Ralegh's efforts to avert complete ruin—True greatness—Keeps in touch with life—First two years—The history—The first sentence—Reasons for incompleteness—James's dislike of the work—Its greatness.

Such things happened in actual life at the beginning of the seventeenth century. There was the same fantastic blending in life of melodrama and farce and poetry as was shown upon the stage. Beaumont and Fletcher, wild and exaggerated as they often appear, gave as faithful a picture of the life around them as Bernard Shaw gives of modern life; and in some ways they gave a more faithful picture, for they had no principle which they desired to inculcate, and a principle, though it is a fine stimulant, is apt to be a sad distortioner. There exactly lies the salient point of contrast between that century and modern times. Life then was confined and intense—with limitless possibilities. The pageant passed compact, and yet in gorgeous disarray. Art was informed by its positive spirit; glowed with animation at its touch. Life has become vast and voluminous; its horizon seems limited, as though for a time it had outgrown its strength, and was sprawling. The pageant crawls by in its interminable length, and yet in dully determined order. Art lives by battling against its dreadful hold—the hold that slowly fastens and stifles with its long, persistent tentacles. The apathy of convention gradually settled, like an obscuring mist, but new knowledge is scattering the mist like a wind, and knowledge brings new responsibilities and fresh life and fresh light. The sun peers through the clouds, and the sun will lend warmth and colour to the pageant.

But such things happened at the beginning of the seventeenth century in actual life. That farce at the scaffold was the first manifestation that King James gave in England of his royal power.

Ralegh was taken from Winchester to the Tower on December 16. His future life was now dreadfully apparent to him. His lot was confinement. But not yet was his indomitable spirit of life dead. Crushed he felt and pinioned, but still he was obliged to strain every nerve to force all that could be forced from the life that henceforward awaited him. He could not submit in proud, becoming silence, as a fabled hero would undoubtedly have done, and as the code of present honour would have him submit—a code which, it is well to remember, is considerably assisted in its conduct by the press.

The only possibility of living with any pretence of decency lay in the favour of other men, who must on no account be permitted to forget him. It is unwise to praise the work which he accomplished in captivity, and to censure him for employing the only possible means in his power to get that work accomplished.

Again he put all his strength into the only task left him, and he succeeded in saving something from the ruin of his estates and the complete curtailment of his liberty, by renewed supplication. Being a man of vivid imagination, he entered so completely into the part which was forced upon him—the part of supplicator—that his letters are the letters of the broken man that he wished to appear, and that his future work proved conclusively he was not. How little his spirit was broken is seen from the tremendous work which he undertook, and from the personal influence which he continued to exercise, and which his imprisonment did not seem to lessen. The scope of his activity was limited, but his activity did not abate.

His letters of supplication throw a light upon the nature of a great man. They show something of that strange quality which men call greatness. Ralegh was not a little man magnified by position or circumstances. He was a great man. Not in success is greatness apparent, not in attainment, but in effort, in vitality, in power of feeling and in control—but essentially in power of feeling. That power broke even the barrier of Ralegh's immense self-control—for a time only.

A great man does not walk exalted, like some demi-god to whom all things are easy; he knows dismay, he knows weakness, and all the legion of infirmities, but in spite of all, he wrests from life what life must yield him.

Ralegh had lost the Governorship of Jersey, the Patent of the Wine Office, the Wardenship of the Stannaries, the Rangership of Gillingham Forest, and the Lieutenancy of Portland Castle, from which together he drew an income of £3000 a year; men to whom he owed money fastened upon his estate at Sherborne. It was to save Sherborne from them that he did his utmost. Lord Cecil came to his assistance: "A secound effect of your Lordship's great favor was the preservation of my moveabells, which the ravenus Sherifs were in hand to have seised, and att my gates to have rifled, if your Lordship's letters had not then cum to have countermanded it; which it also pleased yow, soon after, to procure me."

