Hugh De Sélincourt

“ The life of a dreamer is apt to be sad; if the world touches him, he finds the touch heavy and hurtful. And Spenser could not free himself from state duties which forced him to live for ever witness of the misery and savageness of the peasants, and of the country's weird beauty which made a terrible contrast to their misery. In Ireland he felt solitary and neglected: but he had time and scope for his dreams. In England he quickly felt the pettiness of the busy Court life, to which he could not accustom himself. He never found the life which was most in harmony with his spirit. ”

“ For he was working towards the realization of his great dream, which would bring prosperity and wealth once for all to England and England's greatest Queen, Elizabeth. He now had all the things which are wont to make for comfort and contentment: but he was not a man for whom ease had any attraction. He strained every effort, even amidst the peace and beauty of the country which he loved, to the arduous enterprise which he had set himself—to explore the little-known country of Guiana—an enterprise in which many brave men were known to have lost their lives. ”

“ London was no place in which a man could easily remain inert. The unexpected constantly occurred on account of the dramatic way that news was inevitably brought. News came like vivid flashes of light on darkness, and these flashes were continual.
Ralegh's energy had always been conspicuous, even in those times. He was no slug, as Aubrey pithily puts it. And now it is that one of the great ideas of his life came to him, perhaps the greatest. We hear of him as connected with Sir Humfrey Gilbert's enterprise for discovering the north-west passage. ”

“ He must live. At any cost he must live. There was so much that he had not yet done. The immense vitality of the man rose within him and tortured him by its resistless strength. He must make one last effort for life; and his wife and child—they would be poor and shamed. He was famous throughout England for his pride. Pride and vitality fought within him. For now his only hope of reprieve lay in the King's mercy, and James liked the consciousness of power that comes from a great man's supplication. Vitality conquered. ”

“ It is in the nature of generalization to be limited. For there are many wits where quickness and hardness, which he distinguishes so sharply, are as memorably, as in the case of young Ralegh, combined—"sharpe tooles" whose edges be never turned. Such incontestably was Ralegh. His mind and his character (the motive force) were on the same level of strength; neither preyed on the other, and he lived in a time when the world offered scope, as never perhaps in quite the same way before or since, to the resistless energy of united strength. ”

“ Indeed Ralegh's immense energy is typical of the time. Do it with thy might could fitly have been the motto of the nation. Their capacity for hard work was unequalled. The Armada was England's day of triumph. Men applaud a prima-donna on the night of her success, and are apt to forget the long years of training and privation and self-control that have preceded the glory of the moment. It is even so with a nation. The little hour of triumph is as nothing compared with the long years of life which made that triumph possible ”

“ Change is the law of life, and Ralegh was immensely alive. Such a nature as his must always find expression for itself, must find scope and occupation for its greatness, or the spirit preys upon itself and pines into uneasiness. Whatever the force be from which vitality comes, brain or blood or soul, that force is irresistible. Death alone can free a man from its tyranny. [ 129]
So Ralegh turned towards that kingdom in Guiana, towards "that great and golden city which the Spaniards call El Dorado," and on Thursday, February 6, 1595, he left England. ”

“ It is almost invariably so with a great personality even when he is himself unconscious of the cause.
He put all his energy into making preparations for carrying out his project of founding a new kingdom in Guiana. If he were successful, fortune would be remade, and favour would be regained. The prospect was exciting, but more alluring than the excitement was the knowledge that the sea and the unknown would bring to his soul immediate peace; that new sights, new dangers, and new interests would soothe his mind, fretted by the immanent pettiness of passing days. ”

“ A man had not only to keep clear of treason, but must have the wit to avoid even the suspicion. It is easy to see how the power thus put into the hands of the Government, though such power was essential to its safety and the welfare of the citizens, could be abused. And there is probably no instance in history where its abuse is more conspicuous than in the treatment of Ralegh. Cecil feared Ralegh; James feared Ralegh. There is nothing so unscrupulous, nothing so dangerous and so cruel as fear. The world lay obscured by the dark cloud of Time and of Space ”

“ Certain it is that Ralegh never consciously committed the offence. But certain it also is that he, like any other writer of his calibre, would write with greater feeling the account of some happening or some character, with which the circumstances of his own life brought into sympathy. And exactly because his life and his knowledge of men was profound and varied, his history gains in vitality. For always he keeps his relation in contact with life—that is of course to say, his own experience of life—by which each man is limited—and never does his work degenerate into a mere recital of facts. ”

“ The adventurous whom the Unknown attracts are not drawn to explore the earth's surface; they turn towards the mystery of their own souls from which comes much profitless self-searching and a little eternal gain; they turn towards the mysteries of life and death and birth; they try to unravel the skein which men were then living tempestuously to entangle.
So Ralegh began his great work, greatly conceived and greatly executed, in the very spirit of the age to which he belonged—the age of Elizabeth, and to which King James's little favourites, Car and the rest, could never belong. ”

“ A fine stock were the Devonshire gentlemen who watched over the years of Walter Ralegh's boyhood, whetting no doubt by their interest his keenness in Latin and Greek, in fencing and riding, and training his knowledge of men. Among the Gilberts and Champernounes and Raleghs and Carews, there would be men as skilful in the handling of a ship as in the proper management of a farm, and to all would young Ralegh listen with his mind feverishly alert for information, and from all he would learn what each could teach him. ”

