It was in the late Autumn of ’81 that Raleigh appeared again. He came riding by the London to Plymouth road, in company with his servant Nic Wright and a small body of retainers, and turned apart from his way for the express purpose of revisiting, and renewing his acquaintance with, his young country friend, and perhaps, who knows, of impressing him with a sight of his magnificence. He was become a great man in these days, and in high report with the Queen, who had taken his side in a dispute he had had with the Lord Deputy, following his recent return from Ireland, and seemed disposed to admit him to her extremest favour. No doubt her Majesty had ample reason for this condescension to a soldier who had rendered her such fine and masterful service; yet no question was but that good looks and a flattering tongue had their part in the honours and emoluments which from this date came to be lavished on the fortunate favourite. And indeed the man was built for valiant success. He was of a bold and masterful disposition, imaginative, and even chivalrous for an age in which romanticism, no longer the purely spiritual force of earlier days, survived but as a sort of working Utopianism, full of great visions of the unknown, but regarding that in the light of material rather than of moral possession. Then his intellect was as boundless as his ambition, and as ready to take the whole world for its province; he had a silver tongue for verse, when rhymers were as many and sweet as blackberries; he was as full of curious inventiveness as was his near forerunner, the Italian da Vinci, and not less in the graver articles of chemistry and science than in those of gallantry; and most of all he was a fierce patriot--one of those mighty Elizabethan Captains from whose loins sprang that greater Britain which was offspring of their passionate love for their country. ‘His naeve was,’ says old Aubrey, ‘that he was damnable proud.’ Well, he might be, being great among the great, and he clothed his pride in splendour. The same Chronicler is not wholly complimentary to his appearance, though he admits he was a tall and handsome man. But he wrote from hearsay, and one may feel assured that she, to whom masculine beauty was ever a first recommendation to favour, saw something to admire in her new-found votary besides character. At any rate Brion was aware of no ‘sour eie-lidded’ deformity in this face, which, with its intellectuality and vivacity, was always to him as attractive a face as any he was acquainted with; and, as to that high-handed arrogance which was reputed to bring the Captain into dislike with some, he only knew that his manner to him was ever frank and courteous, while, as to the man’s own servants, they loved their master to devotion.