Note 94 — DIALOGUE IV. ON THE AGE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.

So good a judge of military matters, as Sir Walter Raleigh, was of this opinion with regard to the conduct of the Spanish war. “If the late queen would have believed her men of war, as she did her scribes, we had, in her time, beaten that great empire in pieces, and made their kings, kings of figs and oranges, as in old times. But her majesty did all by halves, and, by petty invasions, taught the Spaniard how to defend himself, and to see his own weakness; which, till our attempts taught him, was hardly known to himself.” See his Works, vol. i. 273.—Raleigh, it may be said, was of the Cecil faction. But the men of war, of the Essex faction, talked exactly in the same strain; which shews that this might probably be the truth.