Some Diversions of a Man of Letters | Page 9

was for Raleigh's ship, the Roebuck; it was
by no means for the Madre de Dios. We find these moral
inconsistencies in the mind of the best of adventurers.
A sketch of Raleigh's character would be imperfect indeed if it
contained no word concerning his genius as a coloniser. One of his
main determinations, early in life, was "to discover and conquer
unknown lands, and take possession of them in the Queen's name." We
celebrate in Sir Walter Raleigh one of the most intelligent and
imaginative of the founders of our colonial empire. The English
merchantmen before his time had been satisfied with the determination
to grasp the wealth of the New World as it came home to Spain; it had
not occurred to them to compete with the great rival at the
fountain-head of riches. Even men like Drake and Frobisher had been
content with a policy of forbidding Spain, as the poet Wither said, "to
check our ships from sailing where they please." South America was
already mainly in Spanish hands, but North America was still open to
invasion. It was Raleigh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who first
thought of planting an English settlement in what is now the United
States, in 1578. But Gilbert had "no luck at sea," as Queen Elizabeth
observed, and it was Raleigh who, in 1584, took up the scheme of
colonisation. He did not drop it until the death of Elizabeth, when,
under the east wind of the new régime, the blossom of his colonial
enterprises flagged.

The motion for the ceremony of to-day originated with the authorities
of an important American city, which proudly bears the name of our
adventurer. The earliest settlement in what are now the United States
was made at Roanoke, in Virginia, on a day which must always be
prominent in the annals of civilisation, August 17th, 1585. But this
colony lasted only ten months, and it was not until nearly two years
later that the fourth expedition which Raleigh sent out succeeded in
maintaining a perilous foothold in the new country. This was the little
trembling taper to which his own name was given, the twinkling spark
which is now the flourishing city of Raleigh in North Carolina. We
may well marvel at the pertinacity with which Sir Walter persisted, in
the face of innumerable difficulties, in sending out one colonising fleet
after another, although, contrary to common legend, he himself never
set foot in North America. It was fortunate that at this period of his
career he was wealthy, for the attempts to plant settlements in the vast
region which he named Virginia cost him more than £40,000. We note
at all turns of his fortune his extraordinary tenacity of purpose, which
he illustrated, as though by a motto, in the verses he addressed to a
comrade towards the end of his imprisonment in the Tower:--
"Change not! to change thy fortune 'tis too late; Who with a manly faith
resolves to die May promise to himself a lasting State, Though not so
great, yet free from infamy."
So we may think of him in his prime, as he stood on the Hoe of
Plymouth twenty years before, a gallant figure of a man, bedizened
with precious stones, velvets, and embroidered damasks, shouting his
commands to his captains in a strong Devonshire accent. We think of
him resolutely gazing westward always, with the light of the sea in his
eyes.
We come to the final scene which we are here to-day to commemorate.
Little honour to the rulers of England in 1618 redounds from it, and yet
we may feel that it completed and even redeemed from decay the
character of Raleigh. This tragedy, which was almost a murder, was
needed to round off the accomplishment of so strange and frantic a
career of romantic violence, and to stamp it with meaning. If Raleigh

had been thrown from his horse or had died of the ague in his bed, we
should have been depressed by the squalid circumstances, we should
have been less conscious than we are now of his unbroken
magnanimity. His failures and his excesses had made him unpopular
throughout England, and he was both proud and peevish in his
recognition of the fact. He declared that he was "nothing indebted" to
the world, and again that, "the common people are evil judges of honest
things." But the thirteen years of his imprisonment caused a reaction.
People forgot how troublesome he had been and only recollected his
magnificence. They remembered nothing but that he had spent his
whole energy and fortune in resisting the brutality and avarice of the
Spaniard.
Then came the disgraceful scene of his cross-examination at
Westminster, and the condemnation by his venal judges at the order of
a paltry king. It