It was thought to be entirely lost, when a
fragment of it was discovered among the Hatfield MSS and first
printed by Hannah in 1870.
fragment of it was discovered among the Hatfield MSS and first
printed by Hannah in 1870.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v04
' As the first illustration of it
he chooses Hamlet, act II, sc. 2, 310—321:
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me
than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is
a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving
how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.
a
This, indeed, is fine rhetoric, but how apostrophic it is, and
how repetitious! 'Canopy'-'firmament'-roof'-thus it is
!
amplified. Again, even if we can distinguish between 'noble in
reason,' 'infinite in faculty,' and 'in apprehension. . . like a god,'
how shall we make clear to ourselves the difference between
moving' and 'action'? And what an anticlimax-'the paragon
of animals'!
This is Shakespeare, though, to be sure, Shakespeare putting
words into the mouth of a dramatic character. And now, merely
.
as a composition, compare Psalm viii, 3–8:
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou
madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all
things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through
the paths of the seas.
Does ‘moon and stars' appeal less forcibly and pictorially to
the imagination than 'golden fire'? Shakespeare's 'majestical roof
is unrelated to man; the 'heavens' of the Biblical passage are
knit up into the same fabric with him. In the psalm there is no
exaggeration. Man is not, as a matter of fact, “infinite in faculty,'
nor may we assume a universal consensus that he is, above every-
thing else, 'the beauty of the world. ' In the psalm he is sub-
ordinated to the heavens, only to be exalted over the creatures,
and, when he is said to be 'a little lower than the angels,' the
moderation of tone is more permanently effective than Shake-
speare's ‘in action how like an angell' which seems merely a piece
of somewhat hysterical exaggeration—though, perhaps, dramati-
cally in keeping—to one who has formed his conception of angels
## p. 45 (#67) ##############################################
The English of the Bible
45
from the Bible, Dante, or Milton, from the Hermes of the ancient
poets, or even from Shakespeare's own line in this same play,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Milton does not scruple to affirm: 'There are no songs to be
compared with the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of
the prophets. ' As Sir Walter Scott drew near his beautiful and
affecting end, he requested Lockhart to read to him. When asked
from what book, he replied: 'Need you ask? There is but one. '
To Wordsworth, 'the grand storehouses of enthusiastic and medi-
tative imagination . . . are the prophetic and lyrical parts of the
Holy Scriptures. '
Ruskin ascribed the best part of his taste in literature to his
having been required by his mother to learn by heart certain
chapters of the Bible, adding: 'I count [it] very confidently the
most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my
education. ' Carlyle said: 'In the poorest cottage. . . is one Book,
wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found
light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever
is deepest in him. ' Newman speaks of the Scriptures as 'com-
positions which, even humanly considered, are among the most
sublime and beautiful ever written. ' Macaulay regarded the Bible
as 'a book which, if everything else in our language should perish,
would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and
power'; and, elsewhere, he says of Bunyan: 'He had studied no
great model of composition, with the exception-an important
exception undoubtedly—of our noble translation of the Bible. '
Froude speaks of its ‘mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon
simplicity, the preternatural grandeur. ' Swift writes, almost exactly
a hundred years after the date of the Authorised Version: ‘The
translators of our Bible were masters of an English style much
fitter for that work than any which we see in our present writings,
which I take to be owing to the simplicity that runs through the
whole'; and again, of the changes which had been introduced into
the language: 'They have taken off a great deal from that sim-
plicity which is one of the greatest perfections in any language. '
Hallam, though he admits that the style of the Authorised
Version is 'the perfection of our English language,' has often
been censured for declaring that the English of the Jacobean
version “is not the English of Daniel, of Raleigh, or Bacon'-in
fact, that 'it is not the language of the reign of James I. ' Yet this
is strictly true, and for the reason that he assigns, namely, 'in
consequence of the principle of adherence to the original versions
which had been kept up since the time of Henry VIII. ' It is true,
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46 The Authorised Version and its Influence
>
in a sense, that no great writer's diction is of his age, any more
than he himself is of his age. Coleridge declares of Shakespeare,
‘His is not the style of the age,' just as Ben Jonson declared of
the poet himself, 'He was not of an age. Indeed, it seems as
' ,
though this were the necessary condition, at least in the case of
great writers, of being ‘for all time,' that one shall not be too
much ‘of an age. ' Great thought and great feeling draw their
own appropriate diction to themselves, somewhat as the magnet
attracts steel filings; and, after the appropriate diction has thus
been attracted, the union between it and the substance of dis-
course seems to be almost indissoluble. It is as if a soul had been
clothed upon with flesh. From that moment, nothing can be
changed with impunity; if you wrench away a word, it is as if
a portion of the life-blood followed it. Now the time when the
soul of the Bible began to take upon itself flesh for us was nearly
three-quarters of a century before the work of the Jacobean revisers.
But, since the life-process, so to speak, did not absolutely begin
with Tindale, it really extended over a considerably longer period
than that named above, especially if we consider that Wyclif was
concerned in it; for, if the Wyclifite versions be included, the
Vulgate can hardly be ignored, so that eventually the Septuagint
must be regarded as having initiated a process which the Jaco-
bean revisers completed. If the substance of the Bible may
thus be compared to a soul which was to be fitted with a body,
it will follow that the diction will differ somewhat from member
to member, even as it did in the Hebrew and Greek originals; but
it will also follow, in proportion to the assumed relation and inter-
dependence of these parts or members, that this diction will have
a certain homogeneity, so that a radical change in the vocabulary
at any point would be likely to throw that part out of keeping
with the rest. The truth of this was recognised by Ellicott, when,
in 1870, he advised future revisers to
limit the choice of words to the vocabulary of the present [Authorised]
version, combined with that of the versions that preceded it; and in altera-
tions preserve as far as possible the rhythm and cadence of the Authorised
Version.
It is not a little remarkable that the effects wrought by the
English Bible should require so few words. The editors of the
New English Dictionary reckon the words in A to L, inclusive, as
160,813, of which number 113,677 are what they call main words.
Shakespeare, it has been estimated, employs about 21,000 (others
say 15,000, or 24,000); Milton, in his verse, about 13,000. The
Hebrew (with the Chaldee) of the Old Testament, according to the
>
a
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
Influence upon English Literature 47
computations of Leusden, comprises 5,642 words, and the New
Testament, it is said, has 4,800, while the whole English Bible, if
we may trust Marsh, employs about 6,000. Making all due allow-
ances for the ‘myriad-mindedness' of a Shakespeare, there is still
room for the conclusion that the capacities of words, especially of
the simpler words, are much greater than is believed by those who
use a large and heterogeneous vocabulary. In this respect, there
is not so much difference between native English and Norman-
French words as is commonly supposed. In the following examples,
the words clean, pure, and clear translate the same Greek ad-
jective, and all seem equally expressive, or nearly so:
Rev. xv, 6: ‘And the seven angels came out of the temple, . . .
clothed in pure and white linen. '
Rev. xix, 8: ‘And to her was granted that she should be arrayed
in fine linen, clean and white. '
Rev. xxi, 18: ‘And the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. '
That, in this sense, they are fairly interchangeable may be seen by
comparing Job xv, 15, ‘Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight,'
with Tennyson's
Make thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies.
This brings us to the question of the influence of the Authorised
Version upon subsequent English literature an influence which
cannot always be precisely distinguished from that of the Bible in
some earlier form. When Spenser or Shakespeare, for instance,
uses the Bible, it is, of course, not the Jacobean version, and
now and then the same thing will be true at a later period, as in
some of Milton's writing. The more important modes in which
the Bible has affected English literature are these:
(a) The themes are Scriptural, and the language partly, at
times even largely, Scriptural. Such is the case in sermons,
versified psalms, paraphrases of Scriptural narrative, devotional
essays, and the like. An excellent example is Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress. This book apart, however, there are few, if any,
examples of a work which has been accepted as pure literature
employing Biblical diction to anything like such a degree. Other
attempts, such as the Book of Mormon, tend to the grotesque or
ludicrous, because of the disparity between the language and the
ideas suggested. A diction resembling that of the Bible in its
concreteness and simplicity, and in its slightly archaic character,
has, however, of late been employed with good effect in prose
versions from authors like Homer.
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48 The Authorised Version and its Influence
1
1
1
(6) Quotations from the Bible are introduced, sometimes
slightly changed, into secular writings. The object is to sub-
stantiate a statement, or to awaken a train of associations favour-
able to the author's purpose. These can be found in almost any
author, but they are more common in the nineteenth century than
earlier, being especially used by writers who have at heart the
reform or elevation of society or individuals.
(c) Allusions, or considerably modified quotations, are intro-
duced freely, and may be found on the editorial page of many
a newspaper. Thus, one reads: "The full measure of justice is not
meted out to them'; "They sold their birthright for a mess of
pottage'; 'They have fallen among thieves. ' In the last three
books which the present writer has read for amusement, he has
been interested to note quotations and allusions of this nature.
In one of them, a recent book on life in an Italian province,
63 references were found; in the second, a recent work on the
life of wild animals, 12; in the third, a novel by Thomas Hardy, 18.
(d) Many phrases have grown so common that they have
become part of the web of current English speech, and are hardly
thought of as Biblical at all, except on deliberate reflection. For
instance: 'highways and hedges'; 'clear as crystal'; 'still small
voice'; 'hip and thigh'; 'arose as one man'; 'lick the dust'; 'a
thorn in the flesh'; 'broken reed'; 'root of all evil'; 'the nether
millstone'; 'sweat of his brow'; 'heap coals of fire'; 'a law unto
themselves'; 'the fat of the land'; 'dark sayings'; 'a soft answer';
'a word in season'; 'moth and rust'; 'weighed in the balance and
found wanting'; even such colloquialisms as, 'we are the people'
(cf. Job xii, 2). Many more of these might readily be quoted.
(e) Other influences, less definitely measurable, but more
important, remain to be mentioned.
Of the Bible in its relations to religion, individual conduct, and
ideals political and social, this is not the place to speak; yet these
affect literature to an incalculable extent, if they do not even
provide its very substance. Of such matters as fall within the
scope of this chapter-matters of vocabulary, grammar, idiom,
and style-something may briefly be said.
In the first place, the literary influence of the Bible, like that
of any classic, is distinctly conservative. The reading of it tends
to keep alive a familiarity with the words and constructions which
were current when the English Bible grew up, or, rather, of such
of these words and constructions as proved most conformable to
the genius of the Hebrew and Greek employed in the sacred
>
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
Influence upon English Literature 49
writings. As hinted above, this influence, in conjunction with that
of the Bible in the sphere of thought and emotion, seems to have
culminated, if its culmination be not rather a matter of the future, in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. The result is that many
terms formerly regarded as awkward, or alien to the genius of the
language, are now understood and accepted. Soon after the Autho-
rised Version was issued, Selden thus criticised the rendering:
The Bible is rather translated into English words than into English
phrases. The Hebraisms are kept, and the phrase of that language is kept.
