Sir Walter Ralegh Part 17

[Sidenote: _Political Disquisitions._]

Physical science did not occupy all his leisure. He wrote much. At different periods of his imprisonment, which cannot be precisely fixed, he composed a variety of treatises. He discussed many questions of politics, theoretical and practical. In his _Prerogative of Parliaments_ he undertook to prove by an elaborate survey of past relations between the Crown and the Legislature, that the royal power gains and does not lose through regular and amicable relations with the House of Commons.

The _Savoy Marriage_ is a demonstrative argument against the proposed double family alliance between Savoy and the House of Stuart. Of that, and of his _Discourse of the Invention of Ships_, his _Observations concerning the Royal Navy and Sea Service_, and the _Letter to Prince Henry on the Model of a Ship_, I have already spoken. He composed _A Discourse on War in General_, which is very sententious. From his notebooks he collected, in his _Arts of the Empire_ and _The Prince_, better known as _Maxims of State_, a series of wise, almost excessively wise, thoughts which had occurred to him in the course of his eager reading. An essay on the _Seat of Government_, and _Observations concerning the Causes of the Magnificency and Opulency of Cities_, show equal exuberance of learning, chiefly cla.s.sical, though they cannot be said to be very conclusive. The former reads as if it had been meant for an introduction to a contemplated ampler view of polity. He must have studied not merely general, but economic politics, if the _Observations touching Trade and Commerce with the Hollander_ _and other Nations_ be by him. That remains a matter of doubt. Both Oldys and a recent German writer ascribe the work, published under five varying t.i.tles, to John Keymer, the Cambridge vintner, who is said to have composed, about 1601, _Observations upon the Dutch Fishery_. Ralegh more commonly has the credit of it. The dissertation, first printed inaccurately, and under a different heading, in 1650, shows minute statistical information, though it propounds, as might be expected, not a few economic fallacies. Its aim is the not very generous one of abstracting the carrying trade from Holland. The author engages, if he should be empowered to inquire officially, to enrich the King's coffers with a couple of millions in two or three years.

[Sidenote: _Moral and Metaphysical Essays._]

Ralegh is alleged to have written on the state, power, and riches of Spain.

He has had attributed to him a _Premonition to Princes; A Dialogue_, in 1609, _between a Jesuit and a Recusant; A Discourse on Spanish Cruelties to Englishmen in Havanna_, and others on the relations of France, England, and Spain, and the meaning of the words Law and Right. He expatiated in the field of practical morals in his celebrated _Instructions to his Son and to Posterity_. The treatise makes an unpleasant impression with its hard, selfish, and somewhat sensual dogmatism. In extenuation it must be recollected that it was addressed to a hot and impetuous youth. He cultivated a taste for metaphysics. _The Sceptic_ and _A Treatise on the Soul_ are exemplifications of it. The former, as it stands, is an apology for 'neither affirming, nor denying, but doubting.' Probably the intention, not carried out, was to have composed an answer in defence of faith. It is affirmed, as matter beyond scepticism, that bees are born of bulls, and wasps of horses. _The Treatise on the Soul_ is a performance of more mark.

The profusion of its learning is enough to prevent surprise, whatever the quant.i.ty of knowledge displayed by the writer elsewhere. It is memorable for a fine burst of indignation at the denial by some men that women possess souls, and for several marvellous subtleties. For instance, the necessity of the theory that man begets soul as well as body, is alleged, since the contrary is said to involve the blasphemous absurdity that G.o.d a.s.sists adultery by having to bestow souls upon its fruits. In the Oxford edition of Ralegh's works, _A Discourse of Tenures which were before the Conquest_ is also included. So versatile was Ralegh that he has thus been a.s.sumed to have even ama.s.sed the lore of a black-letter lawyer. Its authenticity nevertheless does not seem to have been questioned. That of the _Life and Death of Mahomet_ has been, and on very sufficient grounds.

The _Dutiful Advice of a Loving Son to his Aged Father_ falls within a different category. It is not more likely than Steele's counterfeit letter in the _Englishman_ to Prince Henry against the phrase 'G.o.d's Vicegerent,'

or Bolingbroke's attacks, in Ralegh's name, upon Walpole in the _Craftsman Extraordinary_, to have been put forth with any notion that it would be believed to be his. Some editors have supposed it to be a libel upon him by an enemy. Any reader who peruses it dispa.s.sionately will see that it is sufficiently reverent pleading against the postponement of repentance to the hour of death, written by an admirer of Ralegh's style, with no purpose either of ridicule or of imposture.

