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Title: Sir Walter Raleigh Author: Henry David Thoreau Date: 1843 Language: en Topics: biography Source: Retrieved on 1st November 2020 from https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=raleigh Notes: This version is based on the 1905 edition edited by Henry Aiken Metcalf. Another version, with significant differences, can be found in Henry D. Thoreau: Early Essays and Miscellanies, edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer and Edwin Moser, with Alexander C. Kern. Metcalf writes in his introduction that he knew of three drafts of this essay, and he drew on all three of them to construct the version he prepared. He hinted that there may have been an additional fourth draft that had yet to surface. The notes to the Moldenhauer, Moser & Kern version say that Metcalf “misread the holograph at several points, omitted occasional words and phrases, ignored some pencil cancellations, and amplified Thoreau’s text with passages from the working manuscripts and from the Raleigh Works. None of these changes carry authority.”
Perhaps no one in English history better represents the heroic character
than Sir Walter Raleigh, for Sidney has got to be almost as shadowy as
Arthur himself. Raleigh’s somewhat antique and Roman virtues appear in
his numerous military and naval adventures, in his knightly conduct
toward the Queen, in his poems and his employments in the Tower, and not
least in his death, but more than all in his constant soldier-like
bearing and promise. He was the Bayard of peaceful as well as war like
enterprise, and few lives which are the subject of recent and
trustworthy history are so agreeable to the imagination. Not
withstanding his temporary unpopularity, he especially possessed the
prevalent and popular qualities which command the admiration of men. If
an English Plutarch were to be written, Raleigh would be the best Greek
or Roman among them all. He was one whose virtues if they were not
distinctively great yet gave to virtues a current stamp and value as it
were by the very grace and loftiness with which he carried them; — one
of nature’s noblemen who possessed those requisites to true nobility
without which no heraldry nor blood can avail. Among savages he would
still have been chief. He seems to have had, not a profounder or grander
but, so to speak, more nature than other men — a great, irregular,
luxuriant nature, fit to be the darling of a people. The enthusiastic
and often extravagant, but always hearty and emphatic, tone in which he
is spoken of by his contemporaries is not the least remarkable fact
about him, and it does not matter much whether the current stories are
true or not, since they at least prove his reputation. It is not his
praise to have been a saint or a seer in his generation, but “one of the
gallantest worthies that ever England bred.” The stories about him
testify to a character rather than a virtue. As, for instance, that “he
was damnable proud. Old Sir Robert Harley of Brampton-Brian Castle (who
knew him) would say, ’t was a great question, who was the proudest. Sir
Walter or Sir Thomas Overbury, but the difference that was, was judged
on Sir Thomas’s side;” that “in his youth his companions were boisterous
blades, but generally those that had wit;” that on one occasion he beats
one of them for making a noise in a tavern, and “seals up his mouth, his
upper and nether beard, with hard wax.” 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.”
And what we are told of his personal appearance is accordant with the
rest, that “he had in the outward man a good presence, in a handsome and
well-compacted person;” that “he was a tall, handsome, and bold man;”
and his “was thought a very good face,” though “his countenance was some
what spoiled by the unusual height of his forehead.” “He was such a
person (every way), that (as King Charles Ⅰ says of the Lord Strafford)
a prince would rather be afraid of, than ashamed of,” and had an
“awfulness and ascendency in his aspect over other mortals;” and we are
not disappointed to learn that he indulged in a splendid dress, and
“notwithstanding his so great mastership in style, and his conversation
with the learnedest and politest persons, yet he spake broad Devonshire
to his dying day.”
Such a character as this was well suited to the time in which he lived.
His age was an unusually stirring one. The discovery of America and the
successful progress of the Reformation opened a field for both the
intellectual and physical energies of his generation. The fathers of his
age were Calvin and Knox, and Cranmer, and Pizarro, and Garcilaso; and
its immediate forefathers were Luther and Raphael, and Bayard and
Angelo, and Ariosto, and Copernicus, and Machiavel, and Erasmus, and
Cabot, and Ximenes, and Columbus. Its device might have been an anchor,
a sword, and a quill. The Pizarro laid by his sword at intervals and
took to his letters. The Columbus set sail for newer worlds still, by
voyages which needed not the patronage of princes. The Bayard alighted
from his steed to seek adventures no less arduous than heretofore upon
the ocean and in the Western world; and the Luther who had reformed
religion began now to reform politics and science.
In Raleigh’s youth, however it may have concerned him, Camoens was
writing a heroic poem in Portugal, and the arts still had their
representative in Paul Veronese of Italy. He may have been one to
welcome the works of Tasso and Montaigne to England, and when he looked
about him he might have found such men as Cervantes and Sidney, men of
like pursuits and not altogether dissimilar genius from himself, for his
contemporaries, — a Drake to rival him on the sea, and a Hudson in
western adventure; a Halley, a Galileo, and a Kepler, for his
astronomers; a Bacon, a Behmen, and a Burton, for his philosophers; and
a Jonson, a Spenser, and a Shakespeare, his poets for refreshment and
inspiration.
But that we may know how worthy he himself was to make one of this
illustrious company, and may appreciate the great activity and
versatility of his genius, we will glance hastily at the various aspects
of his life.
He was a proper knight, a born cavalier, who in the intervals of war
betook himself still to the most vigorous arts of peace, though as if
diverted from his proper aim. He makes us doubt if there is not some
worthier apology for war than has been discovered, for its modes and
manners were an instinct with him; and though in his writings he takes
frequent occasion sincerely to condemn its folly, and show the better
policy and advantage of peace, yet he speaks with the uncertain
authority of a warrior still, to whom those juster wars are not simply
the dire necessity he would imply.
In whatever he is engaged we seem to see a plume waving over his head,
and a sword dangling at his side. Born in 1552, the last year of the
reign of Edward Ⅵ, we find that not long after, by such instinct as
makes the young crab seek the seashore, he has already marched into
France, as one of “a troop of a hundred gentlemen volunteers,” who are
described as “a gallant company, nobly mounted and accoutred, having on
their colors the motto, Finem det mihi virtus — ‘Let valor be my aim.’ ”
And so in fact he marched on through life with this motto in his heart
always. All the peace of those days seems to have been but a truce, or
casual interruption of the order of war. War with Spain, especially, was
so much the rule rather than the exception that the navigators and
commanders of these two nations, when abroad, acted on the presumption
that their countries were at war at home, though they had left them at
peace; and their respective colonies in America carried on war at their
convenience, with no infraction of the treaties between the mother
countries.
Raleigh seems to have regarded the Spaniards as his natural enemies, and
he was not backward to develop this part of his nature. When England was
threatened with foreign invasion, the Queen looked to him especially for
advice and assistance; and none was better able to give them than he. We
cannot but admire the tone in which he speaks of his island, and how it
is to be best defended, and the navy, its chief strength, maintained and
improved. He speaks from England as his castle, and his (as no other
man’s) is the voice of the state; for he does not assert the interests
of an individual but of a commonwealth, and we see in him revived a
Roman patriotism.
His actions, as they were public and for the public, were fit to be
publicly rewarded; and we accordingly read with equanimity of gold
chains and monopolies and other emoluments conferred on him from time to
time for his various services — his military successes in Ireland, “that
commonweal of common woe,” as he even then described it; his enterprise
in the harbor of Cadiz; his capture of Fayal from the Spaniards; and
other exploits which perhaps, more than anything else, got him fame and
a name during his lifetime.
If war was his earnest work, it was his pastime too; for in the peaceful
intervals we hear of him participating heartily and bearing off the palm
in the birthday tournaments and tilting matches of the Queen, where the
combatants vied with each other mainly who should come on to the ground
in the most splendid dress and equipments. In those tilts it is said
that his political rival, Essex, whose wealth enabled him to lead the
costliest train, but who ran very ill and was thought the poorest knight
of all, was wont to change his suit from orange to green, that it might
be said that “There was one in green who ran worse than one in orange.”