A typical Hebraism is the use of of in such phrases as 'oil of
gladness,' 'man of sin,' 'King of kings'; but who has any difficulty
with them now? In the first half of the nineteenth century, Hallam
could say:
It abounds, . . . especially in the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology,
and with singlo words long since abandoned, or retained only in provincial
use.
At present this is no truer of the Bible than of Shakespeare, if
as true. Our earlier English has been so revived, and rendered so
familiar, that much which needed elaborate explanation in the
eighteenth century is now intelligible to every one. As Lightfoot
said of other objectors :
The very words which these critics would have ejected from our English
Bibles as barbarous, or uncouth, or obsolete, have again taken their places in
our highest poetry, and even in our popular language.
Like the course of a planet round the sun, the movement of
English diction, which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
was, on the whole, away from that of the Bible, now returns with
ever accelerating speed toward it. That the movement really began
at a much earlier date, though inconspicuously, is shown by the
counsels and practice of Swift, and by the circumstance that
Challoner's Roman Catholic version of 1763-4 abandoned many of
the Latinisms of the Rheims and Douay translations in favour of
the simpler language of the Authorised Version.
The use of concrete words has grown in favour. The colourless-
ness, vagueness and obscurity of abstract terms, and of conventional
phraseology whether abstract or not, have been discredited. Vivid-
ness, the sense of reality, have more and more prevailed in literature
that is, in non-technical writings.
Simplicity has always been recommended by the example of the
Authorised Version, and, especially since the age of Wordsworth,
is more and more gaining upon bombast and meretricious orpa-
ment. The concreteness and simplicity of the Authorised Version,
E. L. IV.
CH. II.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50 The Authorised Version and its Influence
6
and its use of the homely vernacular, have steadily appealed to plain
people, as distinguished from those who have had more abundant
opportunities of education. But the love of the humble for the Bible
is largely due to its message of cheer and hope. Huxley has even
gone so far as to call the Bible 'the Magna Charta of the poor and
the oppressed. ' Two men, Bunyan and Lincoln, who educated them-
selves largely by means of the Bible, may serve as examples of many
who have become known to posterity for their inestimable services to
their race. Both are famous as writers, and the best writing of
both is alive with the spirit of the Bible. Bunyan bas already
been mentioned. Of Lincoln it has been said that he
built up his entire reading upon his early study of the Bible. He had
mastered it absolutely; mastered it as later he mastered only one or two
other books, notably Shakespeare; mastered it so that he became almost
'a man of one book’; . . . and he left his life as part of the crowning work of
the century that has just closed.
Of Walt Whitman, the American who wished to be known as
the poet of democracy, it has been authoritatively said:
His own essential model, after all is said, was the rhythmical patterns of the
English Bible. Here was precisely that natural stylistic variation between
the 'terrific,' the “gentle, and the 'inferior' parts, so desired by William
Blake. Here were lyric fragments, of consummate beauty, imbedded in
narrative or argumentative passages. . . . In this strong, rolling music, this
intense feeling, these concrete words expressing primal emotion in daring
terms of bodily sensation, Whitman found the charter for the book he
wished to write.
The elevation and nobility of Biblical diction, assisted by its
slightly archaic tinge, have a tendency to keep all English style
above meanness and triviality. In the words of Coleridge, 'intense
study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar in point of
style.
The Bible teaches that emotion should not habitually be divorced
from thought, nor thought from emotion; certainly not in litera-
ture. Wherever simple language is charged with noble feeling,
stirs the imagination, is directed by steady and comprehensive
thought, is adapted to actuate the will in the direction of social
and individual good, and is concise and pregnant, Biblical style is
approximated, and, very probably, Biblical influence is dominant.
Finally, the English Bible is the chief bond which holds united,
in a common loyalty and a common endeavour, the various branches
of the English race. The influence of the Bible can be traced
through the whole course of English literature and English civilisa-
tion, and, more than anything else, it tends to give unity and per-
petuity to both.
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
SIR WALTER RALEGH
>
NOTHING, perhaps, is more remarkable with regard to Sir
Walter Ralegh's literary career than the fact that a man of his
nature should have won for himself a place in the history of
letters. He was, pre-eminently, a man of action, a man who loved
the stir and bustle of life, the excitement of adventure ; and his
proud, ambitious character made him keen to play a foremost
part in the affairs of the world. But his intellectual activity was
as great as his physical energy. Neither his mind nor his body
could rest. All the periods of enforced leisure in his life he used
for study or writing; yet the chance of an active enterprise could
always win him away from his books.
At the age of 14 or 15, Ralegh, who was born in 1552, at
Hayes Barton, Budleigh, Devon, went to Oxford, where he stayed
for about three years. According to Anthony à Wood, ‘he became
the ornament of the juniors, and a proficient in oratory and
philosophy. ' He passed from Oxford quickly to seek more stirring
adventures in the Huguenot army in France. But, wherever he
went, he was gathering knowledge. Sir Robert Naunton says 'he
was an indefatigable reader, whether by sea or land, and none of
the least observers both of men and the times. ' On his sea voyages,
he took always a trunk of books with him, and spent the long
hours, when he had nothing to divert him, in reading. He is said,
by an early biographer, to have slept but five hours, so as to gain
daily four hours for reading. His knowledge of literature helped,
no doubt, to give him that command of words, that incisive way
of stating a question which called Elizabeth's attention to him
when he discussed Irish affairs over the council table with lord
Grey. He had, says Naunton, 'a strong natural wit and a better
judgment, with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set
out his parts to the best advantage. ' He retained a decided Devon-
shire accent all his life ; but his parliamentary speeches were
distinguished by good style and pointed utterance.
He seems
1 Ralegh's name may be found spelt in some seventy different ways. His own
signature varied very considerably till 1584, after which he used no other signature
bat Ralegh; he never used the common modern form Raleigh. His pronunciation of
his name is clear from the fact that in his early days he often wrote Rauley.
4-2
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
Sir Walter Ralegh
to have shown a tendency towards liberal views. In a debate
about the Brownists, in 1583, he spoke against religious persecu-
tion. But his was neither the speech nor the nature by which a
man wins ready popularity, for in everything, though he showed
himself a lover of liberty, he showed, also, his proud and con-
temptuous character.
Perhaps that proud and contemptuous
character showed itself also in the extravagance of the language
of compliment and adulation with which he addressed Elizabeth.
Such language was fashionable at the time, but it seems strange
in the mouth of a man like Ralegh, and we are inclined to think
that it was his ambition and desire to get on which made him put
no limit to his exaggeration, in scornful contempt of the vanity
that could be pleased by such language.
That Ralegh must have early been known as a writer of
occasional verse is shown by the fact that he contributed some
introductory verses, In commendation of the Steel Glass, to George
Gascoigne's satire, published in 1576. In these lines he describes
Gascoigne's poems in one of his concise, pointed phrases :
This medicine may suffice
To scorn the rest, and seek to please the wise.
Elizabethan poets appear to have had little desire to see their
works in print. They wrote to please their friends, or for their
own delight, not for the general public. Their poems were passed
about in manuscript or read to their friends, and then might,
perhaps, find their way into some of the popular miscellanies
of verse. Few of Ralegh's poems appeared with his name during
his lifetime, and it was long after his death before any attempt
was made to identify or collect his scattered verses. Some of them
had appeared in England's Helicon with the signature ‘Ignoto,
and it was, in consequence, at first assumed that all the poems
so signed in that collection were his. More critical examination
has rejected many of these, and Hannah's carefully edited collec-
tion, published in 1892, gives some thirty pieces which have
reasonably been supposed to be Ralegh’s? These are enough to
justify fully the judgment passed on him in Puttenham’s The Arte
of English Poesie, 'For dittie and amourous ode I find Sir Walter
Ralegh's vein most lofty, insolent and passionate. '
Ralegh seems, at many crises in his life, to have sought
expression for his feelings in verse. When, after his rapid rise to
favour at court, he was driven into temporary disgrace by the
jealousy of Essex, he employed himself in composing a long elegy
* See post, the chapter on the • Song Books. '
6
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
Cynthia
53
expressing his devotion to Elizabeth, and his despair at her anger,
in which he addressed the queen as Cynthia. We hear of this
poem first in Spenser's verses Colin Clout's Come Home Again.
During this temporary disgrace, Ralegh revisited Ireland, where he
had served some years before. There, he either began or renewed
at Kilcolman his friendship with Spenser, then lord Grey's
secretary. The poets seem to have passed some delightful days in
reading their verses to one another. Spenser says of Ralegh in
Colin Clout
His song was all a lamentable lay
Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard
Of Cynthia the Ladie of the Sea,
Which from her presence faultlesse him debard.
Ralegh’s delight in The Faerie Queene led him, as soon as he
was restored to favour, to introduce Spenser at court. Spenser,
in his turn, was full of admiration of Ralegh's work, and wrote
Full sweetly tempered is that Muse of his
That can empierce a Princes' mightie hart.
He returns to it again in the beautiful sonnet addressed to
Ralegh which appeared attached to The Faerie Queene, where
he says that, compared with Ralegh's, his rimes are 'unsavory
and sowre,' and concludes
Yet, till that thou thy Poeme wilt make knowne,
Let thy fair Cinthias praises be thus rudely showne.
Cynthia was never published; we do not know that it was ever
presented to Elizabeth.
It was thought to be entirely lost, when a
fragment of it was discovered among the Hatfield MSS and first
printed by Hannah in 1870. This fragment is entitled The twenty-
first and last book of the Occan to Cynthia. Spenser used to
.
call Ralegh ‘The Shepherd of the Ocean,' and, hence, Ralegh took
to calling himself 'the Ocean. ' Hannah published this fragment as
A continuation of the lost poem Cynthia, and imagined that
it was composed during Ralegh's imprisonment in the Tower
under James I. But it has been conclusively shown that it must
be a portion of the earlier poem? If the other twenty books were
of the same length as this canto, the whole poem must have con-
sisted of ten to fifteen thousand lines. It is written in four lined
stanzas, alternately rimed. Judging from the fragment that
remains, there appears to have been no action or narrative in this
1 This point has been clearly demonstrated by Edmund Gosse from internal evi.
dence, in two letters printed in The Athenaeum for the first two weeks of January 1886.
See, also, Sir Walter Ralegh, by W. Stebbing, p. 73.
6
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
Sir Walter Ralegh
6
long poem, yet Gabriel Harvey describes the part of it which he
saw before 1590 as 'a fine and sweet invention. There are many
fine passages, none finer than the line
>
Of all which past the sorrow only stays.