But Ralegh's possession of Sherborne was temporary and uncertain. He tried to save it entirely from the ruin of his fortune, that his wife and children might have a place in which to live. On this subject he writes continually to Cecil and Lord Cranborne. Sorrow sat by him as he wrote, and for long and long he could not resign himself to the prospect of captivity. "If I had a pardon, I may notwithstanding be restraynd or confined. If I may not be here about London (which God caste my sowle into hell if I desire, but to do your Lordship some kind of service) I shalbe most contented to be confined within the Hundred of Sherburn; or if I cannot be allowed so much I shalbe contented to live in Holland, wher, I shall perchance gett some imployment uppon the Indies, or else, if I be apoyncted to any bishope or other gentelman or nobelman, or that your Lordship would lett me keep but a park of yours—which I will buy from some one that hath it—your Lordship shalbe sure that I will never break the order which you shall pleas to undertake for me. And, if I bee any wher nire yow, yow shall find that in sume kind or other I shall do your Lordship service. For God douth know that if I cannot go to the Bathe this fall I am undun, for my health; and shalbe dead, or disabled for ever."

He wrote to Viscount Cranborne, imploring his aid to preserve this remnant of his fortune. "That life which cann be of no use to others and is now also weery of mee, at parting putts mee in mind of thos whom Nature and Charetie commands me not to neglect—a wife and a childe, and a wife with childe, whom, God knowes, have nothing else to inherite then my shame and ther own misery. How to healp it or to whom to complain, I know not, whose fortune is over darck for the reason of the world to peirce.... And while I know that the best of men are but the spoyles of Tyme and certayne images wherwith childish Fortune useth to play—kisse them to-day and break them to-morrow—and therefore can lament in my sealf but a common destiney, yet the pitifull estate of thos who are altogether healpless and who dayly wound my sowle with the memory of their miseries, force mee in despite of all resolvednesse, bothe to bewayle them and labor for them.... For my own tyme, good my Lord consider that it cannot be calde a life, but only misery drawne out and spoone into a long thride without all hope of other end then Death shall provide for mee; who without the healp of kings or frinds, will deliver me out of prison."

The humiliation of his position was forced upon his notice, for little men began to cheat him in little ways, and he could find no redress. The law knew him but as dead. He writes to Levinus Muncke, secretary to Lord Cranborne.... "I solde of late two peeces of ordenance to one Mr. Aloblaster, a marchant, whome you knowe. Hee that made the bargayne between us was one Thomas Scott, a broker,—one that I have done much for in my tyme, and one that, since I came back from Winchester, offred to sell his howse for me, if I wanted, with protestations too shamless to be dissembled. But having gotten my mony into his hands which Mr. Aloblaster sent mee and five pound waight of tobacco, hath sold the tobacco and reteyneth my money; finding mee now fitt for all men to tread on."

The man jackal is more impatient than his animal brother. For nearly two years Ralegh beat against the prison walls, bruising himself, unable to give up hope that some measure of freedom might be his. His health failed. The plague broke out in the Tower. A woman with the plague on her slept in the next room to his eldest son, with only a partition of paper between them. Every trouble and annoyance fell upon him. Indifference could not come to him with its peace of apathy. He continued to live and to resent and to suffer. A weaker man would have broken down, would have given up this horrible struggle for existence against such overwhelming odds. Ralegh did not. And slowly he emerged from the struggle the conqueror even of these circumstances. He found work and worked. At first he obtained permission to turn a little disused hen-house that leant against a wall in the Tower into a laboratory. He made lotions and a medicine, which remained in constant use for very many years after his death. In modern times that alone would have been sufficient to give him the prestige of millions, and probably with a little discreet management, a peerage.

Few men have turned necessity to gain (that is the quality of the warrior in life) so greatly as Ralegh, such constricting necessity to such glorious gain. By sheer will power he kept in touch with the life, from which he was excluded. He wrote pamphlets on questions that were paramount in interest. His treatise on The Prerogative of Parliaments shows him in the vanguard of the fighters for liberty of thought, before that movement developed into a baser servitude. He wrote arguments against an alliance by marriage with Spain. He wrote at Prince Henry's request a treatise on the building and management of ships. In every sphere his presence was felt. Ladies were eager to use his lotions for the preservation of beauty. His medicine was famous. The Queen sent an urgent messenger to the Tower when the Prince was dying, thinking to save her son's life by its means. But it was too late. The medicine only served to alleviate the agony of his last moments.

