Rawleigh is a great name in our history, and fills a space in our
imagination. His military and maritime genius looked for new regions, to
found perhaps his own dominion. Yet was this hero the courtier holding
"the glass of fashion," and the profound statesman--whose maxims and
whose counsels Milton, the severe Milton, carefully collected--and the
poet, who, when he found a master-genius lingering in a desert, joyed to
pay him the homage of his protection. Rawleigh, who, in his youthful
hours, and even through his vagrant voyages, was at all times a student,
in the ripeness of his knowledge was a sage. Thus he who seemed through
all his restless days to have lived only for his own age, was the true
servant of posterity.
If ever there have been men whose temperaments and dispositions have
harmonized within themselves faculties seemingly incompatible, with an
equability of force combining the extremes of our nature, it would not
be difficult to believe that Sir Walter Rawleigh was one of this rarest
species. Various and opposite were his enterprises, but whichever was
the object his aptitude was prompt; for he is equally renowned for his
active and his contemplative powers; in neither he seems to have held a
secondary rank. And he has left the nation a collection of his writings
which claim for their author the just honours of being one of the
founders of our literature.
This is the perspective view of his _character_ as it appears at a
distance; his was a strange and adventurous _life_! the shifting scenes
seem gathering together as in a tale of fiction, full of as surprising
incidents, and as high passions, and as intricate and mysterious as the
involutions of a well-invented fable. And in this various history of a
single individual should we be dazzled by the haughtiness of prosperity,
and even be startled by the baseness of humiliation, still shall we find
one sublime episode more glorious than the tale, and as pathetic a close
as ever formed the catastrophe of a tragic romance. I pursue this
history as far as concerns its psychological development.
It was the destiny of Rawleigh to be the artificer of his own fortunes,
and in that arduous course to pass through pinching ways and sharp
turns. The younger son of a family whose patrimony had not lasted with
their antiquity, he had nothing left but his enterprise and his sword;
his mind had decided on his calling. The romantic adventures of the
Spanish in new regions had early kindled the master-mind which takes its
lasting bent from its first strong impulse. The Spaniards and their new
world, "the treasures and the paradises" which they enjoyed, haunted his
dreams to his latest days. The age in which the great struggle had
commenced in Europe for the independence of nations and of faiths, was
as favourable to the indulgence of the military passion as it was
pregnant with political instruction. No period in modern history was so
prodigal of statesmen and of heroes; and Rawleigh was to be both.
Two noble schools for military education were opened for our youthful
volunteer: among the Protestants in France, when they assembled their
own armies, and subsequently in the Netherlands, under the Prince of
Orange, Rawleigh learned the discipline of a valorous but a wary leader,
and beheld in Don John of Austria the hardihood of a presumptuous
commander, whose "self-confidence could overcome the greatest
difficulties, yet in his judgment so weak, that he could not manage the
least."
The captain who had fleshed his sword in many a field, now cast his
fortunes in that other element which led Columbus to discovery, and
Pizarro to conquest. Rawleigh had an uterine brother, whom he justly
called his "true brother," Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a great navigator, and
the projector of a new passage to the Indies; an expedition was fitted
out by them to colonise some parts of North America; his first maritime
essay was frustrated by a disastrous accident. But the intrepid activity
of Rawleigh allowed no pause, and now it turned against the rebellious
kerns of Ireland. His disputes with Grey, the Lord-deputy, brought them
before the council-board in the presence of the queen. Our adventurer
knew how to value this fortunate opportunity. His eloquent tale struck
his lordly adversary dumb, and was not slightly noticed by Elizabeth.
The soldier of fortune was now hanging loosely about the circle of the
court, watchful of another fortunate moment to attract the queen's
attention. There was a very remarkable disposition in this extraordinary
man, as I have elsewhere noticed, of practising petty artifices in the
affairs of life. The gay cavalier flung his rich embroidered mantle
across the plashy spot for an instantaneous foot-cloth, not unknowing
that an act of gallantry was sure to win the susceptible coquetry of his
royal mistress. His personal grace, and his tall stature, and the charm
of his voluble elocution when once admitted into the presence, were
irresistible. On the same system as he had cast his mantle before the
queen, he scratched on a window-pane likely to catch her majesty's eye
that verse expressive of his "desire" and "his fear to climb," to which
the queen condescended to add her rhyme.
The man of genius was not yet entangled in the meshes of political
parties, and was still contemplating on an imaginary land north of the
Gulf of Florida, as studious of the art of navigation as he had been of
the art of war. He has left a number of essays on both these subjects,
composed for Prince Henry in the succeeding reign. He was already in
favour with the queen, for she sanctioned a renewal of the unfortunate
expedition under his brother. Rawleigh had the largest vessel built
under his own eye, for he was skilful in naval architecture, and he
named it "The Rawleigh," anticipating the day when it should leave that
name to a city or a kingdom. It was on this occasion that the queen
commanded Rawleigh to present to his brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a
precious gem on which was engraven an anchor guided by a lady,
graciously desiring in return the picture of the hardy adventurer. Such
were the arts of female coquetry which entered so admirably into her
system of policy, kindling such personal enthusiasm in the professed
lovers of their royal mistress, while she resigned her heroes to their
enterprises at their own honourable cost of their fortunes or their
lives. In this second expedition Sir Humphrey Gilbert realised a
discovery of what was then called "The Newfoundland," of which he took
possession for England with the due formalities; but on his return his
slender bark foundered, and thus obscurely perished one of the most
enlightened of that heroic race of our maritime discoverers--the true
fathers of future colonies.
Rawleigh, unrolling an old map which had been presented to her royal
father, charmed the queen by the visions which had long charmed himself.