None of the worthies of that age can be duly appreciated if we neglect
to consider them in their relation to the New World. The stirring
spirits stood with but one foot on the land. There were Drake, Hawkins,
Hudson, Frobisher, and many others, and their worthy companion was
Raleigh. As a navigator and naval commander he had few equals, and if
the reader who has at tended to his other actions inquires how he filled
up the odd years, he will find that they were spent in numerous voyages
to America for the purposes of discovery and colonization. He would be
more famous for these enterprises if they were not overshadowed by the
number and variety of his pursuits.
His persevering care and oversight as the patron of Virginia, discovered
and planted under his auspices in 1584, present him in an interesting
light to the American reader. The work of colonization was well suited
to his genius; and if the necessity of England herself had not required
his attention and presence at this time, he would possibly have realized
some of his dreams in plantations and cities on our coast.
England has since felt the benefit of his experience in naval affairs;
for he was one of the first to assert their importance to her, and he
exerted himself especially for the improvement of naval architecture, on
which he has left a treatise. He also composed a discourse on the art of
war at sea, a subject which at that time had never been treated.
We can least bear to consider Raleigh as a courtier; though the court of
England at that time was a field not altogether unworthy of such a
courtier. His competitors for fame and favor there were Burleigh,
Leicester, Sussex, Buckingham, and, be it remembered, Sir Philip Sidney,
whose Arcadia was just finished when Raleigh came to court. Sidney was
his natural companion and other self, as it were, as if nature, in her
anxiety to confer one specimen of a true knight and courtier on that
age, had cast two in the same mould, lest one should miscarry. These two
kindred spirits are said to have been mutually attracted toward each
other. And there, too, was Queen Elizabeth herself, the center of the
court and of the kingdom; to whose service he consecrates himself, not
so much as a subject to his sovereign, but as a knight to the service of
his mistress. His intercourse with the Queen may well have begun with
the incident of the cloak, for such continued to be its character
afterward. It has in the description an air of romance, and might fitly
have made a part of his friend Sidney’s Arcadia. The tale runs that the
Queen, walking one day in the midst of her courtiers, came to a miry
place, when Raleigh, who was then unknown to her, taking off his rich
plush cloak, spread it upon the ground for a foot-cloth.
We are inclined to consider him as some knight, and a knight errant,
too, who had strayed into the precincts of the court, and practiced
there the arts which he had learned in bower and hall and in the lists.
Not but that he knew how to govern states as well as queens, but he
brought to the task the gallantry and graces of chivalry, as well as the
judgment and experience of a practical modern Englishman. “The Queen”
says one, “began to be taken with his elocution, and loved to hear his
reasons to his demands; and the truth is she took him for a kind of
oracle, which nettled them all.” He rose rapidly in her favor, and
became her indispensable counselor in all matters which concerned the
state, for he was minutely acquainted with the affairs of England, and
none better understood her commercial interests. But notwithstanding the
advantage of his wisdom to England, we had rather think of him taking
counsel with the winds and breakers of the American coast and the roar
of the Spanish artillery, than with the Queen. But though he made a good
use of his influence (for the most part) when obtained, he could descend
to the grossest flattery to obtain this, and we could wish him forever
banished from the court, whose favors he so earnestly sought. Yet that
he who was one while “the Queen of England’s poor captive,” could
sometimes assume a manly and independent tone with her, appears from his
answer when she once exclaimed, on his asking a favor for a friend,
“When, Sir Walter, will you cease to be a beggar?“ ”When your gracious
Majesty ceases to be a benefactor.”
His court life exhibits him in mean and frivolous relations, which make
him lose that respect in our eyes which he had acquired elsewhere.
The base use he made of his recovered influence (after having been
banished from the court, and even suffered imprisonment in consequence
of the Queen’s displeasure) to procure the disgrace and finally the
execution of his rival Essex (who had been charged with treason) is the
foulest stain upon his escutcheon, the one which it is hardest to
reconcile with the nobleness and generosity which we are inclined to
attribute to such a character. Revenge is most unheroic. His acceptance
of bribes afterwards for using his influence in behalf of the earl’s
adherents is not to be excused by the usage of the times. The times may
change, but the laws of integrity and magnanimity are immutable. Nor are
the terms on which he was the friend of Cecil, from motives of policy
merely, more tolerable to consider. Yet we cannot but think that he
frequently travelled a higher, though a parallel, course with the mob,
and though he had their suffrages, to some extent deserves the praise
which Jonson applies to another —
That to the vulgar canst thyself apply,
Treading a better path not contrary.
We gladly make haste to consider him in what the world calls his
misfortune, after the death of Elizabeth and the accession of James Ⅰ,
when his essentially nobler nature was separated from the base company
of the court and the contaminations which his loyalty could not resist,
though tested by imprisonment and the scaffold.
His enemies had already prejudiced the King against him before James’s
accession to the throne, and when at length the English nobility were
presented to his Majesty (who, it will be remembered, was a Scotchman),
and Raleigh’s name was told, “Raleigh!” exclaimed the King, “O my soule,
mon, I have heard rawly of thee.” His efforts to limit the King’s power
of introducing Scots into England contributed to increase his jealousy
and dislike, and he was shortly after accused by Lord Cobham of
participating in a conspiracy to place the Lady Arabella Stuart on the
throne. Owing mainly, it is thought, to the King’s resentment, he was
tried and falsely convicted of high treason; though his accuser
retracted in writing his whole accusation before the conclusion of the
trial.
In connection with his earlier behavior to Essex, it should be
remembered that by his conduct on his own trial he in a great measure
removed the ill-will which existed against him on that account. At his
trial, which is said to have been most unjustly and insolently conducted
by Sir Edward Coke on the part of the Crown, “he answered,” says one,
“with that temper, wit, learning, courage, and judgment that, save that
it went with the hazard of his life, it was the happiest day that ever
he spent.” The first two that brought the news of his condemnation to
the King were Roger Ashton and a Scotsman, “whereof one affirmed that
never any man spake so well in times past, nor would in the world to
come; and the other said, that whereas when he saw him first, he was so
led with the common hatred that he would have gone a hundred miles to
have seen him hanged, he would, ere he parted, have gone a thousand to
have saved his life.” Another says, “he behaved himself so worthily, so
wisely, and so temperately, that in half a day the mind of all the
company was changed from the extremest hate to the extremest pity.” And
another said, “to the lords he was humble, but not prostrate; to the
jury affable, but not fawning; to the King’s counsel patient, but not
yielding to the imputations laid upon him, or neglecting to repel them
with the spirit which became an injured and honorable man.” And finally
he followed the sheriff out of court in the expressive words of Sir
Thomas Overbury, “with admirable erection, but yet in such sort as
became a man condemned.”
Raleigh prepared himself for immediate execution, but after his
pretended accomplices had gone through the ceremony of a mock execution
and been pardoned by the King, it satisfied the policy of his enemies to
retain him a prisoner in the Tower for thirteen years, with the sentence
of death still unrevoked. In the meanwhile he solaced himself in his
imprisonment with writing a History of the World and cultivating poetry
and philosophy as the noblest deeds compatible with his confinement.
It is satisfactory to contrast with his mean personal relations while at
court his connection in the Tower with the young Prince Henry (whose
tastes and aspirations were of a stirring kind), as his friend and
instructor. He addresses some of his shorter pieces to the Prince, and
in some instances they seem to have been written expressly for his use.
He preaches to him as he was well able, from experience, a wiser
philosophy than he had himself practiced, and was particularly anxious
to correct in him a love of popularity which he had discovered, and to
give him useful maxims for his conduct when he should take his father’s
place.
He lost neither health nor spirits by thirteen years of captivity, but
after having spent this, the literary era of his life, as in the
retirement of his study, and having written the history of the Old
World, he began to dream of actions which would supply materials to the
future historian of the New. It is interesting to consider him, a close
prisoner as he was, preparing for voyages and adventures which would
require him to roam more broadly than was consistent with the comfort or
ambition of his freest contemporaries.
