Ralegh was a poet. A man cannot be a poet in his spare time. There is a realm which Beauty rules--that Beauty which Castiglione celebrated, and the understanding of which he made the last and chief attribute of his Courtier, with that realm Ralegh was in communion. From it he drew strength for his life. Such communion does unfit a man for the business of life, but gives him power to cope with its difficulties by enabling him to look a little beyond them. It raises him above the pettiness of things, and makes him see more clearly because he sees things at their proper value and in their right proportion. This perception--this sensitiveness--made him suffer more acutely, but endowed him with the power of detachment, the power to rise above his personal griefs. Ralegh was a poet. He expressed himself in his life in a way strangely akin to that in which he expressed himself in his actual poetry. He resembles some knight in a Morris romance in his adoration for his Queen, and in his love for his wife. But true love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning, Never sick, never old, never dead, From itself never turning. That spirit informed his life, and is linked with his every achievement. "Schönheit geniessen heiss die Welt verstehn." And one of the most memorable facts of the Russo-Japanese war was that the invincible Admiral Togo wrote home asking for plum trees in flower to be sent to him; he needed the strength which he drew from looking at their beauty. Castiglione was right. This perception of beauty is the last quality of the perfect courtier; from that alone can strength be gathered and stored for this strange struggle of life. And now Ralegh had reached the last day of his life. Early next morning he was destined to solve the mighty problem with which poets and philosophers have always wrestled in vain--the problem which is the mightiest in life, which lends life colour and poignancy--the problem of death. The excitement of knowing that in a few hours he would be taken into that great mystery must have been overpowering. He no longer needed consolation: fear was lost in eagerness to know. And a sense of relief came to him that he would be driven no longer to fight on in the long battle of life with the fierce energy that mastered him. He had sufficient experience to be a little weary of life; he had sufficient vitality to welcome death. He knew that he saw the sun set for the last time; that for the last time he saw the approach of night, the familiar faces of men, and all the surroundings of man's life. His consciousness was coming to an end. "Do not carry it with too much bravery," said his kinsman, Francis Thynne. "It is my last mirth in this world," answered Ralegh. "Do not grudge it to me." For the last time? Yet who can tell? What is man's knowledge when confronted by the portentous fact of death?