{86} Another typical Englishman of Elisabeth's reign was Walter
Raleigh, who was even more versatile than Sidney, and more
representative of the restless spirit of romantic adventure, mixed with
cool, practical enterprise that marked the times. He fought against
the Queen's enemies by land and sea in many quarters of the globe; in
the Netherlands and in Ireland against Spain, with the Huguenot Army
against the League in France. Raleigh was from Devonshire, the great
nursery of English seamen. He was half-brother to the famous
navigator, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and cousin to another great captain,
Sir Richard Grenville. He sailed with Gilbert on one of his voyages
against the Spanish treasure fleet, and in 1591 he published a report
of the fight, near the Azores, between Grenville's ship, the Revenue,
and fifteen great ships of Spain, an action, said Francis Bacon,
"memorable even beyond credit, and to the height of some heroical
fable." Raleigh was active in raising a fleet against the Spanish
Armada of 1588. He was present in 1596 at the brilliant action in
which the Earl of Essex "singed the Spanish king's beard," in the
harbor of Cadiz. The year before he had sailed to Guiana, in search of
the fabled El Dorado, destroying on the way the Spanish town of San
Jose, in the West Indies; and on his return he published his _Discovery
of the Empire of Guiana_. In 1597 he captured the town of Fayal, in
the Azores. He took a prominent part in colonizing {87} Virginia, and
he introduced tobacco and the potato plant into Europe.

America was still a land of wonder and romance, full of rumors,
nightmares, and enchantments. In 1580, when Francis Drake, "the
Devonshire Skipper," had dropped anchor in Plymouth harbor, after his
voyage around the world, the enthusiasm of England had been mightily
stirred. These narratives of Raleigh, and the similar accounts of the
exploits of the bold sailors, Davis, Hawkins, Frobisher, Gilbert, and
Drake; but especially the great cyclopedia of nautical travel,
published by Richard Hakluyt, in 1589, _The Principal Navigations,
Voyages, and Discoveries made by the English Nation_, worked powerfully
on the imaginations of the poets. We see the influence of this
literature of travel in the _Tempest_, written undoubtedly after
Shakspere had been reading the narrative of Sir George Somers's
shipwreck on the Bermudas or "Isles of Devils."

Raleigh was not in favor with Elizabeth's successor