Already in 1595, eight years before his imprisonment, it will be
remembered he had undertaken his first voyage to Guiana in person;
mainly, it is said, to recover favor with the Queen, but doubtless it
was much more to recover favor with himself, and exercise his powers in
fields more worthy of him than a corrupt court. He continued to cherish
this his favorite project though a prisoner; and at length in the
thirteenth year of his imprisonment, through the influence of his
friends and his confident assertions respecting the utility of the
expedition to the country, he obtained his release, and set sail for
Guiana with twelve ships. But unfortunately he neglected to procure a
formal pardon from the King, trusting to the opinion of Lord Bacon that
this was unnecessary, since the sentence of death against him was
virtually annulled, by the lives of others being committed to his hands.
Acting on this presumption, and with the best intentions toward his
country, and only his usual jealousy of Spain, he undertook to make good
his engagements to himself and the world.
It is not easy for us at this day to realize what extravagant
expectations Europe had formed respecting the wealth of the New World.
We might suppose two whole continents, with their adjacent seas and
oceans, equal to the known globe, stretching from pole to pole, and
possessing every variety of soil, climate, and productions, lying
unexplored today — what would now be the speculations of Broadway and
State Street?
The few travellers who had penetrated into the country of Guiana,
whither Raleigh was bound, brought back accounts of noble streams
flowing through majestic forests, and a depth and luxuriance of soil
which made England seem a barren waste in comparison. Its mineral wealth
was reported to be as inexhaustible as the cupidity of its discoverers
was unbounded. The very surface of the ground was said to be resplendent
with gold, and the men went covered with gold-dust, as Hottentots with
grease. Raleigh was informed while at Trinidad, by the Spanish governor,
who was his prisoner, that one Juan Martinez had at length penetrated
into this country; and the stories told by him of the wealth and extent
of its cities surpass the narratives of Marco Polo himself. He is said
in particular to have reached the city of Manoa, to which he first gave
the name of El Dorado, or “The Gilded,” the Indians conducting him
blindfolded, not removing the veil from his eyes till he was ready to
enter the city. It was at noon that he passed the gates, and it took him
all that day and the next, walking from sunrise to sunset, before he
arrived at the palace of Inga, where he resided for seven months, till
he had made himself master of the language of the country. These and
even more fanciful accounts had Raleigh heard and pondered, both before
and after his first visit to the country. No one was more familiar with
the stories, both true and fabulous, respecting the discovery and
resources of the New World, and none had a better right than he to know
what great commanders and navigators had done there, or anywhere. Such
information would naturally flow to him of its own accord. That his
ardor and faith were hardly cooled by actual observation may be gathered
from the tone of his own description.
He was the first Englishman who ascended the Orinoco, and he thus
describes the adjacent country: “On the banks were divers sorts of
fruits good to eat, besides flowers and trees of that variety as were
sufficient to make ten volumes of herbals. We relieved ourselves many
times with the fruits of the country, and sometimes with fowl and fish:
we saw birds of all colors, some carnation, some crimson, orange tawny,
purple, green, watchet, and of all other sorts, both simple and mixt; as
it was unto us a great good passing of the time to behold them, besides
the relief we found by killing some store of them with our fowling
pieces, without which, having little or no bread, and less drink, but
only the thick and troubled water of the river, we had been in a very
hard case.”
The following is his description of the waterfalls and the province of
Canuri, through which last the river runs. “When we were come to the
tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining to the river, we beheld
that wonderful breach of waters which ran down Caroli: and might from
that mountain see the river how it ran in three parts above twenty miles
off; there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight, every one as
high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury, that
the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been all covered over
with a great shower of rain: and in some places we took it at the first
for a smoke that had risen over some great town. For mine own part, I
was well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill
footman; but the rest were all so desirous to go near the said strange
thunder of waters, as they drew me on by little and little, into the
next valley, where we might better, discern the same. I never saw a more
beautiful country, nor more lively prospects, hills so raised here and
there over the valleys, the river winding into divers branches, the
plains adjoining without bush or stubble, all fair green grass, the
ground of hard sand, easy to march on either for horse or foot, the deer
crossing in every path, the birds towards the evening singing on every
tree with a thousand several tunes, cranes and herons of white, crimson,
and carnation perching on the river’s side, the air fresh, with a gentle
easterly wind; and every stone that we stopped to take up promised
either gold or silver by his complexion.”
In another place he says: “To conclude, Guiana is a country never
sacked, turned, nor wrought; the face of the earth hath not been torn,
nor the virtue and salt of the soil spent by manurance.”
To the fabulous accounts of preceding adventurers Raleigh added many
others equally absurd and poetical, as, for instance, of a tribe “with
eyes in their shoulders and their mouths in the middle of their
breasts,” but, it seems to us, with entire good faith, and no such
flagrant intent to deceive as he has been accused of. “Weak policy it
would be in me,” says he, “to betray myself or my country with
imaginations; neither am I so far in love with that lodging, watching,
care, peril, diseases, ill savors, bad fare, and many other mischiefs
that accompany these voyages, as to woo myself again into any of them,
were I not assured that the sun covereth not so much riches in any part
of the earth.” Some portion of this so prevalent delusion respecting the
precious metals is no doubt to be referred to the actual presence of an
abundance of mica, slate, and talc and other shining substances in the
soil. “We may judge,” says Macaulay, “of the brilliancy of these
deceptious appearances, from learning that the natives ascribed the
luster of the Magellanic clouds or nebulæ of the southern hemisphere to
the bright reflections produced by them.” So he was himself most fatally
deceived, and that too by the strength and candor no less than the
weakness of his nature, for, generally speaking, such things are not to
be disbelieved as task our imaginations to conceive of, but such rather
as are too easily embraced by the understanding.
It is easy to see that he was tempted, not so much by the luster of the
gold, as by the splendor of the enterprise itself. It was the best move
that peace allowed. The expeditions to Guiana and the ensuing golden
dreams were not wholly unworthy of him, though he accomplished little
more in the first voyage than to take formal possession of the country
in the name of the Queen, and in the second, of the Spanish town of San
Thomé, as his enemies would say, in the name of himself. Perceiving that
the Spaniards, who had been secretly informed of his designs through
their ambassador in England, were prepared to thwart his endeavors, and
resist his progress in the country, he procured the capture of this
their principal town, which was also burnt, against his orders.
But it seems that no particular exception is to be taken against these
high-handed measures, though his enemies have made the greatest handle
of them. His behavior on this occasion was part and parcel of his
constant character. It would not be easy to say when he ceased to be an
honorable soldier and became a freebooter; nor indeed is it of so much
importance to inquire of a man what actions he performed at one and what
at another period, as what manner of man he was at all periods. It was
after all the same Raleigh who had won so much renown by land and sea,
at home and abroad. It was his forte to deal vigorously with men,
whether as a statesman, a courtier, a navigator, a planter of colonies,
an accused person, a prisoner, an explorer of continents, or a military
or naval commander.
And it was a right hero’s maxim of his, that “good success admits of no
examination;” which, in a liberal sense, is true conduct. That there was
no cant in him on the subject of war appears from his saying (which
indeed is very true), that “the necessity of war, which among human
actions is most lawless, hath some kind of affinity and near resemblance
with the necessity of law.” It is to be remembered, too, that if the
Spaniards found him a restless and uncompromising enemy, the Indians
experienced in him a humane and gentle defender, and on his second visit
to Guiana remembered his name and welcomed him with enthusiasm.
We are told that the Spanish ambassador, on receiving intelligence of
his doings in that country, rushed into the presence of King James,
exclaiming “Piratas, piratas!” — “Pirates, pirates!” and the King, to
gratify his resentment, without bringing him to trial for this alleged
new offence, with characteristic meanness and pusillanimity caused him
to be executed upon the old sentence soon after his return to England.
