Raleigh

“ Raleigh begins the ‘History of the World,’ the most God-fearing and God-seeing history which I know of among English writings; though blotted by flattery of James in the preface: wrong: but pardonable in a man trying in the Tower to get out of that doleful prison. But all his writings are thirty years too late; they express the creed of a buried generation, of the men who defied Spain in the name of a God of righteousness,—not of men who cringe before her in the name of a God of power and cunning. ”

“ This famous passage is one of those over which the virtuosity of modern times, rejoicing in evil, has hung so fondly, as giving melancholy proof of the ‘duplicity of Raleigh’s character’; as if a man who once in his life had told an untruth was proved by that fact to be a rogue from birth to death: while others have kindly given him the benefit of a doubt whether the letter were not written after a private marriage, and therefore Raleigh, being ‘joined unto’ some one already, had a right to say that he did not wish to be joined to any one. ”

“ From them Raleigh’s fancy has been fired, and his appetite for learning quickened, while he is yet a daring boy, fishing in the gray trout-brooks, or going up with his father to the Dartmoor hills to hunt the deer with hound and horn, amid the wooded gorges of Holne, or over the dreary downs of Hartland Warren, and the cloud-capt thickets of Cator’s Beam, and looking down from thence upon the far blue southern sea, wondering when he shall sail thereon, to fight the Spaniard, and discover, like Columbus, some fairy-land of gold and gems. ”

“ Raleigh’s spirit is stirred within him. If ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ fiction as it is, once excited us, how must a far worse reality have excited Raleigh, as he remembered that these Spaniards are as yet triumphant in iniquity, and as he remembered, too, that these same men are the sworn foes of England, her liberty, her Bible, and her Queen? What a deed, to be beforehand with them for once! To dispossess them of one corner of that western world, where they have left no trace but blood and flame! He will go himself: he will find El Dorado and its golden Emperor ”

“ Raleigh’s brains are indeed broken. He is old, worn-out with the effects of his fever, lamed, ruined, broken-hearted, and, for the first time in his life, weak and silly. He takes into his head the paltriest notion that he can gain time to pacify the King by feigning himself sick. He puts implicit faith in the rogue Mannourie, whom he has never seen before. He sends forward Lady Raleigh to London—perhaps ashamed—as who would not have been?—to play the fool in that sweet presence ”

“ To Raleigh the change was the setting of a great hope, for to Queen Elizabeth he owed his fortunes, and was proud of the debt. To Raleigh more than to any other one man, notwithstanding his many faults, the Queen owed the brilliancy of her Court, the efficacy and terror of her navy, the enterprise and intelligent energy of her people, to say nothing of the adventurous spirit of colonization which he awoke in his efforts in Western Planting. The glory of his achievements today is the glory alike of England and English America. King James let no man down so far as he did Raleigh. ”

“ Amyas, as you see, is coming fast into Raleigh's old opinion of Ireland. Raleigh, under the inspiration of a possible grant of Desmond's lands, looks on bogs and rocks transfigured by his own hopes and fancy, as if by the glory of a rainbow. He looked at all things so, noble fellow, even thirty years after, when old, worn out, and ruined; well for him had it been otherwise, and his heart had grown old with his head! Amyas, who knows nothing about Desmond's lands, is puzzled at the change.
"Why, what is this, Raleigh? You are like children sitting in the market-place, and nothing pleases you. ”

“ Thus, Raleigh, who was born a gentleman of only moderate estate, willed to be the favorite of a Queen, aspired to found an empire across the seas in the teeth of Imperial Spain and undertook in prison to write the history of the world! For the glory and enrichment of England, Sir Francis Drake pillaged the cities and mighty galleons of Spain and dared to sail around the globe. Sir Richard Grenville, shortly after his memorable voyages to Roanoke Island, gave the British Navy an immortal tradition by duelling for a day and a night with one small ship against a Spanish fleet of 53. ”

“ There was hardly one of these enterprises which was not directly due to the initiative, the exertions, and the persistence of Walter Raleigh. Others no doubt took their share, whether moved by his arguments or in a miscellaneous spirit of adventure; but Raleigh's was the vision of a New England beyond the seas; a goal to dream of and to strive for through weary years of failure and disappointment: an ideal which appealed at once to an intellect among the keenest and an imagination among the boldest of a time which abounded in keen intellects and bold imaginations. ”

“ Raleigh's tall and handsome figure, his dark hair, lofty forehead, resolute bearing, alert expression and spirited wit combined to form an imposing personality, and all the advantages that nature had given him were heightened by a gorgeous splendor in dress and jewels. ”

“ Raleigh: ...At sea, weeks away from port, alone on the deck, rigging and sails creaking, I’ve felt it... I’ve felt it in the smash of waves and moan of beams...felt it in the expanse of sky...that there must be a god.
Marlowe: Should be a god! Put it that way.
Raleigh: No...let it go as I’ve said it. As you ride at the bow, as spray hurls on board, there are certain certainties, rebuffs of personal fancy, declarations of a godhead.
Jonson: The Greek helmsman felt those same declarations, and his god was Zeus. ”

“ Mr. Raleigh attempted to seize her, but he might as easily have put his hand on a butterfly; she eluded him always when within his grasp, and led him such a dance up and down the forest-path as none other than a will-o'-the-wisp, it seemed, could have woven. All at once a dark figure glided out from another alley and snatched the sprite into its arms. It was a colored nurse, who poured out a torrent of broken French and English over the runaway, and made her acknowledgments to Mr. Raleigh in the same jargon. ”

