SCIENCE AND LITERATURE (1604-1615).
[Sidenote: _Chemical Researches._]
In prison as in freedom, if Ralegh failed in one effort for 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: _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 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.
[Sidenote: _Political Disquisitions._]
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 elaborate survey of past relations between
the Crown and the 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_ _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.
[Sidenote: _Moral and Metaphysical Essays._]
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
field of practical morals in his celebrated _Instructions to his Son 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 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.
[Sidenote: _Posthumous Publications._]
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 _Prerogative of Parliaments in England_ was not published
till 1628, 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 Ralegh's
writing. The published essays with his name attached to them do not
nearly account for this vast mass. It may be suggested as a possible
hypothesis that Hampden's collection comprised the manuscript materials
for both parts of the History. Some compositions of his are known to
have been lost. That has been the fate of his _Treatise of the West
Indies_, mentioned by himself in the dedication of his _Discovery of
Guiana_, and also of a _Description of the River of the Amazons_, if it
were correctly assigned to him by Wood. Most of all to be regretted, if
Jonson or Drummond is to be believed, is the life Jonson, at
Hawthornden, alleged 'S.W.', that is, Sir Walter, to have written of
Queen Elizabeth, 'of which there are copies extant.' As a writer of
prose, no less than as a poet, he had little literary vanity. He wrote
for a purpose, and often for one pair of eyes. When the occasion had
passed he did not care to register the author's title.
[Sidenote: _History of the World._]
The weightiness of thought, the enormous scope, the stateliness without
pedantry or affectation, and the nobility of style, of one literary
product of his imprisonment insured it against any such casualty. Of all
the enterprises ever achieved in captivity none can match the _History
of the World_. The authors of _Pilgrim's Progress_ and _Don Quixote_
showed more literary genius, and as much elasticity of spirit. Their
works did not exact the same constancy and inflexibility of effort. Mr.
Macvey Napier has well said: 'So vast a project betokens a consciousness
of intellectual power which cannot but excite admiration.' Ralegh may
himself not have commenced by realising the gigantic comprehensiveness
of his undertaking. An accepted theory has been that his primary idea
was a history of his own country, not of the world. It has been usual to
cite a sentence of the preface in proof. The passage does not confirm
the hypothesis. It runs: 'Beginning with the Creation, I have proceeded
with the history of our world; and lastly proposed, some few sallies
excepted, to confine my discourse within this our renowned island of
Great Britain.' Here is no intimation that he had begun by setting
before him for his text English history, and that the history of the
world was an enlarged introduction. If his own words are to be believed,
his survey of universal antiquity was as much part of his scheme as
English history. Only, as he proceeded, the mass of details would
necessarily thicken, and he would be compelled to narrow his inquiries.
Having to choose, he naturally selected the nation which he regarded as
the heir of successive empires, a race more valiant than the warriors,
whether of Macedon or of Rome. But he distinctly preferred as a
historical subject antiquity to recent times. As he says, 'Whosoever in
writing a modern history shall follow truth too near the heels, it may
haply strike out his teeth.'
[Sidenote: _Breviary of the History of England._]
It has been conjectured that he had already, before the History received
its final shape, experimented on the more contracted or concentrated
theme to which he purposed ultimately to devote himself. Archbishop
Sancroft possessed a short manuscript entitled a _Breviary of the
History of England under William the First_. This was printed in 1693
without the Archbishop's consent, under the title _An Introduction to
the Breviary of the History of England, with the Reign of King William
I, entitled the Conqueror_. Sancroft, a good judge, considered the work
in all its parts much like Ralegh's way of writing, and worthy of him.
Though the language is more careless than Ralegh's, and the tone is less
elevated, there is a resemblance in the diction. But much importance
cannot be attached to a general similarity in the style of compositions
belonging to the same age. Sancroft had the manuscript from an old
Presbyterian in Hertfordshire, 'which sort of men were always the more
fond of Sir Walter's books because he was under the displeasure of the
Court.' Other manuscript copies also ascribe the authorship to Ralegh.