The circumstances of his execution and how he bore himself on that
memorable occasion, when the sentence of death passed fifteen years
before was revived against him — after as an historian in his
confinement he had visited the Old World in his free imagination, and as
an unrestrained adventurer the New, with his fleets and in person — are
perhaps too well known to be repeated. The reader will excuse our hasty
rehearsal of the final scene.
We can pardon, though not without limitations, his supposed attempt at
suicide in the prospect of defeat and disgrace; and no one can read his
letter to his wife, written while he was contemplating this act, without
being reminded of the Roman Cato, and admiring while he condemns him. “I
know,” says he, “that it is forbidden to destroy ourselves; but I trust
it is forbidden in this sort, that we destroy not ourselves despairing
of God’s mercy.” Though his greatness seems to have forsaken him in his
feigning himself sick, and the base methods he took to avoid being
brought to trial, yet he recovered himself at last, and happily
withstood the trials which awaited him. The night before his execution,
besides writing letters of farewell to his wife, containing the most
practical advice for the conduct of her life, he appears to have spent
the time in writing verses on his condition, and among others this
couplet, On the Snuff of a Candle.
Cowards may fear to die; but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.
And the following verses, perhaps, for an epitaph on himself:
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust!
His execution was appointed on Lord Mayor’s day, that the pageants and
shows might divert the attention of the people; but those pageants have
long since been forgotten, while this tragedy is still remembered. He
took a pipe of tobacco before he went to the scaffold, and appeared
there with a serene countenance, so that a stranger could not have told
which was the condemned person. After exculpating himself in a speech to
the people, and without ostentation having felt the edge of the axe, and
disposed himself once as he wished to lie, he made a solemn prayer, and
being directed to place himself so that his face should look to the
east, his characteristic answer was, “It mattered little how the head
lay, provided the heart was right.” The executioner being overawed was
unable at first to perform his office, when Raleigh, slowly raising his
head, exclaimed, “Strike away, man, don’t be afraid.” “He was the most
fearless of death,” says the bishop who attended him, “that ever was
known, and the most resolute and confident, yet with reverence and
conscience.” But we would not exaggerate the importance of these things.
The death scenes of great men are agreeable to consider only when they
make another and harmonious chapter of their lives, and we have
accompanied our hero thus far because he lived, so to speak, unto the
end.
In his History of the World occurs this sentence: “O eloquent, just, and
mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none
hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou
only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together
all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of
man, and covered it all over with those two narrow words — Hic iacet!”
Perhaps Raleigh was the man of the most general information and
universal accomplishment of any in England. Though he excelled greatly
in but few departments, yet he reached a more valuable mediocrity in
many. “He seemed,” said Fuller, “to be like Cato Uticensis, born to that
only which he was about.” He said he had been “a soldier, a sea-captain,
and a courtier,” but he had been much more than this. He embraced in his
studies music, ornamental gardening, painting, history, antiquities,
chemistry, and many arts beside. Especially he is said to have been a
great chemist, and studied most in his sea voyages, “when he carried
always a trunk of books along with him, and had nothing to divert him,”
and when also he carried his favorite pictures. In the Tower, too, says
one, “he doth spend all the day in distillations;” and that this was
more than a temporary recreation appears from the testimony of one who
says he was operator to him for twelve years. Here also “he conversed on
poetry, philosophy, and literature with Hoskins, his fellow-prisoner,”
whom Ben Jonson mentions as “the person who had polished him.” He was a
political economist far in advance of his age, and a sagacious and
influential speaker in the House of Commons. Science is indebted to him
in more ways than one. In the midst of pressing public cares he
interested himself to establish some means of universal communication
between men of science for their mutual benefit, and actually set up
what he termed “An office of address” for this purpose. As a
mathematician, he was the friend of Harriot, Dee, and the Earl of
Northumberland. As an antiquarian, he was a member of the first
antiquarian society established in England, along with Spelman, Selden,
Cotton, Camden, Savile, and Stow. He is said to have been the founder of
the Mermaid Club, which met in Fleet Street, to which Shakespeare, Ben
Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, Carew, Donne, etc., belonged. He has the
fame of having first introduced the potato from Virginia and the cherry
from the Canaries into Ireland, where his garden was; and his manor of
Sherborne “he beautified with gardens, and orchards, and groves of much
variety and delight.” And this fact, evincing his attention to
horticulture, is related, that once, on occasion of the Queen’s visiting
him, he artificially retarded the ripening of some cherries by
stretching a wet canvas over the tree, and removed it on a sunny day, so
as to present the fruit ripe to the Queen a month later than usual.
Not to omit a more doubtful but not less celebrated benefit, it is said
that on the return of his first colonists from Virginia in 1586 tobacco
was first effectually introduced into England, and its use encouraged by
his influence and example. And finally, not to be outdone by the quacks,
he invented a cordial which became very celebrated, bore his name, and
was even administered to the Queen, and to the Prince Henry in his last
illness. One Febure writes that “Sir Walter, being a worthy successor of
Mithridates, Matheolus, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and others, has, he
affirms, selected all that is choicest in the animal, vegetable, and
mineral world, and moreover manifested so much art and experience in the
preparation of this great and admirable cordial as will of itself render
him immortal.”
We come at last to consider him as a literary man and a writer,
concerning which aspect of his life we are least indebted to the
historian for our facts.
As he was heroic with the sword, so was he with the pen. The History of
the World, the task which he selected for his prison hours, was heroic
in the undertaking and heroic in the achievement. The easy and cheerful
heart with which he endured his confinement, turning his prison into a
study, a parlor, and a laboratory, and his prison-yard into a garden, so
that men did not so much pity as admire him; the steady purpose with
which he set about fighting his battles, prosecuting his discoveries,
and gathering his laurels, with the pen, if he might no longer with
regiments and fleets — is itself an exploit. In writing the History of
the World he was indeed at liberty; for he who contemplates truth and
universal laws is free, whatever walls immure his body, though to our
brave prisoner thus employed, mankind may have seemed but his poor
fellow-prisoners still.
Though this remarkable work interests us more, on the whole, as a part
of the history of Raleigh than as the History of the World, yet it was
done like himself, and with no small success. The historian of Greece
and Rome is usually unmanned by his subject, as a peasant crouches
before lords; but Raleigh, though he succumbs to the imposing fame of
tradition and antediluvian story, and exhibits unnecessary reverence for
a prophet or patriarch, from his habit of innate religious courtesy, has
done better than this whenever a hero was to be dealt with. He stalks
down through the aisles of the past, as through the avenues of a camp,
with poets and historians for his heralds and guides; and from whatever
side the faintest trump reaches his ear, that way does he promptly turn,
though to the neglect of many a gaudy pavilion.
From a work so little read in these days we will venture to quote as
specimens the following criticisms on Alexander and the character of
Epaminondas. They will, at any rate, teach our lips no bad habits. There
is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man’s tread, and a breathing
space between the sentences, which the best of more modern writing does
not furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or rather like a
Western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the underwood, and
one may ride on horse back through the openings.
“Certainly the things that this King did were marvellous, and would
hardly have been undertaken by any man else: and though his father had
determined to have invaded the lesser Asia, it is like enough that he
would have contented himself with some part thereof, and not have
discovered the river of Indus, as this man did. The swift course of
victory, wherewith he ran over so large a portion of the world, in so
short a space, may justly be imputed unto this, that he was never
encountered by an equal spirit, concurring with equal power against him.
