10 SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 



should here be told, not for the first time, 

 nothing nowadays is ever told for the 

 first time, but in our own way. A few 

 pages will epitomize the life of this bold, 

 handsome, gallant, honest and honorable, 

 tender and loyal, simple and courage- 

 ous, sixteenth-century gentleman. None 

 braver ever lived, loved, sang, suffered, 

 and died, the best he knew how, than this 

 jewel of a man. No more romantic life 

 has been chronicled than his. 



He was born in the same year with 

 Edmund Spenser, 1552 ; and twelve years 

 before Kit Marlowe and the glorious 

 Shakespeare, both of whom came into the 

 world in 1564. In all the annals of liter- 

 ature, or in all the illimitable worlds of 

 illimitable space, in all the illimitable ages, 

 was there ever, or will there ever be such 

 a quartette gathered under one roof, its 

 one room (the Mermaid's) as that on 

 composed of Raleigh, Spenser, Marlowe, 

 and Shakespeare. 



It was at the Hayes Farm, in Devon. 



