him. Had he coveted more he would have been at more pains to stamp
his verses. His poetic gift he valued merely as a weapon in his armoury,
like many others. It held its own and a more important place in his
career. Imagination, which might have made a poet, elevated and
illuminated the captain's and the courtier's ambition and acts. If it
put him at a disadvantage in a race for power with a Robert Cecil, it
carried him to Guiana, and gave him the palm in the glorious struggle at
the mouth of Cadiz harbour; it inspired him in the more tremendous
strife with judicial obliquity; it supported him on the scaffold in
Palace Yard.

CHAPTER IX.

THE REVENGE. (September, 1591).

[Sidenote: _Sir Richard Grenville._]

Long after Ralegh began to be recognized in his new circle as a poet, he
first showed himself a master of prose diction. The occasion came from
his loss of an opportunity for personal distinction of a kind he
preferred to literary laurels. The hope and the disappointment alike
testify that, whatever had been the Queen's demeanour in 1589, she
frowned no longer in 1591. Essex's temporary disgrace, on account of his
marriage with Lady Sidney in 1590, had improved Ralegh's prospects. So
much in favour was he that, in the spring of 1591, he had been
commissioned as Vice-Admiral of a fleet of six Queen's ships, attended
by volunteer vessels and provision boats. Lord Thomas Howard, second son
of the Duke of Norfolk beheaded in 1572, commanded in chief. The object
of the expedition was to intercept the Spanish plate fleet at the
Azores. Ralegh's cousin and friend, the stern and wayward but gallant
Sir Richard Grenville, finally was substituted for him. There is no
evidence that the change was meant for a censure. Much more probably it
was a token of the Queen's personal regard. He sent with the squadron
his ship, the Ark Ralegh, under the command of Captain Thynne, another
of his innumerable connexions in the West. The English had to wait for
the plate galleons so long at the Azores that news was brought to Spain.
A fleet of fifty-three Spanish sail was despatched as convoy. Ralegh was
engaged officially in Devonshire. The Council directed him in May to
send off a pinnace to tell Howard that this great Spanish force had been
descried off Scilly.

[Sidenote: _The Fight._]

The warning arrived too late. The Spaniards surprised the fleet on
September 10, when many of its men were ashore. Grenville in the Reveng