[Sidenote: _Posthumous Publications._]

Dissertations which were undoubtedly his circulated in ma.n.u.script, and were printed posthumously, if ever. _A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of Azores_, the _Discovery of Guiana_, and the _History of the World_, alone of his many prose writings appeared in his lifetime. The _Prerogative of Parliaments in England_ was not published till 1628, and then first at Middleburg. Milton had the _Arts of Empire_ printed for the first time in 1658, under the t.i.tle of _The Cabinet Council, by the ever-renowned Knight Sir Walter Ralegh_. Dr. Brushfield, in his excellent _Ralegh Bibliography_, suggests that Wood may have meant this essay by the _Aphorisms of State_, to which he alludes as having been published in 1661 by Milton, and as identical with _Maxims of State_. Others of his writings have disappeared altogether. David Lloyd, in his _Observations on the Statesmen and Favourites of England_, published in 1665, states that John Hampden, shortly before the Civil Wars, was at the charge of transcribing 3452 sheets of Ralegh's writing. The published essays with his name attached to them do not nearly account for this vast ma.s.s. It may be suggested as a possible hypothesis that Hampden's collection comprised the ma.n.u.script materials for both parts of the History. Some compositions of his are known to have been lost. That has been the fate of his _Treatise of the West Indies_, mentioned by himself in the dedication of his _Discovery of Guiana_, and also of a _Description of the River of the Amazons_, if it were correctly a.s.signed to him by Wood. Most of all to be regretted, if Jonson or Drummond is to be believed, is the life Jonson, at Hawthornden, alleged 'S.W.', that is, Sir Walter, to have written of Queen Elizabeth, 'of which there are copies extant.' As a writer of prose, no less than as a poet, he had little literary vanity. He wrote for a purpose, and often for one pair of eyes. When the occasion had pa.s.sed he did not care to register the author's t.i.tle.

[Sidenote: _History of the World._]

The weightiness of thought, the enormous scope, the stateliness without pedantry or affectation, and the n.o.bility of style, of one literary product of his imprisonment insured it against any such casualty. Of all the enterprises ever achieved in captivity none can match the _History of the World_. The authors of _Pilgrim's Progress_ and _Don Quixote_ showed more literary genius, and as much elasticity of spirit. Their works did not exact the same constancy and inflexibility of effort. Mr.

Macvey Napier has well said: 'So vast a project betokens a consciousness of intellectual power which cannot but excite admiration.' Ralegh may himself not have commenced by realising the gigantic comprehensiveness of his undertaking. An accepted theory has been that his primary idea was a history of his own country, not of the world. It has been usual to cite a sentence of the preface in proof. The pa.s.sage does not confirm the hypothesis. It runs: 'Beginning with the Creation, I have proceeded with the history of our world; and lastly proposed, some few sallies excepted, to confine my discourse within this our renowned island of Great Britain.' Here is no intimation that he had begun by setting before him for his text English history, and that the history of the world was an enlarged introduction. If his own words are to be believed, his survey of universal antiquity was as much part of his scheme as English history. Only, as he proceeded, the ma.s.s of details would necessarily thicken, and he would be compelled to narrow his inquiries.

Having to choose, he naturally selected the nation which he regarded as the heir of successive empires, a race more valiant than the warriors, whether of Macedon or of Rome. But he distinctly preferred as a historical subject antiquity to recent times. As he says, 'Whosoever in writing a modern history shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth.'

[Sidenote: _Breviary of the History of England._]

It has been conjectured that he had already, before the History received its final shape, experimented on the more contracted or concentrated theme to which he purposed ultimately to devote himself. Archbishop Sancroft possessed a short ma.n.u.script ent.i.tled a _Breviary of the History of England under William the First_. This was printed in 1693 without the Archbishop's consent, under the t.i.tle _An Introduction to the Breviary of the History of England, with the Reign of King William I, ent.i.tled the Conqueror_. Sancroft, a good judge, considered the work in all its parts much like Ralegh's way of writing, and worthy of him.

