the _History of the World_ he speaks of
personally remembering the conduct of the Protestants, immediately after
the death of Conde, at the battle of Jarnac (March 13, 1569). Still more
positively Raleigh says, 'myself was an eye-witness' of the retreat at
Moncontour, on October 3, two days before the arrival of Champernoun. A
provoking obscurity conceals Walter Raleigh from us for the next six or
seven years. When Hakluyt printed his _Voyages_ in 1589 he mentioned
that he himself was five years in France. In a previous dedication he
had reminded Raleigh that the latter had made a longer stay in that
country than himself. Raleigh has therefore been conjectured to have
fought in France for six years, that is to say, until 1575.

During this long and important period we are almost without a glimpse of
him, nor is it anything but fancy which has depicted him as shut up by
Walsingham at the English embassy in Paris on the fatal evening of St.
Bartholomew's. Another cousin of his, Gawen Champernoun, became the
son-in-law and follower of the Huguenot chief, Montgomery, whose murder
on June 26, 1574, may very possibly have put a term to Raleigh's
adventures as a Protestant soldier in France. The allusions to his early
experiences are rare and slight in the _History of the World_, but one
curious passage has often been quoted. In illustration of the way in
which Alexander the Great harassed Bessus, Raleigh mentions that, 'in
the third civil war of France,' he saw certain Catholics, who had
retired to mountain-caves in Languedoc, smoked out of their retreat by
the burning of bundles of straw at the cave's mouth. There has lately
been shown to be no probability in the conjecture, made by several of
his biographers, that he was one of the English volunteers in the Low
Countries who fought in their shirts and drawers at the battle of
Rimenant in August 1578.

On April 15, 1576, the poet Gascoigne, who was a _protege_, of Raleigh's
half-brother, issued his satire in blank verse, entitled _The Steel
Glass_, a little volume which holds an important place in the
development of our poetical literature. To this satire a copy of
eighteen congratulatory verses was prefixed by 'Walter Rawely of the
middle Temple.' These lines are perfunctory and are noticeable only for
their heading 'of the middle Temple.' Raleigh positively tells us that
he never studied law until he found himself a prisoner in the Tower, and
he was probably only a passin