The book, which shows research, but is not very accurate, is almost
identical with the corresponding portion of the poet Samuel Daniel's
_Collection of the History of England_, printed in 1618, and entered
originally in the Register of the Stationers as a _Breviary of the
History of England_. Daniel introduces his narrative with the words:
'For the work itself I can challenge nothing therein, but only the
serving, and the observation of necessary circumstances with
inferences.' Ralegh, though it is not very likely, may have given the
fragment to Daniel for use in his history. Clearly he had formed a
project of writing a history of England himself. In an undated letter
from the Tower he asks Sir Robert Cotton to lend him thirteen authors,
'wherein I can read any of our written antiquities, or any old French
history, wherein our nation is mentioned, or any else in what language
soever.' It is not impossible that the _Breviary_, if in any way it were
his, led him on to his gigantic enterprise, which by its expansion,
unfortunately or fortunately, usurped all the leisure he had
prospectively appropriated to his native annals. But the composition of
an elaborate history by him was no accident, though the choice of the
particular subject may have been.
[Sidenote: _Studies for the History._]
Whatever the original design, the History in its final shape demanded
encyclopaedic research and learning. Necessarily the preparation for it
and its composition employed several years. The number is not known.
Ralegh is alleged to have begun to collect and arrange his matter in
1607. The date is purely conjectural. Sir John Pope Hennessy imagines
that the preliminary investigations may be traced much farther back.
Ralegh quotes in his book Peter Comestor's _Scholastica Historia_, an
abstract of Scripture history, which has been found, with other remnants
of an old monastic library, in a recess behind the wainscot of Ralegh's
bedroom, next to his study in the house at Youghal. Mr. Samuel Hayman,
the historiographer of Youghal, writing in 1852, states that the
discovery was made a few years before, and that the books had probably
been 'hidden at the period of the Reformation.' Sir John conjectures
that Ralegh may have been taking notes from the collection 'for the
_opus magnum_ during his frequent Irish exiles.' An objection is that,
according to Mr. Hayman, the authority cited by Sir John, Comestor's
volume, with its companions, must have been secreted before Ralegh
resided at Youghal, and have remained concealed till he had been dead
for two centuries. In one sense he had been in training for the
enterprise during his whole life; in another the actual work doubtless
was accomplished after he felt that he was destined to a long term of
imprisonment. He had always been a lover of books. In the midst of his
adversities he spared L50 as a contribution towards the establishment of
the Bodleian Library. When he was most deeply immersed in affairs he had
made time for study. As Aubrey says, probably with complete truth, he
was no slug, and was up betimes to read. On every voyage he carried a
trunk full of books. During his active life, when business occupied
thirteen hours of the twenty-four, he is said by Shirley to have reduced
his sleeping hours to five. He was thus able to devote four to study,
beside two for conversation. He loved research; and his name is in a
list of members of the Society of Antiquaries formed by Archbishop
Parker, which, though subsequently dissolved, was the precursor of the
present learned body bearing the name. In the Tower he could read
without stint. He possessed a fair library. From the company of his
books, writes Sir John Harington, he drew more true comfort than ever
from his courtly companions in their chiefest bravery.
[Sidenote: _Care for Accuracy._]
Formerly, his reading necessarily had been desultory. For his History it
had to be concentrated. He distrusted the exactness of his information,
and was willing to accept advice freely. For criticism, Greek, Mosaic,
Oriental and remoter antiquities, he consulted the learned Robert
Burhill. Hariot had since 1606 been lodging or boarding in the Tower at
the charge of the munificent Earl of Northumberland. He, Hues, and
Warner were the Earl's 'three magi.' For chronology, mathematics, and
geography, Ralegh relied upon him. 'Whenever he scrupled anything in
phrase or diction,' he would refer his doubt to that accomplished
serjeant-at-law, John Hoskyns or Hoskins. Hoskyns, now remembered, if at
all, by some poor little epigrams, belongs to the class of paragons of
one age, whose excellence later ages have to take on trust. He is
described by an admirer as the most ingenious and admired poet of his
time. Wotton loved his company. Ben Jonson considered him his 'father'
in literature: ''Twas he that polished me.' In the summer of 1614 he
became, in consequence of a speech in the House of Commons, Ralegh's
fellow prisoner. He is said to have revised the History before it went
to press. Ralegh's intense desire to secure accuracy, his avowal of it,
and its notoriety, have given occasion for charges against his title to
the credit of the total result. Ben Jonson and Algernon Sidney are the
only independent authorities for the calumny. But it has been caught up
by other writers, especially by Isaac D'Israeli, who seems to have
thought charges brought, as Mr. Bolton Corney showed, on the flimsiest
evidence, of an impudent assumption of false literary plumage, in no way
inconsistent with fervid admiration for the alleged pretender.
