Like Napoleon's Italian campaign, the achievements of Drake on the Spanish Main show a master at work, unburdened and unfettered as yet by responsibi… - Walter Raleigh

These Lives are the maturest and strongest of Johnson's work. It ought be a comfort to men past middle life to find Johnson, like Dryden, wrote his best prose in his latest years.

The sense of liberty and power, and of belief in the capacity and destiny of man, which was quickened by the new discoveries, distinguishes the literature of the Elizabethan age from the great backward-looking periods of romance. It is a literature of youth and hope, with none of the subtle and poignant flavours that are to be tasted in a literature of regret and memory.

Of all the notable Elizabethans, Sir Walter Raleigh is perhaps the most difficult to understand. He has the insolent imagination of Marlowe, and the profound melancholy of Donne.