The stately, dignified sonnet by Ralegh, which was appended to
the first edition of The Faerie Queene, in 1590, is worthy of an
age when the sonnet attained rare distinction. Brydges, the first
editor of a collection of Ralegh's poems, says:
Milton had deeply studied this sonnet, for in his compositions of the same
class, he has evidently more than once the very rhythm and construction,
as well as cast of thought of this noble though brief composition.
Other of the poems by Ralegh show more of the impetuous
and daring spirit which was compelled to find an utterance. The
ringing scorn of 'The Lie' depicts the man who knew from personal
experience courts and their meanness. The disenchantment with
life expressed in several of his poems led to the assumption that
they were written on the night before his death ; but of only one
can this be true, the fine lines found in his Bible at the gate-house,
Westminster :
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust.
The others, such as Like Hermit Poor, and The Pilgrimmage,
were, probably, written at moments when his impatient spirit was
filled with disgust of life. No poem of his has greater charm than
The Pilgrimmage, whether for its form, its fancy, or for the deep
seriousness underlying its light grace. Among the authenticated
poems of Ralegh there are few love poems, and those few are
singularly free from sentimentality or the precious conceits popular
at the time. In his reply to Marlowe's song The passionate Shep-
herd to his Love, he by no means responds to the passion of the
appeal, but shows his disbelief in the possibility of the permanence
of the shepherd's love in a world full of fears of' cares to come. '
The authenticity of many of Ralegh’s prose works is almost as
difficult to decide with any certainty as that of his poems. He
seems to have written papers on many varied subjects, but only
two of them, and The History of the World, were published
during his lifetime. Ralegh manuscripts were collected by literary
men, were to be found in many libraries and were much valued.
It is said in the Observations on the Statesmen and Favourites
of England, by David Lloyd, published in 1665, that John
2
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
Prose Writings
55
Hampden, shortly before the Civil Wars, was at the charge of
transcribing 3452 sheets of Ralegh’s writing. Archbishop Sancroft
speaks of a great MS in folio,' by Sir Walter, lent to him by
Mr Ralegh, the author's grandson. He also possessed another
MS, a Breviary of the History of England under William I
which he attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh, and which he said had
been ‘taken from the papers of an old Presbyterian in Hertford-
shire, which sort of men were always the more fond of Sir Walter's
books, because he was under the disfavour of the Court. ' One of
his MSS, called The Arts of Empire, was first printed by Milton
in 1658, under the title of The Cabinet Council by the ever-
renovoned knight, Sir Walter Ralegh. It does not seem as if
Ralegh, ambitious in other respects, aspired to the fame of an
author. He read and wrote for his own delight and recreation.
He loved books and the society of men of letters of all kinds. He
was a friend of Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquary, who collected
the famous library at Cotton House, which became the meeting
place of the scholars of the day. There and elsewhere, Ralegh
consorted with the other men of learning of his times. He was a
member of the Society of Antiquaries, which archbishop Parker
had founded in 1572, and which lasted till 1605, and he is said to
have suggested those gatherings at the Mermaid tavern, in Bread
street, where Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and other play
writers met the antiquaries and literary men of the day, such as
Cotton, Selden and Donne. Here began Ralegh’s friendship with
Ben Jonson, which led him, later, to choose him as travelling tutor
for his son. Always of an open mind and liberal views, Ralegh
also mixed freely with sceptical and freethinking men. He often
met together with Marlowe, Harriot and others for discussions, in
which religious topics were treated fearlessly and without reserve.
A Roman Catholic pamphleteer, writing in 1592, says that the
meetings of this little group of friends were called 'Sir Walter
Rawley's School of Atheism. ' In 1593, the attention of the privy
council was called to their discussions, and a special commission
was appointed to examine Ralegh, his brother Carew and others as
to their alleged heresies. What was the result of this investigation
we do not know, but it is impossible to read Ralegh’s writings
without being convinced of the depth and sincerity of his religious
convictions. Sir John Harington says of him in Nugce Antiquce:
'In religion he hath shown in private talk, great depth and
good reading. '
Ralegh was, at all times, a generous patrou of learning. He
## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################
56
Sir Walter Ralegh
advised Richard Hakluyt with regard to his great collection of
voyages, and assisted his enterprise with gifts of money and
manuscripts. He was with the fleet that, under the command of
the earl of Essex, made, in 1596, a descent upon Faro in Portugal,
and it was, no doubt, he that suggested the seizure and careful
preservation of the great library of bishop Hieron Osorius, which
was afterwards given, probably, again, at Ralegh's suggestion, to
the library newly founded at Oxford by Sir Thomas Bodley. The
Bodleian library was opened in 1602, and, in 1603, Ralegh showed
his love for books by making it a gift of fifty pounds.
The first work published by Ralegh was a quarto tract issued
in 1591, called Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles
of the Açores this last sommer. It appeared anonymously, but
was republished by Hakluyt, as Sir Walter Ralegh's. It describes
the doings of the little fleet in which, at the last moment, Ralegh
had been prevented from sailing himself, and ends with an account
of the famous fight and death of his kinsman Sir Richard Grenville,
on The Revenge. In forcible and vigorous prose, Ralegh tells
with great simplicity the story of what actually happened. But,
both before and after his story, he gives vent to violent de-
nunciation of the Spaniards, at all times the object of his bitterest
hatred. He speaks of 'their frivolouse vain glorious taunts' as
opposed to the 'honorable actions' characteristic of the English.
It seems to have been this kind of language which counted as
patriotism in Elizabethan days, and helped to give Ralegh his
high reputation as a lover of his country. The account ends with
a touch of poetry when, after describing the terrible storm which
followed the fight of The Revenge and caused the destruction of
many ships, he says : 'So it pleased them to honor the buriall of
that renowned ship the Revenge, not suffering her to perish alone,
for the great honour she achieved in her life time. '
It was partly his natural love of adventure, partly his desire to
regain the favour at court which he had temporarily lost, that led
Ralegh to undertake his first expedition to Guiana, in 1595.
When he returned, full of tales of what he had seen, his enemies
attempted to cast discredit on him by asserting that he had never
been to Guiana at all. To defend himself, he at once wrote
an account of his Discovery of the large, rich and beautiful
Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city
of Manoa. This appeared in 1596, with a dedication to ‘my
singular good Lord and kinsman Charles Howard and to the
Rt. Hon. Sir Robt. Cecil'; in which Ralegh says that in his
>
## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################
Guiana
57
discourse he has 'neither studied phrase, forme, nor fashion. ' The
simple story of his stirring adventures, told in pure and nervous
English, won immediate popularity, and was translated into
German, Dutch and Latin, running through many editions. His
sentences are long and sometimes involved, but he tells his story
admirably and his adventures live, whilst his descriptions of
scenery are graceful and attractive, and he urges the advantages
of the colonisation of Guiana in glowing and eloquent words. His
allusions to the tales that the natives told him of tribes of
Amazons, and other strange beings, led Hume to characterise
his whole narrative as 'full of the grossest and most palpable
lies'; a criticism which his most careful editor, Sir Robert
Schomburgh, who has himself visited Guiana, says 'we can now
regard with a smile. ' Besides these two tracts, nothing was
published by Ralegh during the reign of Elizabeth, though one or
two of his letters, especially that written to Robert Cecil on the
death of his wife, in 1596, and the one giving A relation of the
Cadiz Action, in the same year, well deserve to be counted
amongst literary productions. In the letter to Cecil, we find these
fine words:
The minde of man is that part of God which is in us, which, by how mich
it is subject to passion, by 80 mich it is farther from Hyme that gave it us.
Sorrows draw not the dead to life, but the livinge to death.
Ralegh’s life of stir and adventure, his enjoyment and hope of
court favour, all came to an end with the death of Elizabeth and
the accession of James I. He found himself, only just reprieved
from the scaffold, a prisoner in the Tower, the victim of the
prejudice and suspicions of the king. Conscious of the falseness
of the accusation of treason upon which he had been convicted,
still full of schemes of active enterprise and, especially, of the idea
that he would be able to win for England a possession of boundless
wealth in Guiana, he could not, at first, believe that his captivity
would last. But, as his hopes of a speedy release slowly passed
away, it became more and more necessary for him to use his
energies in work of some kind. For the most part, the conditions
of his captivity were not rigorous. He had rooms in the Bloody
Tower, with sufficient accommodation to enable his wife and son
to be with him. His friends visited him freely. His rooms opened
out on a terrace, where he could take exercise, and below was
a little garden, where he was allowed to turn a former hen-house
into a laboratory for the chemical experiments in which he
delighted. At first, it was to his scientific studies that he devoted
## p. 58 (#80) ##############################################
58
Sir Walter Ralegh
1
1
2
1
.
most of his time. But he also wrote a great deal. Prince Henry,
the promising eldest son of James I, was a great admirer of
Ralegh and declared that no one but his father would keep such
a bird in such a cage. He was only a boy of nine when Ralegh
was committed to the Tower, but he had always loved the society
of those older than himself, and, as time went on, he consulted
Ralegh on many points that interested him, especially on naval
and military matters. Several of the papers which Ralegh wrote
in the Tower were composed specially for prince Henry. Among
others, there is a treatise called Observations concerning the
Royal Navy and Sea Service, which is full of interest as throwing
light on the condition of the ships by means of which the great
Elizabethan seamen carried out their famous exploits. When
there was a proposal, very distasteful to prince Henry, to arrange
a marriage between him and a daughter of the house of Savoy,
Ralegh wrote a vigorous treatise in which he clearly pointed out
the disadvantages of the match. It was also for prince Henry
that he planned his greatest work, The History of the World.
It is a testimony to the extent of Ralegh's belief in himself as
well as to the soaring nature of his imagination, that he, a prisoner
in the Tower, in broken health and already over fifty years of age,
should have projected a work of such gigantic scope. History, as
a branch of literature, did not then exist in England ; indeed,
except for the work of the antiquaries, the Elizabethan age is
specially poor in historical work of any kind. The age of the
great chroniclers was over. There were some writers of historical
poems, some annalists, many industrious antiquaries. But the
annalists and the antiquaries still wrote in Latin. Only Richard
Knolles had produced his General Historie of the Turkes, published
in 1603, and John Speed a Historie of Great Britaine, published
in 1611, in English. Ralegh's plan was on an entirely different
scale from anything that had been dreamt of before. He wished
to bring the history of the past together, to treat it as a whole, to
use it as an introduction to the history of his own country; and his
great book was to be for the people, not only for the learned. It
was written in the pure strong English of which he had such easy
command. Not quite free yet from the habit of using too long
sentences which, sometimes, have a tendency to become involved,
he is free from elaborate and fanciful conceits. The subject seems
to command the style. He can tell a story well, he can sketch
a character with force and vigour. He shows at least some sense
of the unity of history, for the motives of men in the past are judged
## p. 59 (#81) ##############################################
The History of the World 59
by him in the same way as the motives of men in the present,
and, at all events when he began, his intention was to lead up
from the past to the present. But, though he had the mind to
conceive a work on such a vast scale, he had not the experience
or the training to enable him to plan it out in such a way that,
under any circumstances, it would have been possible to complete
it. The large folio which he did complete, and which consisted of
five books, began with the Creation and reached only to 130 B. C. ,
when Macedonia became a Roman province. He projected two
other folio volumes, but these do not seem even to have been
begun. After the publication of the first volume, his mind was
diverted to other schemes, to his hope of regaining his liberty and
accomplishing a second voyage to Guiana. The death of prince
Henry, in 1612, also deprived him of one of his chief motives for
writing the history.