[Sidenote: _Borrowed Learning._]
Ben Jonson was associated incidentally in the work. He prefaced it with
a set of anonymous verses explanatory of an allegorical frontispiece.
The manuscript of them was found among his papers. They have always been
included in his _Underwoods_. Though the version there differs
materially from that prefixed to the History, no reasonable doubt of his
authorship of both exists. His omission openly to claim the lines is
supposed, not unreasonably, by Mr. Edwards, to have been due to his fear
of the prejudice his favour at Court might sustain from an open
connexion with a fame so odious there as Ralegh's. But a year after
Ralegh's death he boasted over his liquor to civil sneering Drummond at
Hawthornden, of other 'considerable' contributions. He had written, he
said, 'a piece to him of the Punic War, which Sir Walter altered and set
in his book.' In general, the best wits of England were, he asserted,
engaged in the production. Algernon Sidney, in his posthumous
_Discourses concerning Government_, repeated this insinuation of
borrowed plumes of learning. Ralegh, he stated, was 'so well assisted in
his _History of the World_, that an ordinary man with the same helps
might have performed the same thing.' This is all bare assertion, and
refuted by the internal evidence of the volume itself, which in its
remarkable consistency of style, method and thought, testifies to its
emanation from a single mind. Ralegh had himself explained with a manly
frankness, which ought to have disarmed suspicion, the extent to which
alone he was indebted for assistance. In his preface he admits he was
altogether ignorant of Hebrew. When a Hebrew passage did not occur in
Arias Montanus, or in the Latin character in Sixtus Senensis, he was at
a loss. 'Of the rest,' he says, 'I have borrowed the interpretation of
some of my learned friends; yet, had I been beholden to neither, yet
were it not to be wondered at; having had an eleven years' leisure to
attain to the knowledge of that or any other tongue.' As a whole, the
History must be recognised as truly his own, his not only in its
multitude of grand thoughts and reflections, but in the narrative and
general texture. It cannot be the less his that some of the 660 authors
it cites may have been searched for him by assistants.
[Sidenote: _Period of Publication._]
As early as 1611 he must have settled the scheme, and even the title, of
the book. On April 15 in that year notice was given in the Registers of
the Stationers' Company of '_The History of the World_, written by Sir
Walter Rawleighe.' Part may be presumed to have been by that time
written, and shown to Prince Henry. Three years passed before actual
publication. Camden fixes that on March 29, 1614. Though it is almost
impossible to think Camden in error, yet, if the story of the perusal of
the manuscript by Serjeant Hoskyns be true, and apply, as has been
presumed, to the period of the Serjeant's imprisonment, the publication
must have been half a year or more later. The later date would also
accord better with a rumour of the suppression of the volume at the
beginning of 1615. The publisher was Walter Burre, of the sign of the
Crane in St. Paul's Churchyard. Burre published several works for Ben
Jonson; and out of that circumstance has been constructed the statement
that Jonson superintended the publication of the History for Ralegh. The
form was that of a massive folio, at a price vaguely put by Alexander
Ross at 'twenty or thirty shillings.' The edition was struck off in two
issues, the errata of the first being corrected in the second. None of
the extant copies of either issue possess a title-page, or contain any
mention of the writer's name. The explanation may be the modesty or the
pride which had led him habitually to neglect the personal glory of
authorship, apprehension of the odium in which his name was held at
Court, or a reason which will be mentioned hereafter. There is an
engraved frontispiece by Renold Elstracke, the most elaborate of its
kind known in English bibliography. A naval battle in the North Atlantic
is depicted, and the course of the river Orinoko, with various
symbolical figures. Ben Jonson's lines point its application. All the
pages of the volume bear the heading, 'The First Part of the History of
the World.'
