LITERARY SPECTATOR.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.*

THE name of RALEIGH is familiar to Englishmen as a household word; yet few, we believe, have studied his character unless in the pages of HUME or in SCOTT'S tale of Kenilworth. Mrs. THOMSON is entitled to the thanks of the reading public for placing before them, in her plain and unvarnished narrative, an account at once authentic and spirit-stirring, of the life and times of the great author of the History of the World—the companion of HOWARD of Effingham and of DRAKE on the ocean, of NORRIS and of the brave and headlong ESSEX on the land, the patron of SPENCER, the friend of SYDNEY, the favoured Knight of ELIZABETH, and the victim of her degenerate successor.

The story is not new, yet some of our readers may be pleased to retrace with us a few of the lines of this busy life of daring adven- ture and extraordinary vicissitude. The family of RALEIGH boasted its descent from royalty, through ROBERT Of Gloucester, natural S011 Of HENRY BEAUCLERC. None of its branches, during its long and honourable course, had been ennobled ; but the title of Knight, which several of them had borne, was not in those days, as in ours, lowered by the numbers or the obscurity of those on whom it was bestowed. WALTER was born in the parish of Buddy, in the county of Dev'on, at the farm of Hayes, which was at the time rented by his father. The family was at his birth in a very low condition ;_ of all the property it once possessed, one estate only remained. The mother of RALEIGH 'had been twice married, and she was the third partner of his father. By her first husband she was the mother of Sir JOHN, Sir HUM- PHREY, and Sir ADRIAN GILBERT. Of the first two we had occa- sion to speak in a recent Number, in an account of Captain MOORSOM'S Notes on Nova Scotia.t By her second marriage, she had three children, CAREW, WALTER, and a daughter named MARGARET. Of the childhood of RALEIGH no memorials remain. At sixteen years of age he was entered a Fellow Commoner of the two colleges of Oriel and Christ's Church, at Oxford; where he remained three years ; after which he resided for some time in the Middle Temple, though it is doubtful if he ever were enrolled as a student. Under the command of HENRY CHAMPERNON, his maternal uncle, and with the permission of ELIZABETH, he led into France a company of volunteers to the assistance of the Queen of Navarre and the Protestant Princes. He was present at the battle of Montoncour, in Poitou ; and it is supposed that he must also have witnessed the horrors of St. Bartholomew, though he has not in his works left any notice of that atrocity. In 1575, being then in his twenty-third year, RALErosreturned to England. Some time afterwards, he resumed his military career under Sir JOHN NORRIS, then engaged in aiding the Dutch in their successful struggle against the tyranny of PHILIP. In 1578, he once more visited home ; and in the same year he accompanied his half-brother, Sir HUMPHREY GILBERT, a man of congenial temper, in his first expedition to America. The scheme, which was one of discovery and colonization, was unsuccessful; and RALEIGH, on his return, directed his attention to another and less distant field of operations. Sir HUMPHREY had enjoyed under ELIZABETH a command in Ireland, and for several years had been engaged in attempts to reduce to peace the Irish without the Pale. - In this service RALEIGH was employed, having received a commission under Lord GREY DE WILTON, a man who sullied his not indif- ferent abilities by very great cruelty. PHILIP, the lover, and af- terwards the implacable enemy of ELIZABETH, was then engaged in an attempt to dissever Ireland from England, in which he was favoured by the Catholic part of the population ; and some of his troops occupied Smerwich, in Kerry. RALEIGH surprised a party of the rebels at Rathkele, and took a number of prisoners, the whole of whom he hanged without mercy. He afterwards took a prominent part in the siege of Smerwich, or, as the foreigners had baptized it, Del Oro ; and the murder of a lame portion of the garrison, in the teeth of a surrender which should have secured at least their lives, was perpetrated by the troops under his com- mand. It does not indeed appear that RALEIGH ever allowed any suggestions of merey to interfere with his duty to his supe- riors; and it was a strange retribution, that he at last fell a victim to a manufactured charge of treason. In Ireland RALEIGH remained until 1582, when the principal rebels being subdued, he returned to London. He was then in his thirtieth year, and pos- sessed many of those qualities that in the court of Elizabeth

• Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Raleigh; with some account of the period in which be lived. By Mrs. A. T. Thomson, Author oft' Memoirs of the Court of Henry VIII." London, 1830. t We may here notice, by the by, a ridiculous misprint In that account. We stated that Captain Moorsom was not the first that had observed that a very low temperature might be safely endured when there was no wind. The wordfirst was printed fool. formed the surest recommendation to Royal &VOW.: His pmt was noble and intelligent, the symmetry of his form was perfect, and m stature he rose to the majestic. These gifts of Nature were

set off by a dress that was remarkable in those days of profusion

its ts splen. dour and elegance ; and indeed his love of costly array, even late in life, led to some ridiculous rivalry between him

and the more youthful and therefore more engaging Earl of

ESSEX: His first personal introduction to ELIZABETH has been emhelhshed by SCOTT, but the story of the cloak is not without tradition to support it. The accident of his introduction his con- nexions enabled him effectually to improve. By the friendship of

SYDNEY he obtained the patronage of the all-powerful Earl of LEICESTER ; and he was at the same time fortunate enough to se- cure the interest of HUNSDON, Earl of. Sussex, whom ELIZABETH loved to play off against that favourite, lest her undivided notice might have rendered him more presuming than suited her dignity and his duty. In June 1583, RALEIGH embarked on another expedition to America, with his brother, Sir HUMPHREY GILBERT, which was even more unfortunate than the first ; for, on their return, the brave leader, with all the crew of the vessel in which he sailed, perished in a gale of wind. In a third expedition in which he engaged, RALEIGH founded a colony inVirg,inia ; which languished long in neglect and poverty, notwithstanding the powerful assistance of its founder, and which, for all the treasure that he lavished on it, brought him no other reward than the ho- nour of knighthood, bestowed on him by his frugal mistress on his return. In 1586, a more substantial mark of her favour was given him in the shape of a patent for licensing the selling of wines ; and in the same year he was appointed Seneschal of the counties of Cornwall and Devon, and Lord Warden of the Stannaiies, and received a grant of forfeited lands, which he afterwards sold to the Earl of CORK, in the counties of Cork and Waterford. It was from the colony of Virginia that tobacco was first procured ; LANE, the governor of the infant colony, who came to England with DRAKE, on the return of the latter from the conquest of St. Domingo, introduced it. The plant, of

which a curious notice is given in the Appendix to these Memoirs, was first grown in this .country in 1570, and it

continued to be cultivated in Yorkshire until the statute for its suppression was passed. ELIZABETH on one occasion betted that RALEIGH could not weigh the smoke that escaped from his pipe ; a bet which the Knight very ingeniously won, by comparing the weight of the tobacco with the weight of its ashes. The Queen

laughed while she paid her wager, and exclaimed, that she had often heard of men who turned their gold into smoke, but had never before seen any one who could turn his smoke into gold. In 1589, RALEIGH was honourably joined with the brave HOWARD of Effingham, "born to save and serve his country," DRAKE, FRO- BISHER, and other gallant spirits, by whom the attack of the famous Armada was repelled ; and in the same year he was engaged With DRAKE and NORRIS, his old companions in arms, in defending Don Awromo of Portugal against the usurpations of the Spanish monarch. On his return, he paid a visit to his friend SPENCER, who was then living in Ireland, in poverty and obscurity, at a di- lapidated mansion formerly belonging to the DE SMONDS. RALE' on brought SPENCER to England ; but his interest was exerted in vain for the amiable poet, who died in a few years afterwards, of a bruised spirit, in misery and dependence. The same zeal for learning tempted him at greater hazard to interpose in behalf of UDALL, who had been condemned to die for a libel on the clergy, and who actually perished in prison for that offence. For this, and for his opposition to a most iniquitous bill by which banishment was proposed to be inflicted on every one that was three months absent from public worship, the zealots of the day upbraided RA- LEIGH as an atheist ! In 1599, he fell under the displeasure of the Queen, because of the seduction of ELIZABETH THROG- MORTON, one of her ladies of honour. For this "brutish offence" he was for some months confined in the Tower ; but on his many- ing the lady, and making every submission, he was again restored to favour. The wife to whom he had thus somewhat irregularly united his fortunes, proved one of the best and most faithful and affectionate of partners. She outlived her husband twenty-nine years, honouring his memory by a tender and steady zeal for his fair fame, and devoting her days and her nights to the education of her children and to the most unceasing care for their prosperity. In 1506, RALEIGH sailed under the command of ESSEX (whose superiority he did not easily brook) in the expedition to Cadiz,. where he behaved with consummate gallantry ; although he re- turned in pain and poverty, having, as he says, reaped nothing but a lame leg and empty honour. His leg had been fractured by a splinter, and from injudicious treatment it was ever afterwards much deformed; a misfortune more deplored, perhaps, by one who was vain of his fine figure, than any other misfortune that could have befallen him. 'The expedition to Guiana, undertaken on RALEIGH'S suggestion, and in which he was the chief commander, followed the siege of Cadiz : an account of it was published on his return, which still remains a singular monument of his credulity or of his love of exaggeration. ne also accompanied ESSEX in his island expedition ; in which he captured the town of Fayal, while his commander was accidentally absent, greatly to the offence of that personage, whose anger, though soon .appeased, threatened at first rather serious consequences.

