Great Britain -- History; Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?-1618
been, trained by that great example to overlook no fact, even the
smallest. He brings home lists of rivers, towns, caciques, poison-herbs,
words, what not; he has fresh news of gold, spleen-stones, kidney-stones,
and some fresh specimens; but be that as it may, he, ‘without going as
far as his eyes can warrant, can promise Brazil-wood, honey, cotton,
balsamum, and drugs, to defray charges.’ He would fain copy Raleigh’s
style, too, and ‘whence his lamp had oil, borrow light also,’ ‘seasoning
his unsavoury speech’ with some of the ‘leaven of Raleigh’s discourse.’
Which, indeed, he does even to little pedantries and attempts at
classicality; and after professing that himself and the remnant of his
few years he hath bequeathed wholly to Raleana, and his thoughts live
only in that action, he rises into something like grandeur when he begins
to speak of that ever-fertile subject, the Spanish cruelties to the
Indians; ‘Doth not the cry of the poor succourless ascend unto the
heavens? Hath God forgotten to be gracious to the work of his own hands.
Or shall not his judgments in a day of visitation by the ministry of his
chosen servant come upon these bloodthirsty butchers, like rain into a
fleece of wool?’ Poor Keymis! To us he is by no means the least
beautiful figure in this romance; a faithful, diligent, loving man,
unable, as the event proved, to do great deeds by himself, but inspired
with a great idea by contact with a mightier spirit, to whom he clings
through evil report, and poverty, and prison, careless of self to the
last, and ends tragically, ‘faithful unto death’ in the most awful sense.
But here remark two things: first, that Cecil believes in Raleigh’s
Guiana scheme; next, that the occupation of Orinoco by the Spaniards,
which Raleigh is accused of having concealed from James in 1617, has been
ever since 1595 matter of the most public notoriety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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