[Sidenote: _Defects._]
[Sidenote: _Merits._]
For modern readers a defect of the work is the learning, which was the
wonder and admiration of contemporaries. Since Ralegh's time the
historical method, and historical criticism, have been entirely changed.
The mass of historical evidences has been immensely increased, and their
quality is as different as their quantity. Ralegh had studied the
researches of his learned contemporaries. He had expended much thought
on the reconciliation of apparent inconsistencies. From the point of
view of his own time he was successful. Often he satisfied others better
than himself. Thus, he acknowledges with vexation his inability to
divide exactly the seventy years of the Jewish captivity among the
successive kings of Babylon. Had he been not merely a disciple of the
great scholars of his age, but himself a pioneer, his dissertations and
conclusions would equally have been drowned in the flood of later
knowledge. His information is become superannuated. The metaphysical
subtleties which he loved to introduce no longer delight or surprise.
With all this there is much in the work which can never be obsolete, or
cease to interest and charm. He himself is always near at hand,
sometimes in front. He does not shun to be discerned in the evening of a
tempestuous life, crippled with wounds aching and uncured. He does not
repress, he hails, opportunities for sallying outside his subject. He is
easily tempted to tell of the tactics by which the Armada was
vanquished, and how the battle might have had another issue had Howard
been misled by malignant fools that found fault. He recollects how he
won Fayal. He pauses in his narrative of Alexander's victories to
glorify English courage. He does homage to the invincible constancy of
Spain, and avows her right to all its rewards, if she would 'but not
hinder the like virtue in others.' The story suddenly gleams with
flashes of natural eloquence and insight. Nowhere is there stagnation.
His characters are very human, and very dramatic. King Artaxerxes is
shown wearing a manly look when half a mile off, till the Greeks, for
whom the bravery was not meant, espied his golden eagle, and drew rudely
near. Queen Jezebel is visible and audible, with her paint, which more
offended the dogs' paunches than her scolding tongue troubled the ears
of Jehu, struggling in vain with base grooms, who contumeliously did
hale and thrust her. There Demetrius revels, discovering at length in
luxurious captivity the happiness he had convulsed the world with
travail and bloodshed to attain. Pyrrhus is painted to the life, flying
from one adventure to another, which was indeed the disease he had,
whereof not long after he died in Argos. Characters are drawn with an
astonishing breadth, depth, and decision. Nothing in Tacitus surpasses
the epitaph on Epaminondas, the worthiest man that ever was bred in that
nation of Greece. Everywhere are happy expressions, with wisdom beneath.
It is a history for the nurture of virtuous citizens and generous kings,
for the confusion of sensuality and selfishness.
[Sidenote: _The Moral._]
The narrative rises and falls with the occasion; it is always bright and
apt. Charles James Fox bracketed Bacon, Ralegh, and Hooker, as the three
writers of prose who most enriched the English language in the period
between 1588 and 1640. The diction of the History establishes Ralegh's
title to the praise. It is clear, flowing, elastic, and racy, and
laudably free, as Hallam has testified, from the affectation and passion
for conceits, the snare of contemporary historians, preachers, and
essayists. If Pope, as Spence represents, rejected Ralegh's works as
'too affected' for one of the foundations of an English dictionary, he
must have been talking at random. At all events, he contradicted his own
judgment deliberately expressed in authentic verse. For style, for wit,
mother wit and Court wit, and for a pervading sense that the reader is
in the presence of a sovereign spirit, the _History of the World_ will,
to students now as to students of old, vindicate its rank as a classic.
