the morning. He was no slug: without doubt, had a wonderful waking spirit and great judgment to guide it." Some observations bearing on the same subject occur in the "Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden," January 1619: "That in that paper S. W. Raughly had of the Allegories of the Fayrie Queen, by the Blating Beast the Puritans were understood, by the false Duessa the Q. of Scots." "That Sir W. Raughley esteemed more of fame than conscience. The best wits of England were employed for making his Historie. Ben himself had written a piece to him of the Punick warre, which he altered and set in his booke." "S. W. hath written the life of Queen Elizabeth, of which there is copies extant." References to the discussions on this question will be found in Hannah's notes, pp. 229, 231. The theory of a Ralegh "impersonation" which I have submitted as regards these poems derives further support from evidence of literary assistance given by Bacon to Ralegh in his advocacy of the colonisation of Guiana in 1596. Having lost the Queen's favour through his marriage, and becoming restless in retirement, Ralegh turned his thoughts again to Western discovery, and in 1595 he took out an expedition to Trinidad and explored part of the Orinoco. On his return to England he published, in 1596, an account of his voyage under the following title: The Discoverie of the large rich and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the Great and Golden City of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado) And the provinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia and other Countries, with their rivers adjoining. Performed in the yeare 1595 by Sir W. Ralegh Knight, Captaine of her Majesties Guard, Lo-Warden of the Stanneries and her Highnesse Lieutenant general of the Countie of Cornewall. London, 1596. The Introductory Epistle, addressed to Lord Charles Howard and Sir Robert Cecil, is, I believe, largely the work of Bacon. The object is to win the support of the Queen for the undertaking and to soften her heart at the same time towards the disgraced favourite. The style is quite unlike Ralegh's at any period of his life, and the images used-the "dead stock," the "winter of my life"—are those of the poems which I have dealt with above. The following extracts will sufficiently enable the reader to judge of the style and contents of the epistle : ... The trial that I had of both your loves, when I was left of all but of malice and revenge. In my more happie times as I did especially honour you both, so I found that your loves sought me out in the darkest shadow of adversity. . . . It is true that my errors were great, for they have yeelded verie greevous effects, and if ought might have been deserved in former times to have counterpoysed any part of offences, the frute thereof (as it seemeth) was long before fallen from the tree, and the dead stocke only remained. I did therefore, even in the winter of my life, undertake these travels, fitter for boies less blasted with misfortunes. . . . If I had known another way to win, if I had imagined how greater adventures might have regained, if I could conceive what further meanes I might yet use, but even to appease so powerfull displeasure, I would not doubt but for one yeare more to hold fast my soule in my teeth, til it were performed. . . . I have been accompanyed with many sorrows, with labour, hunger, heat, sicknes and peril: It appeareth notwithstand that I made no other bravado of going to sea, then was ment, and that I was neither hidden in cornwell or elsewhere, as was supposed. They have grosly belied me, that forejudged that I wolde rather become a servant to the Spanish king then return. . . . From myselfe I have deserved no thankes, for I am returned a begger and withered .. [and he proceeds to declare the riches of the countries visited]. W. R. Ralegh's book appears to have failed to excite the interest in his projects which he hoped for. Also he had many enemies, and he was attacked for publishing gross fabrications as to the wealth and natural features of the countries about which he had written. It was even said that he had not been there at all. At this stage another pamphlet appears to have been written, which was first printed in 1848 by Sir Robert Schomburgk in his edition of Ralegh's Discovery of Guiana of 1596. Of this pamphlet Schomburgk writes as follows: Ralegh continued for some time after his return from Guiana in an apparent state of banishment from court; but we learn from a letter of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney that he lived in great splendour about London. . . . To this period seems to belong a document, which, though extremely curious, has hitherto been known only in manuscript. It bears the simple title "Of the voyage for Guiana," and is preserved among the MSS. of Sir Hans Sloane in the library of the British Museum. Although anonymous, it bears so many internal evidences that we cannot doubt as to its being the production of Sir Walter Ralegh. . . . From the statement