It is more pleasing, however, to contemplate such minds as that of RALEIGH in scenes that may be supposed congenial to them, than amidst the strife and turmoil of war, where coarse and

vulgar spirits are equally if not better qualified to shine. Of the Society of Antiquarians, formed by Archbishop PARKER in 1572, RALEIGH was a zealous member, until its frequent meetings roused the jealousy of a suspicious Government, and led to its dissolution. These meetings were held in Derby House, now the Heralds' Office ; and among its members it reckoned some of the greatest as well as most memorable names in English history,—the elder BURLEIGH, HERBERT, the author of Arcadia, STOW, CAMDEN, COTTON, HOOKER, SPELMAN, and last but not least, RALEIGH. COTTON is well known as the most indefatigable and successful of collectors ; and the MS. library that he left for the guidance of succeeding historians, even in the imperfect and mutilated state in which it now appears,* is the proudest boast of our national Mu- seum. While he joined in the graver pursuits, RALEIGH was not insensible to the charms of the gay departments of literature. The celebrated club in Friday Street, which exhibited a galaxy of names such as no preceding age nor any that has followed has paralleled, —SHAKSPE ARE, BEAUMONT, FLETCHER, DONNE, JONSON, CA- REW,—was of his institution. The nodes eceneeque Deorum that the Mermaid afforded, have been celebrated by JONSON in verses that are well known and often quoted ; and FULLER has illus- trated the "wit combattes" that passed between him and his great rival, with equal felicity and truth, by a simile drawn from the history of the day.

We are now come to the period of RALEIGH'S history when his sun of prosperity began to pale towards that total eclipse which de- prived the kingdom of his eminent services, and at length, by an act of injustice, in which, that it might lack no possible aggrava- tion, law, no less than national honour, was outrageously violated, put an end to his life. But the trial of RALEIGH and his condem- nation, the brutality of COKE, the hypocritical tears of CECIL, and the unrelenting hate with which JAMES, after the lapse of years, followed up the judgment which the blustering of the one ruffian and the whining of the other had so unrighteously compassed, are matter of public rather than of private history.

• Were we to judge of RALEIGH'S character from his fortunes, we should incline to the opinion that he was more fitted to com- mand admiration than to win affection. His nature was not gentle, as his Irish campaigns too well showed ; and he has been charged with an over-eagerness to advance his fortunes, which re- ceives considerable countenance from many of his actions. Yet his patronage of the Virginian colony was generous to profusion, and his kindness to SPENCER and others does not bespeak an ava- ricious mind.

One concluding observation we may be indulged in. Every additional perusal of the events of times gone by, but serves to strengthen in us our attachment to the times in which we live. We have no longer such an array of literary giants as the reign of ELIZABETH and the first years of JAMES could display; but we may well dispense with mighty names in exchange for the sub- stantial goods of freedom and security that we the humbler spirits of modem times are permitted to enjoy. We have our Attorney- Generals, -that require bridling, and our statutes, that want amend- ing; but the practice of our officiaries and the principle of our laws fall as far short of the atrocities of either, in those "golden days" to which the unenlightened look back with regret, as the last melodrame falls short of the Tempest, or the Literary Union, of the Mermaid Club.

The Appendix to Mrs. Taceesosis work, in addition to a curious treatise on tobacco, to which we have already alluded, con- tains a considerable number of hitherto unpublished letters, gleaned from that exhaustless source of historical information, the State Paper Office. They are curious, and cast considerable light on some points of RALEIGH'S history. The whole volume does the fair author much credit, as a work of great labour and research successfully prosecuted.

• The house in which the Cottonian MSS. were then kept was burnt down in 1751; When 111 books were wholly destroyed, and 99 much damaged.