Her majesty granted letters patent to secure to him the property of the
countries which he might discover or might conquer. Rawleigh minutely
planned the future operations, and by the captains he sent, for the
queen would not part with her favourite, that country was discovered to
which had the royal maiden not so eagerly given the name of "Virginia,"
had probably borne that of Rawleigh; for subsequently he betrayed this
latent design when he proposed founding a city with that romantic name.
But the pressing interests of our home affairs withdrew his mind from
undiscovered dominions. Rawleigh was a chief adviser of Elizabeth in the
great Spanish invasion. He was eminently active in various expeditions,
and not less serviceable in parliament. The ceaseless topic of his
counsels, and the frequent exercise of his pen, was the alarming
aggrandisement of the Spanish power. At this day, perhaps, we can form
no adequate notion of that Catholic and colossal dominion which Rawleigh
dwells on. "No prince in the west hath spread his wing far over his nest
but the Spaniard, and made many attempts to make themselves masters of
all Europe." Possibly he may have ascribed too great an influence to the
treasures of India, which seem to have been always exaggerated; however,
he assures us, and as a statesman he may have felt a conviction, that
"its Indian gold endangers and disturbs all the nations of Europe; it
creeps into counsels, purchases intelligence, and sets bound loyalty at
liberty in the greatest monarchies. When they dare not with their own
forces invade, they basely entertain the traitors and vagabonds of all
nations." We have here a complete picture of those arts of policy which,
in the revolutionary system of France, endangered Europe, and which may
yet, should ever a colossal power again overshadow its independent
empires.
To clip "the wing that had spread far over its nest," by cutting off
the uninterrupted supplies of the plate fleets of Spain, was a course in
which the queen only perceived the earnest loyalty of the intrepid
adventurer; nor was that loyalty less for its perfect accordance with
his own personal concerns.
Rawleigh and his joint adventurers in these discoveries were carrying on
their expeditions at the risk of their private fortunes, and it appears
that his own zeal had beguiled young men to change their immoveable
lands for light pinnaces. The prudential ministers looked on with a cold
eye, and the economical sovereign, as she was wont, rewarded her hero in
her own way. Elizabeth bestowed titular honours, and cut out a seignory
in Ireland from the Earl of Desmond's domains, which Rawleigh's own
sword had chiefly won; twelve thousand acres, yielding no rents;
dismantled farms and tenantless hamlets--an estate of fire and blood! A
more substantial patent was conferred on him, to license taverns for the
sale of wines; and at length it was enlarged to levy tonnage and
poundage, specifying that the grant was "to sustain his great charges in
the discovery of remote countries."
This was one of those odious monopolies by which the parsimonious
sovereign pretended to reward the services of the individual by the
infliction of a great public grievance, infinitely more intolerable than
any pension-list; for every monopoly was a traffic admitting all sorts
of abuses. Rawleigh's inventive faculty often broke forth into humbler
schemes in domestic affairs. He seems first to have perceived in the
expansion of society, the difficulty of communication for the wants of
life. He projected an office for universal agency; and in this he
anticipated that useful intelligence which we now recognise by the term
of advertisement. New enterprises and ceaseless occupation were the
aliment of that restless and noble spirit. But these monopolies,
severely exacted, provoking complaints and contests, were one among
other causes which may account for Rawleigh's unpopularity, even at his
meridian.
To his absorbing devotion to obtain the queen's favour, he has himself
ascribed his numerous enemies. While Elizabeth listened to his ingenious
solutions of all her inquiries, many close at hand took umbrage lest
they themselves were being supplanted; while he himself, with marked
expressions, disdained all popularity. Hence, from opposite quarters, we
learn how haughtily his genius bore him in commanding the world under
him. And there is no doubt, as Aubrey tells us, that he was "damnably
proud." Even in the height of court favour, this great man was obnoxious
to the people. This we see by an anecdote of Tarleton, the jester of
Elizabeth, famed for his extemporal acting. Performing before the queen,
while Rawleigh stood by her majesty, shuffling a pack of cards, and
pointing to the royal box, the jesting comedian exclaimed, "See, the
knave commands the queen!" Her majesty frowned; but the audience
applauding, the queen, ever chary in checking any popular feeling,
reserved her anger till the following day, when Tarleton was banished
from the royal presence. Nor was Rawleigh less unpopular in the
succeeding reign, when the mob hooted this great man, and when this
great man condescended to tell them how much he despised such rogues and
varlets! The inconsiderate multitude, in the noble preface to his great
work, he compared to "dogs, who always bark at those they know not, and
whose nature is to accompany one another in these clamours."
However busied by the discovery of remote countries, the armed ships of
Rawleigh often brought into port a Spanish prize. The day arrived--the
short but golden day--when, as his contemporary and a secretary of state
has told us, "he who was first to roll through want, and disability to
exist, before he came to a repose," betrayed a sudden affluence--in the
magnificence about him--in the train of his followers, when he seemed to
be the rival of the chivalrous Essex--in the gorgeousness of his dress,
from the huge diamond which buttoned his feather, to his shoes powdered
with pearls, darting from every point of his person the changeful light
of countless jewels. In this habiliment, fitted to be the herald of that
goddess of beauty to which Elizabeth was familiarly compared, beside the
Queen during her royal progresses, stood the captain of her guard, and
her eyes were often solaced as they dwelt on the minion of fortune, her
own prosperous adventurer; it was with secret satisfaction that she knew
his treasure was not taken out of her exchequer. It could only have
been some great Spanish galleon, like that of "The Madre de Dios," which
furnished Rawleigh with that complete suit of armour of solid silver
which fixed all eyes at the tilt; or which went to build the stately
mansion of Sherborne, and to plan its fanciful gardens and groves,
drawing the river through the rocks. Curious in horticulture as in the
slightest arts he practised, Rawleigh's hands transplanted the first
orange trees which breathed in this colder clime, as he had given
Ireland the Virginian potato, and England the Virginian tobacco, and
perhaps the delicious ananas. But Sherborne was Church land. It is said
that Sir Walter had often cast a wistful eye on it as it lay in his
journeys from Devonshire. It gave umbrage to some in Church and State
that, by frightening a timid Bishop of Salisbury, he had prevailed on
him to alienate the manor of Sherborne from his see in favour of the
Crown, that it might the more securely be transferred to him who had
coveted it, till another coveter, in the despicable Carr, plundered him
who had despoiled the diocese.
