nd brains were rotten.'

[Sidenote: _Young Walter._]

Young Walter was of the company, and Ralegh and his wife adventured
nothing else for them so precious. Walter was fiery and precocious, too
much addicted, by his father's testimony, to strange company and violent
exercise. He had been of an age to feel the ruin of his parents, and to
resent their persecution. In childhood, with the consent of Cobham, and
of Cecil as Master of the Court of Wards, he was betrothed to Cobham's
ward, Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of wealthy William Basset, of
Blore. On the attainder the contract was broken. The girl was affianced
to Henry Howard, who died in September, 1616, a son of Lord Treasurer
Suffolk, formerly Lord Thomas Howard. Walter was born in 1593, and in
October, 1607, at fourteen, matriculated at Corpus College, Oxford. He
was described as, at this time, his father's exact image both in body
and mind. In 1610 he took his bachelor's degree. By 1613 he was living
in London. In April, 1615, according to a letter from Carew to Roe,
though other accounts variously give the date as 1614 or early in 1616,
he fought a duel with Robert Finett or Tyrwhit, a retainer of Suffolk's.
It was necessary for him to leave the country. Ralegh sent him to the
Netherlands, with letters of introduction to Prince Maurice. Ben Jonson
is said to have acted as his governor abroad. That is impossible at the
date, 1593, assigned by Aubrey to their association. It is not
impossible a year or two after 1613, if not in 1613, when Jonson appears
to have been in France. Poet and pupil are said to have parted 'not in
cold blood.' It is likely enough, if Drummond's tale be true, as Mr.
Dyce seems to believe, that Walter had Jonson carted dead drunk about a
foreign town. According to another not very plausible story, retailed by
Oldys, the exposure of the tutor's failing was at the Tower, and to
Ralegh, to whom Walter consigned Jonson in a clothes-basket carried by
two stout porters. Though the particular tales are hardly credible,
Jonson's revelries may have laid him open to lectures by the father, and
disrespect from the son, which would have something to do with the
dramatist's sneer at the memory of Ralegh, as one who 'esteemed more
fame than conscience.' At all events, Walter, now just twenty-three, was
back from the Continent in time to command his father's finely-built and
equipped flagship, the Destiny. He was as full of life as Edward
Hastings