We do not know in what year he actually began to write, but,
on 15 April 1611, notice was given in the registers of the
Stationers' company of 'The History of the World written by
Sir Walter Rawleighe. '
It was published, according to Camden, on 29 March 1614;
but it is possible that it may not really have been published till
the beginning of 1615. Many scholars and learned men were
ready to help him in his work. Sir Robert Cotton freely lent him
books from his great library. Robert Burhill, a divine of wide
learning and acquainted with Greek and Hebrew, languages
unknown to Ralegh, was frequently consulted by him. John
Hoskins, a wit and scholar and also a prisoner in the Tower for
a supposed libel on James I, is credited, by tradition, with having
revised the book for him. The fact that Ben Jonson was, also, for
a short time a fellow prisoner in the Tower, and was known to
have been connected with Ralegh, led some to believe his boasts,
made some years later over his cups, that he had contributed
considerable portions of the History. But there is no evidence
for these assertions, which rest only on his own word.
In his search for accuracy, Ralegh frequently consulted Thomas
Harriot the mathematician, an old friend of his, on points of
chronology and geography. But, though no doubt he profited
by the advice and learning of his friends, no one can read the
History without feeling that it is the work of one man, inspired
by one mind and purpose. Moreover, though he naturally read
and studied much specially for it during his years in the Tower,
we see in it also the result of the reading of his whole life. In
The History of the World, as well as in his occasional writings,
## p. 60 (#82) ##############################################
60
Sir Walter Ralegh
L.
1
Schol
11
1
1
1
we are struck with the freedom with which Ralegh handles his
material, with the ready hold that he has on the resources of
his vast reading. About the middle of the nineteenth century,
some old books, amongst them Peter Comestor's Historia
tica, were found behind the wainscot of a room in Ralegh's
favourite Irish house at Youghal. Comestor is one of the authors
quoted by Ralegh, and, though it is possible that these old books
were placed in their hiding-place before his day, yet it is by no
means improbable that his study of Comestor may have begun
at Youghal during the months he spent in Ireland. It has been
computed that six hundred and sixty authors are cited by him in
his History, and there exists a letter to Cotton asking for the loan
of thirteen books, none of which is included amongst the works of
the six hundred and sixty authors quoted.
In writing his history, Ralegh was inspired by a distinct
purpose. He says in his preface, that he wishes to show God's
judgment on the wicked ; to him all history was a revelation
of God's ways.
His preface is to us now, perhaps, the most
interesting part of the book. In it he runs through, and passes
judgment upon, the kings of England from the time of the
Conquest, then makes a rapid survey of the history of France
and of Spain. From the teaching of history he draws his philosophy
of life :
For seeing God, who is the author of all our tragedies hath written out for
us and appointed us all the parts we are to play; and hath not, in their
distribution been partial to the most mighty princes of the world . . . why
should other men, who are but as the least worms, complain of wrongs ?
Certainly there is no other account to be made of this ridiculous world, than
to resolve, that the change of fortune on the great theatre is but the change
of garments on the less : for when on the one and the other, every man wears
but his own skin, the players are all alike.
As we think of the picture of his own times, of the account
of Elizabeth and her court, of the stirring tales of adventure that
the ready pen and quick insight of Ralegh might have given us
had he spent his time in prison in writing his own memoirs, we
can but be filled with regret that he should have chosen, instead,
to have written long chapters on the Creation, the site of the
garden of Eden, the ages of the patriarchs. But Ralegh had
not done with life, his ambitious, restless spirit still aspired to
play a part in the world outside and his book was intended to
add to his friends, not to his enemies. In his preface, he explains
his choice of subject :
I know that 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. . . . To this I answer,
1
## p. 61 (#83) ##############################################
The History of the World
61
that whosoever in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the
heels, it may happily strike out his teeth. There is no mistress or guide that
hath led her followers and servants into greater miseries. . . . It is true, that
I never travelled after men's opinions, when I might have made the best use
of them; and I have now too few days remaining to imitate those, that, either
out of extreme ambition or extreme cowardice, or both, do yet (when death
hath them on his shoulders) flatter the world between the bed and the grave.
It is enough for me (being in that state I am) to write of the eldest times;
wherein also, why may it not be said, that, in speaking of the past, I point
at the present, and tax the vices of those that are yet living in their persons
that are long since dead; and have it laid to my charge. But this I cannot
help, though innocent.
It is but seldom that he even illuminates his pages with any
illustrations drawn from his own experiences. Sometimes, he
indulges in a digression, as when he breaks forth into a disserta-
tion on the nature of law, after telling of the giving of the law to
Moses, or when, in a later book, he makes long dissertations on
the way to defend the coast, on the nature of government, on
mercenary soldiers, on the folly and wickedness of duels and the
false view of honour they involve. He has a long digression, also,
about the bands of Amazons, said to be living in the districts
round Guiana, and gives his reasons for believing in the possi-
bility of their existence.
The first two books of the History, containing twenty-eight
chapters, are occupied with an account of the Creation and the
history of the Jews. Side by side with that history, they give the
contemporary events in Greek mythology and Egyptian history.
The questions treated of, and the method of treating them, alike
show how different were the interests of his day and ours. His
discussion as to the nature of the two trees in the Garden of Eden
is enlivened by a description of Ficus Indica as he had seen it
in Trinidad, dropping its roots, or cords, into the sea ‘so as by
pulling up one of these cords out of the sea, I have seen five
hundred oysters hanging in a heap thereon. ' In none of Ralegh's
writings do we find any sign that he possessed a sense of humour;
had he done so, he would not, perhaps, have indulged in such an
elaborate disquisition as to the capacity of the ark to hold all the
animals which were driven into it. Naturally, no thought of
criticising the Bible narrative entered his mind, as he said 'Let us
build upon the scriptures themselves and after them upon reason
and nature. ' But there is some attempt at criticism in comparing
one author with another, some attempt to trace the development
of thought, and to bring things together, a remarkable feat in his
day, as we may realise when we remember that, before him, there
## p. 62 (#84) ##############################################
62
Sir Walter Ralegh
was practically no attempt at critical history in English. He was
much interested in questions of chronology, and provided his book
with elaborate chronological tables as well as with many maps.
But it is a relief when he passes from his discussions on chronology
to tell a story, such as the story of the Argonauts, which he does
simply and well.
The book moves more freely as he reaches Greek and Roman
times. The characters of some of the great men are given with
much insight and point, and he brings his commonsense to bear
in criticising the conduct of leaders and generals. As the book
goes on, his references to modern history in illustration of his
story grow more frequent. We feel that not only has he read
much, but that he has weighed and pondered what he has read
in the light of his own experience. In reflecting on the end of
Hannibal and Scipio, he says
Hence it comes, to wit from the envy of our equals, and jealousy of our
masters, be they kings or commonweals, that there is no profession more
unprosperous than that of men of war and great captains, being no kings. . . .
For the most of others whose virtues have raised them above the level of
their inferiors, and have surmounted their envy, yet have they been rewarded
in the end either with disgrace, banishment, or death.
Whenever he touches upon any matter of personal experience, the
interest at once quickens and the writing appears at its best.
War is always his main theme; to him, history is an account of
wars and conquests. Questions as to methods of government or
the social conditions of the people have little interest for him,
though he seems to see the importance of combining geography
with history by the descriptions he gives of the nature of the
countries, the towns and cities of which he writes. On the whole,
the best part of the book is his account of the Punic wars; there
he feels fully the interest of his story. Curiously enough, he misses
the tragic interest of the Athenian expedition to Sicily, which, in
his telling, he even manages to make dull.
Never does he lose sight of his moral purpose. His whole
object in writing was to teach a great moral : ‘it being the end
and scope of all history to teach by example of times past, such
wisdom as may guide our desires and actions. ' So he carries us
through the history of the three first Monarchies of the world';
leaving off when the fourth, Rome, was 'almost at the highest. '
He ends with these noble words on death:
0 eloquent, just and mighty death! Whom none could advise, thou hast
persuaded! What none have dared, thou hast done! And whom all the
world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised!
## p. 63 (#85) ##############################################
63
a
The History of the World
Thou hast drawn together all the far fetched greatness, all the pride, cruelty
and ambition of men; and covered it all over with these two narrow words:
Hic jacet.
Though, in his preface, Ralegh said of James I that
if all the malice of the world were infused into one eye, yet could it not
discern in his life, even to this day, any one of those foul spots, by which the
consciences of all the fore named princes (in effect) have been defiled; nor
any drop of that innocent blood on the sword of his justice, with which the
most that forewent him have stained both their hands and fame,
James I was displeased with the book. Perhaps he was clever
enough to discern the value of this fashionable language of
adulation; perhaps, as some said, he thought that Ralegh had
criticised too freely the character of Henry VIII, when he said
'if all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in
the world, they might all again be painted out of the story of this
king. ' To the fanatical believer in the divine right of kings, any
censure of princes was, in itself, a crime. James appears, in
consequence, to have tried to suppress the book. In a letter
written to Venice on 5 January 1615, it is said, “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. '
There is, also, a letter from the archbishop of Canterbury, dated
22 December 1614, to the Stationers' company, saying that he
had received 'expresse directions from his Majestie that the book
latelie published by Sr Walter Rawleigh, nowe prisoner in the
Tower, should be suppressed and not suffered for hereafter to be
sould. ' The book mentioned in this letter can be none other but
the History. But the suppression seems not to have been carried
out; at any rate, the royal command did not affect the distribution
of the book. The first two editions appeared anonymously without
any title-page, but with an elaborate allegorical frontispiece,
representing Magister Vitae, standing on Death represented by a
skeleton, and Oblivion as a man asleep. Experience, as an old
woman, and Truth as a young woman, hold aloft a globe, on one
side of which fama bona and, on the other, fama mala are blowing
trumpets. On the other page is a sonnet, presumably by Ben
Jonson, as he afterwards published it under his name, containing
these lines
From death and dark Oblivion (neere the same)
The Mistresse of Man's life, grave Historie
Raising the world to good or Evill fame
Doth vindicate it to Æternitie.