“ With only a little less eagerness and a wiser discrimination between fact and fable would the elders of the great Devonshire families, with many of whom the Raleghs were connected, hear the news and plan schemes for outwitting their rivals on the sea—the Spaniards—and perhaps foresee the great part their sons would play in gaining for their country prestige in this unclosing of the outside world. They would spare no pains to make the youngsters worthy to carry on the great tradition of Devonshire gentlemen under the splendid new conditions, which were daily becoming more apparent. ”

“ The one quality, which runs through all the pages of every history of every man and every movement, is vitality—intense, burning vitality; and this vitality illumined the literature, chaotic as much of it is, and beat pulsing through the veins of the nation, explaining its magnificent advance, and enthusiasm and greatness, even as it explains its brutality. England was like a boy who is suddenly conscious of being strong and of being free, with all the capacity of some young Hercules and all his reckless faults. ”

“ The apathy of convention gradually settled, like an obscuring mist, but new knowledge is scattering the mist like a wind, and knowledge brings new responsibilities and fresh life and fresh light. The sun peers through the clouds, and the sun will lend warmth and colour to the pageant.
But such things happened at the beginning of the seventeenth century in actual life. That farce at the scaffold was the first manifestation that King James gave in England of his royal power.
Ralegh was taken from Winchester to the Tower on December 16. His future life was now dreadfully apparent to him. ”

“ The immense power of the man overawes you as you begin his tremendous task. That is the first impression, and the impression thrills, as every supreme evidence of man's power must. Then you realize that his whole vision of the world is wrong—is a myth, and you see the futility of man's power—that is the second impression. The two are singularly vivid; they clash splendidly—and the issue? You see limitless possibilities of life for the brave man and the strong man, as they only can be seen, when two ideas—two sincerities—have clashed splendidly. ”

“ Such were Ralegh's chief business activities, which were the groundwork of his life, these and the duties of Captain of the Guard, which were chiefly decorative. It is not easy to realize, in a time of great splendour, the day to day existence of the men who made that time splendid. The mind is apt to leap from dramatic moment to dramatic moment, when mighty exploits mark out a time's history like stepping-stones. ”

“ That spirit informed his life, and is linked with his every achievement. "Schönheit geniessen heiss die Welt verstehn." And one of the most memorable facts of the Russo-Japanese war was that the invincible Admiral Togo wrote home asking for plum trees in flower to be sent to him; he needed the strength which he drew from looking at their beauty. Castiglione was right. This perception of beauty is the last quality of the perfect courtier; from that alone can strength be gathered and stored for this strange struggle of life.
And now Ralegh had reached the last day of his life. ”

“ The mind must always be alive and on the alert. Here was Ralegh, coming to report a successful and daring exploit, suddenly obliged to defend himself against a trumped-up charge. If he failed to take in the whole situation in a moment, and to stand his own ground, death would result from the failure. Nor could he simply rely upon justice; he must know the man with whom he was dealing, and the men who were poisoning the General's mind. Ralegh's self-control is as amazing as his address. ”

“ And it is small wonder in those days when in England the whole force of the Renaissance turned as it were to a rapture of patriotism that such a Queen should be the visible emblem of the country, and be herself worshipped. Men might rave at her whims, they were driven frantic by them, but in their hearts they cherished her as Queen of themselves and Queen of their country. ”

“ To all the power which a beautiful woman, and a woman strong in body and intellect and passion, always has possessed and always will possess, she added the prestige of being Queen of England. Whereas the passions of her father threw Europe into confusion, the love affairs of Elizabeth, less impetuously managed, often held the balance between nations and brought every royal prince to England as suitor for her hand, and the great English courtiers scowled or laughed at them, but were kept in allegiance by their sovereign. ”

“ In this world is the time of confessing that we may be absolved at the day of judgment. You have shewed a fearful sign of denying God in advising a man not to confess the truth. It now comes in my mind why you may not have your accuser come face to face; for such an one is easily brought to retract, when he seeth there is no hope of his own life. It is dangerous that any traitors should have access to or conference with, one another. When they see themselves must die, they will think it best to have their fellow live that he may commit the like treason again, and so in some sort seek revenge. ”

“ England was the husband, for whom her life was lived, and all the greatest men in England lived fiercely to win glory and her smile of approval; and they strove the harder because within them was the knowledge (such knowledge was an inspiration) that their great Queen could also be a beautiful woman to the man who found favour in her eyes. She lived greatly, and created almost an age of great men with such puissance did she employ one side of a woman's creative power. ”

“ Whoever failed became a traitor. Exactly what Ralegh did or did not do, is not known. It is enough that he eventually got into the power of Cecil. He failed, that is to say, he was not sufficiently alert to suspect the intrigues of his friends against him.
The last years of the Queen's reign are as tragic as the last years of the woman's life. The strength of the country was in a strange way bound up with the strength of Elizabeth, and as her strength declined so did the greatness of the country. Never has a woman used her power with such magnificent results. ”