gold mine, and brought home specimens of goldbearing quartz. The record of this voyage is his Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana. The next year, 1596, he commanded the van in the attack on Cadiz - his most brilliant fight — and wrote a spirited account of it. In the Azores, again, he distinguished himself by capturing the town of Fayal, 1597. The remaining years of Elizabeth's reign, up to 1603, were filled with political quarrels, in which Essex and Ralegh were enemies. On the accession of James I, whose mind had been set against him, Ralegh was deprived of his offices and monopolies, and was sent to the Tower on the charge of conspiring" to surprise the king's person," and of plotting with Lord Cobham to deliver the country into the hands of Spain. That Ralegh, who had so often "singed the King of Spain's beard,” should have been accused of conspiring with Spain was the bitterest irony. He was found guilty, and condemned to death in November, 1603, after a scandalous and disgraceful trial. Ralegh had been too friendly with Cobham, but there was no evidence of treason. The Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, made up for the lack of evidence by vile abuse. the extracts from the Trial at the end of this book.) It was while Ralegh was smarting under these insults that he wrote his poem The Pilgrimage (p. 14). On the eve of his expected execution he penned the farewell letter to his wife (p. 84). Though King James was "incurably prejudiced " against Ralegh, he did not dare to execute him. Accordingly, Ralegh was reprieved and imprisoned in the Tower of Lon (See don, where he lived with his wife and son for thirteen years. His apartments were in the upper story of the Bloody Tower. During his long confinement he pursued the study of chemistry and philosophy, and wrote his great work, The History of the World. "Who but my father," cried Henry, Prince of Wales, "would keep such a bird in a cage!" One more voyage, however, the Shepherd of the Ocean was to make. In 1616, he persuaded James to permit him to undertake another expedition to the Orinoco in search of the gold mine. He sailed with strict orders not to engage in hostilities with the Spaniards in Guiana on pain of death. His fleet was scattered by storms; he fell sick of a fever; his men finding a new Spanish settlement, San Thomás, on their way to the mine, attacked and burnt it; his son Walter was killed; the men turned back without reaching the mine; and Sir Walter, broken-hearted, sailed for home, 1618. The Spanish Ambassador demanded his death. Ralegh attempted to escape to France, was taken, and in pursuance of the old sentence of 1603, was executed, 29 October, 1618, in Old Palace Yard, Westminster. Great Elizabethan that he was, he rose to heights of nobleness on the scaffold. (See his Dying Speech, p. 95.) "O hadst thou served thy Heroine all thy days!" The literary work of a man who touched life at so many points would naturally throb with vitality. Ralegh's poems sprang to his lips in moments when his feelings of love, scorn, or wrath had been moved intensely. The three adjectives applied to him by his contemporary, Puttenham, ten generations of critics have not improved upon: "I find Sir Walter Ralegh's vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate." His poetry is fraught with worldly-wisdom: he has no sentimental illusions about life. (See The Lie, The Reply to Marlowe, and his last lines beginning "Even such is time.") His prose writings are voluminous. He was always busy with pens and paper in his Irish residence at Youghal, in the cabin of his ship, in his turret-study at Durham House, in his quarters in the Bloody Tower. His narratives of sea-fights and voyages have dash and vigour. They are manifestly the work of a man of action who must be a clear thinker in order to be a man of action: they are clear in outline, logical in development, progressive in movement. The Fight of "The Revenge" stirs every heart. The Relation of Cadiz Action is like the music of trumpets. The Discovery of Guiana paints in gorgeous colours the tropical life of the Orinoco. It is remarkable for its appreciation of natural scenery and its descriptive ability. In the gigantic History of the World Ralegh's prose is clothed in regal state. Writing now, in those long years of imprisonment, of the rise and fall of the first four empires, he becomes contemplative, and his style swells to the mighty theme of God's punishment of cruel and unrighteous monarchs. Ralegh's majestic organ-note can best be appreciated if his opening lines, The Attributes of God, and his last page, The Apostrophe to Death, are read aloud in a cathedral. The pulse of balanced sentences, the sonorous tones, the magnificent cadences were they not the rhythms of surging waves echoing in his ears and reverberating in his Devon heart, as he sat writing in his cell silent but for the lapping of Thamesripples at the Traitors' Gate? |