THE VOYAGERS 



next reign, to be a monument of the age that was irre- 

 coverably past, and, by his death, to cast a stain (if any- 

 thing so dark and small can take a stain) on the character 

 of James I. Of all the notable Elizabethans, Sir Walter ^^> Salter 

 Raleigh is perhaps the most difficult to understand. He 

 has the insolent imagination of Marlowe, and the pro- 

 found melancholy of Donne. 'The mind of man,' he 

 says in his History of the Worlds ' hath two ports, the one 

 always frequented by the entrance of manifold vanities ; 

 the other desolate and overgrown with grass, by which 

 enter our charitable thoughts and divine contemplations.' 

 Both gates of his mind stood open ; worldly hopes and 

 braggart ambitions crowd and jostle through one entrance, 

 but the monitors of death and eternity meet them, and 

 whisper them in the ear. He schemes elaborately, even 

 while he believes that ' the long day of mankind draweth 

 fast towards an evening, and the world's tragedy and time 

 are near at an end.' The irony of human affairs pos- 

 sesses his contemplation ; his thoughts are high and 

 fanciful ; he condescends to action, and fails, as all those 

 fail whose work is done stooping. He is proud, sardonic, 

 and aloof. His own boast is true — * There is none on 

 the face of the earth that I would be fastened unto.' 

 He takes part with others in no movement, and stakes 

 little or nothing on the strength of human ties. The 

 business of men on this earth seems trivial and insignifi- 

 cant against the vast desert of eternity ; and great deeds 

 alone are worth doing, for they, when they perish, add 

 pomp to the triumph of death and oblivion. 



His political schemes are grandiose and far-reaching: His pride, 

 the mere unfolding of them dwarfs the exploits of more 

 practical men. Has Cavendish gained fame by plun- 



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