Raleigh
Excerpts from
Development of English Literature and Language
by
Alfred H. Welsh
 
Style Easy, vigorous, elevated, as a whole; seldom low, never affected; often ornate, with an antique richness of imagery; showing, when most careful, the artificial structure of Sidney and Hooker. In poetry, simple, sweet, melodious and strong. Spenser called him 'the summer's nightingale.'
Rank In that brilliant constellation of the great which adorned his period, one of the most distinguished of those who added eminence in letters to eminence in action. ... He is the pioneer in the department of dignified historical writing, and, could he have tamed the wild fire of his erratic dreams, would have won a foremost place among the famous poets of his day.
Character A genius versatile as ambitious. What strikes us most forcible is has restless and capacious intellect, -- his various efficiency, and his prompt aptitude for whatever absorbed him at the moment; his superabundant physical and mental vitality, which displays itself equally in literature and in action ... With vision of the moral heights, he could creep in crooked politics, or intrigue in deep labyrinths, and was adept in the arts of bribery and of flattery ... His principal defect, even when his ends were patriotic and noble, was unscrupulousness as to the means ... It was his fate to make headway through subtle and plotting factions.

It was in misfortune, after all, that his noble self was asserted, -- never more grandly than when, the night before he was beheaded, he wrote:

Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!
Dauntless in life, reflection had taught him how to die. On the scaffold, after vindicating his conduct in a manly speech to the spectators, he desired to see the axe. When the headsman hesitated, he said: 'I pray the, let me see it; dost thou think that I am afraid of it?' -- As he ran his fingers over its keen edge, he smilingly remarked: "This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases.' When he had extended himself for the stroke, he was requested to turn his head. 'So the heart be right,' he replied, 'it is no matter which way the head lieth.' 
Influence He contributed to that passion for adventure and discovery which gave at this period an unusual impetus to the mind of man ... this restless spirit, who seemed, in his ceaseless occupations, to have lived only for his own age and his own pleasure, was the true servant of posterity, who hail him also as one of the founders of literature. Had his life been devoted to letters instead of a variety of pursuits, his success would have been brilliant and lasting; his writings, no longer now a living force, would have been a perennial power. A universal genius is not likely to reach eminent and enduring excellence in anything. The beams of a thousands suns will not fire the softest piece of timber when radiating freely. 

 
 

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