The book seems to have been immediately popular.
he chooses Hamlet, act II, sc. 2, 310—321:
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me
than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is
a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving
how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.
a
This, indeed, is fine rhetoric, but how apostrophic it is, and
how repetitious! 'Canopy'-'firmament'-roof'-thus it is
!
amplified. Again, even if we can distinguish between 'noble in
reason,' 'infinite in faculty,' and 'in apprehension. . . like a god,'
how shall we make clear to ourselves the difference between
moving' and 'action'? And what an anticlimax-'the paragon
of animals'!
This is Shakespeare, though, to be sure, Shakespeare putting
words into the mouth of a dramatic character. And now, merely
.
as a composition, compare Psalm viii, 3–8:
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou
madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all
things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through
the paths of the seas.
Does ‘moon and stars' appeal less forcibly and pictorially to
the imagination than 'golden fire'? Shakespeare's 'majestical roof
is unrelated to man; the 'heavens' of the Biblical passage are
knit up into the same fabric with him. In the psalm there is no
exaggeration. Man is not, as a matter of fact, “infinite in faculty,'
nor may we assume a universal consensus that he is, above every-
thing else, 'the beauty of the world. ' In the psalm he is sub-
ordinated to the heavens, only to be exalted over the creatures,
and, when he is said to be 'a little lower than the angels,' the
moderation of tone is more permanently effective than Shake-
speare's ‘in action how like an angell' which seems merely a piece
of somewhat hysterical exaggeration—though, perhaps, dramati-
cally in keeping—to one who has formed his conception of angels
## p. 45 (#67) ##############################################
The English of the Bible
45
from the Bible, Dante, or Milton, from the Hermes of the ancient
poets, or even from Shakespeare's own line in this same play,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Milton does not scruple to affirm: 'There are no songs to be
compared with the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of
the prophets. ' As Sir Walter Scott drew near his beautiful and
affecting end, he requested Lockhart to read to him. When asked
from what book, he replied: 'Need you ask? There is but one. '
To Wordsworth, 'the grand storehouses of enthusiastic and medi-
tative imagination . . . are the prophetic and lyrical parts of the
Holy Scriptures. '
Ruskin ascribed the best part of his taste in literature to his
having been required by his mother to learn by heart certain
chapters of the Bible, adding: 'I count [it] very confidently the
most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my
education. ' Carlyle said: 'In the poorest cottage. . . is one Book,
wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found
light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever
is deepest in him. ' Newman speaks of the Scriptures as 'com-
positions which, even humanly considered, are among the most
sublime and beautiful ever written. ' Macaulay regarded the Bible
as 'a book which, if everything else in our language should perish,
would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and
power'; and, elsewhere, he says of Bunyan: 'He had studied no
great model of composition, with the exception-an important
exception undoubtedly—of our noble translation of the Bible. '
Froude speaks of its ‘mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon
simplicity, the preternatural grandeur. ' Swift writes, almost exactly
a hundred years after the date of the Authorised Version: ‘The
translators of our Bible were masters of an English style much
fitter for that work than any which we see in our present writings,
which I take to be owing to the simplicity that runs through the
whole'; and again, of the changes which had been introduced into
the language: 'They have taken off a great deal from that sim-
plicity which is one of the greatest perfections in any language. '
Hallam, though he admits that the style of the Authorised
Version is 'the perfection of our English language,' has often
been censured for declaring that the English of the Jacobean
version “is not the English of Daniel, of Raleigh, or Bacon'-in
fact, that 'it is not the language of the reign of James I. ' Yet this
is strictly true, and for the reason that he assigns, namely, 'in
consequence of the principle of adherence to the original versions
which had been kept up since the time of Henry VIII. ' It is true,
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46 The Authorised Version and its Influence
>
in a sense, that no great writer's diction is of his age, any more
than he himself is of his age. Coleridge declares of Shakespeare,
‘His is not the style of the age,' just as Ben Jonson declared of
the poet himself, 'He was not of an age. Indeed, it seems as
' ,
though this were the necessary condition, at least in the case of
great writers, of being ‘for all time,' that one shall not be too
much ‘of an age. ' Great thought and great feeling draw their
own appropriate diction to themselves, somewhat as the magnet
attracts steel filings; and, after the appropriate diction has thus
been attracted, the union between it and the substance of dis-
course seems to be almost indissoluble. It is as if a soul had been
clothed upon with flesh. From that moment, nothing can be
changed with impunity; if you wrench away a word, it is as if
a portion of the life-blood followed it. Now the time when the
soul of the Bible began to take upon itself flesh for us was nearly
three-quarters of a century before the work of the Jacobean revisers.
But, since the life-process, so to speak, did not absolutely begin
with Tindale, it really extended over a considerably longer period
than that named above, especially if we consider that Wyclif was
concerned in it; for, if the Wyclifite versions be included, the
Vulgate can hardly be ignored, so that eventually the Septuagint
must be regarded as having initiated a process which the Jaco-
bean revisers completed. If the substance of the Bible may
thus be compared to a soul which was to be fitted with a body,
it will follow that the diction will differ somewhat from member
to member, even as it did in the Hebrew and Greek originals; but
it will also follow, in proportion to the assumed relation and inter-
dependence of these parts or members, that this diction will have
a certain homogeneity, so that a radical change in the vocabulary
at any point would be likely to throw that part out of keeping
with the rest. The truth of this was recognised by Ellicott, when,
in 1870, he advised future revisers to
limit the choice of words to the vocabulary of the present [Authorised]
version, combined with that of the versions that preceded it; and in altera-
tions preserve as far as possible the rhythm and cadence of the Authorised
Version.
It is not a little remarkable that the effects wrought by the
English Bible should require so few words. The editors of the
New English Dictionary reckon the words in A to L, inclusive, as
160,813, of which number 113,677 are what they call main words.
Shakespeare, it has been estimated, employs about 21,000 (others
say 15,000, or 24,000); Milton, in his verse, about 13,000. The
Hebrew (with the Chaldee) of the Old Testament, according to the
>
a
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
Influence upon English Literature 47
computations of Leusden, comprises 5,642 words, and the New
Testament, it is said, has 4,800, while the whole English Bible, if
we may trust Marsh, employs about 6,000. Making all due allow-
ances for the ‘myriad-mindedness' of a Shakespeare, there is still
room for the conclusion that the capacities of words, especially of
the simpler words, are much greater than is believed by those who
use a large and heterogeneous vocabulary. In this respect, there
is not so much difference between native English and Norman-
French words as is commonly supposed. In the following examples,
the words clean, pure, and clear translate the same Greek ad-
jective, and all seem equally expressive, or nearly so:
Rev. xv, 6: ‘And the seven angels came out of the temple, . . .
clothed in pure and white linen. '
Rev. xix, 8: ‘And to her was granted that she should be arrayed
in fine linen, clean and white. '
Rev. xxi, 18: ‘And the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. '
That, in this sense, they are fairly interchangeable may be seen by
comparing Job xv, 15, ‘Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight,'
with Tennyson's
Make thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies.
This brings us to the question of the influence of the Authorised
Version upon subsequent English literature an influence which
cannot always be precisely distinguished from that of the Bible in
some earlier form. When Spenser or Shakespeare, for instance,
uses the Bible, it is, of course, not the Jacobean version, and
now and then the same thing will be true at a later period, as in
some of Milton's writing. The more important modes in which
the Bible has affected English literature are these:
(a) The themes are Scriptural, and the language partly, at
times even largely, Scriptural. Such is the case in sermons,
versified psalms, paraphrases of Scriptural narrative, devotional
essays, and the like. An excellent example is Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress. This book apart, however, there are few, if any,
examples of a work which has been accepted as pure literature
employing Biblical diction to anything like such a degree. Other
attempts, such as the Book of Mormon, tend to the grotesque or
ludicrous, because of the disparity between the language and the
ideas suggested. A diction resembling that of the Bible in its
concreteness and simplicity, and in its slightly archaic character,
has, however, of late been employed with good effect in prose
versions from authors like Homer.
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48 The Authorised Version and its Influence
1
1
1
(6) Quotations from the Bible are introduced, sometimes
slightly changed, into secular writings. The object is to sub-
stantiate a statement, or to awaken a train of associations favour-
able to the author's purpose. These can be found in almost any
author, but they are more common in the nineteenth century than
earlier, being especially used by writers who have at heart the
reform or elevation of society or individuals.
(c) Allusions, or considerably modified quotations, are intro-
duced freely, and may be found on the editorial page of many
a newspaper. Thus, one reads: "The full measure of justice is not
meted out to them'; "They sold their birthright for a mess of
pottage'; 'They have fallen among thieves. ' In the last three
books which the present writer has read for amusement, he has
been interested to note quotations and allusions of this nature.
In one of them, a recent book on life in an Italian province,
63 references were found; in the second, a recent work on the
life of wild animals, 12; in the third, a novel by Thomas Hardy, 18.
(d) Many phrases have grown so common that they have
become part of the web of current English speech, and are hardly
thought of as Biblical at all, except on deliberate reflection. For
instance: 'highways and hedges'; 'clear as crystal'; 'still small
voice'; 'hip and thigh'; 'arose as one man'; 'lick the dust'; 'a
thorn in the flesh'; 'broken reed'; 'root of all evil'; 'the nether
millstone'; 'sweat of his brow'; 'heap coals of fire'; 'a law unto
themselves'; 'the fat of the land'; 'dark sayings'; 'a soft answer';
'a word in season'; 'moth and rust'; 'weighed in the balance and
found wanting'; even such colloquialisms as, 'we are the people'
(cf. Job xii, 2). Many more of these might readily be quoted.
(e) Other influences, less definitely measurable, but more
important, remain to be mentioned.
Of the Bible in its relations to religion, individual conduct, and
ideals political and social, this is not the place to speak; yet these
affect literature to an incalculable extent, if they do not even
provide its very substance. Of such matters as fall within the
scope of this chapter-matters of vocabulary, grammar, idiom,
and style-something may briefly be said.
In the first place, the literary influence of the Bible, like that
of any classic, is distinctly conservative. The reading of it tends
to keep alive a familiarity with the words and constructions which
were current when the English Bible grew up, or, rather, of such
of these words and constructions as proved most conformable to
the genius of the Hebrew and Greek employed in the sacred
>
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
Influence upon English Literature 49
writings. As hinted above, this influence, in conjunction with that
of the Bible in the sphere of thought and emotion, seems to have
culminated, if its culmination be not rather a matter of the future, in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. The result is that many
terms formerly regarded as awkward, or alien to the genius of the
language, are now understood and accepted. Soon after the Autho-
rised Version was issued, Selden thus criticised the rendering:
The Bible is rather translated into English words than into English
phrases. The Hebraisms are kept, and the phrase of that language is kept.
