Walter Raleigh

“ Thus fell Sir Walter Raleigh in the 66th year of his age, a sacrifice to a contemptible administration, and the resentment of a mean prince: A man of so great abilities, that neither that nor the preceding reign produced his equal. His character was a combination of almost every eminent quality; he was the soldier, statesmen, and scholar united, and had he lived with the heroes of antiquity, he would have made a just parallel to Cæsar, and Xenophon, like them being equal master of the sword and the pen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the imaginary portrait of himself, prefixed to Sir Walter Raleigh's volume, we can see him, as he appeared to his own 'inward eye,' staggering between the abyss and the star of Heaven, his limbs cast abroad, his head thrown back in an ecstasy of intoxication, so that, to the frenzy of his rolling vision, the whole universe is upside down. We look, and, as we gaze at the strange image and listen to the marvellous melody, we are almost tempted to go and do likewise. ”

“ But let them not therefore exalt themselves above Walter Raleigh; for that lesson is, of course, soonest learnt by the man who can excel in few things, later by him who can excel in many, and latest of all by him who, like Raleigh, can excel in all.
Few details remain concerning the earlier court days of Raleigh. He rises rapidly, as we have seen. He has an estate given him in Ireland, near his friend Spenser, where he tries to do well and wisely, colonising, tilling, and planting it: but like his Virginia expeditions, principally at second hand. ”

“ Sir Walter entered the council-chamber with a firm step, and, making a low bow, advanced to the Queen’s chair, when he dropped gracefully on one knee, at her feet.
“Rise, Sir Walter Raleigh,” said the Queen, graciously. “We have received thy most alarming message; and as it comes from thee, whom we know to be wise above most men, and, withal, a right loyal gentleman, we may say truly, it is alarming.”
“Not less so than your Highness conceives,” answered Raleigh. “I am informed, from a sure quarter, that the Spaniard is preparing to invade us.” ”

“ The spirit of the times raised up, however, a greater genius, and a more accomplished adventurer, and no less a personage than Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh,—the favorite of the queen; one of the greatest scholars and the most elegant courtier of the age; a soldier, a philosopher, and a statesman. ”

“ Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied if only for the excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man's tread, and a breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern writing does not furnish. ”

“ At this time she made Walter Raleigh a knight and that is why he has always since been called Sir Walter Raleigh.
The next year he sent out one hundred people to settle in Virginia. They must have been very brave to seek a new home among the Red Men across the great ocean. They landed on one of the islands which their people had visited the year before. They set to work at once to make a home for themselves.
It was not long before some rough houses were built and English housekeeping was begun in America.
The Indians were not as kind as they were the year before. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among those who were attracted to the subject, was a British gentleman, whose character and misfortunes have always engaged my sincere admiration.
Sir Walter Raleigh was the natural offspring of the remarkable age in which he lived. We owe him our profoundest respect, for it was Sir Walter who gave the first decided impulse to our race's beneficial enjoyment of this continent. It was his fortune to live at a time of great and various action. The world was convulsed with the throes of a new civilization, and the energy it exhibited was consequent upon its long repose. ”

“ He loved hunting and hawking and all healthy open-air pursuits no less than he loved books, and the society of men, who were the history-makers of his day. He would visit Sir Walter Raleigh in his prison in the Tower, and listen to his brilliant projects for the future greatness of England in the development of her colonies, and the annexation of still barbarous lands, the fabulous wealth of which was the life-long dream of the veteran explorer. ”

“ History has preserved no stranger, more mysterious story than the next experiment of Sir Walter Raleigh. To insure the permanence of his second colony, he decided to send families, women and children, to the fruitful Islands of Roanoke, to make a permanent home, and found "the City of Raleigh." A fleet of transport ships carried eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and eleven little children, with every appliance [10] for comfort, and ample provision of implements of husbandry. The colony arrived in August, after a five months' voyage, and were dismayed to find the island strewn with human bones. ”