So Ralegh gradually came to arrange his life according to its new limitations. And it came about that those years in the Tower were far from being the unhappiest in his life. Ralegh, like his friend Spenser who had died tragically a few years before his imprisonment, knew well the value of Court life; and though he was not cut off from intelligent society as completely in the Tower as Spenser was in Ireland; yet he was cut off from much that had no attraction to Spenser. But in spite of his disgrace, and in spite of the work he desired to do, he must surely have found something of the same peace that comforted Spenser among the savage Irish, before their outbreak took from him his wife and home and all that was dear to him on earth. There is a strange analogy in what life offered to the two men. Lady Ralegh was allowed to visit and stay with her husband, until she offended Waad, who had become governor, by driving into the courtyard of the Tower in her carriage. Then the privilege was curtailed. Ralegh had many visitors. Men who had returned from travels came to tell him their experiences; men who were starting on some voyage, came to ask his advice and listen to his counsel. Ben Jonson visited him, and other scholars and poets. Certainly gossiping cheery Coryat, who amused himself by walking through all countries of the world, would come and recount his experiences. The Odcombian leg stretcher, as he liked to call himself, was hail-fellow-well-met with every man in London and in the principal cities of Europe. A sort of standing amiable joke was Tom of Odcombe. "There is no man but to enjoy his company would neglect anything but business."

For two years he turned in prison as in a cage. Then he began to live. His mind expanded beyond the limits of body and his discomfort and of himself. Some sort of expression must be found for his mind's activity, and his means of expression were limited. As health came to him while he worked in his laboratory the proper expression for his mind's activity evolved itself. During the months of his retreat in Ireland, in his cabin as he made his way across the silent sea, he had read deeply and thought deeply about the past; in his active life at the Court and elsewhere he had known men who made history, and he had taken part in events which were history. He had seen and conversed with men whom civilization had not touched, he had known men of every country whom civilization had shaped to its culminating point; and now as he lived in the Tower- from which he could see the ships sailing down the Thames to the unknown lands, from which he could look down upon the busy men of London, slowly there formed itself in his great mind a project. The project was to write the history of the whole great world, from which he was now cut off, from its very beginnings down to the days in which he was living, aloof from the life around. He determined to write the History of the World. That was the proper expression for his great mind's activity. He felt unconsciously that in so doing he could express himself. He set to work. He felt he had the grip of everything from the creation of the world to his own birth and tempestuous life of more than fifty years. We have burrowed more deeply into the mystery of things than the great Elizabethan, as sublimely unaware of his ignorance, as we are of ours; he had complete confidence in his knowledge. We hesitate, we feel always on the brink of some great discovery, to which acquired knowledge is leading us. He explored continents, feeling limitless possibilities of the earth; and doubted not about the spiritual world. We know the limits of the earth; and explore these spiritual worlds, the mystery of existence. Therein lies the difference between two ages; therein without a boast, lies the progress, even, which has happened in the last three hundred years of man's existence. The adventurous whom the Unknown attracts are not drawn to explore the earth's surface; they turn towards the mystery of their own souls from which comes much profitless self-searching and a little eternal gain; they turn towards the mysteries of life and death and birth; they try to unravel the skein which men were then living tempestuously to entangle.