But its true grandeur is in the scope of the conception, which exhibits
a masque of the Lords of Earth, 'great conquerors, and other troublers
of the world,' rioting in their wantonness and savagery, as if Heaven
cared not or dared not interpose, yet made to pay in the end to the last
farthing of righteous vengeance. They are paraded paying it often in
their own persons, wrecked, ruined, humiliated; and always in those of
their descendants. At times it has seemed as if God saw not. In truth
'He is more severe unto cruel tyrants than only to hinder them of their
wills.' Israelite judges, Assyrian kings, Alexander, the infuriate and
insatiable conqueror, May-game monarchs like Darius, Rehoboam with his
'witless parasites,' so unlike wise, merciful, generous King James and
his, Antiochus, 'acting and deliberating at once, in the inexplicable
desire of repugnancies, which is a disease of great and overswelling
fortunes,' Consul AEmilius, sacking all innocent Epirus to show his
vigour, down to Henry the Eighth, 'pattern of a merciless prince,' none
of them escaped without penalties in their households; none elude their
condemnation and sentences, sometimes, as in the case of Alexander, it
may be deemed, a little too austere, before the tribunal of posterity.
On moves the world's imperial pageant; now slowly and somewhat heavily,
through the domain of Scriptural annals, with theological pitfalls at
every step for the reputed free-thinker; now, as Greek and Roman
confines are reached, with more ease and animation; always under the
conduct as if of a Heaven-commissioned teacher with a message to rulers,
that no 'cords have ever lasted long but those which have been twisted
by love only.' Throughout are found an instinct of the spirit of events
and their doers, a sense that they are to be judged as breathing beings,
and not as mummies, an affection for nobility of aim and virtuous
conduct, a scorn of rapacity, treachery, selfishness, and cruelty, which
account better for the rapture of contemporaries, than for the neglect
of the _History of the World_ in the present century.
[Sidenote: _Popular Favour._]
It was hailed enthusiastically both by a host of illustrious persons and
by the general public. The applause rolled thundering on. The work was
for Cromwell a library of the classics. He recommended it with
enthusiasm in a letter to his son Richard. Hampden was a devoted student
of it, as of Ralegh's other writings. It was a text-book of Puritans, in
whose number, Ralegh says, if the _Dialogue with a Jesuit_ be his, he
was reckoned, though unjustly. They had forgotten or forgiven under
James his enmity to their old idol Essex. The admiration of
Nonconformists did not deter Churchmen and Cavaliers from extolling it.
Bishop Hall, in his _Consolations_, writes of 'an eminent person, to
whose imprisonment we are obliged, besides many philosophical
experiments, for that noble _History of the World_. The Tower reformed
the courtier in him.' Montrose fed his boyish fancy upon its pictures of
great deeds. Unless for a few prejudiced and narrow minds it, 'the most
God-fearing and God-seeing history known of among human writings,' as
Mr. Kingsley has described it, swept away the old calumny of its
author's scepticism. All ranks welcomed it as a classic. That Princess
Elizabeth made it her travelling companion is proved by the history of
the British Museum copy of the 1614 edition, which formed part of her
luggage captured by the Spaniards at Prague in 1620, and recovered by
the Swedes in 1648. With the King alone it found no favour.
Contemporaries believed that he was jealous of Ralegh's literary ability
and fame. Causes rather less base for his distaste for the book may be
assigned. Ralegh had endeavoured to guard in his preface against a
suspicion that, in speaking of the Past, he pointed at the Present, and
taxed the vices of those that are yet living in their persons that are
long since dead. He had interspersed encomiums upon his own sovereign,
the 'temperate, revengeless, liberal, wise, and just,' though 'he may
err.' His doctrine was, as he has written in his _Cabinet Council_, that
'all kings, the bad as well as the good, must be endured' by their
subjects. The murder even of tyrants is deprecated, as 'followed by
inconveniences worse than civil war.' But posterity he did not think was
debarred from judging worthless rulers; and he tried them in his
History. In the eyes of James such freedom of speech, especially in
Ralegh, was _lese majeste_. An explanation by himself of his ill-will to
the book, which has been handed down by Osborn, has an air of
verisimilitude. In his _Memoirs on King James_, Osborn relates that
'after much scorn cast upon Ralegh's History, the King, being modestly
demanded what fault he found, answered, as one surprised, that Ralegh
had spoken irreverently of King Henry the Eighth.' He would be more
indignant on his own account than on that of King Henry, against whom,
says Osborn, 'none ever exclaimed more than usually himself.' James
discovered his own features in the outlined face of Ninias, 'esteemed no
man of war at all, but altogether feminine, and subjected to ease and
delicacy,' the successor of valiant Queen Semiramis, too laborious a
princess, as Ralegh held, to have been vicious.
