Mermaid Club, with Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, and at last with Shakspeare's self, to hear and utter

'Words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whom they came,
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.'

Anything to forget the hand-writing on the wall, which will not be forgotten.

'

But he will do all the good which he can meanwhile, nevertheless. He will serve God and Mammon. So complete a man will surely be able to do both. Unfortunately the thing is impossible, as he discovers too late; but he certainly goes as near success in the attempt as ever man did. Everywhere we find him doing justly and loving mercy. Wherever this man steps he leaves his foot-print ineffaceably in deeds of benevolence. For one year only, it seems, he is governor of Jersey: yet to this day, it is said, the islanders honour his name, only second to that of Duke Rollo, as their great benefactor, the founder of their Newfoundland trade. In the west country he is as a king,' 'with ears and mouth always open to hear and deliver their grievances, feet and hands ready to go and work their redress.' The tin merchants have become usurers of fifty in the hundred.' Raleigh works till he has put down their 'abominable and cut-throat dealing.' There is a burdensome west-country tax on curing fish; Raleigh works till it is revoked. In parliament he is busy with liberal measures, always before his generation. He puts down a foolish act for compulsory sowing of hemp, in a speech on the freedom of labour worthy of the nineteenth century. He argues against raising the subsidy from the three pound men -'Call you this, Mr. Francis Bacon, par jugum,

when a poor man pays as much as a rich ?' He is equally rational and spirited against the exportation of ordnance to the enemy; and when the question of abolishing monopolies is mooted he has his wise word. He too is a monopolist of tin, as Lord Warden of the Stannaries. But he has so wrought as to bring good out of evil; for 'before the granting of his patent, let the price of tin be never so high, the poor workman never had but two shillings a week ;' yet now, 'so has he extended and organized the tin-works, that any man who will can find work, be tin at what price soever, have four shillings a week truly paid. Yet

if all others may be repealed, I will give my consent as freely to the cancelling of this, as any member of this house.' Most of the monopolies were repealed: but we do not find that Raleigh's was among them. Why should it be if its issue was more tin, and full work, and double wages? In all things this man approves himself faithful in his generation. His sins are not against man, but against God; such as the world thinks no sins; and hates them, not from morality, but from

envy.

In the meanwhile, the evil which, so Spenser had prophesied, only waited Raleigh's death, breaks out in his absence, and Ireland is all aflame with Tyrone's rebellion. Raleigh is sent for. He will not accept the post of Lord Deputy, and go to put it down. Perhaps he does not expect fair play as long as Essex is at home. Perhaps he knows too much of the 'common weal, or rather common woe,' and thinks that what is crooked cannot be made straight. Perhaps he is afraid to lose by absence his ground at court. Would that he had gone, for Ireland's sake and his own. However, it must not be. Ormond is recalled, and Knolles

shall be sent; but Essex will have none but Sir George Carew; whom, Naunton says, he hates, and wishes to oust from court. He and Elizabeth argue

it out. He turns his back on her, and she gives him (or does not give him, for one has found so many of these racy anecdotes vanish on inspection into simple wind, that one believes none of them) a box on the ear; which if she did, she did the most wise, just, and practical thing which she could do with such a puppy. He claps his hand (or does not) to his sword-' He would not have taken it from Henry VIII.,' and is turned out forthwith. In vain Egerton, the lord keeper, tries He storms insanely. Every

to bring him to reason. one on earth is wrong but he; every one is co› Spiring against him; he talks of Solomon's fool' too. Had he read the Proverbs a little more closely, he might have left the said fool alone, as being a too painfully exact likeness of himself. It ends by his being worsted, and Raleigh rising higher than ever. I cannot see why Raleigh should be represented as henceforth becoming Essex 'avowed enemy,' save on the ground that all good men are and ought to be the enemies of bad men, when they see them about to do harm, and to ruin the country. Essex is one of the many persons upon whom this age has lavished a quantity of maudlin sentimentality, which suits oddly enough with its professions of impartiality. But there is an impartiality which ends in utter injustice; which by saying carelessly to every quarrel, 'Both are right, and both are wrong,' leaves only the impression that all men are wrong, and ends by being unjust to every one. So has Elizabeth and Essex's quarrel been treated. There was some evil in Essex; therefore Elizabeth was a fool for liking him. There was some good in Essex; therefore Elizabeth was cruel in punishing him. This is the sort

of slipshod dilemma by which Elizabeth is proved to be wrong, even while Essex is confessed to be wrong too; while the patent facts of the case are, that Elizabeth bore with him as long as she could, and a great deal longer than any one else could. Why Raleigh should be accused of helping to send Essex into Ireland, I do not know. Camden confesses (at the same time that he gives a hint of the kind) that Essex would let no one go but himself. And if this was his humour, one can hardly wonder at Cecil and Raleigh, as well as Elizabeth, bidding the man begone and try his hand at government, and be filled with the fruit of his own devices. He goes; does nothing; or rather worse than nothing; for in addition to the notorious ill-management of the whole matter, we may fairly say that he killed Elizabeth. She never held up her head again after Tyrone's rebellion. Elizabeth still clings to him, changing her mind about him every hour, and at last writes him such a letter as he deserves. He has had power, money, men, such as no one ever had before, why has he done nothing but bring England to shame? He comes home frantically (the story of his bursting into the dressing-room rests on no good authority) with a party of friends at his heels, leaving Ireland to take care of itself. Whatever entertainment he met with from the fond old woman, he met with the coldness which he deserved from Raleigh and Cecil. Who can wonder? What had he done to deserve aught else? But he all but conquers; and Raleigh takes to his bed in consequence, sick of the whole matter; as one would have been inclined to do oneself. He is examined and arraigned; writes a maudlin letter to Elizabeth, of which Mr. Tytler says, that it says little for the heart which could resist it;' another instance of the strange selfcontradictions into which his brains will run.

In one

page, forsooth, Elizabeth is a fool for listening to these pathetical 'love letters;' in the next page she is hardhearted for not listening to them. Poor thing! Do

what she would she found it hard enough to please all parties while alive; must she be condemned over and above in æternum to be wrong whatsoever she does? Why is she not to have the benefit of the plain, straightforward interpretation which would be allowed to any other human being, namely, that she approved of such fine talk, as long as it was proved to be sincere by fine deeds; but that when these were wanting, the fine talk became hollow, fulsome, a fresh cause of anger and disgust? Yet still she weeps over him when he falls sick, as any mother would; and would visit him if she could with honour. But a malignant influence counteracts every disposition to relent.' No doubt, a man's own folly, passion, and insolence, has generally a very malignant influence on his fortunes, and he may consider himself a very happy man if all that befalls to him thereby is what befel Essex, deprivation of his offices, and imprisonment in his own house. He is forgiven after all; but the spoilt child refuses his bread and butter without sugar. What is the pardon to him without a renewal of his license of sweet wines? Because he is not to have that, the Queen's 'conditions are as crooked as her carcase.' Flesh and blood can stand no more, and ought to stand no more. After all that Elizabeth has been to him, that speech is the speech of a brutal and ungrateful nature. And such he shows himself to be in the hour of trial.

What if Such gifts

the patent for sweet wines is refused him? were meant as the reward of merit; and what merit has he to show? He never thinks of that. Blind with fury he begins to intrigue with James, and slanders to him, under colour of helping his succession, all