This grand work, which in almost everychapter shows the masterly hand of Raleigh himself, needs no comment here. It is however no disparagement of the book (but the contrary) to say that in the collection, arrangement and condensation of its materials; that in unlocking the muniment room of antiquity and perusing the chief authors of the Greek and Latin classics from Heroditus to Livy and Eusebius, covering a period of near four thousand years, he must have had at cheerful beck powerful and competent aid. To collect, read, collate, note down, and digest these vast and scattered treasures into reasonable and presentable shape for the master mind, required not a bevy of poets and parsons, but one masterly scholar of scientific, analytic, mathematical, philosophical and religious training. Such a man was Hariot.
We read of Gibbon’s twenty years’ fag and toil on the materials of the History of the Roman Empire alone, and at a time when there were many aids not existing in Raleigh’s day. Gibbon personally ransacked the libraries of Europe. Raleigh had scarcely four years to cover the four most ancient empires and a much longer period, and was himself confined to Tower Hill. But he had at command a Hariot, a sort of winged Mercury, who was neither entowered nor hide-bound with conceit or ignorance. He was a marvellously good Greek and Latin scholar, who wrote Latin with almost as much ease as English. One has but to read the vast number of notes, citations and particular references in the History of the World to see the height, depth, and perfect modelling of the structure.
Raleigh was unquestionably the designer, the architect and the finisher of his History of the World. To him is due the honor and credit of the work. But who was the builder ? The answer manifestly is Thomas Hariot of Sion on Thames, learned, patient, self-forgetting, painstaking, long-waiting, devoted Hariot. Many writers have claimed to be, or have been named as, Sir Walter’s assistants and polishers. Ben Jonson, Rev. Dr Burhill, John Hoskins the poet, and others have each had their advocates,but without sufficient evidence. It may well be questioned if any one of them possessed either the ability, the time, the access to the Tower, or the opportunity to perform such herculean labors of love. These claims are apparently all based on pure conjecture, or unrectified gossip, as shown by Mr Bolton Corney in his razorly reply to Mr Isaac D’israeli. But Thomas Hariot, on the contrary, possessed abundantly what they all lacked, the necessary credentials. For proof of this assertion the doubter, as well as the lover of confirmed historical accuracy, is referred to the Hariot papers still preserved partly at Petworth and partly in the British Museum.
The Hariot manuscripts, of which there are thousands of folio pages all in his own handwriting, seem to be still in the same confused state in which he left them. He directed that the ‘waste’ should be weeded out of his mathematical papers and destroyed. But this duty seems, fortunately for us, to have been neglected by his executors, and hence among this ‘waste’ one has even now no great difficulty in recognizing in the well-known Latin handwriting of the’ magician,’ many jottings in chronology, geography and science, and many abstracts and citations of the classics, that in their time must have played parts in the History of the World. The Will now first produced lets in a flood of light on the history of these valued papers, and dispels a great deal of the heaps of foreign pretension, domestic assertion, and mixed charlatanism that have since 1784 beclouded the memories of both Raleigh and Hariot. It is true that on a hint in the previous century from Camden of a will by the great mathematician, many conjectures were afloat from the days of Pell, Collins, Wallis and Wood, but it has not been possible until now for one, with due knowledge of the main events in the lives of these two men, each equally great in his own sphere, to satisfactorily clear away any considerable portion of the misconception and misstatements of biographers and historians concerning them and their achievements. The dawn however is coming, when these new materials now first printed by the Hercules Club, but not worked up, may attract the attention of some historian competent to give them a thorough scientific scrutiny and ‘pen their doctrine.’
It is not our purpose here to dwell upon Raleigh’s masterpiece. From the preface of the History of the World, which opens with ‘the boundless ambition of mortal man,’ to the epilogue which closes up the work with the glorious triumph of Death, the whole book is replete with lessons of wisdom and warning. No one can rise from its perusal without perceiving that the modern author has made himself by apt illustration an accomplished actor in ancient history, while the ancient characters are made in their vera effigies to strut on modern stages. His pictures of great actions and great men, noble deeds and nobler princes, are drawn with such masterly perspective of truth, that they serve for all time ; while his portraiture of tyrants, villains, and dishonorable characters are no less lifelike and human. One marvels not therefore that King James, whose political creed was that the people are bound to princes by iron, and princes to the people by cobwebs, should see in Raleigh’s portraiture of the upright kings no likeness to himself, but had no difficulty in recognizing in the deformed greatness and selfish virtues of the old monarchs qualities suggestive of himself and his favorites. This grand history, extending from the creation over the four great monarchies of the world, near four thousand years, closes with the final triumph of Emilius Paullus in these memorable and oft-repeated words from the first edition of 1614.
