oman
confines are reached, with more ease and animation; always under the
conduct as if of a Heaven-commissioned teacher with a message to rulers,
that no 'cords have ever lasted long but those which have been twisted
by love only.' Throughout are found an instinct of the spirit of events
and their doers, a sense that they are to be judged as breathing beings,
and not as mummies, an affection for nobility of aim and virtuous
conduct, a scorn of rapacity, treachery, selfishness, and cruelty, which
account better for the rapture of contemporaries, than for the neglect
of the _History of the World_ in the present century.

[Sidenote: _Popular Favour._]

It was hailed enthusiastically both by a host of illustrious persons and
by the general public. The applause rolled thundering on. The work was
for Cromwell a library of the classics. He recommended it with
enthusiasm in a letter to his son Richard. Hampden was a devoted student
of it, as of Ralegh's other writings. It was a text-book of Puritans, in
whose number, Ralegh says, if the _Dialogue with a Jesuit_ be his, he
was reckoned, though unjustly. They had forgotten or forgiven under
James his enmity to their old idol Essex. The admiration of
Nonconformists did not deter Churchmen and Cavaliers from extolling it.
Bishop Hall, in his _Consolations_, writes of 'an eminent person, to
whose imprisonment we are obliged, besides many philosophical
experiments, for that noble _History of the World_. The Tower reformed
the courtier in him.' Montrose fed his boyish fancy upon its pictures of
great deeds. Unless for a few prejudiced and narrow minds it, 'the most
God-fearing and God-seeing history known of among human writings,' as
Mr. Kingsley has described it, swept away the old calumny of its
author's scepticism. All ranks welcomed it as a classic. That Princess
Elizabeth made it her travelling companion is proved by the history of
the British Museum copy of the 1614 edition, which formed part of her
luggage captured by the Spaniards at Prague in 1620, and recovered by
the Swedes in 1648. With the King alone it found no favour.
Contemporaries believed that he was jealous of Ralegh's literary ability
and fame. Causes rather less base for his distaste for the book may be
assigned. Ralegh had endeavoured to guard in his preface against a
suspicion that, in speaking of the Past, he pointed at the Present, and
taxed the vices of those that are yet living in their persons that are
l