as by far the most important
factor in solving the momentous New-World problems of that awakening
age, so Drake was by far the most important factor in the English Navy.
_The Worlde Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake_ and _Sir Francis Drake his
Voyage_, 1595, are two of the volumes edited by the Hakluyt Society.
But these contemporary accounts of his famous fights and voyages do not
bring out the supreme significance of his influence as an admiral, more
especially in connection with the Spanish Armada. It must always be a
matter of keen, though unavailing, regret that Admiral Mahan, the great
American expositor of sea power, began with the seventeenth, not the
sixteenth, century. But what Mahan left undone was afterwards done to
admiration by Julian Corbett, Lecturer in History to the (British) Naval
War College, whose _Drake and the Tudor Navy_ (1912) is absolutely
indispensable to any one who wishes to understand how England won her
footing in America despite all that Spain could do to stop her.
Corbett's _Drake_ (1890) in the 'English Men of Action' series is an
excellent epitome. But the larger book is very much the better. Many
illuminative documents on _The Defeat of the Spanish Armada_ were edited
in 1894 by Corbett's predecessor, Sir John Laughton. The only other work
that need be consulted is the first volume of _The Royal Navy: a
History_, edited by Sir William Laird Clowes (1897). This is not so good
an authority as Corbett; but it contains many details which help to
round the story out, besides a wealth of illustration.

RALEIGH. Gilbert, Cavendish, Raleigh, and the other
gentlemen-adventurers, were soldiers, not sailors; and if they had gone
afloat two centuries later they would have fought at the head of
marines, not of blue-jackets; so their lives belong to a different kind
of biography from that concerned with Hawkins, Frobisher. and Drake.
Edwards's _Life of Sir Walter Raleigh_ (1868) contains all the most
interesting letters and is a competent work of its own kind. Oldys'
edition of Raleigh's _Works_ still holds the field though its eight
volumes were published so long ago as 1829. Raleigh's _Discovery of
Guiana_ is the favorite for reprinting. The Hakluyt Society has produced
an elaborate edition (1847) while a very cheap and handy one has been
published in Cassell's National Library. W.G. Gosling's _Life of Sir
Humphry Gilbert_ (1911) is the best recent work of its kind.

The likeliest of all the Hakl