So Raleigh goes on his voyage with Humphrey Gilbert, to carry out the patent for discovering and planting in _Meta Incognita_; but the voyage prospers not. A ‘smart brush with the Spaniards’ sends them home again, with the loss of Morgan, their best captain, and ‘a tall ship’; and _Meta Incognita_ is forgotten for a while; but not the Spaniards. Who are these who forbid all English, by virtue of the Pope’s bull, to cross the Atlantic? That must be settled hereafter; and Raleigh, ever busy, is off to Ireland to command a company in that ‘common weal, or rather common woe’, as he calls it in a letter to Leicester. Two years and more pass here; and all the records of him which remain are of a man valiant, daring, and yet prudent beyond his fellows. He hates his work, and is not on too good terms with stern and sour, but brave and faithful Lord Grey; but Lord Grey is Leicester’s friend, and Raleigh works patiently under him, like a sensible man, just because he is Leicester’s friend. Some modern gentleman of note—I forget who, and do not care to recollect—says that Raleigh’s ‘prudence never bore any proportion to his genius.’ The next biographer we open accuses him of being too calculating, cunning, timeserving; and so forth. Perhaps both are true. The man’s was a character very likely to fall alternately into either sin—doubtless did so a hundred times. Perhaps both are false. The man’s character was, on occasion, certain to rise above both faults. We have evidence that he did so his whole life long.