A genius versatile as ambitious, moving in the eventful court of a
female sovereign, though often musing on "remote countries" or Spanish
galleons, could not stand as a mere spectator amid the agitated
amphitheatre of politics, nor in the luxuriance of courtly idleness save
himself from softer, but not always less fatal, intrigues. Rawleigh was
the victim of love and of politics.
On his first entrance to a court life, Rawleigh found Burleigh and
Leicester watchful of each other. They were the heads of dark factions
which clouded the Court of Elizabeth, and crooked were the ways our
aspirant had to wind. Leicester seems to have been an early patron of
Rawleigh, by means of his nephew Sir Philip Sidney. At length,
perceiving his ascendancy over the Queen, the great lord, to overturn
this idol of womanish caprice, introduced his youthful son-in-law, the
famous and unfortunate Essex; nor had he, who himself had been a
reigning favourite, miscalculated on the fascination of a new lover. The
contest for the royal smile became too apparent; ruptures and
reconciliations followed, till death closed these eventful jealousies.
Rawleigh had glided over to the opposition under the subtle and the
plotting Cecil.
An intrigue of less guiltiness than these dark machinations of heartless
men banished Rawleigh from court. In the dalliance of the ladies of the
privy-chamber, through the long tedious days of audience, he once too
wittily threw out an observation on that seductive but spotless circle,
the maids of honour, who, he declared were "like witches, who could do
hurt, but do no good." There was one, however, the bewitching
Throgmorton, who was all goodness; the impassioned knight was
resistless; and subsequently the law consecrated what love had already
irrevocably joined. But envy with its evil eye was peering. The Queen of
Virgins, implacable in love-treasons, sent the lovers to the Tower.
In this desperate predicament, Rawleigh had lost in an hour the proud
work of his highest ambition, the favour of his mistress-sovereign. The
forlorn hero had recourse to one of those prompt and petty stratagems in
which he was often so dexterous. At his prison-window, one day, he
beheld the Queen passing in her barge, and suddenly raved like a
distracted lover. He entreated to be allowed to go in disguise to rest
his eyes once more on the idol of his heart; and when the governor
refused this extraordinary request of a state-prisoner, he, in his
agony, struggled. Their daggers were clutched; till Sir Arthur Gorge,
seeing "the cold iron walking about," rushed between these terrible
combatants. All this, Gorge, then a friend of Rawleigh, minutely
narrates in a letter to Cecil, at the same time gently hinting that, if
the minister deem it proper, it may be communicated to the queen, that
such was the miserable condition of Rawleigh, that he fell distracted
only at the distant sight of her majesty. This theatrical scene was got
up for the nonce, and served as a prologue to another characteristic
effusion, a letter of raving gallantry, which Orlando Furioso himself
might have penned, potent with the condensed essence of old romance. The
amorist in his prison thus sorrows: "I was wont to behold her riding
like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus; the gentle wind
blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph; sometime
sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometime singing like an angel."
Sir Walter knew how high the pulse beat of his royal mistress, now aged
by her sixtieth year. He obtained his freedom, but was banished the
presence. And now, cast out of court favour, and calling himself "The
Queen's Captive," Rawleigh, whom many had feared and few had not
admired, found that even fools had the courage to vex a banished
favourite.
There was no hope; yet Rawleigh, in his exile at his own Sherborne,
addressed more than one letter to the queen, warning her of "the dangers
of a Spanish faction in Scotland." But the letters were received in
silence. Rawleigh then attempted to awaken Cecil to the state of
Ireland, then on the point of exploding into a rebellion. He compares
himself to the Trojan soothsayer, "who cast his spear against the wooden
horse, and was not believed." The language of complaint was not long
tolerable to a spirit which would have commanded the world; and at once
he took his flight from the old to the new, and his fleet and himself
were again buoyant on the ocean.
This was Rawleigh's first voyage to "the empire of Guiana," as it was
then called. His interesting narrative Hume has harshly condemned, as
containing "the most palpable lies ever imposed on the credulity of
mankind." Our romantic adventurer has incurred censure for his own
credulity in search of mines which appear to have existed, and of "the
golden city," which lying Spaniards had described; and he had even his
honour impeached by the baffled speculators of his own day, whom he had
beguiled with his dreams; but he who sacrificed life and fortune in a
great enterprise, left the world a pledge that he at least believed in
his own tale.
Rawleigh, like other men of genius, was influenced by the spirit of the
age, which was the spirit of discovery; and to the brave and the
resolved, what could be impracticable which opened a new world? The
traditions of the Spaniards had been solemnly recorded in the
collections of their voyages, and had been sanctioned by the reports of
Rawleigh's own people: and he himself had fed his eyes and his dreams on
the novel aspect of those fertile plains and branching rivers, inhabited
by fifty nations; on animals of a new form, and birds of a new plumage;
and on a vegetable world of trees and plants, and flowers, and fruits,
on which the eye dwelt for the first time--a fresh creation, "the face
of whose earth hath not been torn, nor the virtue and salt of the soil
spent by manurance."