A typical Hebraism is the use of of in such phrases as 'oil of
gladness,' 'man of sin,' 'King of kings'; but who has any difficulty
with them now? In the first half of the nineteenth century, Hallam
could say:
It abounds, . . . especially in the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology,
and with singlo words long since abandoned, or retained only in provincial
use.
At present this is no truer of the Bible than of Shakespeare, if
as true. Our earlier English has been so revived, and rendered so
familiar, that much which needed elaborate explanation in the
eighteenth century is now intelligible to every one. As Lightfoot
said of other objectors :
The very words which these critics would have ejected from our English
Bibles as barbarous, or uncouth, or obsolete, have again taken their places in
our highest poetry, and even in our popular language.
Like the course of a planet round the sun, the movement of
English diction, which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
was, on the whole, away from that of the Bible, now returns with
ever accelerating speed toward it. That the movement really began
at a much earlier date, though inconspicuously, is shown by the
counsels and practice of Swift, and by the circumstance that
Challoner's Roman Catholic version of 1763-4 abandoned many of
the Latinisms of the Rheims and Douay translations in favour of
the simpler language of the Authorised Version.
The use of concrete words has grown in favour. The colourless-
ness, vagueness and obscurity of abstract terms, and of conventional
phraseology whether abstract or not, have been discredited. Vivid-
ness, the sense of reality, have more and more prevailed in literature
that is, in non-technical writings.
Simplicity has always been recommended by the example of the
Authorised Version, and, especially since the age of Wordsworth,
is more and more gaining upon bombast and meretricious orpa-
ment. The concreteness and simplicity of the Authorised Version,
E. L. IV.
CH. II.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50 The Authorised Version and its Influence
6
and its use of the homely vernacular, have steadily appealed to plain
people, as distinguished from those who have had more abundant
opportunities of education. But the love of the humble for the Bible
is largely due to its message of cheer and hope. Huxley has even
gone so far as to call the Bible 'the Magna Charta of the poor and
the oppressed. ' Two men, Bunyan and Lincoln, who educated them-
selves largely by means of the Bible, may serve as examples of many
who have become known to posterity for their inestimable services to
their race. Both are famous as writers, and the best writing of
both is alive with the spirit of the Bible. Bunyan bas already
been mentioned. Of Lincoln it has been said that he
built up his entire reading upon his early study of the Bible. He had
mastered it absolutely; mastered it as later he mastered only one or two
other books, notably Shakespeare; mastered it so that he became almost
'a man of one book’; . . . and he left his life as part of the crowning work of
the century that has just closed.
Of Walt Whitman, the American who wished to be known as
the poet of democracy, it has been authoritatively said:
His own essential model, after all is said, was the rhythmical patterns of the
English Bible. Here was precisely that natural stylistic variation between
the 'terrific,' the “gentle, and the 'inferior' parts, so desired by William
Blake. Here were lyric fragments, of consummate beauty, imbedded in
narrative or argumentative passages. . . . In this strong, rolling music, this
intense feeling, these concrete words expressing primal emotion in daring
terms of bodily sensation, Whitman found the charter for the book he
wished to write.
The elevation and nobility of Biblical diction, assisted by its
slightly archaic tinge, have a tendency to keep all English style
above meanness and triviality. In the words of Coleridge, 'intense
study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar in point of
style.
The Bible teaches that emotion should not habitually be divorced
from thought, nor thought from emotion; certainly not in litera-
ture. Wherever simple language is charged with noble feeling,
stirs the imagination, is directed by steady and comprehensive
thought, is adapted to actuate the will in the direction of social
and individual good, and is concise and pregnant, Biblical style is
approximated, and, very probably, Biblical influence is dominant.
Finally, the English Bible is the chief bond which holds united,
in a common loyalty and a common endeavour, the various branches
of the English race. The influence of the Bible can be traced
through the whole course of English literature and English civilisa-
tion, and, more than anything else, it tends to give unity and per-
petuity to both.
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
SIR WALTER RALEGH
>
NOTHING, perhaps, is more remarkable with regard to Sir
Walter Ralegh's literary career than the fact that a man of his
nature should have won for himself a place in the history of
letters. He was, pre-eminently, a man of action, a man who loved
the stir and bustle of life, the excitement of adventure ; and his
proud, ambitious character made him keen to play a foremost
part in the affairs of the world. But his intellectual activity was
as great as his physical energy. Neither his mind nor his body
could rest. All the periods of enforced leisure in his life he used
for study or writing; yet the chance of an active enterprise could
always win him away from his books.
At the age of 14 or 15, Ralegh, who was born in 1552, at
Hayes Barton, Budleigh, Devon, went to Oxford, where he stayed
for about three years. According to Anthony à Wood, ‘he became
the ornament of the juniors, and a proficient in oratory and
philosophy. ' He passed from Oxford quickly to seek more stirring
adventures in the Huguenot army in France. But, wherever he
went, he was gathering knowledge. Sir Robert Naunton says 'he
was an indefatigable reader, whether by sea or land, and none of
the least observers both of men and the times. ' On his sea voyages,
he took always a trunk of books with him, and spent the long
hours, when he had nothing to divert him, in reading. He is said,
by an early biographer, to have slept but five hours, so as to gain
daily four hours for reading. His knowledge of literature helped,
no doubt, to give him that command of words, that incisive way
of stating a question which called Elizabeth's attention to him
when he discussed Irish affairs over the council table with lord
Grey. He had, says Naunton, 'a strong natural wit and a better
judgment, with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set
out his parts to the best advantage. ' He retained a decided Devon-
shire accent all his life ; but his parliamentary speeches were
distinguished by good style and pointed utterance.
He seems
1 Ralegh's name may be found spelt in some seventy different ways. His own
signature varied very considerably till 1584, after which he used no other signature
bat Ralegh; he never used the common modern form Raleigh. His pronunciation of
his name is clear from the fact that in his early days he often wrote Rauley.
4-2
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
Sir Walter Ralegh
to have shown a tendency towards liberal views. In a debate
about the Brownists, in 1583, he spoke against religious persecu-
tion. But his was neither the speech nor the nature by which a
man wins ready popularity, for in everything, though he showed
himself a lover of liberty, he showed, also, his proud and con-
temptuous character.
Perhaps that proud and contemptuous
character showed itself also in the extravagance of the language
of compliment and adulation with which he addressed Elizabeth.
Such language was fashionable at the time, but it seems strange
in the mouth of a man like Ralegh, and we are inclined to think
that it was his ambition and desire to get on which made him put
no limit to his exaggeration, in scornful contempt of the vanity
that could be pleased by such language.
That Ralegh must have early been known as a writer of
occasional verse is shown by the fact that he contributed some
introductory verses, In commendation of the Steel Glass, to George
Gascoigne's satire, published in 1576. In these lines he describes
Gascoigne's poems in one of his concise, pointed phrases :
This medicine may suffice
To scorn the rest, and seek to please the wise.
Elizabethan poets appear to have had little desire to see their
works in print. They wrote to please their friends, or for their
own delight, not for the general public. Their poems were passed
about in manuscript or read to their friends, and then might,
perhaps, find their way into some of the popular miscellanies
of verse. Few of Ralegh's poems appeared with his name during
his lifetime, and it was long after his death before any attempt
was made to identify or collect his scattered verses. Some of them
had appeared in England's Helicon with the signature ‘Ignoto,
and it was, in consequence, at first assumed that all the poems
so signed in that collection were his. More critical examination
has rejected many of these, and Hannah's carefully edited collec-
tion, published in 1892, gives some thirty pieces which have
reasonably been supposed to be Ralegh’s? These are enough to
justify fully the judgment passed on him in Puttenham’s The Arte
of English Poesie, 'For dittie and amourous ode I find Sir Walter
Ralegh's vein most lofty, insolent and passionate. '
Ralegh seems, at many crises in his life, to have sought
expression for his feelings in verse. When, after his rapid rise to
favour at court, he was driven into temporary disgrace by the
jealousy of Essex, he employed himself in composing a long elegy
* See post, the chapter on the • Song Books. '
6
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
Cynthia
53
expressing his devotion to Elizabeth, and his despair at her anger,
in which he addressed the queen as Cynthia. We hear of this
poem first in Spenser's verses Colin Clout's Come Home Again.
During this temporary disgrace, Ralegh revisited Ireland, where he
had served some years before. There, he either began or renewed
at Kilcolman his friendship with Spenser, then lord Grey's
secretary. The poets seem to have passed some delightful days in
reading their verses to one another. Spenser says of Ralegh in
Colin Clout
His song was all a lamentable lay
Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard
Of Cynthia the Ladie of the Sea,
Which from her presence faultlesse him debard.
Ralegh’s delight in The Faerie Queene led him, as soon as he
was restored to favour, to introduce Spenser at court. Spenser,
in his turn, was full of admiration of Ralegh's work, and wrote
Full sweetly tempered is that Muse of his
That can empierce a Princes' mightie hart.
He returns to it again in the beautiful sonnet addressed to
Ralegh which appeared attached to The Faerie Queene, where
he says that, compared with Ralegh's, his rimes are 'unsavory
and sowre,' and concludes
Yet, till that thou thy Poeme wilt make knowne,
Let thy fair Cinthias praises be thus rudely showne.
Cynthia was never published; we do not know that it was ever
presented to Elizabeth.
It was thought to be entirely lost, when a
fragment of it was discovered among the Hatfield MSS and first
printed by Hannah in 1870. This fragment is entitled The twenty-
first and last book of the Occan to Cynthia. Spenser used to
.
call Ralegh ‘The Shepherd of the Ocean,' and, hence, Ralegh took
to calling himself 'the Ocean. ' Hannah published this fragment as
A continuation of the lost poem Cynthia, and imagined that
it was composed during Ralegh's imprisonment in the Tower
under James I. But it has been conclusively shown that it must
be a portion of the earlier poem? If the other twenty books were
of the same length as this canto, the whole poem must have con-
sisted of ten to fifteen thousand lines. It is written in four lined
stanzas, alternately rimed. Judging from the fragment that
remains, there appears to have been no action or narrative in this
1 This point has been clearly demonstrated by Edmund Gosse from internal evi.
dence, in two letters printed in The Athenaeum for the first two weeks of January 1886.
See, also, Sir Walter Ralegh, by W. Stebbing, p. 73.
6
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
Sir Walter Ralegh
6
long poem, yet Gabriel Harvey describes the part of it which he
saw before 1590 as 'a fine and sweet invention. There are many
fine passages, none finer than the line
>
Of all which past the sorrow only stays.
