have had the evil luck to read this inkwasting toy of mine, even in the name of the Nine Muses, no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of poesy; no more to laugh at the name of poets, as though they were next inheritors to fools; no more to jest at the reverend title of a rimer; but to believe, with Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasurers of the Grecians' divin

poets; that while you live, you live in love, and never get favor, for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of 5 an epitaph.

ASTROPHEL AND STELLA

to show,

I

That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—

Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,

Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,

5

ity; to believe, with Bembus, that they 10 Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love were the first bringers in of all civility; to believe, with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man, than the reading of Virgil; to believe, with Clauserus, the translator 15 of Cornutus, that it pleased the heavenly deity by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to give us all knowledge, logic, rhetoric, philosophy natural and moral, and Quid non? [Why not] to 20 believe, with me, that there are many mysteries contained in poetry, which of purpose were written darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused; to believe, with Landin, that they are so beloved of 25 the gods that whatsoever they write proceeds of a divine fury. Lastly, to believe themselves, when they tell you they will make you immortal by their verses.

Thus doing, your names shall flourish in 30 the printers' shops: thus doing, you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface: thus doing, you shall be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all: you shall dwell upon superlatives: thus doing, though you be 35 Libertino patre natus [Born of a freedman father], you shall suddenly grow Herculea proles [Descendant of Hercules],

Si quid mea Carmina possunt: [If my poems are good for anything]

Thus doing, your soul shall be placed with
Dante's Beatrice, or Virgil's Anchises.

40

But if (fie of such a but!) you be born 45 so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a cer- 50 tain rustical disdain, will become such a Mome, as to be a Momus of poetry; then, though I will not wish unto you the ass's ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet's verses, as Bubonax was, to hang 55 himself; nor to be rimed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland; yet thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,

Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting In-
vention's stay;

Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame
Study's blows;

10

And others' feet still seemed but strangers'

in my way.

Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite;

'Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart, and write.'

VII

When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,

In color black why wrapt she beams so bright?

Would she, in beamy black, like painter wise,

Frame daintiest luster, mixed of shades and light?

HAKLUYT'S VOYAGES

Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616) has been well termed by Professor Raleigh the Homer of our heroic age'; yet his aim was not so much to record great deeds as to inspire them, to urge his countrymen to explore and colonize unknown countries, to encourage trade with the distant parts of the earth, and to furnish maps and other helps to navigation. A clergyman and a student, he had no experience of the adventures he described and prompted; but he was much more than a mere compiler. He brought to his self-appointed task the devotion and enthusiasm of a lofty purpose, and must be given a high rank among those who founded the British Empire and established the Anglo-Saxon race beyond the seas. It was fortunate for posterity that the Elizabethan age of commercial enterprise and romantic adventure found a chronicler with leisure and ability to save its achievements from oblivion, for the voyagers themselves were, as a rule, too busy making history to write it. Most of them were much readier with the sword than with the pen; Grenville's desperate resolution, Gilbert's religious valor, and Drake's restless daring would have been lost to literature, and perhaps even to history, if we had had to depend on their own records. Raleigh must be mentioned as a conspicuous exception; be combined with the spirit of adventure a literary power which makes his narratives a strange contrast to the matter-of-fact or garrulous reports of his less gifted fellows.

DEDICATORY EPISTLE TO SIR
FRANCIS WALSINGHAM

(From the first edition of the Voyages,
1589)

Lord, and his wonders in the deep, &c. Which words of the prophet, together with my cousin's discourse (things of high and rare delight to my young nature), took in 5 me so deep an impression that I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the university, where better time and more convenient place might be ministered for these studies, I would by God's assistance prosecute that knowledge and kind of literature, the doors whereof, after a sort, were so happily opened before me.

15

Right honorable, I do remember that being a youth, and one of her Majesty's scholars at Westminster, that fruitful nursery, it was my hap to visit the chamber of Mr. Richard Hakluyt, my cousin, a 10 gentleman of the Middle Temple, well known unto you, at a time when I found lying open upon his board certain books of cosmography, with a universal map. He, seeing me somewhat curious in the view thereof, began to instruct my ignorance by showing me the division of the earth into three parts after the old account, and then according to the latter, and better distribution, into more. He 20 pointed with his wand to all the known seas, gulfs, bays, straits, capes, rivers, empires, kingdoms, dukedoms, and territories of each part, with declaration also of their special commodities, and particular wants, which, by the benefit of traffic and intercourse of merchants, are plentifully supplied. From the map he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the 107th Psalm, directed me to the 23rd and 24th verses, where I read, that they which go down to the sea in ships and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the

25

30

According to which my resolution, when, not long after, I was removed to Christ Church in Oxford, my exercises of duty first performed, I fell to my intended course, and by degrees read over whatsoever printed or written discoveries and voyages I found extant either in the Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portugal, French, or English languages, and in my public lectures was the first that produced and showed both the old imperfectly composed, and the new lately reformed maps, globes, spheres, and other instruments of this art for demonstration in the common schools, to the singular pleasure and general contentment of my auditory. In continuance of time, and by reason principally of my insight in this study, I grew familiarly acquainted with the chiefest captains at sea, the greatest merchants, and the best mariners of our nation; by which