Part 2 (1/2)

But the blatant beast has been busy at home; and, in spite of Chapman's heroical verses, he meets with little but cold looks.

Never mind. If the world will not help to do the deed, he will do it by himself; and no time must be lost, for the Spaniards on their part will lose none. So, after six months, the faithful Keymis sails again, again helped by the Lord High Admiral and Sir Robert Cecil.

It is a hard race for one private man against the whole power and wealth of Spain; and the Spaniard has been beforehand with them, and re-occupied the country. They have fortified themselves at the mouth of the Caroli, so it is impossible to get to the gold mines; they are enslaving the wretched Indians, carrying off their women, intending to transplant some tribes and to expel others, and arming cannibal tribes against the inhabitants. All is misery and rapine; the scattered remnant comes asking piteously why Raleigh does not come over to deliver them? Have the Spaniards slain him, too? Keymis comforts them as he best can; hears of more gold mines; and gets back safe, a little to his own astonishment; for eight-and-twenty s.h.i.+ps of war have been sent to Trinidad to guard the entrance to El Dorado, not surely, as Keymis well says, 'to keep us only from tobacco.' A colony of 500 persons is expected from Spain. The Spaniard is well aware of the richness of the prize, says Keymis, who all through shows himself a worthy pupil of his master. A careful, observant man he seems to have been, trained by that great example to overlook no fact, even the smallest. He brings home lists of rivers, towns, caciques, poison-herbs, words, what not; he has fresh news of gold, spleen-stones, kidney-stones, and some fresh specimens; but be that as it may, he, 'without going as far as his eyes can warrant, can promise Brazil-wood, honey, cotton, balsamum, and drugs, to defray charges.' He would fain copy Raleigh's style, too, and 'whence his lamp had oil, borrow light also,' 'seasoning his unsavoury speech'

with some of the 'leaven of Raleigh's discourse.' Which, indeed, he does even to little pedantries and attempts at cla.s.sicality; and after professing that himself and the remnant of his few years he hath bequeathed wholly to Raleana, and his thoughts live only in that action, he rises into something like grandeur when he begins to speak of that ever-fertile subject, the Spanish cruelties to the Indians; 'Doth not the cry of the poor succourless ascend unto the heavens?

Hath G.o.d forgotten to be gracious to the work of his own hands. Or shall not his judgments in a day of visitation by the ministry of his chosen servant come upon these bloodthirsty butchers, like rain into a fleece of wool?' Poor Keymis! To us he is by no means the least beautiful figure in this romance; a faithful, diligent, loving man, unable, as the event proved, to do great deeds by himself, but inspired with a great idea by contact with a mightier spirit, to whom he clings through evil report, and poverty, and prison, careless of self to the last, and ends tragically, 'faithful unto death' in the most awful sense.

But here remark two things: first, that Cecil believes in Raleigh's Guiana scheme; next, that the occupation of Orinoco by the Spaniards, which Raleigh is accused of having concealed from James in 1617, has been ever since 1595 matter of the most public notoriety.

Raleigh has not been idle in the meanwhile. It has been found necessary after all to take the counsel which he gave in vain in 1588, to burn the Spanish fleet in harbour; and the heroes are gone down to Cadiz fight, and in one day of thunder storm the Sevastopol of Spain. Here, as usual, we find Raleigh, though in an inferior command, leading the whole by virtue of superior wisdom. When the good Lord Admiral will needs be cautious, and land the soldiers first, it is Raleigh who persuades him to force his way into the harbour, to the joy of all captains. When hotheaded Ess.e.x, casting his hat into the sea for joy, shouts 'Intramos,' and will in at once, Raleigh's time for caution comes, and he persuades them to wait till the next morning, and arrange the order of attack. That, too, Raleigh has to do, and moreover to lead it; and lead it he does.

Under the forts are seventeen galleys; the channel is 'scoured' with cannon: but on holds Raleigh's 'Warspite,' far ahead of the rest, through the thickest of the fire, answering forts and galleys 'with a blur of the trumpet to each piece, disdaining to shoot at those esteemed dreadful monsters.' For there is a n.o.bler enemy ahead.

Right in front lie the galleons; and among them the 'Philip' and the 'Andrew,' two of those who boarded the 'Revenge.' This day there shall be a reckoning for the blood of his old friend; he is 'resolved to be revenged for the ”Revenge,”' Sir Richard Grenvile's fatal s.h.i.+p, or second her with his own life'; and well he keeps his vow. Three hours pa.s.s of desperate valour, during which, so narrow is the pa.s.sage, only seven English s.h.i.+ps, thrusting past each other, all but quarrelling in their n.o.ble rivalry, engage the whole Spanish fleet of fifty-seven sail, and destroy it utterly. The 'Philip' and 'Thomas'

burn themselves despairing. The English boats save the 'Andrew' and 'Matthew.' One pa.s.ses over the hideous record. 'If any man,' says Raleigh, 'had a desire to see h.e.l.l itself, it was there most lively figured.' Keymis's prayer is answered in part, even while he writes it; and the cry of the Indians has not ascended in vain before the throne of G.o.d!

