THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



to see such a company together again, when need is.* 

 They were a cheerful race; and, as Drake says, when 

 they were blessed with some little comfortable dew of 

 heaven, some crowns, or some reasonable booties, they 

 would take good heart again, although they were half 



i^^ . dead. Last of all, and among: the most characteristic 



Gentlemen . ° 



Adventurers, figures of the Elizabethan age, there are the gentlemen 

 adventurers, the ambitious courtiers like Essex, the 

 single-minded warriors, like Grenville, the spendthrift 

 sons of fortune, like Cavendish, to whom the world 

 was their oyster, which with their sword they must 

 open. Never was there a set of men worse adapted 

 for the sober business of establishing a colony, or 

 governing a subject race ; yet they too were servants 

 of the Empire, and cleared a way for those who came 

 after them. Long generations of training and many 

 hard blows were needed before the British race learned 

 those lessons of justice and tact and tolerance which 

 every Civil Servant in India must have by heart, now 

 that the round world is mapped and settled. Whatever 

 their faults, these Elizabethans bear the stamp of the 

 heroic age; they lived in an illimitable world, and had 

 nothing about them of tame civility. They are arrogant, 

 excessive, indomitable, inquisitive, madmen in resolution, 

 and children at heart. The great fight of the Revenge 

 was undertaken against all the rules of orthodox naval 



5ir Richard tactics, and in defiance of common sense. Its hero, 

 says Linschoten, ' was of so hard a complexion, that 

 as he continued among the Spanish captains, while 

 they were at dinner or supper with him, he would 

 carouse three or four glasses of wine, and in a bravery 

 take the glasses between his teeth and crash them in 



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