Sir Walter Raleigh was one that, it seems, Fortune had picked out of purpose, of whom to make an example and to use as her tennis-ball, thereby to show what she could do, for she tossed him up of nothing, and to and fro to greatness, and from thence down to little more than to that wherein she found him, a bare gentleman; and not that he was less, for he was well descended, and of good alliance, but poor in his beginnings: and for my Lord Oxford’s jests of him for the jacks and upstarts, we all know it savoured more of emulation, and his honour than of truth; and it is a certain note of the times, that the Queen, in her choice, never took in her favour a mere viewed man, or a mechanic, as Comines observes of Lewis XI., who did serve himself with persons of unknown parents, such as were Oliver, the barber, whom he created Earl of Dunoyes, and made him _ex secretis consiliis_, and alone in his favour and familiarity.
His approaches to the University and Inns of Court were the grounds of his improvement, but they were rather extrusions than sieges, or settings down, for he stayed not long in a place; and, being the youngest brother, and the house diminished in his patrimony, he foresaw his destiny, that he was first to roll through want and disability, to subsist otherwise before he came to a repose, and as the stone doth by long lying gather moss. He was the first that exposed himself in the land-service of Ireland, a militia which did not then yield him food and raiment, for it was ever very poor; nor dared he to stay long there, though shortly after he came thither again, under the command of the Lord Grey, but with his own colours flying in the field, having, in the interim, cast a mere chance, both in the Low Countries and in the voyage to sea; and, if ever man drew virtue out of necessity, it was he, and therewith was he the great example of industry; and though he might then have taken that of the merchant to himself,
“Per mare, per terras, currit mercator ad Indos.”
He might also have said, and truly, with the philosopher, “_Omnia mea mecum porto_,” for it was a long time before he could brag of more than he carried at his back; and when he got on the winning side, it was his commendation that he took pains for it, and underwent many various adventures for his after-perfection, and before he came into the public note of the world; and thence may appear how he came up _per ardua_:—