The soldiers are landed; the city stormed and sacked, not without mercies and courtesies, though, to women and unarmed folk, which win the hearts of the vanquished, and live till this day in well-known ballads. The Flemings begin a 'merciless slaughter.' Raleigh and the Lord Admiral beat them off. Raleigh is carried on sh.o.r.e with a splinter wound in the leg, which lames him for life: but returns on board in an hour in agony; for there is no admiral left to order the fleet, and all are run headlong to the sack. In vain he attempts to get together sailors the following morning, and attack the Indian fleet in Porto Real Roads; within twenty-four hours it is burnt by the Spaniards themselves; and all Raleigh wins is no booty, a lame leg, and the honour of having been the real author of a victory even more glorious than that of 1588.

So he returns; having written to Cecil the highest praises of Ess.e.x, whom he treats with all courtesy and fairness; which those who will may call cunning: we have as good a right to say that he was returning good for evil. There were n.o.ble qualities in Ess.e.x. All the world gave him credit for them, and far more than he deserved; why should not Raleigh have been just to him; even have conceived, like the rest of the world, high hopes of him, till he himself destroyed these hopes? For now storms are rising fast. On their return Cecil is in power. He has been made Secretary of State instead of Bodley, Ess.e.x's pet, and the spoilt child begins to sulk.

On which matter, I am sorry to say, historians talk much unwisdom, about Ess.e.x's being too 'open and generous, etc., for a courtier,'

and 'presuming on his mistress's pa.s.sion for him'; and representing Elizabeth as desiring to be thought beautiful, and 'affecting at sixty the sighs, loves, tears, and tastes of a girl of sixteen,' and so forth. It is really time to get rid of some of this fulsome talk, culled from such triflers as...o...b..rne, if not from the darker and fouler sources of Parsons and the Jesuit slanderers, which I meet with a flat denial. There is simply no proof. She in love with Ess.e.x or Cecil? Yes, as a mother with a son. Were they not the children of her dearest and most faithful servants, men who had lived heroic lives for her sake? What wonder if she fancied that she saw the fathers in the sons? They had been trained under her eye. What wonder if she fancied that they could work as their fathers worked before them? And what shame if her childless heart yearned over them with unspeakable affection, and longed in her old age to lay her hands upon the shoulders of those two young men, and say to England, 'Behold the children which G.o.d, and not the flesh, has given me!'

Most strange it is, too, that women, who ought at least to know a woman's heart, have been especially forward in publis.h.i.+ng these scandals, and sullying their pages by retailing pruriences against such a one as Queen Elizabeth.

But to return. Raleigh attaches himself to Cecil; and he has good reason. Cecil is the cleverest man in England, saving himself. He has trusted and helped him, too, in two Guiana voyages; so the connection is one of grat.i.tude as well as prudence. We know not whether he helped him in the third Guiana voyage in the same year, under Captain Berry, a north Devon man, from Grenvile's country; who found a 'mighty folk,' who were 'something pleasant, having drunk much that day,' and carried bows with golden handles: but failed in finding the Lake Parima, and so came home.

Raleigh's first use of his friends.h.i.+p with Cecil is to reconcile him, to the astonishment of the world, with Ess.e.x, alleging how much good may grow by it; for now 'the Queen's continual unquietness will grow to contentment.' That, too, those who will may call policy. We have as good a right to call it the act of a wise and faithful subject, and to say, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of G.o.d.' He has his reward for it in full restoration to the Queen's favour; he deserves it. He proves himself once more worthy of power, and it is given to him. Then there is to be a second great expedition: but this time its aim is the Azores.

Philip, only maddened by the loss at Cadiz, is preparing a third armament for the invasion of England and Ireland, and it is said to lie at the islands to protect the Indian fleet. Raleigh has the victualling of the land-forces, and, like everything else he takes in hand, 'it is very well done.' Lord Howard declines the chief command, and it is given to Ess.e.x. Raleigh is to be rear-admiral.

