(Marked ‘Feb. 24th | 1 o’Clock’ and ‘very well read’. Clifford won joint first prize for this paper in the English Declamation competition at Trinity in 1866.)
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Transcript
On the Character of Sir Walter Raleigh.
Walter Raleigh was just twenty-four years old when he sat at breakfast in the Middle Temple, one morning in the year of our Lord a thousand five hundred and seventy six. I want you to look at him with me for a little while. For himself, he sits fairly upright; his build by nature is of good style, and it has marks of external training which proclaim the soldier. He sits facing the window, which looks down upon the rows of chrysanthemums, and beyond them to the Thames. On the walls hang arms and armour; the former have tasted blood, the latter the dint of steel. Yet it does not appear that the occupant of those rooms had no thought but for the battle. There are books; the books which found favour with Oxford and Cambridge then; not after all so very different from the books which find favour with Oxford and Cambridge now. I do not remember them all; there were Horace, and Ovid, and Virgil, and the like, all mingled strangely with the stars and the four elements, the forgotten lore of our forefathers, which we will not believe in. And there was North’s Plutarch, that wonderful book of heroes, with the leaves of the life of Cæsar much bethumbed and befingered, as if he who had read therein was apt now and then to forget that he was reading, and to muse. Nor yet have we seen the whole; in a little recess on his right hand there hung a crucifix against the wall; and near it—strange mixture—were a cloak and boots and sword that seemed to have been cast off hurriedly and without care. And this led me to look more narrowly upon the soldier’s face; where were signs not easily to be mistaken, in the eye, the rough brow, the languid and ill-contented look. Indeed, Raleigh was not exactly happy that day; and he shewed it.
But I have forgotten to mention that he had two companions. One was big, strong, and burly, somewhat like himself in body; with a massive jaw and fierce cruel eyes. The other was more slight and gentle of seeming; his face was kindly, and would force you to love and obey. For indeed he seemed the incarnation of mighty world-wide power, a spirit made to rule the hearts of men, to fill vast realms of moral space. Not so the first; his was the one brute will, as the strength of an unicorn, which ever commands present and visible success.
“That was a rare trick of yours, Walter, upon Master Charles Chester last night. I shall laugh till I die at the way he tried to open his mouth, when you had fastened his chin to his upper lip. Would that the whole community of fools were served so. Aha, these are great times for the soldier, truly. The world is all in an uproar; every man’s hand is against every man, and the weakest goes to the wall. Ay, and there is gold too to be had for the having; El Dorado is the right of the strongest. Make your way here, man; be but a good soldier of fortune, and gather like spirits around you; then will we away to the West, and be successful. Condé and Coligni were good schoolmaster enough; but they knew their own interests too well to be profitable servants. Is not the battle to the strongest, there as here? Does not the big boy always get the better of the little boy? And you and I, Raleigh, we are big boys; only let us play hard, and we are sure to win. Just think how great it will be to beat that crafty Spaniard at his own weapons! He has all the gold and the power now; but how did he get it? Exactly in the way I want you to take it from him. What is his right to the Indies? Just this; that he is stronger than all these puny men who cannot keep him back. If then we are stronger than he, we shall have the greater right. Fight, man, for gold and glory; and the devil take the hindmost.”
His sharp cruel eyes looked at Raleigh for a moment with an expression of the most intense affection, the most urgent entreaty; and Raleigh’s own seemed to answer with a sympathetic gleam. But he turned round and looked enquiringly at the youth on the other side of the table.
“It seems to me, Raleigh,” said he, “that when we went to France with Champernon, to fight under Condé for the rights of Navarre, we did so because it was the right cause:”—
“And a great deal we got by it,” interrupted the other. “Remember that day when we took shelter in Walsingham’s house, when the streets were full of the shrieks of the dying, and every hour brought in more and more of the widowed and the fatherless, crying to God and to us for safety and revenge. Remember that when you talk about the Right Cause. That’s what we get by it. To the true soldier one cause is as good as another, provided it turns out well.”
