Page:Sir Walter Raleigh by Thoreau, Henry David,.djvu/39

 would make war impossible. So peace may be begotten from the machinations of evil."

Lord Dundonald, who had fought by sea for the South Americans and the Greeks, was a good sample of a modern Ralegh; but he would not have aroused in Thoreau the interest which he had felt in Ralegh. It was the literary as well as the knightly quality in the Elizabethan that attracted the Concord man of letters; and the burden of this long-lost essay will be found to be chiefly literary. Ralegh, like his friends, Sidney and Spenser, is one of the romantic figures in English literature more admired than read in these later days; they are indispensable to him who would know all the resources of poesy in our native tongue. I was therefore surprised and rather grieved to hear Dr. Holmes say, as we were returning together to Boston from the breakfast given to Mrs. Stowe at Newton, many years since, that he had never read the verses ascribed to Ralegh. Nobody now reads the History of the World,—probably Thoreau was its latest American reader, except those whom some historical task required them to