Hereby it came to pass, that his actions, being limited by no greater
opposition than desert places, and the mere length of tedious journeys
could make, were like the Colossus of Rhodes, not so much to be admired
for the workmanship, though therein also praiseworthy, as for the huge
bulk. For certainly the things performed by Xenophon, discover as brave
a spirit as Alexander’s, and working no less exquisitely, though the
effects were less material, as were also the forces and power of
command, by which it wrought. But he that would find the exact pattern
of a noble commander, must look upon such as Epaminondas, that
encountering worthy captains, and those better followed than themselves,
have by their singular virtue over-topped their valiant enemies, and
still prevailed over those that would not have yielded one foot to any
other. Such as these are do seldom live to obtain great empires; for it
is a work of more labor and longer time to master the equal forces of
one hardy and well-ordered state, than to tread down and utterly subdue
a multitude of servile nations, compounding the body of a gross unwieldy
empire. Wherefore these parvo potentes, men that with little have done
much upon enemies of like ability, are to be regarded as choice examples
of worth; but great conquerors, to be rather admired for the substance
of their actions, than the exquisite managing: exactness and greatness
concurring so seldom, that I can find no instance of both in one, save
only that brave Roman, Cæsar.”
Of Epaminondas he says, “So died Epaminondas, the worthiest man that
ever was bred in that nation of Greece, and hardly to be matched in any
age or country; for he equaled all others in the several virtues, which
in each of them were singular. His justice, and sincerity, his
temperance, wisdom, and high magnanimity, were no way inferior to his
military virtue; in every part whereof he so excelled, that he could not
properly be called a wary, a valiant, a politic, a bountiful, or an
industrious, and a provident captain; all these titles, and many others
being due unto him, which with his notable discipline, and good conduct,
made a perfect composition of an heroic general. Neither was his private
conversation unanswerable to those high parts, which gave him praise
abroad. For he was grave, and yet very affable and courteous; resolute
in public business, but in his own particular easy, and of much
mildness; a lover of his people, bearing with men’s infirmities, witty
and pleasant in speech, far from insolence, master of his own
affections, and furnished with all qualities that might win and keep
love. To these graces were added great ability of body, much eloquence
and very deep knowledge of philosophy and learning, wherewith his mind
being enlightened, rested not in the sweetness of contemplation, but
broke forth into such effects as gave unto Thebes which had ever been an
underling, a dreadful reputation among all people adjoining, and the
highest command in Greece.”
For the most part an author only writes history, treating it as a dead
subject; but Raleigh tells it like a fresh story. A man of action
himself, he knew when there was an action coming worthy to be related,
and does not disappoint the reader, as is too commonly the case, by
recording merely the traditionary admiration or wonder. In commenting
upon the military actions of the ancients, he easily and naturally
digresses to some perhaps equal action of his own, or within his
experience; and he tells how they should have drawn up their fleets or
men, with the authority of an admiral or general. The alacrity with
which he adverts to some action within his experience, and slides down
from the dignified impersonality of the historian into the familiarity
and interest of a party and eye-witness, is as attractive as rare. He is
often without reproach the Cæsar of his own story. He treats Scipio,
Pompey, Hannibal, and the rest quite like equals, and he speaks like an
eye-witness, and gives life and reality to the narrative by his very
lively understanding and relating of it; especially in those parts in
which the mere scholar is most likely to fail. Every reader has observed
what a dust the historian commonly raises about the field of battle, to
serve as an apology for not making clear the disposition and manœuvring
of the parties, so that the clearest idea one gets is of a very vague
counteraction or standing over against one another of two forces. In
this history we, at least, have faith that these things are right. Our
author describes an ancient battle with the vivacity and truth of an
eye-witness, and perhaps, in criticizing the disposition of the forces,
saying they should have stood thus or so, some times enforces his
assertions in some such style as “I remember being in the harbor of
Cadiz,” etc., so that, as in Herodotus and Thucydides, we associate the
historian with the exploits he describes. But this comes not on account
of his fame as a writer, but from the conspicuous part he acted on the
world’s stage, and his name is of equal mark to us with those of his
heroes. So in the present instance, not only his valor as a writer, but
the part he acted in his generation, the life of the author, seems fit
to make the last chapter in the history he is writing. We expect that
when his history is brought to a close it will include his own exploits.
However, it is hardly a work to be consulted as authority nowadays,
except on the subject of its author’s character.
The natural breadth and grasp of the man is seen in the preface itself,
which is a sermon with human life for its text. In the first books he
discusses with childlike earnestness, and an ingenuity which they little
deserved, the absurd and frivolous questions which engaged the theology
and philosophy of his day. But even these are recommended by his
sincerity and fine imagination, while the subsequent parts, or story
itself, have the merit of being far more credible and lifelike than is
common. He shows occasionally a poet’s imagination, and the innocence
and purity of a child (as it were) under a knight’s dress, such as were
worthy of the friend of Spenser. The nobleness of his nature is
everywhere apparent. The gentleness and steady heart with which he
cultivates philosophy and poetry in his prison, dissolving in the
reader’s imagination the very walls and bars by his childlike confidence
in truth and his own destiny, are affecting. Even astrology, or, as he
has elsewhere called it, “star-learning,” comes recommended from his
pen, and science will not refuse it.
“And certainly it cannot be doubted,” says he, “but the stars are
instruments of far greater use, than to give an obscure light, and for
men to gaze on after sunset: it being manifest, that the diversity of
seasons, the winters and summers, more hot and cold, are not so
uncertained by the sun and moon alone, who alway keep one and the same
course; but that the stars have also their working therein.
“And if we cannot deny, but that God hath given virtues to springs and
fountains, to cold earth, to plants and stones, minerals, and to the
excremental parts of the basest living creatures, why should we rob the
beautiful stars of their working powers? for seeing they are many in
number, and of eminent beauty and magnitude, we may not think, that in
the treasury of his wisdom, who is infinite, there can be wanting (even
for every star) a peculiar virtue and operation; as every herb, plant,
fruit, and flower adorning the face of the earth, hath the like. For as
these were not created to beautify the earth alone, and to cover and
shadow her dusty face, but otherwise for the use of man and beast, to
feed them and cure them; so were not those uncountable glorious bodies
set in the firmament, to no other end, than to adorn it; but for
instruments and organs of his divine providence, so far as it hath
pleased his just will to determine.
“Origen upon this place of Genesis, ‘Let there be light in the
firmament, &c.’ affirmeth, that the stars are not causes (meaning
perchance binding causes;) but are as open books, wherein are contained
and set down all things whatsoever to come; but not to be read by the
eyes of human wisdom: which latter part I believe well, and the saying
of Syracides withal; ‘That there are hid yet greater things than these
be, and we have seen but a few of his works.’ And though, for the
capacity of men, we know somewhat, yet in the true and uttermost virtues
of herbs and plants, which our selves sow and set, and which grow under
our feet, we are in effect ignorant; much more in the powers and working
of celestial bodies.… But in this question of fate, the middle course is
to be followed, that as with the heathen we do not bind God to his
creatures, in this supposed necessity of destiny; and so on the contrary
we do not rob those beautiful creatures of their powers and offices.…
And that they wholly direct the reasonless mind, I am resolved: for all
those which were created mortal, as birds, beasts, and the like, are
left to their natural appetites; over all which, celestial bodies (as
instruments and executioners of God’s providence) have absolute
dominion.… And Saint Augustine says, ‘Deus regit inferiora corpora per
superiora’; ‘God ruleth the bodies below by those above.’… It was
therefore truly affirmed, Sapiens adiuvabit opus astrorum, quemadmodum
agricola terrae naturam; ‘A wise man assisteth the work of the stars, as
the husbandman helpeth the nature of the soil.’… Lastly, we ought all to
know, that God created the stars as he did the rest of the universal;
whose influences may be called his reserved and unwritten laws.… But it
was well said of Plotinus, that the stars were significant, but not
efficient, giving them yet something less than their due: and therefore
as I do not consent with them, who would make those glorious creatures
of God virtueless: so I think that we derogate from his eternal and
absolute power and providence, to ascribe to them the same dominion over
our immortal souls, which they have over all bodily substances, and
perishable natures: for the souls of men loving and fearing God, receive
influence from that divine light itself, whereof the sun’s clarity, and
that of the stars, is by Plato called but a shadow, Lumen est umbra Dei,
et Deus est lumen luminis; ‘Light is the shadow of God’s brightness, who
is the light of light.’ ”
We are reminded by this of Du Bartas’s poem on the Probability of the
Celestial Orbs being inhabited, translated by Sylvester:
I’ll ne’er believe that the arch-Architect
With all these fires the heavenly arches deck’d
Only for shew, and with their glistering shields
T’ amaze poor shepherds, watching in the fields;
I’ll ne’er believe that the least flow’r that pranks
Our garden borders, or the common banks,
And the least stone, that in her warming lap
Our kind nurse Earth doth covetously wrap,
Hath some peculiar virtue of its own,
And that the glorious stars of heav’n have none.
