The only possibility of living with any pretence of decency lay in the favour of other men, who must on no account be permitted to forget him. It is unwise to praise the work which he accomplished in captivity, and to censure him for employing the only possible means in his power to get that work accomplished. Again he put all his strength into the only task left him, and he succeeded in saving something from the ruin of his estates and the complete curtailment of his liberty, by renewed supplication. Being a man of vivid imagination, he entered so completely into the part which was forced upon him--the part of supplicator--that his letters are the letters of the broken man that he wished to appear, and that his future work proved conclusively he was not. How little his spirit was broken is seen from the tremendous work which he undertook, and from the personal influence which he continued to exercise, and which his imprisonment did not seem to lessen. The scope of his activity was limited, but his activity did not abate. His letters of supplication throw a light upon the nature of a great man. They show something of that strange quality which men call greatness. Ralegh was not a little man magnified by position or circumstances. He was a great man. Not in success is greatness apparent, not in attainment, but in effort, in vitality, in power of feeling and in control--but essentially in power of feeling. That power broke even the barrier of Ralegh's immense self-control--for a time only. A great man does not walk exalted, like some demi-god to whom all things are easy; he knows dismay, he knows weakness, and all the legion of infirmities, but in spite of all, he wrests from life what life must yield him. Ralegh had lost the Governorship of Jersey, the Patent of the Wine Office, the Wardenship of the Stannaries, the Rangership of Gillingham Forest, and the Lieutenancy of Portland Castle, from which together he drew an income of £3000 a year; men to whom he owed money fastened upon his estate at Sherborne. It was to save Sherborne from them that he did his utmost. Lord Cecil came to his assistance: "A secound effect of your Lordship's great favor was the preservation of my moveabells, which the ravenus Sherifs were in hand to have seised, and att my gates to have rifled, if your Lordship's letters had not then cum to have countermanded it; which it also pleased yow, soon after, to procure me."