We do not feel that Hakluyt cared greatly about commending to after times his wit, but that his book should inflame ‘men to seek fame’ was its very object and purpose. He lived in the age of exploration and great attempts; Englishmen were just fully awakening to their heritage, and determined no longer to be forestalled by the Spaniards and Portuguese in the adventure of the globe. The regions left them to explore were more dangerous and difficult than what Hakluyt calls ‘the mild, lightsome, temperate, and warm Atlantic Ocean, over which the Spaniards and Portugals have made so many pleasant, prosperous and golden voyages.’ But from the rigours of harsh latitudes they won their fame and their hardihood. We love Hakluyt’s gorgeous Elizabethan pride when he speaks favourably of the Northern voyages of the Dutch, but ‘with this proviso; that our English nation led them the dance, brake the yce before them, and gave them good leave to light their candle at our torch.’ What a father he was to his seamen, how he rejoiced in their triumphs, sympathised in their affections, and understood their ‘sea-sorrows’! Many and bitter are those sorrows, as recorded in his ‘Voyages,’ and the men of that day, many of whom had known the savageries of Spain, and all of whom had lived through the coming of the ‘Invincible Armada,’ would thrill to the grand Biblical opening of that poignant narrative of John Hartop, ‘Man being born of a Woman, living a short time is replenished with many miseries, which some know by reading of histories, many by the view of others’ calamities, and I by experience.’