Though the language is more careless than Ralegh's, and the tone is less elevated, there is a resemblance in the diction. But much importance cannot be attached to a general similarity in the style of compositions belonging to the same age. Sancroft had the ma.n.u.script from an old Presbyterian in Hertfordshire, 'which sort of men were always the more fond of Sir Walter's books because he was under the displeasure of the Court.' Other ma.n.u.script copies also ascribe the authorship to Ralegh.

The book, which shows research, but is not very accurate, is almost identical with the corresponding portion of the poet Samuel Daniel's _Collection of the History of England_, printed in 1618, and entered originally in the Register of the Stationers as a _Breviary of the History of England_. Daniel introduces his narrative with the words: 'For the work itself I can challenge nothing therein, but only the serving, and the observation of necessary circ.u.mstances with inferences.' Ralegh, though it is not very likely, may have given the fragment to Daniel for use in his history. Clearly he had formed a project of writing a history of England himself. In an undated letter from the Tower he asks Sir Robert Cotton to lend him thirteen authors, 'wherein I can read any of our written antiquities, or any old French history, wherein our nation is mentioned, or any else in what language soever.' It is not impossible that the _Breviary_, if in any way it were his, led him on to his gigantic enterprise, which by its expansion, unfortunately or fortunately, usurped all the leisure he had prospectively appropriated to his native annals. But the composition of an elaborate history by him was no accident, though the choice of the particular subject may have been.

[Sidenote: _Studies for the History._]

Whatever the original design, the History in its final shape demanded encyclopaedic research and learning. Necessarily the preparation for it and its composition employed several years. The number is not known.

Ralegh is alleged to have begun to collect and arrange his matter in 1607. The date is purely conjectural. Sir John Pope Hennessy imagines that the preliminary investigations may be traced much farther back.

Ralegh quotes in his book Peter Comestor's _Scholastica Historia_, an abstract of Scripture history, which has been found, with other remnants of an old monastic library, in a recess behind the wainscot of Ralegh's bedroom, next to his study in the house at Youghal. Mr. Samuel Hayman, the historiographer of Youghal, writing in 1852, states that the discovery was made a few years before, and that the books had probably been 'hidden at the period of the Reformation.' Sir John conjectures that Ralegh may have been taking notes from the collection 'for the _opus magnum_ during his frequent Irish exiles.' An objection is that, according to Mr. Hayman, the authority cited by Sir John, Comestor's volume, with its companions, must have been secreted before Ralegh resided at Youghal, and have remained concealed till he had been dead for two centuries. In one sense he had been in training for the enterprise during his whole life; in another the actual work doubtless was accomplished after he felt that he was destined to a long term of imprisonment. He had always been a lover of books. In the midst of his adversities he spared 50 as a contribution towards the establishment of the Bodleian Library. When he was most deeply immersed in affairs he had made time for study. As Aubrey says, probably with complete truth, he was no slug, and was up betimes to read. On every voyage he carried a trunk full of books. During his active life, when business occupied thirteen hours of the twenty-four, he is said by Shirley to have reduced his sleeping hours to five. He was thus able to devote four to study, beside two for conversation. He loved research; and his name is in a list of members of the Society of Antiquaries formed by Archbishop Parker, which, though subsequently dissolved, was the precursor of the present learned body bearing the name. In the Tower he could read without stint. He possessed a fair library. From the company of his books, writes Sir John Harington, he drew more true comfort than ever from his courtly companions in their chiefest bravery.

[Sidenote: _Care for Accuracy._]

Formerly, his reading necessarily had been desultory. For his History it had to be concentrated. He distrusted the exactness of his information, and was willing to accept advice freely. For criticism, Greek, Mosaic, Oriental and remoter antiquities, he consulted the learned Robert Burhill. Hariot had since 1606 been lodging or boarding in the Tower at the charge of the munificent Earl of Northumberland. He, Hues, and Warner were the Earl's 'three magi.' For chronology, mathematics, and geography, Ralegh relied upon him. 'Whenever he scrupled anything in phrase or diction,' he would refer his doubt to that accomplished serjeant-at-law, John Hoskyns or Hoskins. Hoskyns, now remembered, if at all, by some poor little epigrams, belongs to the cla.s.s of paragons of one age, whose excellence later ages have to take on trust. He is described by an admirer as the most ingenious and admired poet of his time. Wotton loved his company. Ben Jonson considered him his 'father'