The origin of those puerile tales which the Europeans brought home with
them has not been traced. Some have the air of religious legends,
descriptive of the Paradise of the Blacks, such as that chimerical
Manoa, where they said, "the king had golden images of every object on
earth." Or were such marvellous fictions the shrewd inventions of these
children of nature, more cunning than the men of Europe, stupified and
credulous from their sovereign passion? When the Indians on the coast
found that the whites seemed insatiate of gold and pearls, they fostered
the madness, directing their strange invaders far up into the land, to
the great city of Manoa, the El-Dorado of the Spaniards, and which no
one ever reached. In this manner they probably designed to rid
themselves of their ambiguous guests, sending them to stray in the
deserts of primeval forests, or to sail along interminable rivers,
wrecked amid rapid falls.
Rawleigh endured many miseries; and on his return his narrative was
deemed fabulous. The pathos of his language, however, perpetuates his
dignified affliction. "Of the little remaining fortune I had, I have
wasted in effect all herein; I have undergone many constructions, been
accompanied with many sorrows, with labour, hunger, heat, sickness, and
peril. From myself I have deserved no thanks, for I am returned a beggar
and withered."
An enterprise which was, as he himself considered it to be, national,
crushed the resources of the individual. He assures us that he might
have enriched himself, had "it become the former fortune in which he
once lived, and sorted with all the offices of honour, which by her
majesty's grace he held that day in England, for him _to go journies of
picory_;" that is, in Gondomar's plain Spanish "piracy;" for the
Spaniards applied the term _picarro_, a rogue or thief, to every one
sailing in their forbidden seas. The dedication of his narrative, though
directed to Howard and Cecil, was evidently addressed to "the lady of
ladies," who, however, could not break her enchanted silence.
Spain trembled at the efforts of a single hero of England; she seemed to
anticipate her uncertain dominion over that new world. Spain, though
proud and mighty, standing on her golden feet, yet found them weak as
unbaked clay, while her treasure-fleets were either burned or sunk, or
carried into our ports. But at home there were those who dreaded the
ascendancy of that bold spirit, which even in his present sad condition
asserted that "there were men worthy to be kings of these dominions, and
who, by the queen's grace and leave, would undertake it of themselves."
His adversaries would cloak their private envy under the fair colour of
the public safety, or seemed wise with prudential scepticism. Yet the
dauntless soul of Rawleigh, amid his distresses, despatched two ships
under his devoted Keymis, to keep up the intercourse with the weak
colony he had left behind; this was the second voyage to Guiana, which
only increased the anxiety for a third, which soon followed.
It is a curious instance of that alarm of jealousy prevalent with the
favourites of those days, that during the time of Rawleigh's disgrace at
court merely his sudden appearance in the metropolis, as the news is
cautiously indicated, "gave cause of discontent to some other"--that is,
the reigning favourite, Essex; possibly there might be some cause, for
the writer tells, that Rawleigh was "in good hope to return into
grace;"[1] but this restorative was not then administered to the lorn
stroller from Sherborne. The queen was imperturbable.
The royal anger of Elizabeth never interfered with her policy, nor
dulled her sagacity. Two years after, in 1596, it was decided to attack
the Spanish fleet in their own harbours, according to a plan laid down
by Rawleigh, as far back as in 1588; he was now wanted, and therefore he
was remembered, as far as his appointment, to be one of the four
commanders in the famous expedition against Cadiz. Essex, as
commander-in-chief, betrayed his incompetence, and Rawleigh the prompt
energy of his military and his maritime abilities. Essex, at all times
his rival, and never his friend, saw his own lustre dusked by the
eminence of his inferior; and on his return fatally read in the eyes of
his royal mistress the first omen of his decline. During his absence,
his recommendation of Sir Thomas Bodley for the secretaryship of state
had been rejected, and the hated Cecil had triumphed. Rawleigh now
undertook a more difficult affair than the victory of Cadiz--he effected
an amicable arrangement between Cecil and Essex; and this seems to have
been a most grateful service to the queen, for a month afterwards, we
find him again at court. Five years must have elapsed,--so long the
queen could preserve the royalty of her anger.
Restored to the queen's favour, the lover had lost nothing of his
fascination. The very day on which Cecil led Rawleigh in "as captain of
the guard," he rode in the evening with the queen, and held a private
conference; where, probably, many secrets and counsels were divulged,
too long and too proudly suppressed.[2] All this was done in the absence
of Essex, but not without his consent: for the three enemies were now to
be friends.
The second great expedition followed. Again Essex betrayed his
inexperience and his failure, while Rawleigh, in a brilliant action,
took Fayal. The reception of Essex at court levelled his ambition, and
he retreated from the queen's reproaches, sick at heart, to bury himself
in sullen seclusion. The remainder of his days exhibit a series of
disturbed acts, in the continued conflict between his own popularity and
the variable favour of the queen. To complete this tale of political
intrigues, we have a letter, remarkable for its style, its matter, and
its object, from Rawleigh to Cecil, urging the annihilation of "the
tyrant," before "it is too late," in terms hardly ambiguous enough to
save Rawleigh from the charge of having hurried on the fate of Essex, at
whose execution he shed tears;[3] and in the confession of one of
Essex's desperate advisers, in their mad rising, we learn that the earl
had fixed on Rawleigh to be got rid of.
If we reflect a moment on this triumvirate of political friends--and
Cecil secretly assured the Scottish monarch, that "he and they would
never live under one apple-tree"--we may see how the wiles and
jealousies of love are not more fatal than those of intriguing
statesmen. Rawleigh, for a purpose reconciles Essex with Cecil; but in
reality, the three alike bear a mutual antipathy. When Essex in disgrace
lay sick at home, and the queen half-repentant in her severity sent a
friendly message to the earl, this appearance of returning favour
towards Essex startled Rawleigh, who is seized with sickness in his
turn; and the queen, at once the royal slave and mistress of her
court-lovers, is compelled to send him a cordial of an equivalent
kindness; and both these political patients were cured by the same
prescription.
