CHAPTER XXIII.

SCIENCE AND LITERATURE (1604-1615).

Researches.

In prison as in freedom, if Ralegh failed in one effort for CH.XXIII. the reconstruction whether of his fortune, or of his career, he was always ready for another. He felt all the tedium of the uphill struggle. 'Sorrow rides the ass,' he exclaimed; 'prosperity the eagle.' Never for an instant was he dejected to the extent of faltering in the energy of his protests against the endeavours to suppress him. As Mr. Rossetti has noted in an exquisite sonnet, his mind remained always at liberty. His avocations and interests were enough to engage a dozen ordinary lives. He had always been interested in chemical experiments. He had studied the qualities of metals. In Chemical August, 1602, Carew mentioned to Cecil that he had been sending over to Ralegh from Munster 'many sorts of ore' to prove. Within his Tower garden he equipped an assaying furnace. Cecil occasionally visited it and him to inquire about the results. He is supposed to have written a Treatise of Mines and the Trial of Minerals. It has been thought he was associated with Sir Adrian Gilbert in working during Elizabeth's reign the ancient and neglected silver mines at Combe Martin. Long afterwards he agreed to join Boyle in working a Munster copper mine. Beside his furnace he had his laboratory at the foot of Bloody tower. He had always been fond of chemistry. A learned book on it had been dedicated to him as to an expert in the days of his grandeur. Oldys saw in Sir Hans Sloane's library a manuscript collection

CH.XXIII. in Ralegh's own hand of Chemical and Medicinal Receipts. Now, in his enforced leisure, he threw himself ardently into the pursuit of experimental philosophy in many directions. He is said to have learnt how to cure common English tobacco in the Tower, so that he made it equal to American. The Royal Agricultural Society a few years since would have been grateful for his discovery. He is known to have discovered in the Tower the art of condensing fresh water from salt. He applied the process during his subsequent voyage to Guiana, though the secret was afterwards lost for two centuries. He was especially eager in the study of drugs. Waad wrote to Cecil in 1605 that he 'doth spend his time all the day in distillations in a little hen-house in the garden, which he hath converted into a still-house.' Sampson, a chemist, served him as operator for twelve years. Materials were brought to him by his old comrades and servants from all parts, and he experimented on their properties. He kept a stock of spices and essences, which sometimes he gave away, and sometimes sold. Great French ladies, we have seen, begged balms of him. A letter is preserved from one Zechelius of Nuremberg, complaining of his neglect to send some sassafras he had promised.

The Great Cordial.

His drugs gained fame for cures, and sometimes for the reverse. He had presented some to Overbury. Ill-natured gossip attributed the death of the Countess of Rutland on September 1, 1612, to pills of his composition. The wonder is that in neither case was any sinister motive charged. On the other hand, his Great Cordial or Elixir, which is not to be confounded with his Simple Cordial, was credited with astonishing virtues, and devoutly imbibed. His exact prescription for it is no longer extant. It is not clear whether he ever divulged the quantities as well as the ingredients. As specified by himself it might not have the air of quackery, which, it cannot be denied, surrounds the receipt handed down to posterity. Charles the Second's apothecary, Nicholas le Febre, or le Febure, compounded it for the royal use, and printed an account in 1664. Evelyn relates that he accompanied Charles to

see the preparation in 1662. But le Febre, Kenelm Digby, and CH.XXIII. Alexander Fraser tampered with the original. It is acknowledged that Fraser added the flesh, heart, and liver of vipers, and the mineral unicorn. Other liberties, it may be apprehended, were taken. The receipt as drawn up by le Febre reads like a botanist's catalogue interpolated with oriental pearls, ambergris, and bezoardic stones, to add mystery. The old London Pharmacopoeia gave a simpler receipt, in which the ingredients were zedoary and saffron, distilled with crabs' claws, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom seeds, and sugar. Physical science did not occupy all his leisure. He wrote much. At different periods of his imprisonment, which cannot be precisely fixed, he composed a variety of treatises. He discussed many questions of politics, theoretical and practical. In his Prerogative of Parliaments he undertook to prove by an Political Disquisi elaborate survey of past relations between the Crown and the tions. Legislature, that the royal power gains and does not lose through regular and amicable relations with the House of Commons. The Savoy Marriage is a demonstrative argument against the proposed double family alliance between Savoy and the House of Stuart. Of that, and of his Discourse of the Invention of Ships, his Observations concerning the Royal Navy and Sea Service, and the Letter to Prince Henry on the Model of a Ship, I have already spoken. He composed A Discourse on War in General, which is very sententious. From his notebooks he collected, in his Arts of the Empire and The Prince, better known as Maxims of State, a series of wise, almost excessively wise, thoughts which had occurred to him in the course of his eager reading. An essay on the Seat of Government, and Observations concerning the Causes of the Magnificency and Opulency of Cities, show equal exuberance of learning, chiefly classical, though they cannot be said to be very conclusive. The former reads as if it had been meant for an introduction to a contemplated ampler view of polity. He must have studied not merely general, but economic politics, if the Observations touching Trade and Commerce with the Hollander