in literature: ''Twas he that polished me.' In the summer of 1614 he became, in consequence of a speech in the House of Commons, Ralegh's fellow prisoner. He is said to have revised the History before it went to press. Ralegh's intense desire to secure accuracy, his avowal of it, and its notoriety, have given occasion for charges against his t.i.tle to the credit of the total result. Ben Jonson and Algernon Sidney are the only independent authorities for the calumny. But it has been caught up by other writers, especially by Isaac D'Israeli, who seems to have thought charges brought, as Mr. Bolton Corney showed, on the flimsiest evidence, of an impudent a.s.sumption of false literary plumage, in no way inconsistent with fervid admiration for the alleged pretender.

[Sidenote: _Borrowed Learning._]

Ben Jonson was a.s.sociated incidentally in the work. He prefaced it with a set of anonymous verses explanatory of an allegorical frontispiece.

The ma.n.u.script of them was found among his papers. They have always been included in his _Underwoods_. Though the version there differs materially from that prefixed to the History, no reasonable doubt of his authorship of both exists. His omission openly to claim the lines is supposed, not unreasonably, by Mr. Edwards, to have been due to his fear of the prejudice his favour at Court might sustain from an open connexion with a fame so odious there as Ralegh's. But a year after Ralegh's death he boasted over his liquor to civil sneering Drummond at Hawthornden, of other 'considerable' contributions. He had written, he said, 'a piece to him of the Punic War, which Sir Walter altered and set in his book.' In general, the best wits of England were, he a.s.serted, engaged in the production. Algernon Sidney, in his posthumous _Discourses concerning Government_, repeated this insinuation of borrowed plumes of learning. Ralegh, he stated, was 'so well a.s.sisted in his _History of the World_, that an ordinary man with the same helps might have performed the same thing.' This is all bare a.s.sertion, and refuted by the internal evidence of the volume itself, which in its remarkable consistency of style, method and thought, testifies to its emanation from a single mind. Ralegh had himself explained with a manly frankness, which ought to have disarmed suspicion, the extent to which alone he was indebted for a.s.sistance. In his preface he admits he was altogether ignorant of Hebrew. When a Hebrew pa.s.sage did not occur in Arias Monta.n.u.s, or in the Latin character in Sixtus Senensis, he was at a loss. 'Of the rest,' he says, 'I have borrowed the interpretation of some of my learned friends; yet, had I been beholden to neither, yet were it not to be wondered at; having had an eleven years' leisure to attain to the knowledge of that or any other tongue.' As a whole, the History must be recognised as truly his own, his not only in its mult.i.tude of grand thoughts and reflections, but in the narrative and general texture. It cannot be the less his that some of the 660 authors it cites may have been searched for him by a.s.sistants.

[Sidenote: _Period of Publication._]

As early as 1611 he must have settled the scheme, and even the t.i.tle, of the book. On April 15 in that year notice was given in the Registers of the Stationers' Company of '_The History of the World_, written by Sir Walter Rawleighe.' Part may be presumed to have been by that time written, and shown to Prince Henry. Three years pa.s.sed before actual publication. Camden fixes that on March 29, 1614. Though it is almost impossible to think Camden in error, yet, if the story of the perusal of the ma.n.u.script by Serjeant Hoskyns be true, and apply, as has been presumed, to the period of the Serjeant's imprisonment, the publication must have been half a year or more later. The later date would also accord better with a rumour of the suppression of the volume at the beginning of 1615. The publisher was Walter Burre, of the sign of the Crane in St. Paul's Churchyard. Burre published several works for Ben Jonson; and out of that circ.u.mstance has been constructed the statement that Jonson superintended the publication of the History for Ralegh. The form was that of a ma.s.sive folio, at a price vaguely put by Alexander Ross at 'twenty or thirty shillings.' The edition was struck off in two issues, the errata of the first being corrected in the second. None of the extant copies of either issue possess a t.i.tle-page, or contain any mention of the writer's name. The explanation may be the modesty or the pride which had led him habitually to neglect the personal glory of authorship, apprehension of the odium in which his name was held at Court, or a reason which will be mentioned hereafter. There is an engraved frontispiece by Renold Elstracke, the most elaborate of its kind known in English bibliography. A naval battle in the North Atlantic is depicted, and the course of the river Orinoko, with various symbolical figures. Ben Jonson's lines point its application. All the pages of the volume bear the heading, 'The First Part of the History of the World.'

