SIR WALTER RALEIGH .

Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh, 18797-1922. Edited by Lady Raleigh. (Methuen. 2 vols. 30s. net) - • ' IT seemed to some, when Sir Walter Raleigh died, that courtesy and grace had died with him. His great height—six feet six inches—was never an embarrassment to himself or to others ; for he carried himself with that .kindly-seeming droop of the head and shoulders which Shelley also had-Las though a being from a' nobler world should Put hithself, naturally and easily, upon the level or lesser men. Indeed, the tact with which he wouldavoid embarrassing any man, no matter how uncouth or ignorant, was a delight to see. No one possessed so thoroughly the 'art of compliment for his CoMplinients were never over stressed, and it was impossible to disbelieve what was so. simply and whole-heartedly spoken. It Was a :never-failing surprise that Sir Walter .was, a pro-. fessor: He was well read in English literature, but till the end he " read for fun." Systematic and wearisome stinlyhe could never submit to, and warned all his pdpils against the hunger for mere facts or the painstaking acquisition of second- hand valuations.We find him the same at the beginning of his career as at the end. In a letter of 1889 he Writes " I lecture in a very.picaroon, jolly beggar; kind Of way, think it wiikes them up. On Crabbe I say : ' Why should "we'abuse Crabbe Y ' He has never done us any harrii haVe none of us read him.! On Keats I am tempted to say We now come to John Keats., It .cjoes not. matter when or where he lived. You have come prepared to put down on paper, for committal to memory, any facts I May-give you concerning his life—and you none' ofyou, I kno*;:have sufficient leisure to read 'his works:. I must aiik you to alter this. The facts, it is true, tell in Examination. But you will none of you be any nearer Heaven ten years hence for having taken a B.A. degree, while for a love and understanding of Keats you may raise yourselvea several inches. Irf any-case, you cannot expect me to give you any facts about his life in one• short. hour. If you waste your time, I am determined not to waste mine.? "

And still in his later years he would try more to stimulate his audience to take interest 'in works of literature than to help them to classify authors and-tendencies or form a systematic basis for judgment. His attitude may well be criticized. It

encouraged a ills-elusive and unballasted kind of- general culture, and a man of ready intelligence would often make a better show of small materials than he-deserved to make: And, while it was possible under the - old examinations system to " get- up " questions of fact that would' almost certainly occur in the papers, it threatened to become possible under the more humanistic system to " get up " the examiner's tastes, to cul- tivate a light and, well-mannered style, and to write what' would be sure to' please him. Nevertheless Sir Walter must- have wakened many of his pupils into regarding literature as something capable of giving joy, something to be possessed as a country for private explorations and discoveries.- With his courtliness and charm there went also a gently ironic habit of mind, as though nothing were worth a loss- of

Poise and detachment. It was chiefly against himself that his irony was directed. He was never accustomed to treat his soul with great seriousness, and we may imagine that, had he lived in the eighteenth century, he would have prayed to be preserved against enthusiasm as devoutly as any bishop.

He was not given, in our modern fashion, to perpetual self- analysis ; and it probably never occurred to him- to observe how completely his tastes, his views, and his character were typical of the more enlightened and intelligent men of his own age. He passed his youth in days when the credit of religion had been acutely attacked, and his undergraduate con- temporaries, civilized and rational as they were, interested ten lees in beliefs as curious but quite intelligible super- stitions. Raleigh's own temper made him more sympathetic and tolerant, and obviously he would have hated to offend a sincere believer. He was very critical of shams or vulgarities in religion, and he could recount from his own experience many stories 'of absurdity :—

" Once a religious'reformer got thousands of followers in Central • Indiaa missionary had been at work on him and he accepted the whole body of Christian doctrine, making it into a new creed, by the addition of two tenets, (1) that he himself was the second incarnation (2) that the Cow was 'good and worthy to be venerated."

Christianity he respected, but he thought it unlikely that so much of philosophidal hiiportance should have attached itself to a native of so remote and unimportant a region as Palestine. This -was in his youth : many _years later he would discuss .

wittily and, in some degree, illuminatingly-, whether it was possible to be at once a Christian and a gebtlemark ; and he

would decide, on the whole, that' the two attitudes Could not be reconciled.

The tenor of his literary views was not less obviously. derived. He greW up to -regard the Romantics and the

Elizabethans - unquestioningly the true and ' only type Of

poet. He writes toa 'friend laic& see any other vated.youth of hiS time writing in the kinne fashion) I challenge anyone to produce two lines-of poetry from Crabbe: But-then -I am perhaps out of court ; - for• I cannot conceive how a question ever arose as to whether Eiiiiinienpoet, or how a definition of poetry that is not a much better definition of almost. anything

else could bis invented to his works." '—

This outlook, broadened a little and mellowed a little, re-. mained with him. His books of criticism give us flashes of insight. They are written with a divine smoothness and point. But energy and originality were not strong in him. He affords us the utmost enchantment of an alert and civilized mind, but

he found no new values ; he. was not; himself creative.

His qualities came out most lovably in his personal relations ; and his letters are full of his charm. He writes nonsense or sense as the whim takes him: - One time he will write in Cockney, another in Scotch, and a third in Elizabethan English. His spirit is alway4 awake to oddities and vivid scenes ; he puts no check upon his impressions.. Now we have , an apophthegm full of his own ironic wit : Sometimes I feel, inclined to believe that Vulgarity= is the facility whereby we appreciate social distinctions." Now we have a laughable incident, or a subtle criticism of sonic author, new or old.' And the mark of his excellence as a lettei-writer is this that to each correspondent he speaks in a special and•different and intimate way,- and yet to- all of them he writes with the same happy adventurousness and the same consideration and charm.