ough to have encouraged
the author to continue his own design. Two explanations of his
interruption of it have been invented. For the first, the eldest
authority is W. Winstanley's _English Worthies_, published in 1660.
Winstanley, whom Aubrey follows, relates that Ralegh, a few days before
his execution, asked Burre how that work of his had sold. So slowly,
answered Burre, that it had undone him. Thereupon Ralegh, stepping to
his desk, took the other unprinted part of his work into his hand with a
sigh, saying 'Ah, my friend, hath the first part undone thee? The second
volume shall undo no man; this ungrateful world is unworthy of it.' Then
immediately, going to the fireside, he threw it in, and set his foot on
it till it was consumed. The story is impossible, if only for the
circumstance that the publication notoriously was not a failure. At the
period to which the fable is assigned a second edition had been printed.
So rapid was its sale, furthered, it may be admitted, by the
circumstances of the author's death, that a third edition appeared in
1621. As, moreover, has been with prosaic common sense observed, a
manuscript of some 1000 printed pages would have taken very long to
burn.
The other story is still more complicated, and, if possible, more
insolently mythical. John Pinkerton, writing under the name of Robert
Heron, Esq., in 1785, in his eccentric _Letters on Literature_, is its
source. According to him Ralegh, who had just completed the manuscript
of a second volume, looking from his window into a court-yard, saw a man
strike an officer near a raised stone. The officer drew his sword, and
ran his assailant through. The man, as he fell, knocked the officer
down, and died. His corpse and the stunned officer were carried off.
Next day Ralegh mentioned the affray to a visitor of known probity and
honour. His acquaintance informed him he was entirely in error. The
seeming officer, he said, a servant of the Spanish Ambassador, struck
the first blow. The other snatched out the servant's sword, and with it
slew him. A bystander wrested away the sword, and a foreigner in the
crowd struck down the murderer, while other foreigners bore off their
comrade's body. The narrator, to Ralegh's assurances that he could not
be mistaken, since he had witnessed the whole affair as it happened
round the stone, replied that neither could he be, for he was the
bystander, and on that very stone he had been standing. He showed Ralegh
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