Abandon all Hope ye who enter History, July 23, 2006

The 'History of the World' (which, unfortunately, is incomplete in this collection) is a masterpiece of despair and contempt for the vanity of the world. (It is simply criminal that this book isn't currently available in its entirety.) This 'history', written while Ralegh was in prison, is a recollection of human stupidity, a treatise on the ever-recurring consequences of the worship of power. (Note that this edition of 'Selected Writings' uniformly uses Ralegh instead of Raleigh.)

"Tyranny is more bold, and feareth not to be known, but would be reputed honourable: for it is prosperum et felix scelus, a fortunate mischief, as long as it can subsist. There is no reward or honour (saith Peter Charron) assigned to those, that know how to increase, or preserve human nature: all honours, greatness, riches, dignities, empires, triumphs, trophies, are appointed for those, that know how to afflict, trouble, or destroy it. Caesar and Alexander, have unmade and slain, each of them, more than a million of men: but they made none, nor left none behind them. Such is the error of Man's judgment, in valuing things according to common opinion." (Book Five, Chapter 2:2.iv)

The Peter (or Pierre) Charron referred to here, I believe, is the friend of Montaigne who penned the skeptical 'Sagesse' and it is here, among these moralists, and not the historians, that Raleigh's book truly belongs. Like them, he uses Providence as a stick to beat senseless Man about the head, but for all that he seems to be without any real hope of deliverance.

Nor does Ralegh simply spare himself. He call Courtiers (and Ralegh, especially with Elizabeth I, was indeed a courtier) vermin and says of the tyrant Dionysius and those gathered around him:

"A cruel man he was, and a faithless; a great Poet, but a foolish one. He entertained Plato a while, but afterward, for speaking against his tyranny, he gave order to have him slain or sold for a slave. For he could endure no man, that flattered him not beyond measure. His Parasites therefore styled his cruelty, The hate of evil men; and his lawless slaughters, The ornaments and effects of his justice. True it is, that flatterers are a kind of vermin, which poison all the Princes of the World; and yet they prosper better, than the worthiest and valiantest men do: And I wonder not at it; for it is a world; and as our Saviour Christ hath told us, the world will love its own." (Book 5, Chapter 1, 4)

...Blood, sweat and tears on these pages, and not only those of others. As a man that flitted about the throne, our authors hands can't be entirely clean. His readers should be aware of that. But the main target of this contempt are Kings and those that lust after ruling and refuse to listen to anything 'unpleasant'. Of Darius, and the sound advice he was given by a Greek mercenary, our author says:

"But this discourse was so unpleasing to Darius (who had been accustomed to nothing so much as to his own praises, and to nothing so little as to hear the truth;) as he commanded that this poor Grecian should be presently slain:" (Book 4, Chapter 2:4)

It is no wonder that this contempt for his supposed betters landed him in prison of King James. (Our editor, Gerald Hammond, helpfully points out that James I found the History 'too saucy in censuring princes.') But it was this contempt for Kings, and perhaps also the underlining of their self-destructive vanity, that made him a favorite of the next generation (e.g., Oliver Cromwell and John Milton) of Englishmen. But this next generation is, I think, a step down from the court of the great Elizabeth - which has been, with justice, called the last Renaissance court in Europe. After Ralegh there is only religion, capitalism and revolution...

The cyclical nature of the rise and fall of Kings and Empires (and also, I should add, its horror) is also a recurring theme:

"For we have now greater Giants, for vice and injustice, than the world had in those days; for bodily strength, for cottages, and houses of clay and timber, we have raised Palaces of stone; we carve them, we paint them, and adorn them with gold; insomuch as men are rather known by their houses, than their houses by them; we are fallen from two dishes, to two hundred; from water, to wine and drunkenness; from the covering of our bodies with the skins of beasts, not only to silk and gold, but to the very skins of men. But to conclude this digression, Time will also take revenge of the excess, which it hath brought forth. ...Long time brought forth, longer time increased it, and a time, longer than the rest, shall overthrow it." (Book 5, Chapter 1:4.i)

This writing is magnificent. True, the trope of coming apocalypse and judgment occurs throughout the History:

"And as the Devil our most industrious enemy was ever most diligent: so is he now more laborious than ever: the long day of mankind drawing fast towards an evening, and the world's Tragedy and time near at an end." (Book 1, Chapter 5:8)

But Ralegh, I believe, is but another Renaissance skeptic, unconvinced of the existence of God, but supremely convinced of the necessity of religion; if one reads him in this manner one gets a clearer picture of the hopelessness that smolders throughout this book. Indeed, to find another despair so deep, in English letters, we need to turn to 'King Lear' of Shakespeare. Ralegh is the most underrated prose stylist of Elizabethan England. This is a literary masterpiece: four and a half stars; five for the publisher that reprints it in its entirety. ( )