Nor is the following brief review and exaltation of the subject of all
history unworthy of a place in this History of the World:
“Man, thus compounded and formed by God, was an abstract, or model, or
brief story in the universal: … for out of the earth and dust was formed
the flesh of man, and therefore heavy and lumpish; the bones of his body
we may compare to the hard rocks and stones, and therefore strong and
durable; of which Ovid:
Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,
Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.
From thence our kind hard-hearted is,
Enduring pain and care,
Approving, that our bodies of
A stony nature are.
His blood, which disperseth itself by the branches of veins through all
the body, may be resembled to those waters, which are carried by brooks
and rivers over all the earth; his breath to the air, his natural heat
to the inclosed warmth which the earth hath in itself, which, stirred up
by the heat of the sun, assisteth nature in the speedier procreation of
those varieties, which the earth bringeth forth; our radical moisture,
oil or balsamum (whereon the natural heat feedeth and is maintained) is
resembled to the fat and fertility of the earth; the hairs of man’s
body, which adorns, or overshadows it, to the grass, which covereth the
upper face and skin of the earth; our generative power, to nature, which
produceth all things; our determinations, to the light, wandering, and
unstable clouds, carried everywhere with uncertain winds; our eyes to
the light of the sun and moon; and the beauty of our youth, to the
flowers of the spring, which, either in a very short time, or with the
sun’s heat, dry up and wither away, or the fierce puffs of wind blow
them from the stalks; the thoughts of our mind, to the motion of angels;
and our pure understanding (formerly called mens, and that which always
looketh upwards) to those intellectual natures, which are always present
with God; and lastly, our immortal souls (while they are righteous) are
by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and
similitude.”
But man is not in all things like nature: “For this tide of man’s life,
after it once turneth and declineth, ever runneth with a perpetual ebb
and falling stream, but never floweth again, our leaf once fallen,
springeth no more; neither doth the sun or the summer adorn us again
with the garments of new leaves and flowers.”
There is a flowing rhythm in some of these sentences like the rippling
of rivers, hardly to be matched in any prose or verse. The following is
his poem on the decay of Oracles and Pantheism:
“The fire which the Chaldeans worshipped for a god, is crept into every
man’s chimney, which the lack of fuel starveth, water quencheth, and
want of air suffocateth: Jupiter is no more vexed with Juno’s
jealousies; death hath persuaded him to chastity, and her to patience;
and that time which hath devoured itself, hath also eaten up both the
bodies and images of him and his; yea, their stately temples of stone
and dureful marble. The houses and sumptuous buildings erected to Baal,
can no where be found upon the earth; nor any monument of that glorious
temple consecrated to Diana. There are none now in Phoenicia, that
lament the death of Adonis; nor any in Libya, Creta, Thessalia, or
elsewhere, that can ask counsel or help from Jupiter. The great god Pan
hath broken his pipes; Apollo’s priests are become speechless; and the
trade of riddles in oracles, with the devil’s telling men’s fortunes
therein, is taken up by counterfeit Egyptians, and cozening
astrologers.”
In his Discourse of War in General (commencing with almost a heroic
verse, “The ordinary theme and argument of history is war,”) are many
things well thought, and many more well said. He thus expands the maxim
that corporations have no soul: “But no senate nor civil assembly can be
under such natural impulses to honor and justice as single persons.… For
a majority is nobody when that majority is separated, and a collective
body can have no synteresis, or divine ray, which is in the mind of
every man, never assenting to evil, but upbraiding and tormenting him
when he does it: but the honor and conscience that lies in the majority
is too thin and diffusive to be efficacious; for a number can do a great
wrong, and call it right, and not one of that majority blush for it.
Hence it is, that though a public assembly may lie under great censures,
yet each member looks upon himself as little concerned: this must be the
reason why a Roman senate should act with less spirit and less honor
than any single Roman would do.”
He then in the same treatise leaps with easy and almost merry elasticity
from the level of his discourse to the heights of his philosophy: “And
it is more plain there is not in nature a point of stability to be
found; every thing either ascends or declines: when wars are ended
abroad, sedition begins at home, and when men are freed from fighting
for necessity, they quarrel through ambition.”
And he thus concludes this discourse: “We must look a long way back to
find the Romans giving laws to nations, and their consuls bringing kings
and princes bound in chains to Rome in triumph; to see men go to Greece
for wisdom, or Ophir for gold; when now nothing remains but a poor paper
remembrance of their former condition.
“It would be an unspeakable advantage, both to the public and private,
if men would consider that great truth, that no man is wise or safe, but
he that is honest. All I have designed is peace to my country; and may
England enjoy that blessing when I shall have no more proportion in it
than what my ashes make!”
If his philosophy is for the most part poor, yet the conception and
expression are rich and generous.
His maxims are not true or impartial, but are conceived with a certain
magnanimity which was natural to him, as if a selfish policy could
easily afford to give place in him to a more universal and true.
As a fact evincing Raleigh’s poetic culture and taste, it is said that,
in a visit to the poet Spenser on the banks of the Mulla, which is
described in Colin Clout’s Come Home Again, he anticipated the judgment
of posterity with respect to the Faerie Queene, and by his sympathy and
advice encouraged the poet to go on with his work, which by the advice
of other friends, among whom was Sidney, he had laid aside. His own
poems, though insignificant in respect to number and length, and not yet
collected into a separate volume, or rarely accredited to Raleigh,
deserve the distinct attention of the lover of English poetry, and leave
such an impression on the mind that this leaf of his laurels, for the
time, well nigh overshadows all the rest. In these few rhymes, as in
that country he describes, his life naturally culminates and his secret
aspirations appear. They are in some respects more trustworthy
testimonials to his character than state papers or tradition; for poetry
is a piece of very private history, which unostentatiously lets us into
the secret of a man’s life, and is to the reader what the eye is to the
beholder, the characteristic feature which cannot be distorted or made
to deceive. Poetry is always impartial and unbiased evidence. The whole
life of a man may safely be referred to a few deep experiences. When he
only sings a more musical line than usual, all his actions have to be
retried by a newer and higher standard than before.
The pleasing poem entitled A Description of the Country’s Recreations,
also printed among the poems of Sir Henry Wotton, is well known. The
following, which bears evident marks of his pen, we will quote, from its
secure and continent rhythm:
FALSE LOVE AND TRUE LOVE
As you came from the holy land
Of Walsingham,
Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came?
How shall I know your true love,
That have met many one,
As I went to the holy land,
That have come, that have gone.
She is neither white nor brown,
But as the heavens fair;
There is none hath a form so divine,
In the earth or the air.
Such a one did I meet, good Sir,
Such an angelic face;
Who like a queen, like a nymph did appear,
By her gait, by her grace:
She hath left me here all alone,
All alone as unknown,
Who sometimes did me lead with herself,
And me loved as her own:
What’s the cause that she leaves you alone,
And a new way doth take:
Who loved you once as her own
And her joy did you make?
I have loved her all my youth,
But now, old as you see,
Love likes not the falling fruit
From the withered tree:
Know that Love is a careless child
And forgets promise past,
He is blind, he is deaf, when he list,
And in faith never fast:
His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair,
And is lost with a toy.
Of women-kind such indeed is the love,
Or the word love abused;
Under which, many childish desires
And conceits are excused:
But true love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.
The following will be new to many of our readers:
THE SHEPHERD’S PRAISE OF HIS SACRED DIANA
Prais’d be Diana’s fair and harmless light;
Prais’d be the dews, wherewith she moists the ground;
Prais’d be her beams, the glory of the night;
Prais’d be her power, by which all powers abound!