[Sidenote: _Threatened Suppression._]
Commonly it has been believed that the King's sympathy with his caste
provoked him to the monstrosity of an attempt to stifle its censor's
volume. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton at Venice on January 5, 1615: 'Sir
Walter Ralegh's book is called in by the King's commandment, for divers
exceptions, but specially for being too saucy in censuring princes. I
hear he takes it much to heart, for he thought he had won his spurs, and
pleased the King extraordinarily.' The author of the _Observations on
Sanderson's History_ in 1656 writes to the same effect, but somewhat
less definitely: 'It is well known King James forbad the book for some
passages in it which offended the Spaniards, and for being too plain
with the faults of princes in his preface.' There is no other evidence,
and the majority of Ralegh's biographers have simply accepted the fact
on the authority of Chamberlain's assertion. Yet it is almost incredible
that so extreme an act of prerogative, carried out against so remarkable
a work, should have been suffered to pass without popular protests.
Ralegh and his wife never complained; and they were not given to
suffering in silence. Copies of the first edition are extant in an
abundance which, though not absolutely contradictory to the tale,
renders it unlikely. Dr. Brushfield, who has made the history of the
publication his especial study, conjectures that a compromise with the
royal censorship was effected on the terms that a title-page, which he
thinks the first, like all subsequent editions, originally contained,
should be removed, leaving the volume apparently anonymous. The surmise
is ingenious; but it is very hard to believe that such an arrangement,
if made, would have excited no discussion. Chamberlain's language,
moreover, implies that the book was already in circulation. It would be
exceedingly strange if its previous purchasers had the docility to
eliminate the title-page from their copies, in deference to an order
certainly not very emphatically promulgated. The readiest explanation is
that Chamberlain, in his haste to give his correspondent early
information, reported to him a rumour, and perhaps a threat, upon which
James happily had not the hardihood to act.
[Sidenote: _Successive Editions._]
[Sidenote: _Two Fables._]
At all events, the book weathered the storm of royal displeasure,
however manifested. A second edition appeared in 1617. Down to the
standard Oxford collection of Ralegh's works in 1829, which includes it,
eight have been published since. The last folio edition appeared, with a
biography by the editor, Oldys, in 1736. Gibbon commends it as the best
which had to that time appeared, though it is open to charges of gross
carelessness in the printer, and of arbitrary alterations by the editor,
to the injury of the sense. The work was popular enough to attract
epitomists. Alexander Ross, in 1650, condensed it into his _Marrow of
History_, which is rather its dry bones. Philip Ralegh, Sir Walter's
grandson, in 1698 printed an abridgment. The _Tubus Historicus_, or
_Historical Perspective_, published in 1631, a brief summary of the
fortunes of the four great ancient Empires, which bears Ralegh's name on
the title-page, suggests rather the hand of a book-maker. For half a
century from the time of the original issue it was an accepted classic.
No folio of the period, it has been said, approached it in circulation.
Its success tempted Alexander Ross to put forth in 1652 a second part,
B.C. 160 to A.D. 1640. The popular favour was enough to have encouraged
the author to continue his own design. Two explanations of his
interruption of it have been invented. For the first, the eldest
authority is W. Winstanley's _English Worthies_, published in 1660.
Winstanley, whom Aubrey follows, relates that Ralegh, a few days before
his execution, asked Burre how that work of his had sold. So slowly,
answered Burre, that it had undone him. Thereupon Ralegh, stepping to
his desk, took the other unprinted part of his work into his hand with a
sigh, saying 'Ah, my friend, hath the first part undone thee? The second
volume shall undo no man; this ungrateful world is unworthy of it.' Then
immediately, going to the fireside, he threw it in, and set his foot on
it till it was consumed. The story is impossible, if only for the
circumstance that the publication notoriously was not a failure. At the
period to which the fable is assigned a second edition had been printed.