in the last sentence I dissent. The style is quite unlike that of Ralegh, being involuted, copious and allusive, whereas Ralegh's is brief, simple and direct. It contains an argument to meet scruples which evidently prevailed in England at that time, similar to that in the anonymous account of Sir H. Gilbert's Newfoundland voyage of 1583 (see Chapter XII.), as to the lawfulness for a Christian people to take possession of the country of native infidels. Among other reasons given (illustrated by Biblical analogies) for the occupation of Guiana occurs the following: "beside that presently it will stopp the mouthes of the Romish Catholickes, who vaunt of theyr great adventures for the propogacion of the gospell," and the writer adds that it will add greate increase of honor, to the memory of her Majesties name upon earth to all posterity and in the end bee rewarded with an excellent starlike splendency in the heavens, which is reserved for them that turne many to righteousnes, as the Prophet speaketh. Instances occur of that overwhelming accumulation of ideas which is so noticeable a feature in the writings of Bacon and Shakespeare alike. Thus in a passage on the cruelties of the Spaniards perpetrated on the natives we find the following: . . . who would not bee persuaded that now at length the great judge of the world, hath heard the sighes, grones, lamentacions, teares, and bloud of so many millions of innocent men, women and children aflicted, robbed, reviled, branded with hot irons, roasted, dismembred, mangled, stabbed, whipped, racked, scalded with hott oyle, suet, and hogs-grease, put to the strapado, ripped alive, beheaded in sport, drowned, dashed against the rocks, famished, devoured by mastifes, burned and by infinite crueltyes consumed. . . . There is nothing remotely resembling this, either in style or substance, in the Discovery, which seems evidently a narrative by Ralegh himself; nor, so far as I am able to discover, in any of Ralegh's other prose works. may be noted also that in this piece the significant phrase occurs, “in my simple judgment." It Schomburgk remarks that "it is evident from the dedication and the address to the reader, prefixed to the publication of his voyage, that the intelligence which Ralegh brought of his discovery did not raise the interest which he expected. Many of the statements contained in this remarkable production were treated as fabulous, and his recommendation to secure the possession of these fertile regions to England as chimerical." In these circumstances what could be more natural than that Ralegh, being a man of action, and distrusting the advocacy of his own pen, which at that period he had had little occasion to exercise, should have had recourse to the services of Bacon, and that the latter should have written this short treatise in support of Ralegh's enterprise? Owing to an insincerity of tone, and the use made of the religious motive, the document is not altogether pleasant reading. I have drawn attention to the same feature in the discourse about the Gilbert enterprise of 1583. Ralegh's exaggerations probably proceeded, to some extent, from the sanguine nature of his temperament. He was also credulous after the manner of the age, and I think Schomburgk is right when he says: "In a general sense we have little doubt he fully believed the existence of these riches at a period when the most learned were still given to credulity; and that Ralegh possessed a great share of it is proved by his History of the World, where we find sober discussions whether paradise was in the moon, and whether the ark was lighted by a carbuncle." Bacon himself was not emancipated from such fantastic beliefs, as may be seen from sundry passages in his works. Perhaps as good an instance as any is the following, from a draft of a speech on a rumour as to the existence of a party of "undertakers" for the King in Parliament in 1614. He informs the House of Commons, apparently in good faith, that "it is like the birds of Paradise that they have in the Indies that have no feet; and therefore they never light upon any place, but the wind carries. them away and such a thing do I take this rumour to be." 1 As to the fabulous stories in the Discovery, which Shakespeare glances at in the experiences of Othello: the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads it is to be observed that, though Ralegh professes to believe them, he does not report them as of his own knowledge, but bases them on the testimony of the natives: Next unto Arui there are two rivers Atoica and Caora, and on that braunch which is called Caora are a nation of people, whose heads appeare not above their shoulders, which though it may be thought a meere fable, yet for mine owne parte I am resolued it is true, because every child in the prouinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirme the same: they are called Ewaipanoma: they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts, and that a long train of haire groweth backward betwen their shoulders. 1 Spedding, Life, v. 43. |