to whom the Spaniards universally attributed their defeat.  Lope studied the exploits of Francis Drake from his first appearance to his end, and he celebrated those exploits, as England herself has never yet thought it worth her while to do, by making him the hero of an epic poem.  There are heroes and heroes.  Lope de Vega’s epic is called ‘The Dragontea.’  Drake himself is the dragon, the ancient serpent of the Apocalypse.  We English have been contented to allow Drake a certain qualified praise.  We admit that he was a bold, dexterous sailor, that he did his country good service at the Invasion.  We allow that he was a famous navigator, and sailed round the world, which no one else had done before him.  But—­there is always a but—­of course he was a robber and a corsair, and the only excuse for him is that he was no worse than most of his contemporaries.  To Lope de Vega he was a great deal worse.  He was Satan himself, the incarnation of the Genius of Evil, the arch-enemy of the Church of God.

It is worth while to look more particularly at the figure of a man who appeared to the Spaniards in such terrible proportions.  I, for my part, believe a time will come when we shall see better than we see now what the Reformation was, and what we owe to it, and these sea-captains of Elizabeth will then form the subject of a great English national epic as grand as the ‘Odyssey.’

In my own poor way meanwhile I shall try in these lectures to draw you a sketch of Drake and his doings as they appear to myself.  To-day I can but give you a part of the rich and varied story, but if all goes well I hope I may be able to continue it at a future time.

I have not yet done with Sir John Hawkins.  We shall hear of him again.  He became the manager of Elizabeth’s dockyards.  He it was who turned out the ships that fought Philip’s fleet in the Channel in such condition that not a hull leaked, not a spar was sprung, not a rope parted at an unseasonable moment, and this at a minimum of cost.  He served himself in the squadron which he had equipped.  He was one of the small group of admirals who met that Sunday afternoon in the cabin of the ark Raleigh and sent the fire-ships down to stir Medina Sidonia out of his anchorage at Calais.  He was a child of the sea, and at sea he died, sinking at last into his mother’s arms.  But of this hereafter.  I must speak now of his still more illustrious kinsman, Francis Drake.

I told you the other day generally who Drake was and where he came from; how he went to sea as a boy, found favour with his master, became early an owner of his own ship, sticking steadily to trade.  You hear nothing of him in connection with the Channel pirates.  It was not till he was five-and-twenty that he was tempted by Hawkins into the negro-catching business, and of this one experiment was enough.  He never tried it again.

The portraits of him vary very much, as indeed it is natural that they should, for most of those which pass for Drake were not meant for Drake at all.  It is the fashion in this country, and a very bad fashion, when we find a remarkable portrait with no name authoritatively attached to it, to christen it at random after some eminent man, and there it remains to perplex or mislead.