His best biographer writes: "Raleigh was a sight to see; not only for his fame and name, but for his picturesque and dazzling figure. Fifty-one years old, tall, tawny, splendid, with the bronze of tropical suns on his leonine cheek, a bushy beard, a round mustache, and a ripple of curling hair which his man Peter took an hour to dress. Apparelled as became such a figure, in scarf and band of richest color and costliest stuff, in cap and plume worth a ransom, in jacket powdered with gems, his whole attire from cap to shoe-strings blazing with rubies, emeralds, and pearls, he was allowed to be one of the handsomest men alive."
In the eleventh year of his bondage he finished the first part of the History of the World. He wrote what men will not let die, invented the modern war-ship, and from the turrets of Bloody Tower looked across the vast blue plain of ocean and directed operations in Virginia and Guiana. He was a guiding light to his beloved England; proud and brilliant heroes deferred to him, sought his advice; charming women were charmed by the most courtly of courtiers, and all felt him to be a man whom the government could not afford to spare. He knew more than any other person living about the New World offering endless riches to the Old, and his services were at the King's command. While prisoner to the crown he sailed with five ships under royal orders for the region of the Orinoco, the land of promise unfulfilled. The golden city lighted by jewels was a vanishing illusion ending in bitter disappointment.
Years before, in 1609, he had written to Shakespeare, whom he called, "My dearest Will":
"Great were our hopes, both of glory and of gold, in the kingdom of Powhatan. But it grieves me much to say that all hath resulted in infelicity, misfortune, and an unhappy end.... As I was blameworthy for thy risk, I send by the messenger your £50, which you shall not lose by my overhopeful vision. For its usance I send a package of a new herb from the Chesapeake, called by the natives tobacco. Make it not into tea, as did one of my kinsmen, but kindle and smoke it in the little tube the messenger will bestow ... it is a balm for all sorrows and griefs, and as a dream of Paradise.... Thou knowest that from my youth up I have adventured for the welfare and glory of our Queen, Elizabeth. On sea and on land and in many climes have I fought the accursed Spaniard, and am honored by our sovereign and among men ... but all this would I give, and more, for a tithe of the honor which in the coming time shall assuredly be thine. Thy kingdom is of the imagination, and hath no limit or end."
The dreams of the Admiral far outran any possibility, and the mines of Guiana proved a cheat equal to the yellow clay of the Roanoke. Peril of life, fortune, and the varied resources of genius and valor were not enough to insure success, and a failure in the paradise of the world probably hastened the sentence for which Philip III. of Spain clamored.
The charges of treason against Raleigh were pure invention; but on his return from South America he was arrested, committed to the Tower, and the warrant for execution was signed without a new trial, while men from the streets and ships came crowding to the wharf, whence they could see him walking on the wall. He was advised to kill himself to escape the shameful sentence of James I., but he solemnly spoke of self-murder, and declared he would die in the light of day and before the face of his countrymen. In the field of battle, on land and on sea, he had looked at death too often to tremble now.
His farewell letter to his wife is one of the sweetest. I wish I had space for it all. It concludes:
"The everlasting God, Infinite, Powerful, Inscrutable; the Almighty God, which is Goodness itself, Mercy itself; the true light and life—keep thee and thine, have mercy on me, and teach me to forgive my persecutors and false witnesses, and send us to meet again in His Glorious Kingdom. My own true wife, farewell. Bless my poor boy. Pray for me, and let the good God fold you both in His arms. Written with the dying hand of sometime thy husband, but now, alas! overthrown.
"Yours that was, but not now my own,
"W. Raleigh."