The stately, dignified sonnet by Ralegh, which was appended to
the first edition of The Faerie Queene, in 1590, is worthy of an
age when the sonnet attained rare distinction. Brydges, the first
editor of a collection of Ralegh's poems, says:
Milton had deeply studied this sonnet, for in his compositions of the same
class, he has evidently more than once the very rhythm and construction,
as well as cast of thought of this noble though brief composition.
Other of the poems by Ralegh show more of the impetuous
and daring spirit which was compelled to find an utterance. The
ringing scorn of 'The Lie' depicts the man who knew from personal
experience courts and their meanness. The disenchantment with
life expressed in several of his poems led to the assumption that
they were written on the night before his death ; but of only one
can this be true, the fine lines found in his Bible at the gate-house,
Westminster :
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust.
The others, such as Like Hermit Poor, and The Pilgrimmage,
were, probably, written at moments when his impatient spirit was
filled with disgust of life. No poem of his has greater charm than
The Pilgrimmage, whether for its form, its fancy, or for the deep
seriousness underlying its light grace. Among the authenticated
poems of Ralegh there are few love poems, and those few are
singularly free from sentimentality or the precious conceits popular
at the time. In his reply to Marlowe's song The passionate Shep-
herd to his Love, he by no means responds to the passion of the
appeal, but shows his disbelief in the possibility of the permanence
of the shepherd's love in a world full of fears of' cares to come. '
The authenticity of many of Ralegh’s prose works is almost as
difficult to decide with any certainty as that of his poems. He
seems to have written papers on many varied subjects, but only
two of them, and The History of the World, were published
during his lifetime. Ralegh manuscripts were collected by literary
men, were to be found in many libraries and were much valued.
It is said in the Observations on the Statesmen and Favourites
of England, by David Lloyd, published in 1665, that John
2
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
Prose Writings
55
Hampden, shortly before the Civil Wars, was at the charge of
transcribing 3452 sheets of Ralegh’s writing. Archbishop Sancroft
speaks of a great MS in folio,' by Sir Walter, lent to him by
Mr Ralegh, the author's grandson. He also possessed another
MS, a Breviary of the History of England under William I
which he attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh, and which he said had
been ‘taken from the papers of an old Presbyterian in Hertford-
shire, which sort of men were always the more fond of Sir Walter's
books, because he was under the disfavour of the Court. ' One of
his MSS, called The Arts of Empire, was first printed by Milton
in 1658, under the title of The Cabinet Council by the ever-
renovoned knight, Sir Walter Ralegh. It does not seem as if
Ralegh, ambitious in other respects, aspired to the fame of an
author. He read and wrote for his own delight and recreation.
He loved books and the society of men of letters of all kinds. He
was a friend of Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquary, who collected
the famous library at Cotton House, which became the meeting
place of the scholars of the day. There and elsewhere, Ralegh
consorted with the other men of learning of his times. He was a
member of the Society of Antiquaries, which archbishop Parker
had founded in 1572, and which lasted till 1605, and he is said to
have suggested those gatherings at the Mermaid tavern, in Bread
street, where Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and other play
writers met the antiquaries and literary men of the day, such as
Cotton, Selden and Donne. Here began Ralegh’s friendship with
Ben Jonson, which led him, later, to choose him as travelling tutor
for his son. Always of an open mind and liberal views, Ralegh
also mixed freely with sceptical and freethinking men. He often
met together with Marlowe, Harriot and others for discussions, in
which religious topics were treated fearlessly and without reserve.
A Roman Catholic pamphleteer, writing in 1592, says that the
meetings of this little group of friends were called 'Sir Walter
Rawley's School of Atheism. ' In 1593, the attention of the privy
council was called to their discussions, and a special commission
was appointed to examine Ralegh, his brother Carew and others as
to their alleged heresies. What was the result of this investigation
we do not know, but it is impossible to read Ralegh’s writings
without being convinced of the depth and sincerity of his religious
convictions. Sir John Harington says of him in Nugce Antiquce:
'In religion he hath shown in private talk, great depth and
good reading. '
Ralegh was, at all times, a generous patrou of learning. He
## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################
56
Sir Walter Ralegh
advised Richard Hakluyt with regard to his great collection of
voyages, and assisted his enterprise with gifts of money and
manuscripts. He was with the fleet that, under the command of
the earl of Essex, made, in 1596, a descent upon Faro in Portugal,
and it was, no doubt, he that suggested the seizure and careful
preservation of the great library of bishop Hieron Osorius, which
was afterwards given, probably, again, at Ralegh's suggestion, to
the library newly founded at Oxford by Sir Thomas Bodley. The
Bodleian library was opened in 1602, and, in 1603, Ralegh showed
his love for books by making it a gift of fifty pounds.
The first work published by Ralegh was a quarto tract issued
in 1591, called Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles
of the Açores this last sommer. It appeared anonymously, but
was republished by Hakluyt, as Sir Walter Ralegh's. It describes
the doings of the little fleet in which, at the last moment, Ralegh
had been prevented from sailing himself, and ends with an account
of the famous fight and death of his kinsman Sir Richard Grenville,
on The Revenge. In forcible and vigorous prose, Ralegh tells
with great simplicity the story of what actually happened. But,
both before and after his story, he gives vent to violent de-
nunciation of the Spaniards, at all times the object of his bitterest
hatred. He speaks of 'their frivolouse vain glorious taunts' as
opposed to the 'honorable actions' characteristic of the English.
It seems to have been this kind of language which counted as
patriotism in Elizabethan days, and helped to give Ralegh his
high reputation as a lover of his country. The account ends with
a touch of poetry when, after describing the terrible storm which
followed the fight of The Revenge and caused the destruction of
many ships, he says : 'So it pleased them to honor the buriall of
that renowned ship the Revenge, not suffering her to perish alone,
for the great honour she achieved in her life time. '
It was partly his natural love of adventure, partly his desire to
regain the favour at court which he had temporarily lost, that led
Ralegh to undertake his first expedition to Guiana, in 1595.
When he returned, full of tales of what he had seen, his enemies
attempted to cast discredit on him by asserting that he had never
been to Guiana at all. To defend himself, he at once wrote
an account of his Discovery of the large, rich and beautiful
Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city
of Manoa. This appeared in 1596, with a dedication to ‘my
singular good Lord and kinsman Charles Howard and to the
Rt. Hon. Sir Robt. Cecil'; in which Ralegh says that in his
>
## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################
Guiana
57
discourse he has 'neither studied phrase, forme, nor fashion. ' The
simple story of his stirring adventures, told in pure and nervous
English, won immediate popularity, and was translated into
German, Dutch and Latin, running through many editions. His
sentences are long and sometimes involved, but he tells his story
admirably and his adventures live, whilst his descriptions of
scenery are graceful and attractive, and he urges the advantages
of the colonisation of Guiana in glowing and eloquent words. His
allusions to the tales that the natives told him of tribes of
Amazons, and other strange beings, led Hume to characterise
his whole narrative as 'full of the grossest and most palpable
lies'; a criticism which his most careful editor, Sir Robert
Schomburgh, who has himself visited Guiana, says 'we can now
regard with a smile. ' Besides these two tracts, nothing was
published by Ralegh during the reign of Elizabeth, though one or
two of his letters, especially that written to Robert Cecil on the
death of his wife, in 1596, and the one giving A relation of the
Cadiz Action, in the same year, well deserve to be counted
amongst literary productions. In the letter to Cecil, we find these
fine words:
The minde of man is that part of God which is in us, which, by how mich
it is subject to passion, by 80 mich it is farther from Hyme that gave it us.
Sorrows draw not the dead to life, but the livinge to death.
Ralegh’s life of stir and adventure, his enjoyment and hope of
court favour, all came to an end with the death of Elizabeth and
the accession of James I. He found himself, only just reprieved
from the scaffold, a prisoner in the Tower, the victim of the
prejudice and suspicions of the king. Conscious of the falseness
of the accusation of treason upon which he had been convicted,
still full of schemes of active enterprise and, especially, of the idea
that he would be able to win for England a possession of boundless
wealth in Guiana, he could not, at first, believe that his captivity
would last. But, as his hopes of a speedy release slowly passed
away, it became more and more necessary for him to use his
energies in work of some kind. For the most part, the conditions
of his captivity were not rigorous. He had rooms in the Bloody
Tower, with sufficient accommodation to enable his wife and son
to be with him. His friends visited him freely. His rooms opened
out on a terrace, where he could take exercise, and below was
a little garden, where he was allowed to turn a former hen-house
into a laboratory for the chemical experiments in which he
delighted. At first, it was to his scientific studies that he devoted
## p. 58 (#80) ##############################################
58
Sir Walter Ralegh
1
1
2
1
.
most of his time. But he also wrote a great deal. Prince Henry,
the promising eldest son of James I, was a great admirer of
Ralegh and declared that no one but his father would keep such
a bird in such a cage. He was only a boy of nine when Ralegh
was committed to the Tower, but he had always loved the society
of those older than himself, and, as time went on, he consulted
Ralegh on many points that interested him, especially on naval
and military matters. Several of the papers which Ralegh wrote
in the Tower were composed specially for prince Henry. Among
others, there is a treatise called Observations concerning the
Royal Navy and Sea Service, which is full of interest as throwing
light on the condition of the ships by means of which the great
Elizabethan seamen carried out their famous exploits. When
there was a proposal, very distasteful to prince Henry, to arrange
a marriage between him and a daughter of the house of Savoy,
Ralegh wrote a vigorous treatise in which he clearly pointed out
the disadvantages of the match. It was also for prince Henry
that he planned his greatest work, The History of the World.
It is a testimony to the extent of Ralegh's belief in himself as
well as to the soaring nature of his imagination, that he, a prisoner
in the Tower, in broken health and already over fifty years of age,
should have projected a work of such gigantic scope. History, as
a branch of literature, did not then exist in England ; indeed,
except for the work of the antiquaries, the Elizabethan age is
specially poor in historical work of any kind. The age of the
great chroniclers was over. There were some writers of historical
poems, some annalists, many industrious antiquaries. But the
annalists and the antiquaries still wrote in Latin. Only Richard
Knolles had produced his General Historie of the Turkes, published
in 1603, and John Speed a Historie of Great Britaine, published
in 1611, in English. Ralegh's plan was on an entirely different
scale from anything that had been dreamt of before. He wished
to bring the history of the past together, to treat it as a whole, to
use it as an introduction to the history of his own country; and his
great book was to be for the people, not only for the learned. It
was written in the pure strong English of which he had such easy
command. Not quite free yet from the habit of using too long
sentences which, sometimes, have a tendency to become involved,
he is free from elaborate and fanciful conceits. The subject seems
to command the style. He can tell a story well, he can sketch
a character with force and vigour. He shows at least some sense
of the unity of history, for the motives of men in the past are judged
## p. 59 (#81) ##############################################
The History of the World 59
by him in the same way as the motives of men in the present,
and, at all events when he began, his intention was to lead up
from the past to the present. But, though he had the mind to
conceive a work on such a vast scale, he had not the experience
or the training to enable him to plan it out in such a way that,
under any circumstances, it would have been possible to complete
it. The large folio which he did complete, and which consisted of
five books, began with the Creation and reached only to 130 B. C. ,
when Macedonia became a Roman province. He projected two
other folio volumes, but these do not seem even to have been
begun. After the publication of the first volume, his mind was
diverted to other schemes, to his hope of regaining his liberty and
accomplishing a second voyage to Guiana. The death of prince
Henry, in 1612, also deprived him of one of his chief motives for
writing the history.
