THE HUGUENOTS 19 only a piece in the game, and she respected it as the most valuable piece. It is easy to cry "Shame!" and "Treachery!" when modern power over time and space has modified the rules of the diplomatic game; but game it remains, and truth in it still plays, and will always play, the subservient part of a nice convention or a fine pretext. So those gallant gentlemen, who longed to fight and could find no more excellent reason than faith for fighting, went with their companies to France and fought their fill for the Huguenots. They realized the unfortunate necessity to which the Queen of England was put in ordaining that if they were taken prisoners a scroll should be pinned on their breasts as they dangled from the gallows, on which it was declared that they met their fate "for having come against the will of the Queen of England to the help of the Huguenots." That, probably, only lent zest to their endeavour. They would realize, too, that however the Queen of England might be forced to act, Elizabeth in her woman's heart sympathized deeply with the cause for which they fought; and Elizabeth, be sure, with her woman's wit, did her utmost to encourage them in this belief, and not without sincerity. Henry Champernoun, of whose band of gentlemen volunteers, gathered mostly from Devonshire, Camden asserts that Ralegh was a member, was famous among these Huguenot supporters, though not so famous as his cousin, Gawen Champernoun, a son of Katherine, Ralegh's younger brother, Sir Arthur. Gawen progressed so far that he became son-in-law to the celebrated Count of Montgomery. No doubt Ralegh the nephew looked up to his uncles. About his five or six years' absence in France (the date of his return is uncertain) Ralegh is reticent, partly, as Edwards suggests, in obedience to the maxim laid down in his "History of the World" which runs, "Whosoever in writing a Modern Historie shall follow Truth too near the heels it may haply strike out his teeth;" and partly, too, for the reason that his experiences as a boy would be adventurous rather than suggestive. He would have been too young to be enough behind the scenes to know the motives of movements in which he took part, and the motives would alone lend a broad or historical value to the adventures. Among relations, youngness is commonly taken into full account. And Ralegh, for all his ability, had not probably the opportunity given him of seeing things other than as isolated incidents. As likely as not, he was asked to leave the tent or the room when matters of moment were about to be discussed. But certain anecdotes he recalls in his "History of the World," one of which is well worth telling in his own good words, because it shows the manner of fighting that prevailed in these wars: "I saw in the third Civil War of France certain caves in Languedoc which had but one entrance, and that very narrow, cut out in the midway of high rocks, which we knew not how to enter by any ladder or engine; till at last by certain bundles of straw, let down by an iron chain, and a weighty stone in the midst, those that defended it were so smothered as they rendered themselves with their plate, money and other goods therein hidden." He was not, however, always among the caves and hedgerows; almost certainly he was in Paris in 1572, sheltering with Philip Sidney in the house of the ambassador, Walsingham, when the terrible and famous massacre took place during the night of St. Bartholomew's Eve, in which the friends of the Duke of Guise boasted that more Protestants were slain than in the whole of the twelve years of the war. CHAPTER III TOWARDS MANHOOD Friendship with George Gascoyne-Its importance-Ralegh in London-The arch-gossip Aubrey-Elizabethan LondonRalegh and Sir Humfrey Gilbert-The beginning of the great enterprise. R ALEGH returned from France in 1575 or 1576; and there are three years of his life-important years, from the age of twenty-three to twenty-six-which contain little or no record of his doings. Some authors, on the slenderest authority, maintain that he trailed a pike in the Lowlands, under Sir John Norris. But this is unlikely. The time of his possible presence there has been adroitly whittled down by William Oldys to the early part of the year 1578, and quite recently a document has been discovered bearing his signature, and the date of the deed is April 11th, 1578. If the signature is genuine, and expert evidence points to the fact that it is so, this is an additional, almost conclusive, proof that during these three years he remained in England. There is another matter, intrinsically small, but exceedingly important because it throws a great light on his pursuits at this time. To George Gascoigne's satirical poem "The Steele Glas" is appended, among other commendatory verses, a poem by Walter Rawely, of the Middle Temple, which runs as follows "Swete were the sauce, would please ech kind of tast To scorne the rest, and seke to please the wise. "Though sundry mindes in sundry sorte do deeme Yet worthiest wights yelde praise for every payne, "Wherefore to write, my censure of this booke This Glasse of Steele impartially doth shewe, From prince to poore, from high estate to lowe I feare me much, shal hardly reache so high." Edwards thinks, and rightly, that the verses show an intimate friendship with the poet in whose honour they were written; and "the poem itself to me discovers," writes Oldys, with his own quaint charm, “in the very first line of it a great air of that solid axiomatical vein which is observable in other productions of Ralegh's muse. And the whole middle hexastic is such an indication of his own fortune or fate, such a caution against that envy of superior merit which he himself ever struggled with, that it could proceed from no hand more properly than his own." And these conjectures are strengthened into fact when it is remembered (and this point seems hitherto to have been passed over) that Gascoigne was a close friend of Sir Humfrey Gilbert, and a kinsman to Martin Frobisher. "Now it happened," writes Gascoigne (“in a letter from my lodging, where I march among the Muses for lacke of exercise in martial exploytes"), FRIENDSHIP WITH GASCOIGNE 23 "now it happened that my selfe being one (amongst manie) beholding to the said S. Humfrey Gilbert for sundrie curtesies did come to visit him in Winter last past at his house in Limehouse, and beeing verie bolde to demande of him howe he spente his time in this loytering vacation from martial stratagems: he curteously tooke me up into his studie and there shewed me sundrie profitable and verie commendable exercises which he had perfected painefully with his own penne: And amongst the rest this present Discourse. The which as well because it was not long, as also because I understoode that M. Fourboiser (a kinsman of mine) did pretend to travaile in the same Discouverie, I craved at the said S. Humfreyes handes for two or three dayes to reade and peruse. And hee verie friendly granted my request, but still seming to doubt that thereby the same might, contrarie to his former determination be Imprinted." Ralegh would meet Gascoigne often at Sir Humfrey's house, and to Gascoigne he probably owed his first impulse towards literature. For George Gascoigne was the most considerable man writing at that time; and though his work contained no actual greatness, it was very much on the right lines, that is to say, he was steeped in Chaucer and Gower, and acknowledged them his masters, rather than classical authors. Not that he was ignorant of either Latin or Greek; on the contrary, he was intimate with both, and his "Jocasta," which he adapted from an Italian translation by Dolce of the "Phoenissæ" of Euripides, was not only one of the first plays in blank verse, but also was the first known attempt to produce translated tragedy upon the English stage. And therein lies Gascoigne's chief quality. He was |