“ One of the first was the Conspiracy of Sir Walter Raleigh. conspiracy against the king, in which Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh were engaged. We lament that so great a favorite with all readers as Sir Walter Raleigh, so universal a genius, a man so learned, accomplished, and brave, should have even been suspected of a treasonable project, and without the excuse of some traitors, that they wished to deliver their country from tyranny. But there is no perfection in man. Sir Walter was restless and ambitious, and had an eye mainly to his own advantage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The solitary, majestic character of Sir Walter Raleigh, his intrepidity while undergoing tortures inflicted by a cowardly king, the ring of indignation—- all these make a weapon for him stronger than the ax that beheaded him. ”

“ If they mean thereby, as most seem to mean, that it was a mere selfish and ambitious scheme by which to wriggle into court favour once more—why, let them mean it: I shall only observe that the method which Raleigh took was a rather more dangerous and self-sacrificing one than courtiers are wont to take. But if it be meant that Walter Raleigh spoke somewhat thus with himself,—‘I have done a base and dirty deed, and have been punished for it. I have hurt the good name of a sweet woman who loves me, and whom I find to be a treasure ”

“ The sheriff asked him which way he would lay himself upon the block. “So as the heart be right,” he said, “it matters not which way the head lies.” Then he laid himself down; and since the headsman feared to strike, and well he might fear, my lord himself hurried him. “Strike, man, strike!” he cried; and in an instant the noblest head in England rolled upon the ground.
So ended the glorious Sir Walter Raleigh; and musing on that end and on the wrongs he suffered at the hands of Queen Elizabeth, I am often led to wonder that men should raise kings and queens over them to work such ill. ”

“ Yet we may be allowed to express some surprise, that two poems quoted as Sir Walter's in Sir Egerton's edition of Phillips's "Theatrum Poetarum," should not have found a place in this collection. Of these, the first is attributed to Raleigh, on the authority of MSS. in the British Museum, and is entitled, "Sir Walter Raleigh in the Unquiet Rest of his last Sickness," a production equally admirable for its sublimity and Christian morality, and for the strength and concinnity of its expression [639:C] ”

“ SIR WALTER RALEIGH. Sir Walter Raleigh, a distinguished statesman, scholar, and warrior, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., was born in 1552, at Budleigh in Devonshire, and educated at Oriel College, Oxford. At the age of seventeen he made one of a troop of an hundred gentlemen volunteers whom Queen Elizabeth permitted to go to France, under the command of Henry Champernon, for the service of the Protestant princes. He next served in the Netherlands ”

“ A young contemporary says, "I have heard his enemies confess that he was one of the weightiest and wisest men that the island ever bred;" and another gives this character of him,—"who hath not known or read of this prodigy of wit and fortune, Sir Walter Raleigh, a man unfortunate in nothing else but in the greatness of his wit and advancement, whose eminent worth was such, both in domestic policy, foreign expeditions, and discoveries, in arts and literature, both practic and contemplative, that it might seem at once to conquer example and imitation." ”

“ An act which reminds us of the happy chance for like courtesy that made Raleigh's fortune when he was a boyish adventurer in the train of Sussex; a beautiful youth watching the state barge of Queen Elizabeth.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
The supreme moment came; the great captain, never greater than in death, stretched out his palsied hands. The deathman hesitated. "What dost thou fear, man? Strike, strike." One blow—a true one—and the murder was done. There were those standing near who saw his face as it had been the face of an angel. ”

“ A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one but all mankind's epitome
is a description written about a very different character. But it is really much more appropriate to Sir Walter Raleigh. Courtier and would-be colonizer, soldier and sailor, statesman and scholar, poet and master of prose, Raleigh had one ruling passion greater than all the rest combined. In a letter about America to Sir Robert Cecil, the son of Queen Elizabeth's principal minister of state, Lord Burleigh, he expressed this great determined purpose of his life: I shall yet live to see it an Inglishe nation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”