Politics & government > Life of Sir Walter Raleigh

290 from raleigh’s first confinement
it been begotten then, with my first dawn of day, when
the light of common knowledge began to open itself to
my younger years, and before any wound received either
from fortune or time, I might yet well have doubted,
that the darkness of age and death would have covered
over both it and me long before the performance. For,
beginning with the creation, I have proceeded with the
History of the World ; and I lastly purposed (some few
sallies excepted) to confine my discourse within this our
renowned Island of Great Britain. I confess that it had
better sorted with my disability, the better part of whose
times are run out in other travels, to have set together
(as I could) the unjointed and scattered frame of our
English affairs, than of the universal: in whom had
there been no other defect (who am all defect) than the
time of the day, it were enough ; the day of a tempes¬
tuous life, drawn on to the very evening ere I began.
But those inmost and soul-piercing wounds, which are
ever aching while uncured, with the desire to satisfy those
few friends which I have tried by the fire of adversity—
the former enforcing, the latter persuading—have caused
me to make my thoughts legible, and myself the subject
of every opinion, wise or weak.”*
The conclusion of the preface affords a specimen of the
beauties as well as the defects of Raleigh’s style: “ I
know that it will be said by many, that I might have
been more pleasing to the reader if I had written the
story of mine own times, having been permitted to draw
water as near the well-head as another. To this I an¬
swer, that whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall
follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out
his teeth. There is no mistress or guide that hath led
her followers and servants into greater miseries. He
that goes after her too far off, loseth her sight, and
loseth himself; and he that walks after her at a middle
distance, I know not whether I should call that kind
of course temper or baseness. It is true, that I never
* Preface, p. i. See Remarks at the end of this volume.