“Not to the soldier of God.” Here the big man began to wince a little. “It is surely happier to fail, nay, to die, on the side of the righteous, than to ride victorious at the head of the ungodly. Not now, but far away in the future, is the victory of good; he who would do right now must look for failure, visible, seeming failure, that he may share in the glorious triumph bye and bye. Who would not rather be the meanest that fell on that day in the streets of Paris, than Charles the Tenth {1} upon his bloody throne? Let us fight to conquer the Spaniard, the oppressor of mankind; not to wrest his gold from him, not to win from him at the sword’s point the sovereignty of the Indies; but to vindicate law and right upon the earth, to succour the poor from his oppressor, and the needy from him that spoileth him. The cause that we fought for was the cause of God, and every right cause is the same. There is only one battle upon the earth, now and ever; that battle is the fight between good and evil. The powers of evil ride on exulting in their strength, and seem to conquer; far greater and nobler is the victory which is won by the slain and the captive. All through Europe and the world the oppressor is gathering together his forces to the battle, that he may hush for ever the voice of justice and mercy, the voice that sings “Excelsior!” from the summit of the mount of God.”
He stopped for a moment; the big man was uneasy, and Ralegh looked puzzled. The expression of his face seemed to say “That is all very true, and in fact I knew it before; but I don’t exactly see how it bears upon the present case.” And the other, who had apparently taken advantage of this moment to consider a little, went on.
“Ralegh, you know very well that you are a great bully, and a coward. You are exceedingly conceited because you can write verses. Altogether, you are not an estimable kind of man.” Here he paused again.
“It is true that you have fought bravely. Did you do it yourself, or did you get the strength from outside? You have been merciful and gentle. You know how that was. You have written good words, which many shall feed upon hereafter. They were not your own words. O Prophet of the Lord, betray not your inspiration to the Evil One! Here is your true crusade, clear, definite, unmistakeable. Deus id vult!”
II.
Sixteen years went by. Sixteen years; a century to the life of a cabbage; a day, to the life of an oak.
Sir Walter Raleigh was walking in the gardens of Whitehall. He was certainly changed; yet not much; you could not help thinking that the man was wider. His appearance was toned down, more polished than before; his look more settled and satisfied. He wore a cloak which had once been brave and splendid; now it was much the worse for wear; the inside of it was stained with London mud, and yet he seemed to carry it proudly. But again he was not alone; a lady walked beside him, whose like you have all seen once, perhaps twice; not often. Her eyes were of that colour which the Greeks ascribed to Athênê; not that I can define either precisely, for they seem different to different men; but I am quite sure that that colour is not blue. Of the other features, nothing more can be said than that they were not beautiful. Not, that is, if you took each separately; for grave faults could be found in all. And yet no mortal man had ever denied that she was beautiful, nor do I. And Raleigh seemed to be of the same opinion with all the rest; for though every now and again his painter’s eye would rest critically upon a fault which seemed just then to spoil the entire effect, yet some sudden expression would light up the whole into radiant harmony, and the critical spirit would make way for unreserved worship, the natural right of all that is true and beautiful.
“You are a stranger to me, Sir Walter; I have not seen you for three days.”
“The queen’s business has been urgent of late.” He seemed to speak abstractedly, and to be thinking of something else. The lady was nettled.
“You are so fond of the queen, that I do not believe you care for me at all.”
“Who would not be fond of her?” said Raleigh with enthusiasm. “She is the greatest and best monarch that ever ruled men. Has she not delivered her own people, and many other peoples beside? What glory can compare with that which comes from the protected Flemings, the defeated Armada, the worshipping English? She stands alone with her people, triumphant over tyranny and wrong; and all because she is a right royal and a noble soul. I worship the very ground she treads on.” Here he lifted a certain portion of his cloak, and kissed it.
