparalleled at the time for conciseness and perspicuity of style; superior even to that of Bacon, being free from the overwhelming verbosity of this great man, by which the sense is sometimes obscured.

  The style of the history is excellent,—clear, sweet, flexible, straightforward and business-like, discussing the question of the locality of Paradise as Raleigh would have discussed the question of an expedition against Spain at the council-table of Elizabeth.

  Raleigh’s “History,” as a record of facts, has long been superseded; the interest it possesses at the present day is derived almost entirely from its literary merits, and from a few passages in which the author takes occasion to allude to circumstances that have fallen within his own experience. Much of it is written without any ambition of eloquence; but the style, even where it is most careless, is still lively and exciting, from a tone of the actual world which it preserves, and a certain frankness and heartiness coming from Raleigh’s profession and his warm and impetuous character. It is not disfigured by any of the petty pedantries to some one or other of which most of the writers of books in that day gave way more or less, and it has altogether comparatively little of the taint of age upon it; while in some passages the composition, without losing anything of its natural grace and heartiness, is wrought up to great rhetorical polish and elevation.

  A fine antique eloquence flows from his pen, enriched with a deep learning, which excites wonder when displayed by Raleigh. The soldier, the sailor, or the courtier is hardly the man from whom we expect profound philosophy or deep research; yet Raleigh showed by this achievement a power of wielding the pen, at least not inferior to his skill with sword or compass. That part of the History which he was able to complete, opening with the Creation, closes with the second Macedonian war, about one hundred and sixty-eight years before Christ. A deep tinge of melancholy, caught from the sombre walls that were ever frowning on his task, pervades the pages of the great book.

  Ralegh’s long confinement in the Tower had the effect to gain him a high reputation for learning, and, judging from what he has left us, he was one of the best scholars of the age in which he lived. His great work, “The History of the World,” is indeed a great monument to his memory, as it is equally a monument to his want of judgment in the choice of a subject.

  It must not be forgotten that Ben Jonson claimed a share in the great “History,” both for himself and for others. The probable amount of Raleigh’s obligations has been fairly stated by Oldys, exaggerated by D’Israeli, and again reduced to reasonable dimensions by Mr. Tytler, Mr. Macvey Napier, and Mr. Edwards.

  Only the preface and the conclusion have much literary value; they are among the finest remains of Elizabethan prose.

  It is regarded as a model of style, and the pioneer of the great English school of historical writers.

  A work of great merit for his time.

  What a remarkable work would it have been, had Walter Ralegh himself recorded the history of his time…. The history of the world which Walter Ralegh had leisure to write in his prison, is an endeavour to put together the materials of Universal History as they lay before him from ancient times, and so make them more intelligible. He touches on the events of his age only in allusions, which excited attention at the time, but remain obscure to posterity.

  Both in style and matter, this celebrated work is vastly superior to all the English historical productions which had previously appeared. Its style, though partaking of the faults of the age in being frequently stiff and inverted, has fewer of these defects than the diction of any other writer of the time.

  The sentences may sometimes strike us as long and cumbersome, but they are in the main easy and flowing; they impress the ear with a feeling of completeness. Occasionally he rises to real eloquence, especially when describing battles. His account of the Punic War is one of the most striking parts of the book. It is when he is dealing with men and their doings that he is at his best; it is then that we seem to see Ralegh’s real character much more than when he indulges in philosophical speculations.

  A work which for simple majesty of subject and style is hardly to be surpassed in prose.

  Will compare favorably in style, exhaustiveness of research, freedom from bias, and depth of judgment, with many of our more brilliant and pretentious historical works…. On account of the imperfect scientific knowledge of his times, there is much material in this history that is now considered crude; but many of his digressions upon government, wars and treaties, battles, and the characters of great men, are very interesting and instructive even to the student of to-day.

  His masterpiece, the famous “History of the World,” is made up of short passages of the most extraordinary beauty, and long stretches of monotonous narration and digression, showing not much grace of style, and absolutely no sense of proportion or skill in arrangement. The contrast is so strange that some have sought to see in the undoubted facts that Raleigh, in his tedious prison labours, had assistants and helpers (Ben Jonson among others), a reason for the superior excellence of such set pieces as the Preface, the Epilogue, and others, which are scattered about the course of the work. But independently of the other fact that excellence of the most varied kind meets us at every turn, though it also deserts us at every turn, in Raleigh’s varied literary work, and that it would be absurd to attribute all these passages to some “affable familiar ghost,” there is the additional difficulty that in none of his reported helpers’ own work do the peculiar graces of the purple passages of the “History” occur. The immortal descant on mortality with which the book closes, and which is one of the highest achievements of English prose, is not in the least like Jonson, not in the least like Selden, not in the least like any one of whose connection with Raleigh there is record. Donne might have written it; but there is not the smallest reason for supposing that he did, and many for being certain that he did not. Therefore, it is only fair to give Raleigh himself the credit for this and all other passages of the kind.

  A great reservoir of facts, stated with all grace and dignity, but which, like a great many heavy, excellent books, is never read. The matter-of-fact young man remembers that Sir Walter Raleigh first brought potatoes and (possibly) tobacco into England; but forgets his ponderous “History.”

  This huge composition is one of the principal glories of seventeenth century literature, and takes a very prominent place in the history of English prose. As before, so here we find Raleigh superior to the ornaments and oddities of the Euphuists. He indites a large matter, and it is in a broad and serious style. The Preface, perhaps, leads the reader to expect something more modern, more entertaining than he finds. It is not easy to sympathise with a historian who confutes Steuchius Eugubinus and Goropius Becanus at great length, especially as those flies now exist only in the amber of their opponent. But the narrative, if obsolete and long-winded, possesses an extraordinary distinction, and, in its brighter parts, is positively resplendent. The book is full of practical wisdom, knowledge of men in the mass, and trenchant study of character. It is heavy and slow in movement, the true historical spirit, as we now conceive it, is absent, and it would probably baffle most readers to pursue its attenuated thread of entertainment down to the triumph of Emilius Paulus. But of its dignity there can be no two opinions, and in sustained power it easily surpassed every prose work of its own age.

  The design and style of Ralegh’s “History of the World” are instinct with a magnanimity which places the book among the noblest literary enterprises. Throughout it breathes a serious moral purpose.

  That delightful “History of the World” which is one of the glories of English prose literature.

General

	To thee, that art the sommers Nightingale,
	Thy soveraine Goddesses most deare delight,
	Why doe I send this rusticke Madrigale,
	That may thy tunefull eare unseason quite?
	Thou onely fit this Argument to write,
	In whose high thoughts Pleasure hath built her bowre,
	And dainty love learnd sweetly to endite.
	My rimes I know unsavory and sowre,
	To tast the streames that, like a golden showre,
	Flow from thy fruitfull head, of thy love’s praise;
	Fitter, perhaps, to thonder Martiall stowre,
	When so thee lift thy lofty Muse to raise:
	Yet, till that thou thy Poeme wilt make knowne,
	Let thy faire Cinthias praises be thus rudely showne.

  Sir Walter Raleigh, not to be contemned, either for judgment or style.

  Many years in my hands, [“Cabnet Council”] and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public.

  There was some time in the Library of Sir Kenelm Digby, a Manuscript History of the Life and Death of the Conqueror, said to have been written by Sir Walter Raleigh.

  In talking over the design for a dictionary, that might be authoritative for our English writers; Mr. Pope rejected Sir Walter Raleigh twice, as too affected.

  A writer more learned than Shakespear, more polished by the varieties of human intercourse, and that with persons of the highest eminence and station, than Hooker.

  The diction of Raleigh is more pure and perspicuous, and more free from inversions, than that of any other writer of the age of Elizabeth or James the First.

  Upon maritimal concerns he published no fewer than eight treatises, being, as he proudly announced, the first writer either ancient or modern that had treated on this subject. These works are written with great perspicuity, and, although the practices recommended in them be now obsolete, and the improvements and plans suggested, superseded by the rapid strides of modern science, they are interesting, as all compositions dictated by good sense and experience must ever be; and curious, as illustrating the comparative progress of navigation, and of the arts connected with it.

  Raleigh was, beyond all doubt, one of the most eminent persons in an age which was extraordinarily prolific of great men. He is equally distinguished in the naval and in the literary history of his country.

  The thoughts of Sir Walter Raleigh on moral prudence are few, but precious.

  Looking at the activity of his life, his wars, his voyages, his parliamentary duties, one is astonished at the amount of work which he did. But this work was not all. Some of the ablest state papers of the time were drawn up by him. In history, politics, philosophy, science, and poetry, his mind was also employed; and his pen productive of memorable works. His writings are voluminous. He wrote, besides his great history, on the Prerogatives of Parliament; on Trade; on Shipping; on the State of Spain; on the Life and Death of Mahomet; on the Life and Death of William the Conqueror; on Mines and Trials of Minerals; on almost every subject interesting to man.

  A writer of magnificent prose, itself full of religion and poetry both in thought and expression…. It would be very unfair to judge Sir Walter by his verse. His prose is infinitely better, and equally displays the devout tendency of his mind—a tendency common to all the great men of that age. The worst I know of him is the selfishly prudent advice he left behind for his son. No doubt he had his faults, we must not judge a man even by what he says in an over-anxiety for the prosperity of his child.

  When the vigour of debate passed from Parliament to the Press, no deceased writer rendered truer service to Britain than did Ralegh in supporting and lighting up the policy which is truly liberal, just because it builds upon old foundations, appeals to old instincts, and brings out what is true and vital in the national traditions. A passionate and untiring energy is not more characteristic of Ralegh the man, than a clinging to political development, rather than political construction, is the distinctive mark of Ralegh the publicist. Hence it is, as I believe, that his name figures so saliently and so continually in the political literature of the eighteenth century. In the seventeenth, his deeds and his endeavours were continually rising before the minds of men who were still fighting under the same banner and against the same enemies. Not a few of them had been the contemporaries of his closing years. In the eighteenth, all the outward circumstances of the political conflict had changed. New men are seen in the arena. The party combinations are new. The impulses and the aims of the strife are new. Yet Ralegh’s writings are even more frequently appealed to. A large volume might be made of the quotations which were pressed into service during the bitter contests of the Georgian reigns, and of the commentaries which grew out of the quotations.

  The “Discovery” is a matter-of-fact record of his own voyage, his dealings with the natives, and his impressions of the scenery. It was much ridiculed at the time by his jealous enemies, but there is nothing incredible in what he professes to have seen, though he was too sanguine in his beliefs as to the splendour of the parts of the empire that he had not seen. As regards the style, he “neither studied phrase, form, nor fashion;” yet at times he shows his natural power of graphic description.

  He loved letters intensely, and was one of those bountiful protectors of literature in this age who gave without a thought of patronage or any desire but to help upward the aspiring intellect.

  This restless spirit, who seemed, in his ceaseless occupations, to have lived only for his own age and his own pleasure, was the true servant of posterity, who hail him as also one of the founders of literature.

  This [“A Discourse on War”] may be recommended to the modern reader as the most generally pleasing of Raleigh’s prose compositions, and the one in which, owing to its modest limits, the peculiarities of his style may be most conveniently studied. The last passage of the little book forms one of the most charming pages of the literature of that time, and closes with a pathetic and dignified statement of Raleigh’s own attitude towards war.

  Undoubtedly Bacon (Shakespeare in his person as he lived being in the main nominis umbra) is the grandest figure of the age; but Raleigh is the most fascinating. Of the versatility and daring of the Elizabethans he remains the chief representative. In a larger sense than that in which the words were afterwards applied, he was “not one but all mankind’s epitome.” Soldier, courtier, philosopher, and poet, he had carried the spirit of Sidney into the field, and discussed metres and myths with Spenser when it was won. Drake was his only master among the kings of the sea; Bacon himself his only superior in the work of the “Instauratio Magna.” Known abroad as the champion of the Indians, as the great intercessor for civil and religious liberty at home, he could turn from writing verses, only surpassed in grace by the lyrics of the later Cavaliers, to study “the learning of the Egyptians,” or what passed for such before the reign of criticism, and record with an equal credulity and eloquence the annals of antiquity as then accepted. Early among the pioneers of European civilisation in the New World, he was the first modern historian of the Old.

  This [“Discovery of Guiana”] was a work of high importance in the development of English prose, the most brilliant and original contribution to the literature of travel which had been made during the reign of Elizabeth, rich as that had been in work of the same class. Hume, who spurned the “Discovery” from him as “full of the grossest and most palpable lies,” showed an eighteenth-century blindness to the truth which lay under the magnificent diction of Raleigh’s narrative, but it is strange that the conduct of that narrative itself could win no word of praise from such a critic.

  Ralegh makes amazing show of systematic arrangement; but the analysis is often arbitrary and inexact. On the one hand this poor analysis, on the other his utterly unwieldy and elephantine periods, make him an exceedingly bad paragraphist.

  Of Raleigh’s voluminous writings the advice to his son, or, as he entitles it, “Instructions to his Son and to Posterity,” is one of the few which still maintains its interest.

  His mental calibre cannot be fairly judged, nor his versatility fully realised, until his achievements in poetry, in history, and political philosophy have been taken into account. However impetuous and rash was he in action, he surveyed life in his writings with wisdom and insight, and recorded his observations with dignity and judicial calmness. It is difficult to reconcile the religious tone of his writings with the reputation for infidelity which attached to Ralegh until his death, and was admitted to be justifiable by Hume. The charges brought against Ralegh and Marlowe in 1593 were repeated in general terms within four months after his execution by Archbishop Abbot, who attributed the catastrophe to his “questioning” of “God’s being and omnipotence.” (Abbot to Sir Thomas Roe, 19 Feb. 1618–19). Such a charge seems confuted on almost every page of his “History of the World,” in which he follows in his early chapters the Old Testament narrative with most confiding literalness, and earnestly insists throughout on God’s beneficence. A similar sentiment finds repeated expression in his political essays…. Nothing actually inconsistent with these views can be detected in two works in which he dealt with metaphysical speculation.

  He could dangle at Court and bandy compliments as well as the most empty-headed fine gentlemen; but he gave up only five hours of the twenty-four to sleep, and spent every hour he could snatch in study. His reading must have been omnivorous, for his breadth of view, his depth of knowledge, and his profundity of thought—far in advance of his contemporaries—prove him, to have been perhaps the most universally capable Englishman that ever lived—a fit contemporary of Shakspeare and Bacon.