Kings and Princes have alwayes laid before them, the actions, but not the ends, of those great Ones which precededthem. They are alwayes transported with the glorie of the one, but they never minde the miserie of the other, till they finde the experience themselves. They neglect the advice of God, while they enioy life, or hope it; but they follow the counsell of Death, upon his first approach. It is he that puts into man all the wisdome of the world, without speaking a word ; which God with all the words of His Law, promises, or threats, doth not infuse. Death which hateth and destroyeth man, is beleeved ; God, which hath made him and loves him, is alwayes deferred. I have considered, saith Solomon, all the workes that are under the Sunne, and behold, all is vanitie and vexation of spirit: but who beleeves it, till Death tells it us. It was Death, which opening the conscience of Charles the fift, made him enjoyne his sonne Philip to restore Navarre ; and King Francis the First of France, to command that justice should be done upon the murderers of the Protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which till then he neglected. It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly make man know himselfe. He tells the proud and insolent, that they are but Abjects, and humbles them at the instant ; makes them crie, complaine, and repent; yea, even to hate their forepassed happinesse. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked begger, which hath interest in nothing, but in the grauell that filles his mouth. He holds a glasse before the eyes of the most beautifull, and makes them see therein their deformitie and rottennesse; and they acknowledge it.
O eloquent, just and mightie Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast perswaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou onely hast cast out of the world and despised : thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition, of man, and covered it all over with those two narrow words : Hic jacet.
With this outburst of true eloquence the historian of the world laid down his pen in 1614. Four short years later the same historian himself, wickedly sacrificed by his hispaniolized monarch, laid down his life on the scaffold, with an apotheosis scarcely less eloquent. No death recorded in ancient or modern history is more grand or instructive than that of Sir Walter Raleigh, in many respects the greatest man of his age.
On the execution being granted in the King’s Bench Court, on the afternoon of the 28th of October 1618, he asked for a little time for pre- paration, but his request was refused, Bacon having already in his pocket the death warrant duly signed by the King before the meeting of the Court! Sir Walter then asked for paper, pen and ink; and when he came to die that he might be permitted to speak at his farewell. To these last requests he appears to have received no reply, but was with indecent haste hustled off to the Gate House for execution early the next morning, the 29th of October, Lord Mayor’s day, when it was expected that the crowd would go cityward. However, there was a crowd, and probably in consequence he was not prohibited from speaking. He had prepared himself, and is said to have consulted a ‘Note of Remembrance’ which he held in his hand while speaking. It is possible, nay, probable that this very same Note still survives in ‘paper-saving’ Hariot’s ‘waste,’ for a precious little waif, all crumpled and soiled, just such a ‘Note of Remembrance,’ it is believed, as Raleigh held in his hand and consulted during that ever memorable speech, has comedown to us, and is now preserved among the Hariot papers in the British Museum. It has been recently recognized and identified by Mr Stevens, who has placed it, with other newly discovered documents respecting our philosopher, at the disposition of the Hercules Club. It is thought to possess internal evidence of having been drawn out before the speech, and is not therefore Hariot’s jottings of remembrance after it. But positive proof is wanting.
It is beyond all doubt, however, in the well-known handwriting of Hariot, and is presumed to be the ‘note of remembrance’ for the speech, made in the Gate House, probably from dictation, during the night before the execution. It appears as if hurriedly penned with a blunt quill, and is on a narrow strip of thin foolscap paper such as Hariot used. It is about twelve inches long and nearly four inches wide, about one-third of the lower part of the paper being blank. There is no heading, date, or anything else on the paper. It is rather difficult to read, but every word, letter and point have been made out, and the whole Note is here given, line for line, and verbatim, the heading and press-mark only being added :