So rapid was its sale, furthered, it may be admitted, by the
circumstances of the author's death, that a third edition appeared in
1621. As, moreover, has been with prosaic common sense observed, a
manuscript of some 1000 printed pages would have taken very long to
burn.
The other story is still more complicated, and, if possible, more
insolently mythical. John Pinkerton, writing under the name of Robert
Heron, Esq., in 1785, in his eccentric _Letters on Literature_, is its
source. According to him Ralegh, who had just completed the manuscript
of a second volume, looking from his window into a court-yard, saw a man
strike an officer near a raised stone. The officer drew his sword, and
ran his assailant through. The man, as he fell, knocked the officer
down, and died. His corpse and the stunned officer were carried off.
Next day Ralegh mentioned the affray to a visitor of known probity and
honour. His acquaintance informed him he was entirely in error. The
seeming officer, he said, a servant of the Spanish Ambassador, struck
the first blow. The other snatched out the servant's sword, and with it
slew him. A bystander wrested away the sword, and a foreigner in the
crowd struck down the murderer, while other foreigners bore off their
comrade's body. The narrator, to Ralegh's assurances that he could not
be mistaken, since he had witnessed the whole affair as it happened
round the stone, replied that neither could he be, for he was the
bystander, and on that very stone he had been standing. He showed Ralegh
a scratch on the cheek he had received in pulling away the sword. Ralegh
did not persist in his version. As soon as his friend was gone, he cast
his manuscript into the fire. If he could not properly estimate an event
under his own eyes, he despaired of appreciating human acts done
thousands of years before he was born. 'Truth!' he cried, 'I sacrifice
to thee.' Pinkerton, whose judgment and veracity were not equal to his
learning, led astray both Guizot and Carlyle. Carlyle talks of 'the old
story, still a true lesson for us.'
[Sidenote: _The Fact._]
Of the extent to which Ralegh had proceeded in the continuation of his
work he had himself informed the public. In his preface he 'forbears to
promise a second or third volume, which he intends if the first receives
grace and good acceptance; for that which is already done may be thought
enough and too much.' At the conclusion he wrote: 'Whereas this book
calls itself the first part of the _General History of the World_,
implying a second and third volume, which I also intended, and have hewn
out; besides many other discouragements persuading my silence, it hath
pleased God to take that glorious prince out of the world, to whom they
were directed.' His language points evidently to the collection of
'apparatus for the second volume,' as Aubrey says. It may have
comprised very possibly not a few such scattered gems of thought and
rich experience as are the glory of the printed volume. A Ralegh
Society, should it ever be instituted, might have the honour of
disinterring and reuniting some of them. No less clearly he indicates
that he had not advanced beyond the preliminary processes of inquiry and
meditation.
[Sidenote: _The Prerogative of Parliaments._]
The motive for his abandonment at this point of the thorough realization
of his plan was probably a combination of disturbing causes,
disappointment, hope, and rival occupations. Prince Henry's favour had
brought liberty and restitution very close. With a nature like his the
abrupt catastrophe did not benumb; it even stimulated; but it took the
flavour out of many of his pursuits. He could no longer indulge in
learned ease, and trust for his rehabilitation to spontaneous respect
and sympathy. The near breath of freedom had set his nerves throbbing
too vehemently for him to be able to settle down, as if for an eternity
of literary leisure, to tasks like the _History of the World_, or the
_Art of War by Sea_. He began working mines as busily as ever, but in
new directions. He sought to make himself recognised as necessary either
by the King or by the nation. With the sanguine elasticity which no
failures could damp, he tried to storm his way as a politician into the
royal confidence a few months after he is said to have experienced as a
scholar an effect of the King's invincible prejudice. At some period
after May, 1615, he wrote, and dedicated to James, an imaginary dialogue
between a Counsellor of State and a Justice of the Peace. Under the
title of _The Prerogative of Parliaments in England_ it was published
first posthumously in 1628, at Middleburg. In his lifetime it circulated
in manuscript copies.
