Page:Sir Walter Raleigh by Thoreau, Henry David,.djvu/82

 people adjoining, and the highest command in Greece."

For the most part an author only writes history, treating it as a dead subject; but Raleigh tells it like a fresh story. A man of action himself, he knew when there was an action coming worthy to be related, and does not disappoint the reader, as is too commonly the case, by recording merely the traditionary admiration or wonder. In commenting upon the military actions of the ancients, he easily and naturally digresses to some perhaps equal action of his own, or within his experience; and he tells how they should have drawn up their fleets or men, with the authority of an admiral or general. The alacrity with which he adverts to some action within his experience, and slides down from the dignified impersonality of the historian into the familiarity and interest of a party and eye-witness, is as attractive as rare. He is often without reproach the Cæsar of his own story. He treats Scipio, Pompey, Hannibal, and the rest quite like equals, and he speaks like an eye-witness, and gives life and reality to the