The English Voyages 

 of the Sixteenth Century 



By Walter Raleigh 



' 'T^HE great prose epic of the modern English The Epic 



-^ nation ' is itself but an incident or episode in a y^^l^. 

 greater and wider world-drama. The discovery and 

 settlement of America by the western peoples of Europe 

 is the last act in a play which began in the cradle of 

 the Aryans and which unrolls its vast theme leisurely, 

 observing none of the unities. In this historical pageant 

 the hero is often changed ; one nation after another 

 presses to the front and draws to itself the eyes of all 

 spectators ; one after another falls from its pre-eminence 

 and yields its place to a new-comer. For many ages 

 the light which permits us to follow the fortunes of 

 humanity is focussed on the Mediterranean ; we witness 

 the struggle of conflicting civilisations, the rise and fall 

 of the monarchies of the East, the passionate and lyrical 

 intrusion of the Greek on the slowly unfolding plot, the 

 rivalry of Roman and Phoenician, and the grouping of 

 the actors under the spell of Rome in a towering world- 

 polity. But the group falls asunder almost before it is 

 completed; the interest of the action shifts from the 



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