Cecil and Rawleigh paused not till they laid the head of Essex on the
block; and that day sealed their own fortunes, for, left without a
rival, they became rivals to each other. "Those," said Rawleigh on the
scaffold, "who set me against him, set themselves afterwards against me,
and were my greatest enemies." This may be placed among the confessions
of criminal friendships!
Cecil "bore no love to Rawleigh," tells a contemporary; but we know more
than contemporaries, and we possess secrets which Rawleigh could not
discover while Elizabeth was on the throne, though a lurking suspicion
of the hollowness of his friend "Robin" may have lain on his mind when
he wrote this verse on the ambidextrous Talleyrand, who through all
changes
Still kept on the mountain, and left us on the plain.
It was while this subdolous minister was holding most intimate
intercourse with Rawleigh, while his son was placed under his guardian
care at Sherborne, and he himself, with Lord Cobham his brother-in-law,
was there a guest, that this extraordinary Machiavel was daily working
at the destruction of both his friends! This was effectually done by
instilling into the Scottish monarch antipathies never to be uprooted.
On the demise of the queen, Rawleigh was for raising up an English
against a Scottish party; he was for keeping the government in their own
hands, and, looking on the successor to the English throne as a
foreigner, and his people as a needy race, would have only admitted him
on terms; or, as Aubrey hints, was for "setting up a commonwealth."
Little dreamed Rawleigh that he was already sold and disposed of; that
his friend, Secretary Cecil, was surrounding Durham-House, Rawleigh's
town residence, by domestic and midnight spies; and, as the secretary
was wont, laying traps to decoy his associate in the councils of
Elizabeth into something which might be shifted into a semblance of
treason against the future sovereign.[4]
The train so covertly laid, the mine was sprung at the due hour.
Rawleigh's reception by the king was the prognostic of his fall.
Rawleigh announced, James exclaimed, _more suo_,--"Rawleigh! Rawleigh!
o' my saul, mon, I have heard _rawly_ of thee!"[5] Cecil, who had
participated in the fall of Essex, the chief of the Scottish party, all
expected would have shared in the same royal repulse. Lady Kildare once
aptly described Cecil, when she threatened "to break the neck of that
weasel;" and afterwards the Scottish monarch, admiring the quick
shiftings and keen scent of the crafty creature in the playful style of
the huntsman, characterised his minister, in his kennel of courtiers, as
his "little beagle." "The weasel," had all along, moving to and fro,
kept his unobserved course; and, to the admiration of all, now "came out
of the chamber like a giant, to run his race for honour and fortune."
That astute Machiavel had long prepared staunch friends for himself in
well-paid Scots. James was hardly seated on his new throne, when his
minister opened one of his political exhibitions by the
incomprehensible Cobham conspiracy; and this ingenious artificer of
state-plots had knotted the present with one apparently more real; but
though they would not hold together, they served to put his friend on
his memorable trial. When the eloquence of Rawleigh had baffled his
judges, and the evidence failed, Cecil, then sitting in court in the
character of a friend, secretly conveyed an insidious letter, sufficient
to serve as an ambiguous plea for a mysterious conviction. Rawleigh was
judicially but illegally condemned; and the affair terminated in a
burlesque execution, where men were led to the block, and no one
suffered decapitation.[6]
A remarkable circumstance, however, occurred, which must not be passed
over in this psychological history of Rawleigh. In the Tower, during the
examination of the weak and worthless Cobham, who was shifting evidence,
Rawleigh affected a recklessness of life; suddenly, he inflicted upon
himself what his enemies afterwards called "the guilty blow in the
Tower;" in the blow he did not risk his life, "being, in truth, rather a
cut than a stab" in his breast. Mortified passion may have overcome for
a moment the hero whose fortitude had often been more nobly tried; but
in my own mind, I cannot avoid including the present incident among
those similar minor artifices, designed for some grand effect.
Rawleigh, condemned, was suffered to live twelve years in the Tower,
whence he obtained a release, but not a pardon; the condemnation was
suspended over his head like the pointed sword, ready to drop on the
guest invited to the mockery of a festival. A new secretary, Winwood,
and a new favourite, Buckingham, had listened to the vision of a gold
mine, and an English colony. The sage, who had passed through that
school of wisdom, his own "History of the World," when called into
action, was still the same romantic adventurer. What else for him
remained in England, but the dream of his early days? The military and
the naval writings, as well as the "History of the World," of Rawleigh,
had been designed by their great author to mould the genius of that
prince to whom he looked for another Elizabethan reign; but Prince Henry
had sunk into an untimely grave, and the sovereign who loved as much as
any one an awful volume, was deterred from valuing the man.
Rawleigh gathered together all the wrecks of his battered fortune, and,
with a company of adventurers, equipped the fleet which was hastening to
found a new empire. Ere its sails were filled with propitious gales, its
ruin was prepared. The secret plans of its great conductor, confided to
our government, by their order were betrayed to the jealous council of
Castille. Lying in sickness, Rawleigh lands on a hostile coast; his son,
with filial emulation, combated and fell; his confidential Keymis, whose
life was devoted to him, could not endure reproach, and closing his
cabin-door, ended his days; and if he himself bore up with life, it was
that his life was still due to many. "I could die heart-broken, as Drake
and Hawkins had died before, when they failed in their enterprise. My
brains are broken, and I cannot write much; I live, and I told you why."
But he knew his life was a pledge no longer redeemable. His "rabble of
idle rascals" mutinied, till the hope of falling in with the Spanish
treasure-fleet lured them homewards. The letters to his wife are among
the most tragical communications of a great mind greatly despairing, and
may still draw tears.