So Ralegh began his great work, greatly conceived and greatly executed, in the very spirit of the age to which he belonged—the age of Elizabeth, and to which King James's little favourites, Car and the rest, could never belong. Shut away from the bustle of the court and its splendour, now sinking to ignoble display; shut away from the voice of the nation, singing after the nation's deeds, as it had never sung before and has not sung since, he dreamed his great dream and found peace as he forced it to take shape and reality to his vision. From the creation of the world to the death of his own great Queen Elizabeth—everything that was—that was his subject; nothing less could satisfy him. He set the huge machinery of his idea slowly to work. His authorities were vast in number. He searched them all, and began to write. As he wrote the first sentences, he felt the world lay before his ken, outstretched with all its strange happenings, the rise and the fall of dynasties, the rise and fall of kingdoms and nations. All were within his knowledge and grip. And above he saw the God, who had called the world into existence, and man into being. About that God he writes his first paragraph, untroubled by any simian suspicions. The immense power of the man overawes you as you begin his tremendous task. That is the first impression, and the impression thrills, as every supreme evidence of man's power must. Then you realize that his whole vision of the world is wrong—is a myth, and you see the futility of man's power—that is the second impression. The two are singularly vivid; they clash splendidly—and the issue? You see limitless possibilities of life for the brave man and the strong man, as they only can be seen, when two ideas—two sincerities—have clashed splendidly.

"And on through brave wars waged."

One is feign to cry out, when the dream of things has passed.

The first sentence of the History should be read aloud with a great voice in a cathedral.

"God, whom the wisest men acknowledge to be a Power uneffable and vertue infinite, a Light by abundant charitie invisible; an Understanding which itself can only comprehend, an essence eternal and spiritual, of absolute purenesse and simplicitie; was and is pleased to make himself knowne by the work of the World: in the wonderful magnitude whereof (all which Hee imbraceth, filleth, and sustayneth) we behold the Image of that glorie which cannot be measured, and withall that one and yet universal Nature, which cannot be defined. In the glorious Lights of Heaven, we perceive a shadow of his divine Countenance; in his mercifull provision for all that live, his manifold goodness, and lastly in creating and making existent the World universall, by the absolute Arte of his owne Word, his Power and Almightinesse; which Power Light Vertue Wisdome and Goodnesse, being all but attributes of one simple Essence and one God, we in all admire, and in part discern, per speculam creaturaram, that is in the disposition, order, and varietie of Celestiall and Terrestriall bodies: Terrestriall, in their strange and manifold diversities: Celestiall in their beautie and magnitude; which in their continuall and contrary motions are neither repugnant, intermixt nor confounded. By these potent effects we approch to the knowledge of the Omnipotent cause, and by these motions, their Almightie mover."

The History is based upon a fallacy; but the History is written in great prose—the prose of Ralegh. Even when the subject comes from remote authorities on antedeluvian epochs, it is shaped and filled with perpetual life by contact with the great living personality of Ralegh. Error in life or art matters little. It is vitality that matters.

Mr. Edmund Gosse remarks that "the entire absence of humour is characteristic.... The story of Periander's burning the clothes of the women closes with a jest; there is, perhaps, no other occasion on which the solemn historian is detected with a smile upon his lips." The remark is almost as astounding as that of Mr. Edwards, who, after a careful summary of the History, is obliged to say, "The three or four thousand pages of the History of the World contain, I believe, no line or word within which there lies the tiniest spark of prurient suggestion." Mr. Edwards is, of course, pleased at this; but there is no reason for Mr. Gosse's lament. Ralegh did not write with the continual bubble of humour which makes the Church History of Great Britain (of all impossible subjects) endeavoured by that inimitable old Thomas Fuller, one of the wittiest and most readable books in the language. Humour constantly occurs. Two instances in one paragraph are quite unforgetable. It is the fourth paragraph of the twenty-third chapter of the second book of the first part of the History (what portentous dimensions the book has!).

"Touching all that was said before of Phul Belosus, for the proving that Phul and Belosus were not sundry Kings, Joseph Scaliger pities their ignorance that have spent their labour to little purpose. Honest and painefull men he confesseth that they were, who by their diligence might have won the good liking of their Readers had they not by mentioning Annius his Authors given such offence that men refused thereupon to reade their Bookes and Chronologies. A short answere.

"For mine owne part, howsoever, I believe nothing that Annius his Berosus, Metasthenes, and others of that stampe affirme, in respect of their bare authority; yet am I not so squeamish, but that I can well enough digest a good Booke, though I finde the wordes of one or two of these good fellows alleaged in it: I have (somewhat peradventure too often) already spoken my mind of Annius, his Authors.... Neither indeed are those honest and painfull men (as Scaliger tearmes them, meaning if I mistake him not; good silly fellowes) who set down the Assyrian Kings from Pul forwards as Lords also of Babylon, taking Pul for Belosus and Salmanassar for Nabonassar, such writers as a man should be ashamed or unwilling to reade."

In such a passage even a student of Ralegh can see not only his lips smile, but his eyes twinkle with humour, which is a characteristic of their solemn historian. And he ends the paragraph by recounting a singularly pertinent and amusing jest.

"Therefore the fictions (or let them be called conjectures) painted in Maps doe serve only to mislead such discoverers as rashly beleeve them; drawing upon the publishers eyther some angry curses or well deserved scorne.... To which purpose I remember a pretie jest of Don Pedro de Sarmiento, a worthy Spanish Gentleman who had been employed by his King in planting a Colonie upon the Streights of Magellan; for when I asked him being then my Prisoner, some question about an Island in those Streights which me thought, might have done eyther benefit or displeasure to his enterprise, he told me merrily that it was to be called the Painters Wives Island; saying That whilest the fellow drew that Map, his Wife sitting by, desired to put in one Countrey for her; that she, in imagination might have an island of her owne. But in filling up the blankes of old Histories, wee need not be so scrupulous. For it is not to be feared that time should runne backward, and by restoring the things themselves to knowledge, make our conjectures appeare ridiculous...."

But the great work was never brought to an end. The first immense half of it, however, was finished, and that half is equal in bulk to about thirty modern novels. Many traditions survive as to the reason which caused Ralegh to discontinue his task. One is that Burr, the publisher, complained of the loss which the production of the first folio involved, and that Ralegh instantly laid hands on the heap of manuscript which lay on the table before him and, laying it on the fire, pushed it deep into the red embers with his foot, saying that no man should be the loser through his work. Another is (and this commends itself to the imagination of M. Anatole France) that Ralegh saw from his window two men fighting in the courtyard below; that he asked the cause of the quarrel and that, when two eye-witnesses gave him two essentially different accounts, he was so overcome with the mystery that must ever surround all truth, that he thereupon destroyed the remaining manuscript of his History. These stories are interesting but not authentic enough to carry any weight against the reason which Ralegh himself gives for leaving his work unfinished, though they may possibly be reckoned among the discouragements which he mentions. For these are his words:

"Lastly whereas this book by the title it hath, calls itselfe, The first part of Generall Historie of the World, implying a Second and Third Volume; which I also intended and have hewne out; besides many other discouragements perswading my silence; it hath pleased God to take that glorious Prince out of the world, to whom they were directed, whose unspeakable and never enough lamented losse hath taught mee to say with Job Versa est in luctum Cithara mea, et Organum meum in vocem flentium."

James did not like the History. He did not consider that Ralegh bated his breath sufficiently when writing of kings, who obtained their power, in his opinion, directly from a divine source. And he went farther in his dislike. For into what Ralegh had written of kings and men, long dead, he read criticisms against himself and his favourites; and these he could ill brook. James, like most cruel men, was sensitive, but he was "sensitive within alone, Inly only thrilling shrewd;" where others were concerned, he was, as is seen in his treatment of Ralegh, hard, "scaly as in clefts of pine."

James had no real cause to do this. Certain it is that Ralegh never consciously committed the offence. But certain it also is that he, like any other writer of his calibre, would write with greater feeling the account of some happening or some character, with which the circumstances of his own life brought into sympathy. And exactly because his life and his knowledge of men was profound and varied, his history gains in vitality. For always he keeps his relation in contact with life—that is of course to say, his own experience of life—by which each man is limited—and never does his work degenerate into a mere recital of facts. Only when he is weighing authority against authority is he lifeless, and almost necessarily lifeless, but even then—witness the passage quoted a little earlier in this chapter—he is not often dull.

All through the length of the history, passage after passage of deep wisdom and insight occur, so that his work is still a comment upon that greatest and most enthralling of all mysteries—life.

CHAPTER XVIII