ory of the World_, is made
up of short passages of the most extraordinary beauty, and long stretches
of monotonous narration and digression, showing not much grace of style,
and absolutely no sense of proportion or skill in arrangement. The
contrast is so strange that some have sought to see in the undoubted facts
that Raleigh, in his tedious prison labours, had assistants and helpers
(Ben Jonson among others), a reason for the superior excellence of such set
pieces as the Preface, the Epilogue, and others, which are scattered about
the course of the work. But independently of the other fact that excellence
of the most diverse kind meets us at every turn, though it also deserts us
at every turn, in Raleigh's varied literary work, and that it would be
absurd to attribute all these passages to some "affable familiar ghost,"
there is the additional difficulty that in none of his reported helpers'
own work do the peculiar graces of the purple passages of the _History_
occur. The immortal descant on mortality with which the book closes, and
which is one of the highest achievements of English prose, is not in the
least like Jonson, not in the least like Selden, not in the least like any
one of whose connection with Raleigh there is record. Donne might have
written it; but there is not the smallest reason for supposing that he did,
and many for being certain that he did not. Therefore, it is only fair to
give Raleigh himself the credit for this and all other passages of the
kind. Their character and, at the same time, their comparative rarity are
both easily explicable. They are all obviously struck off in moments of
excitement--moments when the writer's variable and fanciful temperament was
heated to flashing-point and gave off almost spontaneously these lightnings
of prose as it gave, on other occasions, such lightnings of poetry as _The
Faerie Queene_ sonnet, as "the Lie," and as the other strange jewels (cats'
eyes and opals, rather than pearls or diamonds), which are strung along
with very many common pebbles on Raleigh's poetical necklace. In style they
anticipate Browne (who probably learnt not a little from them) more than
any other writer; and they cannot fairly be said to have been anticipated
by any Englishman. The low and stately music of their cadences is a thing,
except in Browne, almost unique, and it is not easy to trace it to any
peculiar mannerism of vocabulary or of the arrangement of words. But
Raleigh's usual