e five years which had elapsed since Raleigh's last
publication, English literature had been undergoing a marvellous
development, and he who read everything and sympathised with every
intellectual movement could not but be influenced by what had been
written. During those five years, Marlowe's wonderful career had been
wound up like a melodrama. Shakespeare had come forward as a poet. A new
epoch in sound English prose had been inaugurated by Hooker's
_Ecclesiastical Polity_. Bacon was circulating the earliest of his
_Essays_. What these giants of our language were doing for their own
departments of prose and verse, Raleigh did for the literature of
travel. Among the volumes of navigations, voyages, and discoveries,
which were poured out so freely in this part of the reign of Elizabeth,
most of them now only remembered because they were reprinted in the
collections of Hakluyt and Purchas, this book of Raleigh's takes easily
the foremost position. In comparison with the bluff and dull narratives
of the other discoverers, whose chief charm is their naivete, the
_Discovery of Guiana_ has all the grace and fullness of deliberate
composition, of fine literary art, and as it was the first excellent
piece of sustained travellers' prose, so it remained long without a
second in our literature. The brief examples which it has alone been
possible to give in this biography, may be enough to attract readers to
its harmonious and glowing pages.

Among the many allusions found to this book in contemporary records,
perhaps the most curious is an epic poem on Guiana, published almost
immediately by George Chapman, who gave his enthusiastic approval to
Raleigh's scheme. It is the misfortune of Chapman's style that in his
grotesque arrogance he disdained to be lucid, and this poem is full of
tantalising hints, which the biographer of Raleigh longs to use, but
dares not, from their obscurity. These stately verses are plain enough,
but show that Chapman was not familiar with the counsels of Elizabeth:

Then in the Thespiads' bright prophetic font,
Methinks I see our Liege rise from her throne,
Her ears and thoughts in steep amaze erect,
At the most rare endeavour of her power;
And now she blesses with her wonted graces
The industrious knight, the soul of this exploit,
Dismissing him to convoy of his stars:

Chapman was quite misinformed; and to what event he now proceeds to
refer, it would be hard to say: