Edmund Gosse

“ While Raleigh was shaking down a fortune from the green ivy-bushes that hung at the vintners' doors, the western continent, at which he had already cast wistful glances, remained the treasure-house of Spain. His unfortunate but indomitable half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, recalled it to his memory. The name of Gilbert deserves to be better remembered than it is; and America, at least, will one day be constrained to honour the memory of the man who was the first to dream of colonising her shores. ”

“ More humane, more intelligent than any of the adventurers who had preceded him, it yet does not seem that Raleigh was less insanely bitten with the gold fever than any of them. He saw the fleets of Spain return to Europe year after year laden with precious metals from Mexico, and he exaggerated, as all men of his age did, the power of this tide of gold. He conceived that no one would stem the dangerous influence of Spain until the stream of wealth was diverted or divided. ”

“ His mind became the clearer, as if already it had been freed from the cloud and oppression of the body, and that trial gave an illustration to his courage, so that it changed the affection of his enemies, and turned their joy into sorrow, and all men else it filled with admiration, leaving no doubt but this, whether death was more acceptable to him, or he more welcome unto death. ”

“ Such were the sources of an opulence which we must do Raleigh the credit to say was expended not on debauchery or display, but in the most enlightened efforts to extend the field of English commercial enterprise beyond the Atlantic. We need not suppose him to have been unselfish beyond the fashion of his age. In his action there was, no doubt, an element of personal ambition; he dreamed of raising a State in the West before which his great enemy, Spain, should sink into the shade, and he fancied himself the gorgeous viceroy of such a kingdom. ”

“ The last touch spoils an exquisite picture. It is at once dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. ”

“ Here, in the midst of terrors by night and day, at the edge of the dreadful Wood, where 'outlaws fell affray the forest ranger,' Spenser had been settled for three years, describing the adventures of knights and ladies in a wild world of faery that was but too like Munster, when the Shepherd of the Ocean came over to Ireland to be his neighbour. Raleigh settled himself in his own house at Youghal, and found society in visiting his cousin, Sir George Carew, at Lismore, and Spenser at Kilcolman. ”

“ Some of the ships grated on the rocks, all lost anchors and cables; one pinnace, her crew being asleep and no one on the watch, drove under the bowsprit of the 'Destiny,' struck her and sank. When they did effect a landing on Brava, they were soaked by the tropical autumnal rains of early October. Men were dying fast in all the ships. In deep dejection Raleigh gave the order to steer away for Guiana. Meanwhile Bailey had arrived in England, had seen Gondomar, and had openly given out that he left Raleigh because the admiral had been guilty of piratical acts against Spain. ”

“ It is no longer possible for us to follow the personal life of Raleigh as we have hitherto been doing, step by step. In the deep monotony of confinement, twelve years passed over him without leaving any marks of months or days upon his chronicle of patience. A hopeless prisoner ceases to take any interest in the passage of time, and Raleigh's few letters from the Tower are almost all of them undated. ”

“ Even her political acumen had failed her; she was unable to see, in her vexation at the loss of the Indian carracks, that the blow to Spain had been one which relieved her of a constant and immense anxiety. She determined that no one should be the richer or the nobler for a victory which had resulted in the destruction of so much treasure which might have flowed into her coffers. Deeply disappointed at the Queen's surly ingratitude, Raleigh, whom she still refused to see, retired for the next nine months into absolute seclusion at Sherborne. ”

“ It is to be regretted that Raleigh, whose opinion of James's minions was not on private occasions concealed, should write to Carr of all people in England as 'one whom I know not, but by an honourable fame;' and that the eloquence of his appeal should be thrown away on such a recipient. 'For yourself, Sir,' he says, 'seeing your day is but now in the dawn, and mine come to the evening, your own virtues and the King's grace assuring you of many good fortunes and much honour, I beseech you not to begin your first building upon the ruins of the innocent ”

“ Coke then suddenly turned upon him, and cried out, 'To whom, Sir Walter, did you bear malice? To the royal children?' In the altercation that followed, Coke lost his temper in earnest, and allowed himself to call Raleigh 'a monster with an English face, but a Spanish heart.' He then proceeded to state what the accusation of Sir Walter really amounted to, and in the midst of the inexplicable chaos of this whole affair it may be well to stand for a moment on this scrap of solid ground. Coke's words were:
You would have stirred England and Scotland both. ”

“ Raleigh was obliged to sit with folded hands. He could only hope that the eloquence and patriotism of his Apology might possibly appeal to the sympathy of James. As so often before, he merely showed that he was ignorant of the King's character, for James read the Apology without any other feeling than one of triumph that it amounted to a confession of guilt. The only friend that Raleigh could now appeal to was Anne of Denmark, and to her he forwarded, about August 15, a long petition in verse:
Cold walls, to you I speak, but you are senseless! ”

“ It is impossible to tell where Raleigh's pen will take fire. He is most exquisite and [Pg 179] fanciful where his subject is most unhopeful, and, on the other hand, he is likely to disappoint us where we take for granted that he will be fine. For example, the series of sections on the Terrestrial Paradise are singularly crabbed and dusty in their display of Rabbinical pedantry, and the little touch in praise of Guiana is almost the only one that redeems the general dryness. It is not mirth, or beauty, or luxury that fires the historian, but death. ”

“ The murder of an English officer, who was stabbed in his bed while the guest of the brother of the Earl of Desmond, was recommended by Sandars the legate as a sweet sacrifice in the sight of God, and ruthlessly committed. The result was what Sandars had foreseen; the Geraldines, hopelessly compromised, threw up the fiction of loyalty to Elizabeth. Sir Nicholas Malby defeated the rebels in the Limerick woods in September, but in return the Geraldines burned Youghal and drove the Deputy within the walls of Cork, where he died of chagrin. ”

“ By this time he was sorry that he had bemeaned himself in his first paroxysm of despair, and he entreated Lady Raleigh to try to get back the letters in which he sued for his life, 'for,' he said, 'I disdain myself for begging it.' He went on:
Know it, dear wife, that your son is the child of a true man, and who, in his own respect, despiseth Death, and all his misshapen and ugly forms. ”

“ When the Lord Chief Justice called the noble prisoner a traitor and an atheist, the bystanders, who after all were Englishmen, though they had met prepared to tear Raleigh limb from limb, could bear it no longer, and they hissed the judge, as a little before they had hooted Coke. To complete the strangeness of this strange trial, when sentence had been passed, Raleigh advanced quickly up the court, unprevented, and spoke to Cecil and one or two other commissioners, asking, as a favour, that the King would permit Cobham to die first. ”

“ It was a humble entreaty for life, begging the King to listen to the charitable advice which the English law, 'knowing her own cruelty, doth give to her superior,' to be pitiful more than just. This letter has been thought obsequious and unmanly; but it abates no jot of the author's asseverations that he was innocent of all offence, and, surely, in the very face of death a man may be excused for writing humbly to a despot. Lady Raleigh, meanwhile, was clinging about the knees of Cecil, whose demeanour during the trial had given her fresh hopes. ”

“ New men were coming on, but for the moment the most violent and aggressive of his rivals, Essex, was disposed to wave a flag of truce. Both Raleigh and Essex saw one thing more clearly than the Queen herself, namely, that the loyalty of the Puritans, whom Elizabeth disliked, was the great safeguard of the nation against Catholic encroachment, and they united their forces in trying to protect the interests of men like John Udall against the Queen's turbulent prejudices. ”

“ If the English Government will not prosecute the enterprise that he has sketched out, Spain and France will shortly do so, and Raleigh, in the face of such apathy, 'concludes that we are cursed of God.' Amid all this excitement, it is pleasant to find him remembering to be humane, and begging Cecil to impress the Queen with the need of 'not soiling this enterprise' with cruelty; nor permitting any to proceed to Guiana whose object shall only be to plunder the Indians. ”

“ This little change was all the variety that Raleigh enjoyed until he left for Guiana in 1617.
When it transpired in 1605 that through, as it appears, the negligence of the copying clerk, the conveyance by which Raleigh thought that he had secured Sherborne to his son was null and void, he had to suffer from a vindictive attack from his wife herself. She, poor woman, had now for nearly two years bustled hither and thither, intriguing in not always the most judicious manner for her family, but never resting, never leaving a stone unturned which might lead to their restitution. ”

“ Raleigh complains to Cecil:
I never busied myself with the Lord Viscount's [Lord Bindon's] wealth, nor of his extortions, nor poisoning of his wife, as is here avowed, have I spoken. I have foreborne ... but I will not endure wrong at so peevish a fool's hands any longer. I will rather lose my life, and I think that my Lord Puritan Peryam doth think that the Queen shall have more use of rogues and villains than of men, or else he would not, at Bindon's instances, have yielded to try actions against me being out of the land. ”

“ It has been thought that Raleigh's picturesque and vivid personality immediately and directly influenced Spenser's imagination. Dean Church has noticed that to read Hooker's account of 'Raleigh's adventures with the Irish chieftains, his challenges and single combats, his escapes at fords and woods, is like reading bits of the Faery Queen in prose.' The two men, in many respects the most remarkable Englishmen of imagination then before the notice of their country, did not, however, really come into mutual relation until the time we have now reached. ”

“ Posterity has laughed at one piece of the Attorney's evidence:
There is one Dyer, a pilot, that being in Lisbon met with a Portugal gentleman, which asked him if the King of England was crowned yet. To whom he answered, 'I think not yet, but he shall be shortly.' 'Nay,' said the Portugal, 'that shall he never be, for his throat will be cut by Don Raleigh and Don Cobham before he be crowned.'
A prosecution that calls for evidence such as this has simply broken down. ”

“ Among other steps hurriedly taken to uphold the Queen's power in Ireland, young Walter Raleigh was sent where his half-brother, Humphrey Gilbert, had so much distinguished himself ten years before.
The biographer breathes more freely when he holds at last the earliest letter which remains in the handwriting of his hero. All else may be erroneous or conjectural, but here at least, for a moment, he presses his fingers upon the very pulse of the machine. On February 22, 1580, Raleigh wrote from Cork to Burghley, giving him an account of his voyage. ”

“ Sebastian, half a league to the westward of Cadiz. The four English divisions of the fleet contained in all ninety-three vessels, and the Dutch squadron consisted of twenty-four more. There were about 15,500 men, that is to say 2,600 Dutchmen, and the rest equally divided between English soldiers and sailors.
The events of the next few days were not merely a crucial and final test of the relative strength of Spain and England, closing in a brilliant triumph for the latter, but to Raleigh in particular they were the climax of his life, the summit of his personal prosperity and glory. ”