[Sidenote: _Hallam's Misconception._]
A conspicuous instance of the misconceptions of which he was the habitual
victim is the view taken of this treatise by Algernon Sidney, and by the
judicious and fair-minded Hallam. Its object was to influence the King to
call a Parliament. Ralegh's point of view of the royal prerogative was, it
must be admitted and remembered, that of a Tudor courtier. It was very
different from that which the Long Parliament learnt and taught. But it was
liberal for his own day, according to a Tudor standard of liberalism. It
was too liberal for the taste of the Court of James. Hallam has caught at
some phrases couched in the adulatory style, 'so much,' Hallam allows,
'among the vices of the age, that the want of it passed for rudeness.'
Ralegh told James in his dedication that 'the bonds of subjects to their
kings should always be wrought out of iron, the bonds of kings unto
subjects but with cobwebs.' Sidney had already protested against these
obsequious phrases; and to Hallam they seem 'terrible things.' He is
equally horrified by a statement in the dialogue that Philip II 'attempted
to make himself not only an absolute monarch over the Netherlands, like
unto the Kings of England and France, but Turk like to tread under his feet
all their national and fundamental laws, privileges, and ancient rights.'
The tenor of the essay itself only has to be equitably considered to enable
its readers to place a more lenient construction than Hallam's even upon
the former sentence. Ralegh merely was pursuing his object, with some
carelessness, after his manner, as to form. Throughout he endeavoured to
sweeten advice he knew to be unpalatable, by assurances that the King need
not fear his prerogative would be permanently impaired by deference to the
representatives of the people. The language is, for the nineteenth century,
indefensible. Taken in connexion with the general argument, it resolves
itself into a courtly seventeenth century solace to the monarch for an
obligatory return to Parliamentary government.
[Sidenote: _Not shared by James._]
For the second quotation such an excuse is scarcely requisite. The
theories of the royal prerogative in France and in England were not
originally dissimilar, profoundly unlike as was the practice. Since, as
well as before, the Revolution of 1689, the absolute character of the
English sovereignty has been a common theory of lawyers. Blackstone,
writing in the reign of George the Third, asserts dogmatically that an
English King is absolute in the exercise of his prerogative. Blackstone
was able to find room beside an absolute prerogative for the national
liberties and Parliamentary privileges. So was Ralegh able. His language
seems now unconstitutional, when, in his _Maxims of State_, he
distinguishes the English 'Empire' from a 'limited Kingdom'; or when, in
this _Prerogative of Parliaments_, he declares that 'the three Estates
do but advise, as the Privy Council doth.' To him, however, 'limited'
meant more than now, and 'absolute' less. He saw no inconsistency
between the theory of royal absolutism and the application of popular
checks. Their reconciliation was the purpose of the essay of 1615. That
was evident to many excellent patriots of the next reign, who circulated
and gloried in a composition which proved the writer their fellow
worker. It was too apparent, though not to Hallam, to James, for the
dissertation to move him to any kindness. The basis and principle of the
discussion affronted all his prejudices. He was not to be beguiled by
admissions of his theoretical omnipotence into affection for a wise and
constitutional policy, which recognised popular rights. He had no
inclination to traverse the golden bridge Ralegh had built for his
return within the lines, whether of the Constitution, or of personal
justice. In all relations Ralegh was antipathetic to James without
consciousness of it. He could declare his implicit belief, in consonance
with strict constitutional orthodoxy, that the King loved the liberties
of his people, and that none but evil counsellors intercepted the signs
of his liberality. He could acknowledge the tender benignity of his
sovereign to himself, and throw upon betrayers of the royal trust the
shame of his persecution. He could be excessively deferential and
grateful in words and demeanour. He could not but act and reason with a
mental independence as hateful to James as to Henry Howard, and as
condemnatory. Whether he discoursed on Assyrian or on English politics,
or on his private wrongs, he sat visibly on the seat of judgment.
Nothing but tame silence and spiritual petrifaction could have made his
peace at the Stuart Court. It was the one kind of fealty he was
incapable of rendering.