SIR WALTER RALEIGH,

AND HIS HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

AT nearly the fame period of time, but under very different influences, were born, lived, wrote and died, the authors of "Don Quixote" and of "The Hiftory of the World." There were only five years difference between their ages, the great Spaniard having been born in 1547, the great Englishman in 1552; and the latter furvived the former by only a little more than two years, for Cervantes died in comparative poverty and neglect on the 23rd of April, 1616, and Raleigh was executed on the 29th of October, 1618. Thus these two great geniuses were altogether contemporaries. One the greatest child of a nation about to decay; the other a great -but far from being the greatest-child of a nation just about to affert her fupremacy and prove herself a match "against the world in arms." What a glorious period that great Elizabethan age was for a man Great in deed and great in thought. Equal to anything that it is poffible for ftrong men, having a living faith in a living God, to do.

to live in!

The

deeds and works, and men of that epoch are still our boasts and our examples. To them we turn when we want to fee how great it is poffible for men to be. At home, abroad, in the council chamber, on the battle-field, founding new colonies for English enterprise, making wife laws for English protection and defence; writing immortal books, fighting immortal battles-in everything was our land then great. Equal to any task, and doing all things with energy and might. She could hew a coloffus out of a rock, or carve heads upon cherry ftones. Equal to all things, and great in all. Her men were warriors, statesmen, adventurers, philofophers, poets; and her women equalled the mothers of the Gracchi. Then had we the world's greatest poet, our own darling Shakspeare; then had we the world's greatest philofopher, our own wife Bacon; then had we the world's pureft knight of chivalry, our own fpotlefs Sir Philip Sydney; then had we the world's greatest statesman, our own cautious Burleigh; then had we the world's most terrible admiral, our own "fea-dog" Drake; then had we, at the head of a thousand worthy of the immortal fame which they have won, and at the head of a people worthy of fuch leaders, the greatest queen that ever ruled a nation, our own "good Queen Bess." What an age in which to have lived! And amongst them all, and the friend of them all, doing

deeds equal to the bravest, the favoured jewel of the queen, the darling of Spenfer, lived that "imp of fame" the founder of Virginia, importer of tobacco, foldier, sailor, statesman, poet, and author of that notable prison-book the "History of the World."

Walter Raleigh was born at Hayes, in the parish of Budley, Devonshire, in the year 1552. In his fixteenth year he entered the University of Oxford, where he received his education. Anthony Wood fays, "He became commoner of Oriel College in or about the year 1568, when his kinfman C. Champernon studied there, and that his natural parts being strangely advanced by academical learning, under the care of an excellent tutor, he became the ornament of the juniors, and was worthily esteemed a proficient in oratory and philofophy."* His own works are full of confirmation of this proficiency. He did not remain at college more than three years, but his was a nature to make more of three than ordinary students could of any number. He left the University "worthily esteemed a proficient in oratory and philofophy." Lord Bacon, in his

Apophthegms," relates an anecdote of Sir Walter while a student, which we will repeat here. “While Raleigh was a scholar at Oxford, there was a cowardly fellow who happened to be a very good

*

Quoted by Oldys. See Wood's Athenæ Oxonienfes. Bliff's Edition, ii. 235.