“ Sir Walter Raleigh was executed on the twenty-ninth day of October, 1618, in the Old Palace Yard. He died with Christian heroism. Distinguished as a navigator and discoverer, a naval and military commander, an author in prose and verse, a wit, a courtier, a statesman and philosopher, there is perhaps in English history no name associated with such lofty and versatile genius, so much glorious action, and so much wise reflection. ”

“ Now comes the turning-point of Raleigh’s life. What does he intend to be? Soldier, statesman, scholar, or sea-adventurer? He takes the most natural, yet not the wisest course. He will try and be all four at once. He has intellect for it; by worldly wisdom he may have money for it also. Even now he has contrived (no one can tell whence) to build a good bark of two hundred tons, and send her out with Humphrey Gilbert on his second and fatal voyage. Luckily for Raleigh she deserts and comes home, while not yet out of the Channel, or she surely had gone the way of the rest of Gilbert’s squadron. ”

“ He was a man a little older than Raleigh, and of a conceited and violent nature, owing not a little of his exaggerated reputation to the dread that he inspired. He was never more rude and brutal than in his treatment of Sir Walter Raleigh upon this famous occasion, and even in a court packed with enemies, in which the proud poet and navigator might glance round without meeting one look more friendly than that in the cold eyes of Cecil, the needless insolence of Coke went too far, and caused a revulsion in Raleigh's favour. ”

“ We know not any man's history more romantic in its commencement, or more touching in its close, than that of Raleigh—from the first dawn of his fortunes, when he threw his cloak before the foot of royalty, throughout his brilliant rise and long imprisonment, to the hour when royalty rejoiced in his merciless martyrdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it was for this boy friend that Raleigh began the book by which we know him best, his History of the World. Never has such a great work been attempted by a captive. To write the history of even one country must mean much labor, much reading, much thought. To write a history of the world still more. And I have told you about Raleigh because with him begins an interest in history beyond the bounds of our own island. Before him our historians had only written of England. ”

“ There is a blessing upon the meek of the earth, but I do not present Raleigh to you as a humble-minded man. In that wonderful Elizabethan age there were blossoming, side by side, the meekness of Hooker, the subtlety of Bacon, the platonic dream of Spenser, the imperturbable wisdom of Shakespeare. ”

“ Raleigh will quote David’s example one day, not wisely or well. Does David’s example ever cross him now, and those sad words,—‘The Lord hath put away thy sin, . . . nevertheless the child that is born unto thee shall die?’
Let that be as it may, all is sunshine once more. Sherborne Manor, a rich share in the great carack, a beautiful wife, a child; what more does this man want to make him happy? ”

“ While Raleigh has not the look of age which characterizes many old southern cities, causing them to delight the eye and the imagination, its broad streets have here and there a building old enough to remove from the town any air of raw newness, and to make it a homelike looking place. ”

“ But there is one bright point at least in the darkness; one on whom Raleigh’s eyes, and those of all England, are fixed in boundless hope; one who, by the sympathy which attracts all noble natures to each other, clings to the hero utterly ”

“ And perhaps this is the secret of Raleigh’s failure. He is a fanatic, no doubt, a true knight-errant: but he is too much of a poet withal. The sense of beauty enthrals him at every step. Gloriana’s fairy court, with its chivalries and its euphuisms, its masques and its tourneys, and he the most charming personage in it, are too charming for him—as they would have been for us, reader: and he cannot give them up and go about the one work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We must realise that Raleigh was a man of severe speech and reserved manner, not easily moved to be gracious, constantly reproving the sluggish by his rapidity, and galling the dull by his wit. All through his career we find him hard to get on with, proud to his inferiors, still more crabbed to those above him. ”

“ Raleigh’s spirited achievements do not seem to have been appreciated. He had, as he thought, returned bringing a gift to his queen of a rich empire that would assure his restoration to favour, but he was met with cold neglect, and left in doubt as to whether his report concerning Guiana was to be accepted as a true history or passed by as an idle tale. At this stage of his career he gave conclusive evidence of the diversity of his gifts, the wide range of his capability, his restless activity, and indomitable perseverance. ”

“ It does not appear, however, that, although she might coquet with Raleigh, to gratify her own love of admiration, and to enjoy the charms of his rich and fiery eloquence and versatile wit, though she might advance him in his career of arms, and even stimulate his vaulting ambition to deeds of yet wilder emprise, she ever esteemed Raleigh as he deserved to be esteemed, or penetrated the depths of his imaginative and creative genius, much less beloved him personally, as she did the vain and petty ambitious Leicester, or the high-spirited, the valorous, the hapless Essex. ”

“ 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! ”

“ No man is perfect, nor was Raleigh perfect. But he was a great man, and although all his plans failed we remember him as the first great coloniser, the first Englishman to gain possession of any part of North America. ”

“ It is not as a literary man proper that I have spoken of Raleigh; the poems that he wrote were very few, nor were they overfine; but they did have the glimmer in them of his great courage and of his clear thought. They were never collected in book shape in his own day, nor, indeed, till long after he had gone: they were only occasional pieces, [2] coming to the light fitfully under stress of mind—a trail of fire-sparks, as we may say, flying off from under the trip-hammer of royal wrath or of desperate fortunes. ”