[Sidenote: _Defects._]

[Sidenote: _Merits._]

For modern readers a defect of the work is the learning, which was the wonder and admiration of contemporaries. Since Ralegh's time the historical method, and historical criticism, have been entirely changed.

The ma.s.s of historical evidences has been immensely increased, and their quality is as different as their quant.i.ty. Ralegh had studied the researches of his learned contemporaries. He had expended much thought on the reconciliation of apparent inconsistencies. From the point of view of his own time he was successful. Often he satisfied others better than himself. Thus, he acknowledges with vexation his inability to divide exactly the seventy years of the Jewish captivity among the successive kings of Babylon. Had he been not merely a disciple of the great scholars of his age, but himself a pioneer, his dissertations and conclusions would equally have been drowned in the flood of later knowledge. His information is become superannuated. The metaphysical subtleties which he loved to introduce no longer delight or surprise.

With all this there is much in the work which can never be obsolete, or cease to interest and charm. He himself is always near at hand, sometimes in front. He does not shun to be discerned in the evening of a tempestuous life, crippled with wounds aching and uncured. He does not repress, he hails, opportunities for sallying outside his subject. He is easily tempted to tell of the tactics by which the Armada was vanquished, and how the battle might have had another issue had Howard been misled by malignant fools that found fault. He recollects how he won Fayal. He pauses in his narrative of Alexander's victories to glorify English courage. He does homage to the invincible constancy of Spain, and avows her right to all its rewards, if she would 'but not hinder the like virtue in others.' The story suddenly gleams with flashes of natural eloquence and insight. Nowhere is there stagnation.

His characters are very human, and very dramatic. King Artaxerxes is shown wearing a manly look when half a mile off, till the Greeks, for whom the bravery was not meant, espied his golden eagle, and drew rudely near. Queen Jezebel is visible and audible, with her paint, which more offended the dogs' paunches than her scolding tongue troubled the ears of Jehu, struggling in vain with base grooms, who contumeliously did hale and thrust her. There Demetrius revels, discovering at length in luxurious captivity the happiness he had convulsed the world with travail and bloodshed to attain. Pyrrhus is painted to the life, flying from one adventure to another, which was indeed the disease he had, whereof not long after he died in Argos. Characters are drawn with an astonishing breadth, depth, and decision. Nothing in Tacitus surpa.s.ses the epitaph on Epaminondas, the worthiest man that ever was bred in that nation of Greece. Everywhere are happy expressions, with wisdom beneath.

It is a history for the nurture of virtuous citizens and generous kings, for the confusion of sensuality and selfishness.

[Sidenote: _The Moral._]

The narrative rises and falls with the occasion; it is always bright and apt. Charles James Fox bracketed Bacon, Ralegh, and Hooker, as the three writers of prose who most enriched the English language in the period between 1588 and 1640. The diction of the History establishes Ralegh's t.i.tle to the praise. It is clear, flowing, elastic, and racy, and laudably free, as Hallam has testified, from the affectation and pa.s.sion for conceits, the snare of contemporary historians, preachers, and essayists. If Pope, as Spence represents, rejected Ralegh's works as 'too affected' for one of the foundations of an English dictionary, he must have been talking at random. At all events, he contradicted his own judgment deliberately expressed in authentic verse. For style, for wit, mother wit and Court wit, and for a pervading sense that the reader is in the presence of a sovereign spirit, the _History of the World_ will, to students now as to students of old, vindicate its rank as a cla.s.sic.