Prais’d be her nymphs, with whom she decks the woods;
Prais’d be her knights, in whom true honor lives;
Prais’d be that force by which she moves the floods!
Let that Diana shine, which all these gives!
In heaven, queen she is among the spheres;
She mistress-like, makes all things to be pure;
Eternity in her oft-change she bears;
She, Beauty is ; by her, the fair endure.
Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide;
Mortality below her orb is plac’d;
By her the virtues of the stars down slide;
In her is Virtue’s perfect image cast!
A knowledge pure it is her worth to know:
With Circes let them dwell that think not so!
Though we discover in his verses the vices of the courtier, and they are
not equally sustained, as if his genius were warped by the frivolous
society of the Court, he was capable of rising to unusual heights. His
genius seems to have been fitted for short flights of unmatched
sweetness and vigor, but by no means for the sustained loftiness of the
epic poet. One who read his verses would say that he had not grown to be
the man he promised. They have occasionally a strength of character and
heroic tone rarely expressed or appreciated; and powers and excellences
so peculiar, as to be almost unique specimens of their kind in the
language. Those which have reference to his death have been oftenest
quoted, and are the best. The Soul’s Errand deserves to be remembered
till her mission is accomplished in the world.
We quote the following, not so well known, with some omissions, from the
commencement of —
HIS PILGRIMAGE
Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon;
My scrip of joy, immortal diet;
My bottle of salvation;
My gown of glory, (hope’s true gage)
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body’s balmer,
No other balm will here be given,
Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,
Travels to the land of heaven,
Over all the silver mountains,
Where do spring those nectar fountains:
And I there will sweetly kiss
The happy bowl of peaceful bliss.
Drinking mine eternal fill
Flowing on each milky hill.
My soul will be adry before,
But after, it will thirst no more.
In that happy, blissful day,
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have cast off their rags of clay,
And walk apparell’d fresh like me.
But he wrote his poems, after all, rather with ships and fleets, and
regiments of men and horse. At his bidding, navies took their place in
the channel, and even from prison he fitted out fleets with which to
realize his golden dreams, and invited his companions to fresh
adventures.
Raleigh might well be studied if only for the excellence of his style,
for he is remarkable even in the midst of so many masters. All the
distinguished writers of that period possess a greater vigor and
naturalness than the more modern, and when we read a quotation from one
of them in the midst of a modern authority, we seem to have come
suddenly upon a greener ground and greater depth and strength of soil.
It is as if a green bough were laid across the page, and we are
refreshed as if by the sight of fresh grass in midwinter or early
spring. You have constantly the warrant of life and experience in all
you read. The little that is said is supplied by implication of the much
that was done. The sentences are verdurous and blooming as evergreen and
flowers, because they are rooted in fact and experience; but our false
and florid sentences have only the tints of flowers without their sap or
roots. Where shall we look for standard English but to the words of a
standard man? The word which is best said came very near not being
spoken at all; for it is cousin to a deed which would have been better
done. It must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity,
even by some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive
knight after all. And perhaps the fates had such a design, when, having
stored Raleigh so richly with the substance of life and experience, they
made him a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his deeds,
and transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity of his action.
The necessity of labor, and conversation with many men and things, to
the scholar, is rarely well remembered. Steady labor with the hands,
which engrosses the attention also, is the best method of removing
palaver out of one’s style both of talking and writing. If he has worked
hard from morning till night, though he may have grieved that he could
not be watching the train of his thoughts during that time, yet the few
hasty lines which at evening record his day’s experience will be more
musical and true, than his freest but idle fancy could have furnished.
He will not lightly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord
before nightfall in the short days of winter, but every stroke will be
husbanded and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the stroke of
that scholar’s pen, when at evening this records the story of the day,
ring soberly on the ear of the reader long after the echoes of his axe
have died away. The scholar may be sure he writes the tougher truths for
the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. We are
often astonished at the force and precision of style to which
hard-working men unpracticed in writing easily attain, when required to
make the effort; as if sincerity and plainness, those ornaments of
style, were better taught on the farm or in the workshop than in the
schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough,
like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.
The scholar might frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis of the
farmer’s call to his team, and confess, if that were written, it would
surpass his labored sentences.
From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man we
are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of
the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and
spirits. We like that a sentence should read as if its author, had he
held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and
straight to the end. The scholar requires hard labor to give an impetus
to his thought; he will learn to grasp the pen firmly so, and wield it
gracefully and effectually as an axe or sword. When we consider the weak
and nerveless periods of some literary men, who perchance in feet and
inches come up to the standard of their race, and are not deficient in
girth also, we are amazed at the immense sacrifice of thews and sinews.
What! these proportions, these bones, and this their work! Hands which
could have felled an ox have hewed this fragile matter which would not
have tasked a lady’s fingers. Can this be a stalwart man’s work, who has
a marrow in his back and a tendon Achilles in his heel? They who set up
Stonehenge did somewhat, if they only laid out their strength for once,
and stretched themselves.
Yet after all the truly efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his
day with work, but will saunter to his task, surrounded by a wide halo
of ease and leisure, and then do but what he likes best. He is anxious
only about the kernels of time. Though the hen should set all day she
could lay only one egg, and besides, she would not have picked up the
materials for another.
A perfectly healthy sentence is extremely rare. But for the most part we
miss the hue and fragrance of the thought. As if we could be satisfied
with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the
heavens without their azure. The most attractive sentences are perhaps
not the wisest, but the surest and soundest. They are spoken firmly and
conclusively, as if the author had a right to know what he says; and if
not wise, they have at least been well learned. At least he does not
stand on a rolling stone, but is well assured of his footing; and if you
dispute their doctrine, you will yet allow that there is truth in their
assurance. Raleigh’s are of this sort, spoken with entire satisfaction
and heartiness. They are not so much philosophy as poetry. With him it
was always well done and nobly said. His learning was in his hand, and
he carried it by him and used it as adroitly as his sword. Aubrey says,
“He was no slug; without doubt had a wonderful waking spirit, and great
judgment to guide it.” He wields his pen as one who sits at ease in his
chair, and has a healthy and able body to back his wits, and not a
torpid and diseased one to fetter them. In whichever hand is the pen we
are sure there is a sword in the other. He sits with his armor on, and
with one ear open to hear if the trumpet sound, as one who has stolen a
little leisure from the duties of a camp; and we are confident that the
whole man, as real and palpable as an Englishman can be, sat down to the
writing of his books, and not some curious brain only. Such a man’s mere
daily exercise in literature might well attract us, and Cecil has said,
“He can toil terribly.”
Raleigh seems to have been too genial and loyal a soul to resist the
temptations of a court; but if to his genius and culture could have been
added the temperament of George Fox or Oliver Cromwell, perhaps the
world would have had reason longer to remember him. He was, however, the
most generous nature that could be drawn into the precincts of a court,
and carried the courtier’s life almost to the highest pitch of
magnanimity and grace of which it was capable. He was liberal and
generous as a prince, that is, within bounds; brave, chivalrous, heroic,
as a knight in armor but not as a defenceless man. His was not the
heroism of a Luther, but of a Bayard, and had more of grace than of
honest truth in it. He had more taste than appetite. There may be
something petty in a refined taste, it easily degenerates into
effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use, and is not content
with simple good and bad, but is often fastidious, and curious, or nice
only.
His faults, as we have hinted before, were those of a courtier and a
soldier. In his counsels and aphorisms we see not unfrequently the haste
and rashness of the soldier, strangely mingled with the wisdom of the
philosopher. Though his philosophy was not wide nor profound, it was
continually giving way to the generosity of his nature, and he was not
hard to be won to the right.
