George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

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He was not only admirable in active life as a sol-

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dier; he was an accomplished scholar. No statesman in retirement ever expressed the charms of tranquil leisure more beautifully than Raleigh; and it was not entirely with the language of grateful friendship, that Spenser described his ‘sweet verse as sprinkled with nectar,’ and rivaling the melodies of ‘the summer's nightingale.’¹ When an unjust verdict, contrary to probability and the evidence, ‘against law and against equity,’ on a charge which seems to have been a pure invention, left him to languish for years in prison, with the sentence of death suspended over his head, his active genius plunged into the depths of erudition; and he who had been a soldier, a courtier, and a seaman, now became the elaborate author of a learned History of the World.

His career as a statesman was honorable to the pupil of Coligny and the contemporary of L'Hopital. In his public policy, he was thoroughly an English patriot; jealous of the honor, the prosperity, and the advancement of his country; the inexorable antagonist of the pretensions of Spain. In parliament, he defended the freedom of domestic industry. When, by the operation of unequal laws, taxation was a burden upon industry rather than wealth, he argued for a change:² himself possessed of a lucrative monopoly, he gave his voice for the repeal of all monopolies;³ and, while he pertinaciously used his influence with his sovereign to mitigate the severity of the judgments against the nonconformists,⁴ as a legislator he resisted the sweeping enactment of persecuting laws.⁵