We do not know in what year he actually began to write, but,
on 15 April 1611, notice was given in the registers of the
Stationers' company of 'The History of the World written by
Sir Walter Rawleighe. '
It was published, according to Camden, on 29 March 1614;
but it is possible that it may not really have been published till
the beginning of 1615. Many scholars and learned men were
ready to help him in his work. Sir Robert Cotton freely lent him
books from his great library. Robert Burhill, a divine of wide
learning and acquainted with Greek and Hebrew, languages
unknown to Ralegh, was frequently consulted by him. John
Hoskins, a wit and scholar and also a prisoner in the Tower for
a supposed libel on James I, is credited, by tradition, with having
revised the book for him. The fact that Ben Jonson was, also, for
a short time a fellow prisoner in the Tower, and was known to
have been connected with Ralegh, led some to believe his boasts,
made some years later over his cups, that he had contributed
considerable portions of the History. But there is no evidence
for these assertions, which rest only on his own word.
In his search for accuracy, Ralegh frequently consulted Thomas
Harriot the mathematician, an old friend of his, on points of
chronology and geography. But, though no doubt he profited
by the advice and learning of his friends, no one can read the
History without feeling that it is the work of one man, inspired
by one mind and purpose. Moreover, though he naturally read
and studied much specially for it during his years in the Tower,
we see in it also the result of the reading of his whole life. In
The History of the World, as well as in his occasional writings,
## p. 60 (#82) ##############################################
60
Sir Walter Ralegh
L.
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Schol
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we are struck with the freedom with which Ralegh handles his
material, with the ready hold that he has on the resources of
his vast reading. About the middle of the nineteenth century,
some old books, amongst them Peter Comestor's Historia
tica, were found behind the wainscot of a room in Ralegh's
favourite Irish house at Youghal. Comestor is one of the authors
quoted by Ralegh, and, though it is possible that these old books
were placed in their hiding-place before his day, yet it is by no
means improbable that his study of Comestor may have begun
at Youghal during the months he spent in Ireland. It has been
computed that six hundred and sixty authors are cited by him in
his History, and there exists a letter to Cotton asking for the loan
of thirteen books, none of which is included amongst the works of
the six hundred and sixty authors quoted.
In writing his history, Ralegh was inspired by a distinct
purpose. He says in his preface, that he wishes to show God's
judgment on the wicked ; to him all history was a revelation
of God's ways.
His preface is to us now, perhaps, the most
interesting part of the book. In it he runs through, and passes
judgment upon, the kings of England from the time of the
Conquest, then makes a rapid survey of the history of France
and of Spain. From the teaching of history he draws his philosophy
of life :
For seeing God, who is the author of all our tragedies hath written out for
us and appointed us all the parts we are to play; and hath not, in their
distribution been partial to the most mighty princes of the world . . . why
should other men, who are but as the least worms, complain of wrongs ?
Certainly there is no other account to be made of this ridiculous world, than
to resolve, that the change of fortune on the great theatre is but the change
of garments on the less : for when on the one and the other, every man wears
but his own skin, the players are all alike.
As we think of the picture of his own times, of the account
of Elizabeth and her court, of the stirring tales of adventure that
the ready pen and quick insight of Ralegh might have given us
had he spent his time in prison in writing his own memoirs, we
can but be filled with regret that he should have chosen, instead,
to have written long chapters on the Creation, the site of the
garden of Eden, the ages of the patriarchs. But Ralegh had
not done with life, his ambitious, restless spirit still aspired to
play a part in the world outside and his book was intended to
add to his friends, not to his enemies. In his preface, he explains
his choice of subject :
I know that 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. . . . To this I answer,
1
## p. 61 (#83) ##############################################
The History of the World
61
that whosoever in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the
heels, it may happily strike out his teeth. There is no mistress or guide that
hath led her followers and servants into greater miseries. . . . It is true, that
I never travelled after men's opinions, when I might have made the best use
of them; and I have now too few days remaining to imitate those, that, either
out of extreme ambition or extreme cowardice, or both, do yet (when death
hath them on his shoulders) flatter the world between the bed and the grave.
It is enough for me (being in that state I am) to write of the eldest times;
wherein also, why may it not be said, that, in speaking of the past, I point
at the present, and tax the vices of those that are yet living in their persons
that are long since dead; and have it laid to my charge. But this I cannot
help, though innocent.
It is but seldom that he even illuminates his pages with any
illustrations drawn from his own experiences. Sometimes, he
indulges in a digression, as when he breaks forth into a disserta-
tion on the nature of law, after telling of the giving of the law to
Moses, or when, in a later book, he makes long dissertations on
the way to defend the coast, on the nature of government, on
mercenary soldiers, on the folly and wickedness of duels and the
false view of honour they involve. He has a long digression, also,
about the bands of Amazons, said to be living in the districts
round Guiana, and gives his reasons for believing in the possi-
bility of their existence.
The first two books of the History, containing twenty-eight
chapters, are occupied with an account of the Creation and the
history of the Jews. Side by side with that history, they give the
contemporary events in Greek mythology and Egyptian history.
The questions treated of, and the method of treating them, alike
show how different were the interests of his day and ours. His
discussion as to the nature of the two trees in the Garden of Eden
is enlivened by a description of Ficus Indica as he had seen it
in Trinidad, dropping its roots, or cords, into the sea ‘so as by
pulling up one of these cords out of the sea, I have seen five
hundred oysters hanging in a heap thereon. ' In none of Ralegh's
writings do we find any sign that he possessed a sense of humour;
had he done so, he would not, perhaps, have indulged in such an
elaborate disquisition as to the capacity of the ark to hold all the
animals which were driven into it. Naturally, no thought of
criticising the Bible narrative entered his mind, as he said 'Let us
build upon the scriptures themselves and after them upon reason
and nature. ' But there is some attempt at criticism in comparing
one author with another, some attempt to trace the development
of thought, and to bring things together, a remarkable feat in his
day, as we may realise when we remember that, before him, there
## p. 62 (#84) ##############################################
62
Sir Walter Ralegh
was practically no attempt at critical history in English. He was
much interested in questions of chronology, and provided his book
with elaborate chronological tables as well as with many maps.
But it is a relief when he passes from his discussions on chronology
to tell a story, such as the story of the Argonauts, which he does
simply and well.
The book moves more freely as he reaches Greek and Roman
times. The characters of some of the great men are given with
much insight and point, and he brings his commonsense to bear
in criticising the conduct of leaders and generals. As the book
goes on, his references to modern history in illustration of his
story grow more frequent. We feel that not only has he read
much, but that he has weighed and pondered what he has read
in the light of his own experience. In reflecting on the end of
Hannibal and Scipio, he says
Hence it comes, to wit from the envy of our equals, and jealousy of our
masters, be they kings or commonweals, that there is no profession more
unprosperous than that of men of war and great captains, being no kings. . . .
For the most of others whose virtues have raised them above the level of
their inferiors, and have surmounted their envy, yet have they been rewarded
in the end either with disgrace, banishment, or death.
Whenever he touches upon any matter of personal experience, the
interest at once quickens and the writing appears at its best.
War is always his main theme; to him, history is an account of
wars and conquests. Questions as to methods of government or
the social conditions of the people have little interest for him,
though he seems to see the importance of combining geography
with history by the descriptions he gives of the nature of the
countries, the towns and cities of which he writes. On the whole,
the best part of the book is his account of the Punic wars; there
he feels fully the interest of his story. Curiously enough, he misses
the tragic interest of the Athenian expedition to Sicily, which, in
his telling, he even manages to make dull.
Never does he lose sight of his moral purpose. His whole
object in writing was to teach a great moral : ‘it being the end
and scope of all history to teach by example of times past, such
wisdom as may guide our desires and actions. ' So he carries us
through the history of the three first Monarchies of the world';
leaving off when the fourth, Rome, was 'almost at the highest. '
He ends with these noble words on death:
0 eloquent, just and mighty death! Whom none could advise, thou hast
persuaded! What none have dared, thou hast done! And whom all the
world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised!
## p. 63 (#85) ##############################################
63
a
The History of the World
Thou hast drawn together all the far fetched greatness, all the pride, cruelty
and ambition of men; and covered it all over with these two narrow words:
Hic jacet.
Though, in his preface, Ralegh said of James I that
if all the malice of the world were infused into one eye, yet could it not
discern in his life, even to this day, any one of those foul spots, by which the
consciences of all the fore named princes (in effect) have been defiled; nor
any drop of that innocent blood on the sword of his justice, with which the
most that forewent him have stained both their hands and fame,
James I was displeased with the book. Perhaps he was clever
enough to discern the value of this fashionable language of
adulation; perhaps, as some said, he thought that Ralegh had
criticised too freely the character of Henry VIII, when he said
'if all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in
the world, they might all again be painted out of the story of this
king. ' To the fanatical believer in the divine right of kings, any
censure of princes was, in itself, a crime. James appears, in
consequence, to have tried to suppress the book. In a letter
written to Venice on 5 January 1615, it is said, “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. '
There is, also, a letter from the archbishop of Canterbury, dated
22 December 1614, to the Stationers' company, saying that he
had received 'expresse directions from his Majestie that the book
latelie published by Sr Walter Rawleigh, nowe prisoner in the
Tower, should be suppressed and not suffered for hereafter to be
sould. ' The book mentioned in this letter can be none other but
the History. But the suppression seems not to have been carried
out; at any rate, the royal command did not affect the distribution
of the book. The first two editions appeared anonymously without
any title-page, but with an elaborate allegorical frontispiece,
representing Magister Vitae, standing on Death represented by a
skeleton, and Oblivion as a man asleep. Experience, as an old
woman, and Truth as a young woman, hold aloft a globe, on one
side of which fama bona and, on the other, fama mala are blowing
trumpets. On the other page is a sonnet, presumably by Ben
Jonson, as he afterwards published it under his name, containing
these lines
From death and dark Oblivion (neere the same)
The Mistresse of Man's life, grave Historie
Raising the world to good or Evill fame
Doth vindicate it to Æternitie.
The book seems to have been immediately popular.