But its true grandeur is in the scope of the conception, which exhibits a masque of the Lords of Earth, 'great conquerors, and other troublers of the world,' rioting in their wantonness and savagery, as if Heaven cared not or dared not interpose, yet made to pay in the end to the last farthing of righteous vengeance. They are paraded paying it often in their own persons, wrecked, ruined, humiliated; and always in those of their descendants. At times it has seemed as if G.o.d saw not. In truth 'He is more severe unto cruel tyrants than only to hinder them of their wills.' Israelite judges, a.s.syrian kings, Alexander, the infuriate and insatiable conqueror, May-game monarchs like Darius, Rehoboam with his 'witless parasites,' so unlike wise, merciful, generous King James and his, Antiochus, 'acting and deliberating at once, in the inexplicable desire of repugnancies, which is a disease of great and overswelling fortunes,' Consul aemilius, sacking all innocent Epirus to show his vigour, down to Henry the Eighth, 'pattern of a merciless prince,' none of them escaped without penalties in their households; none elude their condemnation and sentences, sometimes, as in the case of Alexander, it may be deemed, a little too austere, before the tribunal of posterity.

On moves the world's imperial pageant; now slowly and somewhat heavily, through the domain of Scriptural annals, with theological pitfalls at every step for the reputed free-thinker; now, as Greek and Roman confines are reached, with more ease and animation; always under the conduct as if of a Heaven-commissioned teacher with a message to rulers, that no 'cords have ever lasted long but those which have been twisted by love only.' Throughout are found an instinct of the spirit of events and their doers, a sense that they are to be judged as breathing beings, and not as mummies, an affection for n.o.bility of aim and virtuous conduct, a scorn of rapacity, treachery, selfishness, and cruelty, which account better for the rapture of contemporaries, than for the neglect of the _History of the World_ in the present century.

[Sidenote: _Popular Favour._]

It was hailed enthusiastically both by a host of ill.u.s.trious persons and by the general public. The applause rolled thundering on. The work was for Cromwell a library of the cla.s.sics. He recommended it with enthusiasm in a letter to his son Richard. Hampden was a devoted student of it, as of Ralegh's other writings. It was a text-book of Puritans, in whose number, Ralegh says, if the _Dialogue with a Jesuit_ be his, he was reckoned, though unjustly. They had forgotten or forgiven under James his enmity to their old idol Ess.e.x. The admiration of Nonconformists did not deter Churchmen and Cavaliers from extolling it.

Bishop Hall, in his _Consolations_, writes of 'an eminent person, to whose imprisonment we are obliged, besides many philosophical experiments, for that n.o.ble _History of the World_. The Tower reformed the courtier in him.' Montrose fed his boyish fancy upon its pictures of great deeds. Unless for a few prejudiced and narrow minds it, 'the most G.o.d-fearing and G.o.d-seeing history known of among human writings,' as Mr. Kingsley has described it, swept away the old calumny of its author's scepticism. All ranks welcomed it as a cla.s.sic. That Princess Elizabeth made it her travelling companion is proved by the history of the British Museum copy of the 1614 edition, which formed part of her luggage captured by the Spaniards at Prague in 1620, and recovered by the Swedes in 1648. With the King alone it found no favour.

Contemporaries believed that he was jealous of Ralegh's literary ability and fame. Causes rather less base for his distaste for the book may be a.s.signed. Ralegh had endeavoured to guard in his preface against a suspicion that, in speaking of the Past, he pointed at the Present, and taxed the vices of those that are yet living in their persons that are long since dead. He had interspersed encomiums upon his own sovereign, the 'temperate, revengeless, liberal, wise, and just,' though 'he may err.' His doctrine was, as he has written in his _Cabinet Council_, that 'all kings, the bad as well as the good, must be endured' by their subjects. The murder even of tyrants is deprecated, as 'followed by inconveniences worse than civil war.' But posterity he did not think was debarred from judging worthless rulers; and he tried them in his History. In the eyes of James such freedom of speech, especially in Ralegh, was _lese majeste_. An explanation by himself of his ill-will to the book, which has been handed down by Osborn, has an air of verisimilitude. In his _Memoirs on King James_, Osborn relates that 'after much scorn cast upon Ralegh's History, the King, being modestly demanded what fault he found, answered, as one surprised, that Ralegh had spoken irreverently of King Henry the Eighth.' He would be more indignant on his own account than on that of King Henry, against whom, says...o...b..rn, 'none ever exclaimed more than usually himself.' James discovered his own features in the outlined face of Ninias, 'esteemed no man of war at all, but altogether feminine, and subjected to ease and delicacy,' the successor of valiant Queen Semiramis, too laborious a princess, as Ralegh held, to have been vicious.

