He had begun his career as a brilliant pirate in South America above thirty years before; he had alarmed all Spain by ravaging its coasts and occupying Cadiz, in a sort of doubtful warfare which Lord Bacon tells us the free sailor used to call “singeing the king of Spain’s beard”;[239] and he had risen to the height of his glory as second in command of the great fleet which had discomfited the Armada, one of whose largest vessels was known to have surrendered to the terror of his name alone. In Spain, where he was as much hated as he was feared, he was regarded chiefly as a bold and successful buccaneer, whose melancholy death at Panamá, in 1596, was held to be a just visitation of the Divine vengeance for his piracies;--a state of feeling of which the popular literature of the country, down to its very ballads, affords frequent proof.[240] [239] “Considerations touching a War with Spain, inscribed to Prince Charles, 1624”; a curious specimen of the political discussions of the time. See Bacon’s Works, London, 1810, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 517. [240] Mariana, Historia, ad an. 1596, calls him simply “Francis Drake, an English corsair”;--and in a graceful little anonymous ballad, imitated from a more graceful one by Góngora, we have again a true expression of the popular feeling. The ballad in question, beginning “Hermano Perico,” is in the Romancero General, 1602, (f. 34), and contains the following significant passage:-- And Bartolo, my brother, To England forth is gone, Where the Drake he means to kill;-- And the Lutherans every one, Excommunicate from God, Their queen among the first, He will capture and bring back, Like heretics accurst. And he promises, moreover, Among his spoils and gains, A heretic young serving-boy To give me, bound in chains; And for my lady grandmamma, Whose years such waiting crave, A little handy Lutheran, To be her maiden slave. Mi hermano Bartolo Se va á Ingalaterra, A matar al Draque, Y á prender la Reyna, Y á los Luteranos De la Bandomessa. Tiene de traerme A mí de la guerra Un Luteranico Con una cadena, Y una Luterana A señora agüela. Romancero General, Madrid, 1602, 4to, f. 35.