By the time they reach the Azores, Ess.e.x has got up a foolish quarrel against Raleigh for disrespect in having stayed behind to bring up some stragglers. But when no Armada is to be found at the Azores, Ess.e.x has after all to ask Raleigh what he shall do next. Conquer the Azores, says Raleigh, and the thing is agreed on. Raleigh and Ess.e.x are to attack Fayal. Ess.e.x sails away before Raleigh has watered. Raleigh follows as fast as he can, and at Fayal finds no Ess.e.x. He must water there, then and at once. His own veterans want him to attack forthwith, for the Spaniards are fortifying fast: but he will wait for Ess.e.x. Still no Ess.e.x comes. Raleigh attempts to water, is defied, finds himself 'in for it,' and takes the island out of hand in the most masterly fas.h.i.+on, to the infuriation of Ess.e.x.

Good Lord Howard patches up the matter, and the hot-headed c.o.xcomb is once more pacified. They go on to Graciosa, where Ess.e.x's weakness of will again comes out, and he does not take the island. Three rich Caracks, however, are picked up. 'Though we shall be little the better for them,' says Raleigh privately to Sir Arthur Gorges, his faithful captain, 'yet I am heartily glad for our General's sake; because they will in great measure give content to her Majesty, so that there may be no repining against this poor Lord for the expense of the voyage.'

Raleigh begins to see that Ess.e.x is only to be pitied; that the voyage is not over likely to end well: but he takes it, in spite of ill-usage, as a kind-hearted man should. Again Ess.e.x makes a fool of himself. They are to steer one way in order to intercept the Plate- fleet. Ess.e.x having agreed to the course pointed out, alters his course on a fancy; then alters it a second time, though the hapless Monson, with the whole Plate-fleet in sight, is hanging out lights, firing guns, and shrieking vainly for the General, who is gone on a new course, in which he might have caught the fleet after all, in spite of his two mistakes, but that he chooses to go a roundabout way instead of a short one; and away goes the whole fleet, save one Carack, which runs itself on sh.o.r.e and burns, and the game is played out and lost.

All want Ess.e.x to go home, as the season is getting late: but the wilful and weak man will linger still, and while he is hovering to the south, Philip's armament has sailed from the Groyne, on the undefended sh.o.r.es of England, and only G.o.d's hand saves us from the effects of Ess.e.x's folly. A third time the Armadas of Spain are overwhelmed by the avenging tempests, and Ess.e.x returns to disgrace, having proved himself at once intemperate and incapable. Even in coming home there is confusion, and Ess.e.x is all but lost on the Bishop and Clerks, by Scilly, in spite of the warnings of Raleigh's sailing-master, 'Old Broadbent,' who is so exasperated at the general stupidity that he wants Raleigh to leave Ess.e.x and his squadron to get out of their own sc.r.a.pe as they can.

Ess.e.x goes off to sulk at Wanstead; but Vere excuses him, and in a few days he comes back, and will needs fight good Lord Howard for being made Earl of Nottingham for his services against the Armada and at Cadiz. Baulked of this, he begins laying the blame of the failure at the Azores on Raleigh. Let the spoilt naughty boy take care; even that 'admirable temper' for which Raleigh is famed may be worn out at last.

These years are Raleigh's noon--stormy enough at best, yet brilliant.

There is a pomp about him, outward and inward, which is terrible to others, dangerous to himself. One has gorgeous glimpses of that grand Durham House of his, with its carvings and its antique marbles, armorial escutcheons, 'beds with green silk hangings and legs like dolphins, overlaid with gold': and the man himself, tall, beautiful, and graceful, perfect alike in body and in mind, walking to and fro, his beautiful wife upon his arm, his n.o.ble boy beside his knee, in his 'white satin doublet, embroidered with pearls, and a great chain of pearls about his neck,' lording it among the lords with an 'awfulness and ascendency above other mortals,' for which men say that 'his naeve is, that he is d.a.m.nable proud'; and no wonder. The reduced squire's younger son has gone forth to conquer the world; and he fancies, poor fool, that he has conquered it, just as it really has conquered him; and he will stand now on his blood and his pedigree (no bad one either), and all the more stiffly because puppies like Lord Oxford, who instead of making their fortunes have squandered them, call him 'jack and upstart,' and make impertinent faces while the Queen is playing the virginals, about 'how when jacks go up, heads go down.' Proud? No wonder if the man be proud! 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have built?' And yet all the while he has the most affecting consciousness that all this is not G.o.d's will, but the will of the flesh; that the house of fame is not the house of G.o.d; that its floor is not the rock of ages, but the sea of gla.s.s mingled with fire, which may crack beneath him any moment, and let the nether flame burst up. He knows that he is living in a splendid lie; that he is not what G.o.d meant him to be. He longs to flee away and be at peace. It is to this period, not to his death- hour, that 'The Lie' belongs; {4} saddest of poems, with its melodious contempt and life-weariness. All is a lie--court, church, statesmen, courtiers, wit and science, town and country, all are shams; the days are evil; the canker is at the root of all things; the old heroes are dying one by one; the Elizabethan age is rotting down, as all human things do, and nothing is left but to bewail with Spenser 'The Ruins of Time'; the glory and virtue which have been-- the greater glory and virtue which might be even now, if men would but arise and repent, and work righteousness, as their fathers did before them. But no. Even to such a world as this he will cling, and flaunt it about as captain of the guard in the Queen's progresses and masques and pageants, with sword-belt studded with diamonds and rubies, or at tournaments, in armour of solid silver, and a gallant train with orange-tawny feathers, provoking Ess.e.x to bring in a far larger train in the same colours, and swallow up Raleigh's pomp in his own, so achieving that famous 'feather triumph' by which he gains little but bad blood and a good jest. For Ess.e.x is no better tilter than he is general; and having 'run very ill' in his orange-tawny, comes next day in green, and runs still worse, and yet is seen to be the same cavalier; whereon a spectator shrewdly observes that he changed his colours 'that it may be reported that there was one in green who ran worse than he in orange-tawny.' But enough of these toys, while G.o.d's handwriting is upon the wall above all heads.