“That is true, Sir Walter, and I love her also,” said the lady, who seemed strangely satisfied with his reply. “But then, so much of her glory is also your own. It was you that most helped to crush Don John of Austria; you that discovered Virginia, and planted the queen’s name across the sea; you that truly advised, to the great destruction of the Spanish fleet.” And in saying this she blushed a little, as if she had been sounding her own praises. “And yet all this seems to me but a fair beginning. Surely it is not yet time to rest. You, who have done so much, can do much more. Should not the Spaniard be expelled from the Indies, root and branch? Should not El Dorado:—”
But here she stopped suddenly.
Two forms, like those we saw in that chamber in the Middle Temple, had been looking on. Not now in gross human shape, but as great etherial essences, floating like clouds above the sphere of men, unseen, but working. The dark one took great volumes of unhealthy smoke and pestilent vapours of fog and miasma, which rose from the great city, to mix with the pure air of heaven. And these he spread abroad, scowling fiercely the while. Then the bright spirit came and drew them away to the West, towards the setting sun; and there he made with them a glorious sunset, a scene like those which have fired poets and painters and prophets of all kinds in all ages to do honour to the wonderful works of God. The sky swept round from the north, a rosy sea, growing brighter and brighter towards the sun; and there were islands of purple and gold, darker and yet more glorious than the golden sea. And far and far away, long past the islands of purple, long past the islands of gold, beyond the rosy sea itself, there was El Dorado, right in the centre of the sun, glowing with gold, and gold, and gold! But, just above and just below the sea, and just to the south of the sun, there were great black masses of thick darkness, pierced here and there with furnaces of fire and blood, lurid and dreadful. Yet beyond all these was the great blue deep of the ether, looking down calmly on the whole world, clear, but not fathomed.
So Raleigh exclaimed suddenly, “Mistress Throgmorton, what a magnificent sunset!”
III.
Sixteen years more, and the Tower of London. Again Sir Walter Raleigh, and again the lady; she is now no longer Mistress Throgmorton, but Lady Raleigh. And beautiful yet;—you doubt, you smile unbelievingly. Ah then, you know not what true beauty is like; you never saw it, for it seemed to you but tame, and incomplete, and faulty. That material form which you worship for itself, in itself it will die; it contains no promise of a resurrection. Know that God made beauty for the outward and visible sign of the indwelling soul; it is one of the many tongues wherein He inspires men to teach their fellows. And to those who can read that language the beauty of man or woman is the beauty in which they will rise again! No wonder then that it is far above the reach of time; no wonder; for it shall last eternity.
And Raleigh, what of him? He bears the marks of those sixteen years, and they are deep marks. But his wounds are all in front. He has chosen the good cause, the cause of present failure, of final and glorious success. That motto which inspired his maiden sword has guided him on and on. Finem det mihi virtus. {2} So the old hero has the marks of his greatness about him; a greatness so vast, so imposing, that it is not even safe to let the crowd gaze upon him, lest they should catch the infection, and become great themselves. “Non sufficit orbis” said the proud Spaniard of his brute dominion, glorying in the plenitude of his material power; how low down he sinks when we weigh him against this mighty soul! Non sufficit orbis; no; the world’s tyrant is too small an enemy for him.
But what made him so great? Was it the expedition to Guiana, that great victory of justice and mercy, that blow to the Spanish power? Or was it the fight at Cadiz, the victory of true valour, the great overthrow of the oppressor? Or was it those years of private glory, when all men spoke well of him at home but those who would have stood immediately in his path? No, it was none of these. It was the long twelve years in the Tower of London; when all his schemes were foiled, when he was getting poorer and poorer every day, when the nation was falling down, down, far away from its high ideal, when the conquered Spaniard was repairing his losses by craft, and was helped by the very monarch who sat upon the English Throne; then, when all things looked blackest, and the evil one began to glory in his triumph and to say “I have conquered in the battle; with mine own arm have I gained this victory, and who is he that shall take it from me?”; then was the soul of Raleigh growing fast and faster to the full and perfect stature of a prophet of the Highest; preparing with painful discipline for that day when at last all hindrances should be overthrown, and he should go forth in freedom of spirit to fight the battle of the Lord.
Well, the twelve years were nearly over, and the refiner’s fire had all but done its work. Raleigh sat by a table, with a pen in his hand; a manuscript lay before him; it was the History of the World. Not finished, indeed; no good work of man ever is finished, for then it would cease to be good. All that we do here is worth only its incompleteness, only its promise of something to follow. So the History of the World was unfinished, and destined to remain so. And Raleigh looked up to his wife, who had watched him musingly as he wrote. “Oh husband,” she said, “I dreamt that you and I and Walter and Carew were all in El Dorado together, and that we sent home a whole shipload of gold for the people.”
I would shew you Raleigh once more; but I have not the eye of the eagle that can look the sun in the face. The battle of good and evil is going on still upon the earth; and it often seems to us as if the righteous side were losing ground. Then it is good for us to remember that the armies which we see with our mortal eyes are not the only combatants that are engaged in the fight; that besides the host of the Syrians, the enemies of Israel, that surround the mount, there is also the unseen army that defends us, so that they are more with us than with them. Ever above the clang of human contest, the hosts of light and darkness are warring in the clouds; nay, rather, in the thickest of the earthly fight. And when any of us is hard pressed, and seemingly at the mercy of the foe; then are we covered by the shields of the immortals, or caught up in a cloudy mist out of the hand of the enemy. In that great army of the twelve legions is the old soldier of England fighting still; from that Dorado does he send fine gold to his people who are still in the old country; now, more than ever, is that glorious motto true, Non sufficit orbis.
“But,” some will say, “that scene in the Tower was not the end of his life; you cannot reconcile this with what came afterwards.”
Know then, all ye who doubt, that the death of the Saints is enveloped in thick darkness, which seems to cover all the earth, and to hide even the face of God. And in this they grope about as blind men for awhile, suffering more than in all their lives before. But for those who have thus suffered there is needed no further purification; for the hour of death draws away the veil of darkness, and frees them to fulfil their glorious destiny. {3}
But what destiny?
Fighting still; on the same side, with the same objects, against the same foes. Now, as then, there is just in front of us a Dorado, meant for the good of all men, the gift of Him Who sends rain upon the just and upon the unjust. The student of science lives in the consciousness that at any moment that may be revealed to him which shall change utterly the whole face of society, and alleviate in an enormous degree the physical miseries of mankind. And now, as then, there is the danger lest that which is meant for the good of all should be perverted into an instrument of evil; lest, after all, the only result should be that another portion of conquered Nature is cursed for the sake of man.
Again: it is just as true now as it was then, that religion is impeded by her golden slippers. The political relations of Christianity have rent Christendom, and thrown doubt upon the Faith; they have furnished a religious pretext for the foulest of crimes.—
Ahi Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,
Non la tua conversion, ma quelta dote
Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!
Let no man think that ecclesiastical oppression is dead, because it has advanced in refinement with the age. It is true that we have emancipated ourselves from the rule of the Western Patriarch; it is also true that we use our independence to define that which Christendom has never defined, and to condemn those whom Christendom has never condemned. The Twelve Legions are fighting hard for the reunion of the Churches; but they are also fighting against tyranny and wrong. Not by their help will that Union be effected, if it is to be nothing else than a conspiracy for the oppression of mankind. If then we want a definite cause, a crusade of righteousness to fight for; let us fight on the side of Raleigh and the Host of Heaven against intolerance and oppression, and brute force; so only shall we be fighting for the Faith, the freedom and the unity of Christians.
+W:K:C:
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Marked at the head in pencil ‘Feb. 24th | 1 o’Clock’. Docketed in pencil ‘Declamation’ and, above, ‘very well spoken’. Note the variation in the spelling of Raleigh’s name.
{1} ‘IXth’ has been added in pencil in the margin.
{2} Followed by ‘“I fight for the right and the true’ struck through in ink, and ‘“True and Righteous is the Issue”’ struck through in pencil.
{3} Followed by a cancelled paragraph, as follows: ‘“But the cause was bad;” say others. Raleigh fought for a false faith, against the Faith of Christ; how then is he a saint?”’