"The existing Lives of Raleigh are very numerous. To this day the most interesting of these, as a literary production, is that published in 1736 by William Oldys, afterwards Norroy King at Arms. This book was a marvel of research, as well as of biographical skill, at the time of its appearance, but can no longer compete with later lives as an authority. By a curious chance, two writers who were each ignorant of the other simultaneously collected information regarding Raleigh, and produced two laborious and copious Lives of him, at the same moment, in 1868. Each of these collections, respectively by Mr. Edward Edwards, whose death is announced as these words are leaving the printers, and by the late Mr. James Augustus St. John, added very largely to our knowledge of Raleigh; but, of course, each of these writers was precluded from using the discoveries of the other. The present Life is the first in which the fresh matter brought forward by Mr. Edwards and by Mr. St. John has been collated; Mr. Edwards, moreover, deserved well of all Raleigh students by editing for the first time, in 1868, the correspondence of Raleigh. I hope that I do not seem to disparage[Pg vi] Mr. Edwards's book when I say that in his arrangement and conjectural dating of undated documents I am very frequently in disaccord with him. The present Life contains various small data which are now for the first time published, and more than one fact of considerable importance which I owe to the courtesy of Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson. I have, moreover, taken advantage up to date of the Reports of the Historical MSS. Commission, and of the two volumes of Lismore Papers this year published. In his prospectus to the latter Dr. Grosart promises us still more about Raleigh in later issues. My dates are new style.

The present sketch of Raleigh's life is the first attempt which has been made to portray his personal career disengaged from the general history of his time. To keep so full a life within bounds it has been necessary to pass rapidly over events of signal importance in which he took but a secondary part. I may point as an example to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a chapter in English history which has usually occupied a large space in the chronicle of Raleigh and his times. Mrs. Creighton's excellent little volume on the latter and wider theme may be recommended to those who wish to see Raleigh painted not in a full-length portrait, but in an historical composition of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. I have to thank Dr. Brushfield for the use of his valuable Raleigh bibliography, now in the press, and for other kind help."