been and only recollected his magnificence. They remembered nothing but
that he had spent his whole energy and fortune in resisting the
brutality and avarice of the Spaniard.

Then came the disgraceful scene of his cross-examination at Westminster,
and the condemnation by his venal judges at the order of a paltry king.
It became known, or shrewdly guessed, that Spain had sent to James I. a
hectoring alternative that Raleigh must be executed in London or sent
alive for a like purpose to Madrid. The trial was a cowardly and
ignominious submission of the English Government to the insolence of
England's hereditary enemy. Raleigh seemed for the moment to have failed
completely, yet it was really like the act of Samson, who slew more men
at his death than in all his life. Samuel Pepys, who had some fine
intuitions at a time when the national _moral_ was very low, spoke of
Raleigh as being "given over, as a sacrifice," to our enemies. This has
been, in truth, the secret of his unfailing romantic popularity, and it
is the reason of the emotion which has called us together here three
hundred years after his death upon the scaffold.

[Footnote 1: Address delivered at the Mansion House, October 29th, 1918,
on occasion of the Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh's death.]




THE SONGS OF SHAKESPEARE


Among the "co-supremes and stars of love" which form the constellated
glory of our greatest poet there is one small splendour which we are apt