ly if his absorption in it had dimmed the
brightness of his marvellous intelligence, or deadened his delight in
its gymnastics. But he had to live his life according to his nature. The
multiplicity of his interests separates him from others of his mental
level. He loved power, both the contest for it and its exercise. He
coveted money for its uses, and equally for the inspiring experiences
involved in its acquisition. He liked to act the patron, and was content
in turn to play the client. He loved toil, and he could enjoy ease. He
revelled in the strifes of statesmanship and the physical perils of
battles and travel. He resembled his period, with its dangers and
glories, its possibilities of Spanish dungeons and Spanish plunder, its
uncertainties of theology and morality. He had a natural gift for
deriving pleasure from his actual circumstances, a dull and brutal civil
war, or a prison, though none could utter more dismal groans. By
predilection he basked in a Court, where simultaneously he could adore
its mistress and help to sway her sceptre.

[Sidenote: _His Aspect._]

[Sidenote: _Dates of Portraits._]

Hitherto his career had been run outside the verge of chronicles. Its
early stages left few direct records. They have to be pieced together by
retrospective allusions proceeding from himself or others, after he had
already risen. The difficulties of his biographers are not at an end
when he has mounted into the full blaze of publicity. His name
thenceforth was in a multitude of mouths; yet much in his character,
position, and motives always remains shadowy and uncertain. His
appearance at the time it was winning an entrance for him at Court can
only be conjectured. He was tall and well-proportioned, with thick curly
locks, beard, and mustache, full red lips, bluish-grey eyes, and the
high forehead and long bold face, remarked in a contemporary epigram.
Aubrey describes him by report similarly, with the addition that he was
sour eye-lidded. His characteristic features, and the 'general aspect of
ascendency,' were the same in youth and in later life. They are vividly
represented by several extant portraits, by Zucchero's, somewhat wanting
in repose and dignity, at Longleat; by another of Zucchero's, now in the
National Gallery of Ireland, the original of the print in Sir Henry
Ellis's collection of letters, representing Ralegh at forty-four, with a
map of Cadiz; by that at Knole, from which Vertue's print in Oldys's