On Rawleigh's return, a proclamation was issued for his arrest, and he
surrendered to his near kinsman, Sir Lewis Stukeley, vice-admiral of
Devon. On their journey to London, they were joined by Manoury, a French
physician, not unskilled in chemistry, a favourite study with Rawleigh.
It was in this journey that Rawleigh contrived one of those humiliating
stratagems which we have several times noted with astonishment. In a
confidential intercourse with the French chemist, he procured drugs by
which he was enabled to counterfeit a strange malady. Alas! the great
man was himself cozened. Manoury was the most guileful of _Moutons_, and
his near kinsman, Stukeley, the most infamous of traitors![7]
The conflict of opposite emotions which induced this folly who shall
describe? Rawleigh died in the elevation of his magnanimous spirit; as
truly great when he took his farewell of his world, as when he closed
the last sublime page of his great volume. He knew his fate, and he had
come to meet it. The moment was disastrous; the Spanish match lay in one
scale, and the head of Rawleigh was put in the other by the implacable
Spaniard; and when a state-victim is required, the political balance is
rarely regulated by simple justice.
An eminent critic has pronounced, that "the 'History of the World,' by
Rawleigh, is rather an historical dissertation, than a work rising to
the majesty of history."
It sometimes happens that the application of an abstract principle of
the critical art to some particular work may tend to injure the writer,
without conveying any information to the reader; for thus the rare
qualities of originality are wholly passed by, should the masterly
genius have composed in a manner unprescribed by any canon of criticism.
Our author was not ignorant of the laws of historical composition,
which, he observes, "many had taught, but no man better, and with
greater brevity, than that excellent learned gentleman, Sir FRANCIS
BACON."
The ardent and capricious genius of our author projected a universal
history which was to occupy three mighty folios, at a time when our
language had not yet produced a single historical work; he had no model
to look up to; nor, had there been, was he disposed to be casting in
other men's moulds. The design and the execution were a creation of his
own. Masses of the most curious parts of learning were to be drawn out
of recondite tomes, from the Rabbins, the Fathers, the historians and
the poets of every nation; all that the generations of men have thought,
and whatever they have memorably acted. But in this voluminous scroll of
time, something was to enter of not less price--what his own searching
spirit thought, what his diligence had collected, and farther, what his
own eyes had observed in the old and the new worlds. TRUTH and
EXPERIENCE were to be the columns which supported and adorned HISTORY.
And this we read in "The MIND of the Frontispiece," one of those
emblematical representations of "the mind" of the author, which the
engravers of that day usually rendered less pictorial than
perplexing.[8]
A universal genius was best able to compose a universal history;
statesman, soldier, and sage, in writing the "History of the World," how
often has Rawleigh become his own historiographer! He had been a pilgrim
in many characters; and his philosophy had been exercised in very
opposite spheres of human existence. A great commander by land and by
sea, he was critical in all the arts of stratography, and delights to
illustrate them on every occasion. The danger of having two generals for
one army, is exemplified by what he himself had witnessed at Jarnac; in
a narrative of Carthage, when the Romans lost their fleet, he points out
the advantages of a flying navy, from what had occurred under his own
eye in the wars of the Netherlands, and of Portugal; and concludes that
"it is more difficult to defend a coast than to invade it." In the midst
of a narrative of the siege of a town of Carthage, when the besieged
rushed out of the town eager to learn the terms of the capitulation
before they were concluded, the Roman general seized on this advantage
by entering with his army, without concluding the capitulation. "A
similar incident happened when I was a young man in France, of Marshal
Monluc, while a parley was held about the surrender; but noble men held
this conduct as not honourable." Foreign mercenaries, he observes, are
not to be relied on, for at the greatest extremity, they have not only
refused to fight, but have passed over to the enemy; or they have become
the masters of those who hired them, as the Turks were called in by the
Greeks, and the Saxons by the Britons; and here he distinguishes the
soldiery consisting of English, French, and Scotch, which established
the independence of the Netherlands; in this case, these mercenaries
were bound together by one common interest with the people who had
required their aid; therefore, these stood in the condition of allies,
as well as of foreigners solely retained by pay.
His digressions are never more agreeable than when they become
dissertations; the most ordinary events of history assumed a new face by
the noble speculations which he builds on them, full of a searching,
critical spirit, of sound morality, and of practicable policy; often
profound, always eloquent. One on the Mosaic code as a precedent for the
laws of other nations, would have delighted Montesquieu. On the
inviolability of oaths, he admirably describes them as "the chains by
which free-men are tied to the world." On slavery--on idolatry--on
giving the lie--on the point of honour--on the origin of local names of
America by their first discoverers--such topics abound in his versatile
pages. Even curious matters engaged his attention, and in the new world
he inspected nature with the close eye of a naturalist;[9] nor has he
disdained, at times, a pleasant tale. There are few pages of this
venerable, but genial volume, where we do not find that it is Rawleigh
who speaks or who acts, making legible his secret thoughts, charming the
story of four thousand years with the pleasures of his own memory.
The actual condition of society; the politics of past governments; the
arts, the trades, the inventions of past ages, matters deeply
interesting in the history of man, often forgotten, and hardly
recoverable, judged by that large mind which had so boldly planned the
"History of the World," cannot properly be censured as "Digressions."