[Sidenote: _Threatened Suppression._]

Commonly it has been believed that the King's sympathy with his caste provoked him to the monstrosity of an attempt to stifle its censor's volume. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton at Venice on January 5, 1615: 'Sir Walter Ralegh's book is called in by the King's commandment, for divers exceptions, but specially for being too saucy in censuring princes. I hear he takes it much to heart, for he thought he had won his spurs, and pleased the King extraordinarily.' The author of the _Observations on Sanderson's History_ in 1656 writes to the same effect, but somewhat less definitely: 'It is well known King James forbad the book for some pa.s.sages in it which offended the Spaniards, and for being too plain with the faults of princes in his preface.' There is no other evidence, and the majority of Ralegh's biographers have simply accepted the fact on the authority of Chamberlain's a.s.sertion. Yet it is almost incredible that so extreme an act of prerogative, carried out against so remarkable a work, should have been suffered to pa.s.s without popular protests.

Ralegh and his wife never complained; and they were not given to suffering in silence. Copies of the first edition are extant in an abundance which, though not absolutely contradictory to the tale, renders it unlikely. Dr. Brushfield, who has made the history of the publication his especial study, conjectures that a compromise with the royal censorship was effected on the terms that a t.i.tle-page, which he thinks the first, like all subsequent editions, originally contained, should be removed, leaving the volume apparently anonymous. The surmise is ingenious; but it is very hard to believe that such an arrangement, if made, would have excited no discussion. Chamberlain's language, moreover, implies that the book was already in circulation. It would be exceedingly strange if its previous purchasers had the docility to eliminate the t.i.tle-page from their copies, in deference to an order certainly not very emphatically promulgated. The readiest explanation is that Chamberlain, in his haste to give his correspondent early information, reported to him a rumour, and perhaps a threat, upon which James happily had not the hardihood to act.

[Sidenote: _Successive Editions._]

[Sidenote: _Two Fables._]

At all events, the book weathered the storm of royal displeasure, however manifested. A second edition appeared in 1617. Down to the standard Oxford collection of Ralegh's works in 1829, which includes it, eight have been published since. The last folio edition appeared, with a biography by the editor, Oldys, in 1736. Gibbon commends it as the best which had to that time appeared, though it is open to charges of gross carelessness in the printer, and of arbitrary alterations by the editor, to the injury of the sense. The work was popular enough to attract epitomists. Alexander Ross, in 1650, condensed it into his _Marrow of History_, which is rather its dry bones. Philip Ralegh, Sir Walter's grandson, in 1698 printed an abridgment. The _Tubus Historicus_, or _Historical Perspective_, published in 1631, a brief summary of the fortunes of the four great ancient Empires, which bears Ralegh's name on the t.i.tle-page, suggests rather the hand of a book-maker. For half a century from the time of the original issue it was an accepted cla.s.sic.

No folio of the period, it has been said, approached it in circulation.

Its success tempted Alexander Ross to put forth in 1652 a second part, B.C. 160 to A.D. 1640. The popular favour was enough to have encouraged the author to continue his own design. Two explanations of his interruption of it have been invented. For the first, the eldest authority is W. Winstanley's _English Worthies_, published in 1660.

Winstanley, whom Aubrey follows, relates that Ralegh, a few days before his execution, asked Burre how that work of his had sold. So slowly, answered Burre, that it had undone him. Thereupon Ralegh, stepping to his desk, took the other unprinted part of his work into his hand with a sigh, saying 'Ah, my friend, hath the first part undone thee? The second volume shall undo no man; this ungrateful world is unworthy of it.' Then immediately, going to the fireside, he threw it in, and set his foot on it till it was consumed. The story is impossible, if only for the circ.u.mstance that the publication notoriously was not a failure. At the period to which the fable is a.s.signed a second edition had been printed.

So rapid was its sale, furthered, it may be admitted, by the circ.u.mstances of the author's death, that a third edition appeared in 1621. As, moreover, has been with prosaic common sense observed, a ma.n.u.script of some 1000 printed pages would have taken very long to burn.

