Spenser eulogizes Raleigh’s poetic powers as those of one
“... as skilful in that art as any.”[[19]]
He likewise entitles him ‘the summer’s nightingale,’ and hints that he had in store a poem on Queen Elizabeth, which might rival “The Faerie Queene:”—
“To taste the streames, that like a golden showre,
Flow from thy fruitful head, of thy Love’s praise—
Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stowre—
When so thee list thy lofty Muse to raise;
Yet till that thou thy poem wilt make known,
Let thy faire Cynthia’s praises be thus rudely shown.”
But poetic effusions are not the only contributions of Raleigh to literature. During his long confinement in the Tower, on charge of treason, he relieved his solitude by compiling a “History of the World;” an undertaking sufficient to appal the most active and learned man under the most favourable circumstances, but which appears something superhuman when attempted and almost accomplished by a wretched prisoner lying under an unjust sentence of death.