BOOKS.
THE ELIZABETHAN VOYAGERS.*
PROFESSOR RALEIGH was well advised to issue in separate form his introduction to the latest edition of Hakluyt, for it takes rank with Froude's essay as one of the best modern appreciations of the great age of English adventure. Hakluyt is "the silent man seated in the dark corner," who listens to the tales of returning voyagers, cross-examines them, and writes the result faithfully down, conscious that in his own way he is working to the same end. A serious and scientific Empire-builder, there is scarcely one constructive idea of modern Imperialism which we cannot find in his volumes. He belonged to "that stalwart race of clerics who, next to the Kingdom of Heaven, love a fight " ; but it was not merely the adventure which caught his fancy, for commerce, colonisation, geography, scientific seamanship, all enter into his survey. It was a merciful fate which sent England such a chronicler, for no chapter in her history is better worth remembering than that tale of how she first turned her eyes east and west, and found a new ideal for her race. The instinct may be traced far back into the Middle Ages in the search for that Earthly Paradise where the golden age still lingered, in the quest of Cathay, and in the strange tales of Prester John. In the sixteenth century the discoveries of Columbus and Da Gama had made it a practical policy, in which missionary enterprise, gold-seeking, geographical curiosity, colonisation, and the European balance of power were all intermingled. "There is no land uninhabitable," wrote Master Robert Thorne with magnificent confidence, "nor sea innavigable." England, forestalled in the easier routes by the nations of Southern Europe, began by trying wild new methods. Willoughby and Chancelor tried the North-Eastern Passage, and, if they failed in their main object, opened up a trade with Russia. Frobisher, Gilbert, and John Davis attempted the North- Western Passage without better success, though their efforts had the merit of turning the nation's gaze westward. New ways being impossible, it remained only to contest the old ways with Spain, and the age of exalted piracy succeeded that of exploration. Many strange elements were conjoined in the aims of the adventurers. Religion played a park—the desire to show some proselytising record among savage peoples to vie with the resounding achievements of Spain, though the parsons who accompanied the voyages were not usually shining vessels. A new outlet for trade was the main motive, and the old lust of treasure-hunting. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was the first to formulate the idea of colonisation, and in his famous Discourse he lays down many sound principles. The mistake was that the men selected were too much the riff-raff of England instead of the flower, and that the management of the enterprise fell often into the wrong hands. Had Sir Philip Sidney led the Virginian expedition in 1585 all might have been well, but the task was entrusted to Sir Richard Grenville, who preferred to carry fire and a sword rather than peace.
Whatever the chief motive, there is no doubt about the magnitude of the achievement. The adventurers were mainly pirates, not aided or recognised by the State, but at the same time not unduly interfered with. "The great deeds of Elizabeth's reign," Professor Raleigh says truly, "were most of them unlawfully begotten, and were legitimated when they came of age." Drake is the heroic instance of the profession, —" The Master Thief of the Unknown World," as the people nicknamed him. He learned early in life the lesson that the boldest course was the safest, that it was wiser to singe the King of Spain's beard than to take shots at him from a distance. A great leader of men, his courage only burned more brightly in adversity, and it was when things looked most hopeless that he was most resourceful and dangerous.
* The Emglish Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. By Walter Raleigh, Pro. fessor of English Literature in the University of Oxford. Glasgow: James MneLehose and Sons. [is. 6d. Let.]
He laboured to drive England into war, and in the end he succeeded beyond his dreams. But though Drake stands a head or two taller, he had may colleagues of high stature. They were not sober Empire-makers, the pioneers who first blazed the trail. "But whatever their faults, these Elizabethans bear the stamp of the heroic age ; they lived in an illimitable world, and had nothing about them of tame civility. They are arrogant, excessive, indomitable, inquisitive, madmen in resolution, and children at heart." And the crews were like their masters. The invincible cheerfulness of the British sailor is long-descended. They "ate putrid penguins and drank bilge-water on strange seas," and returned to die of plague or starvation in English sea-ports ; but they had the heart to endure and try again so long as life remained to them. "God send us," said the Lord High Admiral, "to see such a company together again, when need is."
From the Elizabethan adventures came the spirit of Eliza- bethan literature. "That marvellous summer time of the imagination, the Elizabethan age, with all its wealth of flowers and fruit, was the gift to England of the sun that bronzed the faces of the voyagers, and of the winds that carried them to the four quarters of the world." Doubtless it derived much from the past, but the spirit which inspired it was the belief in the tremendous destinies of the future. Other literary renaissances have looked backwards and revived some forgotten cult, but this kept its eyes fixed on the far horizon. It is emphatically a literature of youth and hope, and, like all such literature, it is robustious, undisciplined, scornful of modes and traditions, overflowing with an aggressive vitality. Its main creation, the English romantic drama, scorns the rules of composition, as the adventurers scorned the accepted rules of the sea. The poet writes, not for the indoor critic, but for the community of wayfarers, for "You patrician spirits that refine Your flesh to fire, and issue like a flame On brave endeavours."
Professor Raleigh traces this spirit in the whole confederacy from Marlowe to Shakespeare. In the later plays of Shake- speare he finds the influence of the adventurers in the weari- ness of old institutions which pervades them. "It is easy to believe that the fascinating tales told by the voyagers quickened his longing for a simpler society, and contributed something to his magical descriptions of innocence and kindli- ness, whether in the wizard's cell on the island, or on the shepherd's lawn in Bohemia, or in the cave among the moun- tains of Wales." Like all true poetry, the work of the Elizabethans had its roots in the common life of the people.
It built no exclusive fairy world for itself, for tales as strange as any romancer's could be heard in every ale-house. Their inspiration was not that of a coterie, but of the nation, confident in its destiny, intoxicated with dreams, and burning to outshine the world.
In the greatest of the adventurers the impulses of action and literature are united. Raleigh will never be other than a mystery. His superb ability in many spheres and his measure-
less vitality were those of his age ; but he was no single- hearted adventurer, for his mind turned in upon itself, and he had the,' detachment of the artist and the philosopher. The instinct to create both by deeds and words has rarely been
seen in a more notable degree ; but it is a law of mortality that the two may not flourish together, and therefore all his enterprises are tinged with failure. In prose as noble as his own his namesake has sketched the paradox of his career :—
" He has the insolent imagination of Marlowe, and the profound melancholy of Donne. The mind of man,' he says, in his History of the World, 'hath two ports, the one always frequented by the entrance of manifold vanities; the other desolate and overgrown with grass, by which enter our charitable thoughts and divine contemplations.' Both gates of his mind stood open ; worldly hopes and braggart ambitions crowd and jostle through one entrance, but the monitors of death and eternity meet them, and whisper them in the ear. He schemes elaborately, even while he believes that 'the long day of mankind draweth fast towards an evening, and the world's tragedy and time are near at an end.' The irony of human affairs possesses his contemplation; his thoughts are high and fanciful; he condescends to action, and fails, as all those fail whose work is done stooping. He is proud, sardonic, and aloof. His own boast is true= There is none on the face of the earth that I would be fastened unto.' He takes part with others in no movement, and stakes little or nothing on the strength of human ties. The business of men on this earth seems trivial and insignificant against the vast desert of eternity ; and great deeds alone are worth doing, for they, when they perish, add pomp to the triumph of death and oblivion."
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