The other story is still more complicated, and, if possible, more insolently mythical. John Pinkerton, writing under the name of Robert Heron, Esq., in 1785, in his eccentric _Letters on Literature_, is its source. According to him Ralegh, who had just completed the ma.n.u.script of a second volume, looking from his window into a court-yard, saw a man strike an officer near a raised stone. The officer drew his sword, and ran his a.s.sailant through. The man, as he fell, knocked the officer down, and died. His corpse and the stunned officer were carried off.

Next day Ralegh mentioned the affray to a visitor of known probity and honour. His acquaintance informed him he was entirely in error. The seeming officer, he said, a servant of the Spanish Amba.s.sador, struck the first blow. The other s.n.a.t.c.hed out the servant's sword, and with it slew him. A bystander wrested away the sword, and a foreigner in the crowd struck down the murderer, while other foreigners bore off their comrade's body. The narrator, to Ralegh's a.s.surances that he could not be mistaken, since he had witnessed the whole affair as it happened round the stone, replied that neither could he be, for he was the bystander, and on that very stone he had been standing. He showed Ralegh a scratch on the cheek he had received in pulling away the sword. Ralegh did not persist in his version. As soon as his friend was gone, he cast his ma.n.u.script into the fire. If he could not properly estimate an event under his own eyes, he despaired of appreciating human acts done thousands of years before he was born. 'Truth!' he cried, 'I sacrifice to thee.' Pinkerton, whose judgment and veracity were not equal to his learning, led astray both Guizot and Carlyle. Carlyle talks of 'the old story, still a true lesson for us.'

[Sidenote: _The Fact._]

Of the extent to which Ralegh had proceeded in the continuation of his work he had himself informed the public. In his preface he 'forbears to promise a second or third volume, which he intends if the first receives grace and good acceptance; for that which is already done may be thought enough and too much.' At the conclusion he wrote: 'Whereas this book calls itself the first part of the _General History of the World_, implying a second and third volume, which I also intended, and have hewn out; besides many other discouragements persuading my silence, it hath pleased G.o.d to take that glorious prince out of the world, to whom they were directed.' His language points evidently to the collection of 'apparatus for the second volume,' as Aubrey says. It may have comprised very possibly not a few such scattered gems of thought and rich experience as are the glory of the printed volume. A Ralegh Society, should it ever be inst.i.tuted, might have the honour of disinterring and reuniting some of them. No less clearly he indicates that he had not advanced beyond the preliminary processes of inquiry and meditation.

[Sidenote: _The Prerogative of Parliaments._]

The motive for his abandonment at this point of the thorough realization of his plan was probably a combination of disturbing causes, disappointment, hope, and rival occupations. Prince Henry's favour had brought liberty and rest.i.tution very close. With a nature like his the abrupt catastrophe did not benumb; it even stimulated; but it took the flavour out of many of his pursuits. He could no longer indulge in learned ease, and trust for his rehabilitation to spontaneous respect and sympathy. The near breath of freedom had set his nerves throbbing too vehemently for him to be able to settle down, as if for an eternity of literary leisure, to tasks like the _History of the World_, or the _Art of War by Sea_. He began working mines as busily as ever, but in new directions. He sought to make himself recognised as necessary either by the King or by the nation. With the sanguine elasticity which no failures could damp, he tried to storm his way as a politician into the royal confidence a few months after he is said to have experienced as a scholar an effect of the King's invincible prejudice. At some period after May, 1615, he wrote, and dedicated to James, an imaginary dialogue between a Counsellor of State and a Justice of the Peace. Under the t.i.tle of _The Prerogative of Parliaments in England_ it was published first posthumously in 1628, at Middleburg. In his lifetime it circulated in ma.n.u.script copies.

[Sidenote: _Hallam's Misconception._]

A conspicuous instance of the misconceptions of which he was the habitual victim is the view taken of this treatise by Algernon Sidney, and by the judicious and fair-minded Hallam. Its object was to influence the King to call a Parliament. Ralegh's point of view of the royal prerogative was, it must be admitted and remembered, that of a Tudor courtier. It was very different from that which the Long Parliament learnt and taught. But it was liberal for his own day, according to a Tudor standard of liberalism. It was too liberal for the taste of the Court of James. Hallam has caught at some phrases couched in the adulatory style, 'so much,' Hallam allows, 'among the vices of the age, that the want of it pa.s.sed for rudeness.'