SECRET HISTORY OF SIR WALTER RAWLEIGH.[66]

Rawleigh exercised in perfection incompatible talents, and his character
connects the opposite extremes of our nature! His "Book of Life," with
its incidents of prosperity and adversity, of glory and humiliation, was
as chequered as the novelist would desire for a tale of fiction. Yet in
this mighty genius there lies an unsuspected disposition, which requires
to be demonstrated, before it is possible to conceive its reality. From
his earliest days, probably by his early reading of the romantic
incidents of the first Spanish adventurers in the New World, he himself
betrayed the genius of an _adventurer_, which prevailed in his character
to the latest; and it often involved him in the practice of mean
artifices and petty deceptions; which appear like folly in the wisdom of
a sage; like ineptitude in the profound views of a politician; like
cowardice in the magnanimity of a hero; and degrade by their littleness
the grandeur of a character which was closed by a splendid death, worthy
the life of the wisest and the greatest of mankind!

The sunshine of his days was in the reign of Elizabeth. From a boy,
always dreaming of romantic conquests (for he was born in an age of
heroism), and formed by nature for the chivalric gallantry of the court
of a maiden queen, from the moment he with such infinite art cast his
rich mantle over the miry spot, his life was a progress of glory. All
about Rawleigh was as splendid as the dress he wore: his female
sovereign, whose eyes loved to dwell on men who might have been fit
subjects for "the Faerie Queene" of Spenser, penurious of reward, only
recompensed her favourites by suffering them to make their own fortunes
on sea and land; and Elizabeth listened to the glowing projects of her
hero, indulging that spirit which could have conquered the world, to
have laid the toy at the feet of the sovereign!

This man, this extraordinary being, who was prodigal of his life and
fortune on the Spanish Main, in the idleness of peace could equally
direct his invention to supply the domestic wants of every-day life, in
his project of "an office for address." Nothing was too high for his
ambition, nor too humble for his genius. Pre-eminent as a military and a
naval commander, as a statesman and a student, Rawleigh was as intent on
forming the character of Prince Henry, as that prince was studious of
moulding his own aspiring qualities by the genius of the frien