Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 1.

Adventures of the Age. Heroism. Ex

Scene in a Sea-side Tavern.

Hatred

of the Spaniard. Sea Chivalry. - Voyage of Master Parker of Plymouth.- Escape to Guatimala. - Sea Yarns.-Valiant Fight of Ten Merchant Ships of London and Twelve Spanish Galleys. The Centurion of London. - Escape of John Fox from a Turkish Prison. The religious Sentiment. - Spanish Cruelties. - Names

of Vessels.

Our Navy. English Army. - Decline of Archery. - Uses of Archery. - Archer's Fittings. - Defects of Archers. |

THE Wapping of Elizabeth's day was a dense net-work of narrow, dirty streets, whose fronts nodded to, and almost touched, each other. Below were rope walks, biscuit shops, old clothes stores, and dusty piles of Indian curiosities, much as are at present in such localities. In the parlour of the "Drake's Head," or "Gallant Howard," sat old sunburnt, scarred sailors, talking of Virginny, or of the chase of some Indian chief. Incredible lies are heard emerging, like the utterance of oracles, not from the incense of an altar, but from dense clouds of tobacco

smoke, lit here and there by stars of dull red flame. There are tales of the Inquisition Chambers, with baring of shrivelled arms and branded breasts, and much stripping of legs to show the red band where the fetters clasped, or the dark hole where the poisoned arrow entered; what cheers, too, from the balconies and the great chimneycorner when some great captain enters, and proposes a fresh cruise to the Golden City, the vexed Bermoothes, or the pearl fisheries. Lion hearts, every one in iron frames, ready for hot or cold death, fire or steel, — so the dollars are won, and the Spaniards can be stripped. Away they go, flag flying, and men cheering, for the Horn Cape, El Dorado, or the Land of Fire.

Whoever has any love for the golden age must have read the three folios written by that excellent scholar and brave spirit, Richard Hakluyt, preacher, and sometimes student of Christchurch, Oxford.

It is from those wonderful records alone that we can fully learn to appreciate the ardour of commercial enterprise that animated the voyagers of this reign, when a lion-hearted Queen ruled over lion-hearted subjects; was it not then that Richard Chancelor reached Russia by the North Cape, and by a new route then that Sir Hugh Willoughby coasted Nova Zembla, and Frobisher and Davis toiled for the North-West Passage? Raleigh, and Drake,

THE SHIP PRIMROSE."

175

and Hawkins, were all contemporaries in the reign in which Shakspere and Jonson flourished, Burleigh governed, and Bacon thought.

There was not a ship that set out from Plymouth but had a crew of Argonauts, heroes who loved England, and were ready to die for her. Against the Papist and the Spaniard, the greatest successes with the smallest means were the rules with these men. The Sunshine, a smack of 50 tons, leaves Davis to discover a passage between Greenland and Iceland; the Centurion, of London, a tall ship, weakly manned, beats off five Spanish galleys in the Straits of Gibraltar.

The Primrose, of London, 150 tons, escapes from under the very guns of Bilboa, and carries off the Corregidor

himself.

The enterprise is in all regions: sober citizens of London travel to Moscow, are found in China, visit Barbary, embark for Guinea, colonise Virginia, trade with Goa, have consuls at Damascus, threaten the King of Algiers, and obtain privileges from the Grand Turk.

It is John Fox, a simple English sailor, who delivered 266 Christian slaves from captivity at Alexandria. There is Miles Phillips, one of Hawkins's sailors, who eats parrots with the cannibals, who is sold as a slave at Mexico, who is imprisoned by the Inquisition, who, hearing

of Drake's arrival, escapes from Vera Cruz, and from Cavallos to Spain, and so to England.

Every day at Dartmouth voyagers were landing fresh from grapples with Indians and Spaniards, their necks strung with pearls of the Pacific, or jewels from Brazil, carrying strange birds on their wrists from the woods of the Bermudas, or leading in leashes the hunting leopards of Hindostan.

But there were also disasters, for every sea is bounded by a shore of death. Sir Hugh Willoughby and all his crew were frozen in Lapland; Drake and Cavendish died of broken hearts, and Raleigh's schemes proved futile; thousands of Englishmen fell victims to Indian arrows and Spanish bullets; thousands pined away in the galleys of Bilboa, the prisons of the Inquisition, the mines of Peru, and the dockyards of Algiers; quicksands, whirlpools, reefs and shoals, had all their victims; and at this price we purchased our commercial greatness: deserts, mountains, rivers, and forests were burying-places for our travellers; but the survivors returned to widen our empire and buttress it with colonies.

Our voyagers explored Muscovy and Persia, and the Great Khan, and the Russian Emperor entered into an alliance with our nation. We rivalled Venice in energy, and Genoa in enterprise; our ships were in every

TAVERN STORIES.

177

sea, and our foot-prints on every shore. English flags waved over the ports of Candia and Cyprus, Tripoli and Constantinople. English faces were to be seen among dusty images in the streets of Jerusalem and Alexandria, in Venice and Pegu, at Calicut, and at Rhodes. Quicksilver and plate, pegos and ducats, ingots and jewels, rolled together on the quays of the ports of Devon, coinstained with Spanish blood, and won by the sweat of Englishmen. The Emperor of Ethiopia, and the Lama of Thibet, had both heard of England, and seen the ambassadors of its Queen. Simple merchants of Exeter commenced a trade with Senegal and Guinea, and private enterprisers captured Spanish caricks, and plundered Indian cities.

In the tavern of any seaport town you might hear swarthy men, with scarred faces and gold earrings, narrate stories of Drake's Portugal voyage, or of Essex's capture of Cadiz, of the Earl of Northumberland's voyage to the Azores, or of the noble death of Sir Richard Greenvil. The navigators were never tired of justifying their intrepid piracies, by narrations of Spanish cruelty and aggression. Had not the Spaniards wasted 30,000 Indians in Hispanioles alone, besides many millions of a poor harmless people elsewhere; men, too, who might easily have been persuaded to have become Christians. Were the Spaniards