Raleigh knows that the handwriting is there. The spirit which drove him forth to Virginia and Guiana is fallen asleep: but he longs for Sherborne and quiet country life, and escapes thither during Ess.e.x's imprisonment, taking Cecil's son with him, and writes as only he can write about the shepherd's peaceful joys, contrasted with 'courts'

and 'masques' and 'proud towers' -

'Here are no false entrapping baits Too hasty for too hasty fates, Unless it be The fond credulity Of silly fish, that worlding who still look Upon the bait, but never on the hook; Nor envy, unless among The birds, for prize of their sweet song.

'Go! let the diving negro seek For pearls hid in some forlorn creek, We all pearls scorn, Save what the dewy morn Congeals upon some little spire of gra.s.s, Which careless shepherds beat down as they pa.s.s And gold ne'er here appears Save what the yellow Ceres bears.'

Tragic enough are the after scenes of Raleigh's life: but most tragic of all are these scenes of vain-glory, in which he sees the better part, and yet chooses the worse, and pours out his self- discontent in song which proves the fount of delicacy and beauty which lies pure and bright beneath the gaudy artificial crust. What might not this man have been! And he knows that too. The stately rooms of Durham House pall on him, and he delights to hide up in his little study among his books and his chemical experiments, and smoke his silver pipe, and look out on the clear Thames and the green Surrey hills, and dream about Guiana and the Tropics; or to sit in the society of antiquaries with Selden and Cotton, Camden and Stow; or in his own Mermaid Club, with Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, and at last with Shakspeare's self to hear and utter

'Words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.'

Anything to forget the handwriting on the wall, which will not be forgotten. But he will do all the good which he can meanwhile, nevertheless. He will serve G.o.d and Mammon. So complete a man will surely be able to do both. Unfortunately the thing is impossible, as he discovers too late: but he certainly goes as near success in the attempt as ever man did. Everywhere we find him doing justly and loving mercy. Wherever this man steps he leaves his footprint ineffaceably in deeds of benevolence. For one year only, it seems, he is governor of Jersey; yet to this day, it is said, the islanders honour his name, only second to that of Duke Rollo, as their great benefactor, the founder of their Newfoundland trade. In the west country he is 'as a king,' 'with ears and mouth always open to hear and deliver their grievances, feet and hands ready to go and work their redress.' The tin-merchants have become usurers 'of fifty in the hundred.' Raleigh works till he has put down their 'abominable and cut-throat dealing.' There is a burdensome west-country tax on curing fish; Raleigh works till it is revoked. In Parliament he is busy with liberal measures, always before his generation. He puts down a foolish act for compulsory sowing of hemp in a speech on the freedom of labour worthy of the nineteenth century. He argues against raising the subsidy from the three-pound men--'Call you this, Mr. Francis Bacon, par jugum, when a poor man pays as much as a rich?' He is equally rational and spirited against the exportation of ordnance to the enemy; and when the question of abolis.h.i.+ng monopolies is mooted he has his wise word. He too is a monopolist of tin, as Lord Warden of the Stannaries. But he has so wrought as to bring good out of evil; for 'before the granting of his patent, let the price of tin be never so high, the poor workman never had but two s.h.i.+llings a week'; yet now, so has he extended and organised the tin- works, 'that any man who will can find work, be tin at what price soever, and have four s.h.i.+llings a week truly paid . . . Yet if all others may be repealed, I will give my consent as freely to the cancelling of this as any member of this house.' Most of the monopolies were repealed: but we do not find that Raleigh's was among them. Why should it be if its issue was more tin, full work, and double wages? In all things this man approves himself faithful in his generation. His sins are not against man, but against G.o.d; such as the world thinks no sins, and hates them, not from morality, but from envy.