re continually growing poorer, and a minority were
growing richer. The Raleghs, it is plain, had not met with the good
fortune of the Russells, and others of their rural peers. They were
declining, if hardly in the degree represented subsequently. But an
ampler share of prosperity could not have made much difference in young
Walter's prospects or training. Three brothers were all before him in
the succession to the patrimony. His birthright could not have comprised
more than the cadet's prescriptive portion of necessity and brains. It
is unfair to the natural curiosity of posterity that his extraordinary
endowments in the second respect are not traceable in anecdotes of his
childhood. Naturally a local legend reports him to have loved the
society of adventurous mariners. Sir John Millais in his 'Boyhood of
Ralegh,' which was painted at Budleigh Salterton, has embodied it. In a
narrative printed a century after his death a general assertion of his
fondness for books of voyages occurs. Otherwise his boyish tastes and
habits are wholly unknown. The name of his school has not been
preserved. The first accepted fact after his birth is his entrance, as a
commoner, into Oriel College, of which, says Anthony a Wood, his cousin,
C. Champernoun, was a member. According to a statement by Thomas Fuller,
of which there is no corroboration either in the books of Christ Church,
or elsewhere, he belonged also to Christ Church, before or after his
admission into Oriel. For any details of his academical course, as for
the dates of its commencement and close, posterity is indebted to Wood,
who remarks that he went up to Oriel 'in 1568, or thereabouts,' and,
'after he had spent about three years in that house, left the University
without a degree.' Wood declares that 'his natural parts being strangely
advanced by academical learning, under the care of an excellent tutor,
he became the ornament of the juniors, and was worthily esteemed a
proficient in oratory and philosophy.' It is exceedingly likely, Ralegh
being Ralegh. At the same time, particulars would have been welcome.

[Sidenote: _Chronological difficulties._]

Lord Bacon has enshrined in his Apophthegms an example of Ralegh's wit
at Oxford. A cowardly fellow happened to be a very good archer. Having
been grossly abused by another, he bemoaned himself to Ralegh, and asked
what he should do to repair the wrong that had been offered him. 'Why,
challenge him,' answered Ralegh, 'to a ma