within six months in a fresh expedition. If Meta Incognita be not
worth planting, there must be, so Raleigh thinks, a vast extent of
coast between it and Florida, which is more genial in climate,
perhaps more rich in produce; and he sends Philip Amadas and Arthur
Barlow to look for the same, and not in vain.

On these Virginian discoveries I shall say but little. Those who
wish to enjoy them should read them in all their naive freshness in
the originals; and they will subscribe to S. T. Coleridge's dictum,
that no one nowadays can write travels as well as the old worthies
who figure in Hakluyt and Purchas.

But to return to the question--What does this man intend to be? A
discoverer and colonist; a vindicator of some part at least of
America from Spanish claims? Perhaps not altogether: else he would
have gone himself to Virginia, at least the second voyage, instead of
sending others. But here, it seems, is the fatal, and yet pardonable
mistake, which haunts the man throughout. He tries to be too many
men at once. Fatal: because, though he leaves his trace on more
things than one man is wont to do, he, strictly speaking, conquers
nothing, brings nothing to a consummation. Virginia, Guiana, the
'History of the World,' his own career as a statesman--as dictator
(for he might have been dictator had he chosen)--all are left
unfinished. And yet most pardonable; for if a man feels that he can
do many different things, how hard to teach himself that he must not
do them all! How hard to say to himself, 'I must cut off the right
hand, and pluck out the right eye. I must be less than myself, in
order really to be anything. I must concentrate my powers on one
subject, and that perhaps by no means the most seemingly noble or
useful, still less the most pleasant, and forego so many branches of