the incomparable _Report on the Fight
in the Revenge_, supply us with ample materials for forming an idea of
his value as a naval strategist. Raleigh's earliest biographer, Oldys
the antiquary, speaks of him as "raising a grove of laurels out of the
sea," and it is certainly upon that element that he reaches his highest
effect of prominence. It was at sea that he could give fullest scope to
his hatred of the tyrannous prosperity of Spain. He had to be at once a
gamekeeper and a poacher; he had to protect the legitimate interests of
English shipping against privateers and pirates, while he was persuaded
to be, or felt himself called upon to become, no little of a pirate
himself. He was a passionate advocate of the freedom of the seas, and
those who look upon Raleigh as a mere hot-brained enthusiast should read
his little book called _Observations on Trade and Commerce_, written in
the Tower, and see what sensible views he had about the causes of the
depression of trade. These sage opinions did not check him, or his
fleets of hunting-pinnaces, from lying in wait for the heavy wallowing
plate-ships, laden with Indian carpets and rubies and sandalwood and
ebony, which came swinging up to the equator from Ceylon or Malabar. The
"freedom of the seas" was for Raleigh's ship, the _Roebuck_; it was by
no means for the _Madre de Dios_. We find these moral inconsistencies in
the mind of the best of adventurers.

A sketch of Raleigh's character would be imperfect indeed if it
contained no word concerning his genius as a coloniser. One of his main
determinations, early in life, was "to discover and conquer unknown
lands, and take possession of them in the Queen's name." We celebrate in
Sir Walter Raleigh one of the most intelligent and imaginative of the
founders of our colonial empire. The English merchantmen before his time
had been satisfied with the determination to grasp the wealth of the New
World as it came home to Spain; it had not occurred to them to compete
with the great rival at the fountain-head of riches. Even men like Drake
and Frobisher had been content with a policy of forbidding Spain, as the
poet Wither said, "to check our ships from sailing where they please."
South America was already mainly in Spanish hands, but North America was
still open to invasion. It was Raleigh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, who first thought of planting an English settlement in what is
now the United States, in 1578. But Gilbert