So Ralegh began his great work, greatly conceived and greatly executed, in the very spirit of the age to which he belonged--the age of Elizabeth, and to which King James's little favourites, Car and the rest, could never belong. Shut away from the bustle of the court and its splendour, now sinking to ignoble display; shut away from the voice of the nation, singing after the nation's deeds, as it had never sung before and has not sung since, he dreamed his great dream and found peace as he forced it to take shape and reality to his vision. From the creation of the world to the death of his own great Queen Elizabeth--everything that was--that was his subject; nothing less could satisfy him. He set the huge machinery of his idea slowly to work. His authorities were vast in number. He searched them all, and began to write. As he wrote the first sentences, he felt the world lay before his ken, outstretched with all its strange happenings, the rise and the fall of dynasties, the rise and fall of kingdoms and nations. All were within his knowledge and grip. And above he saw the God, who had called the world into existence, and man into being. About that God he writes his first paragraph, untroubled by any simian suspicions. The immense power of the man overawes you as you begin his tremendous task. That is the first impression, and the impression thrills, as every supreme evidence of man's power must. Then you realize that his whole vision of the world is wrong--is a myth, and you see the futility of man's power--that is the second impression. The two are singularly vivid; they clash splendidly--and the issue? You see limitless possibilities of life for the brave man and the strong man, as they only can be seen, when two ideas--two sincerities--have clashed splendidly. "And on through brave wars waged." One is feign to cry out, when the dream of things has passed. The first sentence of the History should be read aloud with a great voice in a cathedral.