CH.XXIII. and other Nations be by him. That remains a matter of doubt. Both Oldys and a recent German writer ascribe the work, published under five varying titles, to John Keymer, the Cambridge vintner, who is said to have composed, about 1601, Observations upon the Dutch Fishery. Ralegh more commonly has the credit of it. The dissertation, first printed inaccurately, and under a different heading, in 1650, shows minute statistical information, though it propounds, as might be expected, not a few economic fallacies. Its aim is the not very generous one of abstracting the carrying trade from Holland. The author engages, if he should be empowered to inquire officially, to enrich the King's coffers with a couple of millions in two or three years.

Ralegh is alleged to have written on the state, power, and riches of Spain. He has had attributed to him a Premonition to Princes; A Dialogue, in 1609, between a Jesuit and a Recusant ; A Discourse on Spanish Cruelties to Englishmen in Havanna, and others on the relations of France, England, and Spain, and the meaning of the words Law and Right. He expatiated in the Moral and field of practical morals in his celebrated Instructions to his Son Metaphysical Essays, and to Posterity. The treatise makes an unpleasant impression with its hard, selfish, and somewhat sensual dogmatism. In extenuation it must be recollected that it was addressed to a hot and impetuous youth. He cultivated a taste for metaphysics. The Sceptic and A Treatise on the Soul are exemplifications of it. The former, as it stands, is an apology for 'neither affirming, nor denying, but doubting.' Probably the intention, not carried out, was to have composed an answer in defence of faith. It is affirmed, as matter beyond scepticism, that bees are born of bulls, and wasps of horses. The Treatise on the Soul is a performance of more mark. The profusion of its learning is enough to prevent surprise, whatever the quantity of knowledge displayed by the writer elsewhere. It is memorable for a fine burst of indignation at the denial by some men that women possess souls, and for several marvellous subtleties. For instance, the necessity of the theory that man begets soul as well as body, is alleged, since the contrary is said to involve the

blasphemous absurdity that God assists adultery by having CH.XXIII. to bestow souls upon its fruits. In the Oxford edition of

Ralegh's works, A Discourse of Tenures which were before the Conquest is also included. So versatile was Ralegh that he has thus been assumed to have even amassed the lore of a black-letter lawyer. Its authenticity nevertheless does not seem to have been questioned. That of the Life and Death of Mahomet has been, and on very sufficient grounds. The Dutiful Advice of a Loving Son to his Aged Father falls within a different category. It is not more likely than Steele's counterfeit letter in the Englishman to Prince Henry against the phrase 'God's Vicegerent,' or Bolingbroke's attacks, in Ralegh's name, upon Walpole in the Craftsman Extraordinary, to have been put forth with any notion that it would be believed to be his. Some editors have supposed it to be a libel upon him by an enemy. Any reader who peruses it dispassionately will see that it is sufficiently reverent pleading against the postponement of repentance to the hour of death, written by an admirer of Ralegh's style, with no purpose either of ridicule or of imposture.

Publica

Dissertations which were undoubtedly his circulated in manuscript, and were printed posthumously, if ever. A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of Azores, the Discovery of Guiana, and the History of the World, alone of his many prose writings appeared in his lifetime. The Pre- Posthumous rogative of Parliaments in England was not published till 1628, tions. and then first at Middleburg. Milton had the Arts of Empire printed for the first time in 1658, under the title of The Cabinet Council, by the ever-renowned Knight Sir Walter Ralegh. Dr. Brushfield, in his excellent Ralegh Bibliography, suggests that Wood may have meant this essay by the Aphorisms of State, to which he alludes as having been published in 1661 by Milton, and as identical with Maxims of State. Others of his writings have disappeared altogether. David Lloyd, in his Observations on the Statesmen and Favourites of England, published in 1665, states that John Hampden, shortly before the Civil Wars, was at the charge of transcribing 3452 sheets of