"True it is," he adds, "that I have also made many others, which, if
they shall be laid to my charge, I must cast the fault into the great
heap of human error. For seeing we digress in all the ways of our
lives--yea, seeing the life of man is nothing else but digression, it
may the better be excused in writing of their lives and actions. _I am
not altogether ignorant in the laws of history and of the kinds._"
It is evident that our author was conscious that he had struck into a
virgin vein, and however amenable to the code of historical composition,
very gracefully apologises for indulging the novelty. The novelty indeed
was so little comprehended by those gross feeders on the carrion of time
who can discover nothing in history but its disjointed and naked facts,
that, rejecting every "digression" as interrupting the chronology, they
put forth their abridgments; and Alexander Ross rejoiced to call his
"The Marrow of History;" but probably found, to his dismay, that he had
only collected the dry bones; and that in all this "History of the
World," nothing was more veritable than the author's own emotions. All
which these matter-of-fact retailers had so carefully omitted we now
class by a title which such writers rarely recognise as the philosophy
of history. Great writers admit of no abridgment. If you do not follow
the writer through all the ramifications of his ideas, and imbue your
mind with the fulness of the author's mind, you can receive only
interrupted impressions, and retain but an imperfect and mutilated image
of his genius. The happiest of abridgments is the author's own skill in
composition: to say all that is necessary and to omit all that is
superfluous--this is the secret of abridgment, and there is no other of
a great original work.
"The History of the World" appeared as a literary phenomenon, even to
the philosophical Hume. He expresses his astonishment at "the extensive
genius of the man who being educated amid naval and military
enterprises, had _surpassed in the pursuits of literature even those of
the most recluse and sedentary lives_."
This is much from him who has taught us not to wonder but to inquire.
Rawleigh, however, had dropped some hints on his Hebraic studies;
acknowledging his ignorance of that recondite language, he was indebted
to some preceding interpreters and to "some learned friends;" and he
adds with good humour, but with a solemn feeling, "Yet it were not to be
wondered at had I been beholding to neither, having had _eleven years'
leisure_ to obtain the knowledge of that or any other language." It did
not occur to our historian that "eleven years" of uninterrupted leisure
yields a full amount of "the most recluse and sedentary life." With a
universal mind Rawleigh was eager after universal knowledge; and we have
positive and collateral evidence that he sought in his learned circle
whatever aid the peculiar studies of each individual could afford him.
A circumstance as remarkable as the work itself occurred in the author's
long imprisonment. By one of those strange coincidences in human
affairs, it happened that in the Tower Rawleigh was surrounded by the
highest literary and scientific circle in the nation. Henry, the ninth
Earl of Northumberland, on the suspicion of having favoured his relative
Piercy, the gunpowder-plot conspirator, was cast into this state-prison,
and confined during many years. This earl delighted in what Anthony Wood
describes as "the obscure parts of learning." He was a magnificent
Mecaenas, and not only pensioned scientific men, but daily assembled them
at his table, and in this intellectual communion participating in their
pursuits he passed his life. His learned society were designated as "the
Atlantes of the mathematical world;" but that world had other
inhabitants, antiquaries and astrologers, chemists and naturalists.
There was seen Thomas Allen, another Roger Bacon, "terrible to the
vulgar," famed for his _Bibliotheca Alleniana_, a rich collection of
manuscripts, most of which have been preserved in the Bodleian; the name
of Allen survives in the ardent commemorations of Camden, of Spelman,
and of Selden. He was accompanied by his friend Doctor Dee, but whether
Dee ever tried their patience or their wonder by his "Diary of
Conferences with Spirits" we find no record; and by the astronomical
Torporley, a disciple of Lucretius, for his philosophy consisted of
atoms; several of his manuscripts remain in Sion College. The
muster-roll is too long to run over. In this galaxy of the learned, the
brightest star was Thomas Hariot, who merited the distinction of being
"the universal philosopher;" his inventions in algebra, Descartes, when
in England, silently adopted, but which Dr. Wallis afterwards
indignantly reclaimed; his skill in interpreting the text of Homer
excited the grateful admiration of Chapman when occupied by his version;
Bishop Corbet has described--
Deep Hariot's mine,
In which there is no dross.
Two others were Walter Warner, who is said to have suggested to Harvey
the great discovery of the circulation of the blood, and Robert Hues,
famed for his "Treatise on the Globes." These, with Hariot, were the
earl's constant companions; and at a period when science seemed
connected with necromancy, the world distinguished the earl and his
three friends as "Henry the Wizard, and his three Magi." We may regret
that no Symposia have come down to us from this learned society in the
Tower, which we may consider as the first philosophical society in our
country. All these persons, eminent in their day, appear to have written
in their various departments, and were inventors in science; yet few of
their works have passed through the press. This circumstance is a
curious evidence in our literary history, that in that day the studious
composed their works without any view to their publicity; the difficulty
of obtaining a publisher for any work of science might also have
conduced to confine their discoveries to their private circle. Some of
these learned men probably were uncouth writers; Dee never could end a
sentence in his rambling, confused style. Many of these works, scattered
in their forlorn state of manuscript, often fell into hands who
appropriated them to their own purpose. Even Hariot's treatise, which
furnished Descartes with a new idea of the science, was a posthumous
publication by his friend Warner, merely to secure a continuance of the
pension which had been granted to him by the Earl of Northumberland.
These philosophers appear to have advanced far into their inquiries,
for they were branded by atheism or deism. What therefore has reached us
coming from ignorant or prejudiced reporters will not satisfy our
curiosity. Of Hariot, Wood tells that "he always undervalued the old
story of the creation of the world, and could never believe the trite
position _ex nihilo nihil fit_. He made a _philosophical theology_,
wherein he cast off the Old Testament, so that consequently the New
would have no foundation. He was a deist, and his doctrine he did impart
to the Earl of Northumberland and to Sir Walter Rawleigh, when he was
compiling his 'History of the World.' He would controvert the matter
with eminent divines, who therefore having no good opinion of him, did
look on the matter of his death as a judgment for nullifying the
Scriptures." Hariot died of a cancer on his lip.