What he touches he adorns by a greater humanity and native nobleness,
but he touches not the truest nor deepest. He does not in any sense
unfold the new, but embellishes the old, and with all his promise of
originality he never was quite original, or steered his own course. He
was of so fair and susceptible a nature, rather than broad or deep, that
he delayed to slake his thirst at the nearest and most turbid wells of
truth and beauty; and his homage to the least fair and noble left no
room for homage to the All-fair. The misfortune and incongruity of the
man appear in the fact that he was at once the author of the Maxims of
State and The Soul’s Errand.
When we reconsider what we have said in the foregoing pages, we hesitate
to apply any of their eulogy to the actual and historical Raleigh, or
any of their condemnation to that ideal Raleigh which he suggests. For
we must know the man of history as we know our contemporaries, not so
much by his deeds, which often belie his real character, as by the
expectation he begets in us and there is a bloom and halo about the
character of Raleigh which defies a close and literal scrutiny, and robs
us of our critical acumen. With all his heroism, he was not heroic
enough; with all his manliness, he was servile and dependent; with all
his aspirations, he was ambitious. He was not upright nor constant, yet
we would have trusted him; he could flatter and cringe, yet we should
have respected him; and he could accept a bribe, yet we should
confidently have appealed to his generosity.
Such a life is useful for us to contemplate as suggesting that a man is
not to be measured by the virtue of his described actions, or the wisdom
of his expressed thoughts merely, but by that free character he is, and
is felt to be, under all circumstances. Even talent is respectable only
when it indicates a depth of character unfathomed. Surely it is better
that our wisdom appear in the constant success of our spirits than in
our business, or the maxims which fall from our lips merely. We want not
only a revelation, but a nature behind to sustain it. Many silent, as
well as famous, lives have been the result of no mean thought, though it
was never adequately expressed nor conceived; and perhaps the most
illiterate and unphilosophical mind may yet be accustomed to think to
the extent of the noblest action. We all know those in our own circle
who do injustice to their entire character in their conversation and in
writing, but who, if actually set over against us, would not fail to
make a wiser impression than many a wise thinker and speaker.
We are not a little profited by any life which teaches us not to despair
of the race; and such effect has the steady and cheerful bravery of
Raleigh. To march sturdily through life, patiently and resolutely
looking grim defiance at one’s foes, that is one way; but we cannot help
being more attracted by that kind of heroism which relaxes its brows in
the presence of danger, and does not need to maintain itself strictly,
but, by a kind of sympathy with the universe, generously adorns the
scene and the occasion, and loves valor so well that itself would be the
defeated party only to behold it; which is as serene and as well pleased
with the issue as the heavens which look down upon the field of battle.
It is but a lower height of heroism when the hero wears a sour face. We
fear that much of the heroism which we praise nowadays is dyspeptic.
When we consider the vast Xerxean army of reformers in these days, we
cannot doubt that many a grim soul goes silent, the hero of some small
intestine war; and it is somewhat to begin to live on cornbread solely,
for one who has before lived on bolted wheat; — but of this sort surely
are not the deeds to be sung. These are not the Arthurs that inflame the
imaginations of men. All fair action is the product of enthusiasm, and
nature herself does nothing in the prose mood, though sometimes grimly
with poetic fury, and at others humorously. There is enthusiasm in the
sunrise and the summer, and we imagine that the shells on the shore take
new layers from year to year with such rapture as the bard writes his
poems.
We would fain witness a heroism which is literally illustrious, whose
daily life is the stuff of which our dreams are made; so that the world
shall regard less what it does than how it does it; and its actions
unsettle the common standards, and have a right to be done, however
wrong they may be to the moralist.
Mere gross health and cheerfulness are no slight attraction, and some
biographies have this charm mainly. For the most part the best man’s
spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it adds not a
little there fore to the credit of Little John, the celebrated follower
of Robin Hood, reflecting favorably on the character of his life, that
his grave was “long celebrous for the yielding of excellent whetstones.”
A great cheerfulness indeed have all great wits and heroes possessed,
almost a profane levity to such as understood them not, but their
religion had the broader basis of health and permanence. For the hero,
too, has his religion, though it is the very opposite to that of the
ascetic. It demands not a narrower cell but a wider world. He is perhaps
the very best man of the world; the poet active, the saint willful; not
the most godlike, but the most manlike. There have been souls of a
heroic stamp for whom this world seemed expressly made; as if this fair
creation had at last succeeded, for it seems to be thrown away on the
saint. Such seem to be an essential part of their age if we consider
them in time, and of the scenery if we consider them in Nature. They lie
out before us ill-defined and uncertain, like some scraggy hillside or
pasture, which varies from day to day and from hour to hour, with the
revolutions of Nature, so that the eye of the forester never rests twice
upon the same scene; one knows not what may occur — he may hear a fox
bark or a partridge drum. They are planted deep in Nature and have more
root than others. They are earth-born (γηγενεις), as was said of the
Titans. They are brothers of the sun and moon, they belong, so to speak,
to the natural family of man. Their breath is a kind of wind, their step
like that of a quadruped, their moods the seasons, and they are as
serene as Nature. Their eyes are deep-set like moles or glow worms, they
move free and unconstrained through Nature as her guests, their motions
easy and natural as if their course were already determined for them; as
of rivers flowing through valleys, not as somewhat finding a place in
Nature, but for whom a place is already found. We love to hear them
speak though we do not hear what they say. The very air seems forward to
modulate itself into speech for them, and their words are of its own
substance, and fall naturally on the ear, like the rustling of leaves
and the crackling of the fire. They have the heavens for their abettors,
for they never stood from under them, and they look at the stars with an
answering ray. The distinctions of better and best, sense and nonsense,
seem trivial and petty, when such great healthy indifferences come
along. We lay aside the trick of thinking well to attend to their
thoughtless and happy natures, and are inclined to show a divine
politeness and heavenly good-breeding, for they compel it. They are
great natures. It takes a good deal to support them. Theirs is no thin
diet. The very air they breathe seems rich, and, as it were, perfumed.
They are so remarkable as to be least remarked at first, since they are
most in harmony with the time and place, and if we wonder at all it will
be at ourselves and not at them. Mountains do not rise perpendicularly,
but the lower eminences hide the higher, and we at last reach their top
by a gentle acclivity. We must abide a long time in their midst and at
their base, as we spend many days at the Notch of the White Mountains in
order to be impressed by the scenery. Let us not think that Alexander
will conquer Asia the first time we are introduced to him, though
smaller men may be in haste to re-enact their exploits then.
“Would you have
Such an Herculean actor in the scene,
And not his hydra?”
“They must sweat no less
To fit their properties than to express their parts.”
The presence of heroic souls enhances the beauty and ampleness of Nature
herself. Where they walk, as Virgil says of the abodes of the blessed —
Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
Purpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
Here a more copious air invests the fields, and clothes with purple
light; and they know their own sun and their own stars.
But, alas! What is Truth? That which we know not. What is Beauty? That
which we see not. What is Heroism? That which we are not. It is in vain
to hang out flags on a day of rejoicing — fresh bunting, bright and
whole; better the soiled and torn remnant which has been borne in the
wars.
We have considered a fair specimen of an Englishman in the sixteenth
century; but it behoves us to be fairer specimens of American men in the
nineteenth. The gods have given man no constant gift, but the power and
liberty to act greatly. How many wait for health and warm weather to be
heroic and noble! We are apt to think there is a kind of virtue which
need not be heroic and brave — but in fact virtue is the deed of the
bravest; and only the hardy souls venture upon it, for it deals in what
we have no experience, and alone does the rude pioneer work of the
world. In winter is its campaign, and it never goes into quarters. “Sit
not down,” said Sir Thomas Browne, “in the popular seats and common
level of virtues, but endeavor to make them heroical. Offer not only
peace-offerings, but holocausts, unto God.”
In our lonely chambers at night we are thrilled by some far-off serenade
within the mind, and seem to hear the clarion sound and clang of
corselet and buckler from many a silent hamlet of the soul, though
actually it may be but the rattling of some farmer’s wagon rolling to
market against the morrow.