Spain still feared Ralegh alive —even in prison. So did James. Popular opinion had made it increasingly difficult to keep the prisoner quietly immured. Here, then, was a solution: another trip to Guiana meant conflict with the Spanish; Ralegh, who had been urging such an expedition, should be sent, with instructions not to break the peace with Spain, and the court at Madrid, forewarned of the adventure, should make the carrying out of such instructions impossible.

Just before Ralegh's departure French complications developed. He had received permission, if not a commission, from the French Admiralty to land Spanish prizes in French ports. A letter of his to a French councillor of state regarding coöperation in the Guiana work was obtained by James; and the whole packet -plans of the voyage, French letter, and explanations from the King-was sent via Madrid to the Spanish governor of Guiana. The cue of the Spaniard was of course to resist Ralegh's advance to the mine; then Sir Walter, with his hands tied, must fight or fail. To fight would be against the Crown's orders; to fail would prove his scheme a hoax and revive the old popular dislike.

Ralegh, who was ignorant of the fact that San Thome was moved so that a conflict would be inevitable, set out in hopeful spirits from Plymouth on June 12, 1617. Il luck beset the expedition from the start; added to this, the crews were mutinous and incompetent. Arriving off Cape Oyapoco, he sent a party under his son Walter, with Keymis as guide, in search of the gold mine. He himself stayed at the mouth of the river in his flagship, the Destiny, partly to guard against Spanish attack, partly on account of ill health.

In his instructions to those setting out he said: "You shall find me at Puncto Gallo, dead or alive. And if you find not my ships there, you shall find their ashes. For I will fire, with the galleons, if it come to extremity; run will I never." The mine expedition fared badly. Young Walter fell fighting gallantly in the capture of San Thome, where the Spaniards forced a fight; the others turned back disheartened without reaching the mine; and Keymis, overcome by Ralegh's reproof, committed suicide. Any chance of a second attempt or of piratical attacks on the Mexican fleet was lost by the desertion of some of the captains. The forlorn hope had failed. Ralegh returned, broken in health and spirit, to a satisfied King and a condemning people.

On arriving again at Plymouth, Sir Walter was immediately taken into custody. With all the world before him and French ports open to him, he had not taken the chance to escape. Now, persuaded by his wife and a Captain King, he foolishly attempted flight to France. Once in the boat, however, he ordered return and gave himself up again. But his tenacious eagerness for life soon returned. At Salisbury he feigned madness and sickness for a week, that he might gain time to write his Apology for the Voyage to Guiana. At London he made another attempt to escape, but was taken by his keeper, Sir Thomas Stukely, who accepted bribes and pretended assistance.

Once more Ralegh stood before the King's Bench. The judges, however, were again unable to find sufficient evidence. The Mexican plate fleet had not been attacked, the Spaniards had offered the first resistance at San Thome, and the French complication could not be proved treasonous. Pardon, however, was another

matter. Winwood was dead, and Ralegh found few influential friends. James, moreover, had promised the King of Spain a public execution, either in Madrid or in London; it was clear that Ralegh must be a peaceoffering to Spain. The old charges of 1603 were renewed; Ralegh was found guilty of high treason as before, and on October 29, 1618, was executed in Palace Yard.

In his death Ralegh was exalted into the same nobleness that is so pervasive in his great History. This is a significant characteristic in his life; it is always found breaking out in great crises, in Guiana, at Cadiz, in his trial, in prison, on the scaffold; it, in fact, is what gives him the right, when the skillfully versatile courtier and daring buccaneer seem inadequate, to represent most truly of all men the "spacious " times of Elizabeth. He must have been in this spirit the night before his execution, when he wrote those famous lines:

"Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust ;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days.

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust."

"He made no more of his death," said Dean Tounson, who administered him the sacrament, "than if it had been to take a journey." When he was asked whether he would lay his head toward the east, he answered, "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies." To the executioner's offer to blindfold him, he replied, "Think you I fear the shadow of the axe, when I fear not itself?" And

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when the headsman hesitated to strike, "What dost thou fear?" cried Ralegh. Strike man, strike!" Immediately he had become a martyr. James found it necessary, in fact, to issue an apology. Bacon, then lord chancellor, was appointed to the task, and though he had always been a friend and admirer of Ralegh, he accepted his ungenerous duty and wrote the Declaration. But neither Bacon nor James could quell the popular enthusiasm. The patriot, Sir John Eliot, who witnessed Ralegh's execution, spoke of "the fortitude of our Ralegh," and Hampden, Pym, and Cromwell believed they were bearing the same burden as he.

EDMUND SPENSER

SPENSER has been called the poets' poet, partly because of the unbounded praise which men like Milton have bestowed upon him, and partly because the qualities of his poetry appeal rather to the admiration of the artist than to the interest of the reader. Yet his Faerie Queen, like Pilgrim's Progress, is an allegory filled not only with adventures of every kind but with characters who are in many cases the counterparts of those who still absorb the attention of young and old in the career of Bunyan's hero. The difficulty for the modern reader lies in Spenser's complication of the allegory, and in a certain unreal quality not unlike that which we see in Shelley. About Mr. Worldly Wiseman there is no doubt, and the man himself is still with us; but we have to be told that Artegall represents not only justice but also Spenser's patron, Lord Grey of Wilton. A few readers, to be sure, enjoy the Faerie Queen as a story without reference to its moral or meaning; this meaning, however, played a great part in Spenser's own time. Milton speaks of "our sage and serious Poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas;" and according to Dryden "acknowledged... that Spenser was his original." Still, what the poets love in Spenser is not so much his moral as his poetry. Of all men who have written English verse, to none has verse been such a natural and unforced expression as to Spenser.

Edmund Spenser was born in London not far from