From such accounts we can derive no knowledge of the _philosophical
theology_ of Hariot. He was the philosopher, however, who went to
Virginia with the design of establishing a people of peace, with the
Bible in his hand. He taught those children of nature its pure doctrines
till they began to idolise the book itself, embracing it, kneeling to
it, and rubbing their bodies with it. This new Manco Capac checked this
innocent idolatry, but probably found some difficulty in making them
rightly comprehend that the Bible was but a book like any other, made by
many hands; but that the spiritual doctrine contained in it was a thing
not to be touched nor seen, but to be obeyed. Such a philosopher, could
he have remained among these Indians, would have become the great
legislator of a tribe of primitive Christians; and as he actually
contrived to construct an alphabet for them, this seems to have been his
intention.
The doctrines of Hariot, which Wood has reprobated, certainly were not
infused into the pages of Rawleigh; his divinity is never sceptical; his
researches only lead to speculations purely ethical and political--what
men have done, and what men do.[10]
Such were the men of science, daily guests in the Tower during the
imprisonment of Rawleigh; and when he had constructed his laboratory to
pursue his chemical experiments, he must have multiplied their wonders.
With one he had been intimately connected early in life; Hariot had been
his mathematical tutor, was domesticated in his house, and became his
confidential agent in the expedition to Virginia. Rawleigh had earnestly
recommended his friend to the Earl of Northumberland, and Sion House in
consequence became for Hariot a home and an observatory.
The scholastic Dr. Burhill is supposed to have been one among the
learned friends whose assistance in his Hebraic researches Rawleigh
acknowledges. It was such a student that might have led Rawleigh into
his singular discussion on the site of paradise. One great name has
claimed the tracings of his hand in the "History of the World." Ben
Jonson has positively told that he wrote a piece on the Punic wars,
which Rawleigh "altered and set in his book." The verses prefixed to the
"Mind of the Frontispiece" are Jonson's. There was an intimacy between
Jonson and Rawleigh which appears to have been interrupted, and this may
possibly have given occasion to the remarkable sharp stricture from
Jonson, in his conversation with Drummond, that "Rawleigh esteemed more
fame than conscience; the best wits in England were employed in making
his 'History of the World.'"
Rawleigh, in his vast and recondite collection of criticism and
chronology, would enrich his volume with the stores accumulated from the
sources of brother-minds; it is even said that he submitted his
composition to Serjeant Hoskyns, that universal Aristarchus of that day,
at whose feet, to use the style of honest Anthony, all poets threw their
verses;[11] but the most material characteristic of his work Rawleigh
could borrow from no one--the tone and elevation of his genius.
But if the "History of the World" instructed his contemporaries, there
was a greater history in his mind, which had secured the universal
acceptance of posterity--the history of his own times. But the age of
Elizabeth, in manuscript, might be an act of treason in the court of
James the First, in the eyes of his redoubted rival Cecil; he who did
not wholly escape from malicious applications in writing the history of
the world that had passed away, eluded the fatal struggle with
contemporary passions. He has himself acquainted us of this loss to our
domestic political history: "It will be said by many that I might have
been more pleasing to the reader if I had written the story of mine own
times, having been permitted to draw water as near the well-head as
another. To this I answer, that whosoever in writing a modern history
shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his
teeth. There is no mistress or guide that hath led her followers and
servants into greater miseries. He that goeth after her too far off,
loseth her sight and loseth himself; and he that walks after her at a
middle distance, I know not whether I should call that kind of course,
temper or baseness."[12]
The miscellaneous writings of Rawleigh are so numerous and so various,
that Oldys has classed them under the heads, poetical, epistolary,
military, maritime, geographical, political, philosophical, and
historical.[13]
Of a character so exalted and a genius so varied, how has it happened
that Gibbon, who had once intended to compose the wondrous tale of his
life, has pronounced his character to be "ambiguous;" and that Hume has
described it as "a great, but ill-regulated mind?"[14]
The story of Rawleigh is a moral phenomenon; but what is there that
moves in the sphere of humanity, of which, when we discover the
principle of action, we cannot calculate even the most eccentric
movements? Rawleigh from the first was to be the architect of his own
fortunes; this was a calamity with him, for a perpetual impulse was
communicated to the versatility and the boundless capacity of a genius
which seemed universal. Soldier and sailor, sage and statesman, he could
not escape from the common fate of becoming the creature of
circumstance. What vicissitudes! what moral revelations! How he
disdained his enviers! His towering ambition paused not in its altitude;
he reached its apex, and having accomplished everything, he missed all!
He whose life is a life of adventure, who is now the daring child of
fortune, and falls to be the miserable heir of misfortune, though glory
sometimes disguises his recklessness, is doomed to be often humiliated
as well as haughty.
The favourite of his sovereign, thrown amid the contending suitors of a
female Court, we have found creeping in crooked politics, and
intriguing in dark labyrinths. Rawleigh met his evil genius in Cecil; he
saw his solitary hope vanish with Prince Henry. Awakening his last
energies with the juvenile passion of his early days, he pledged his
life on a new adventure--it was his destiny to ascend the scaffold. He
was always to be a victim of state. The day of his trial and the hour of
his death told to his country whom they had lost. From the most
unpopular man in England he became the object of the public sympathy,
for they saw the permanent grandeur of the character, when its lustre
was no longer dusked by cloudy interests or temporary passions.
There is no object in human pursuits which the genius of Rawleigh did
not embrace. What science was that unwearying mind not busied in? What
arts of hoar antiquity did he not love to seek? What sense of the
beautiful ever passed transiently over his spirit? His books and his
pictures ever accompanied him in his voyages. Even in the short hour
before his last morning, is he not still before us, while his midnight
pen traces his mortuary verse, perpetuating the emotions of the sage,
and of the hero who could not fear death.[15]
Such is the psychological history of a genius of the first order of
minds, whom posterity hails among the founders of our literature.