556 Revieios of Books and heroic part " in the last years of the war and whose reputation as an admiral "is scarcely less difficult to explain than that which Essex en- joyed in his lifetime." By the " bulk of his contemporaries he was de- tested as no better than a pushing and selfish adventurer. For us that view of him is forgotten and forgiven in his prophetic dream of empire and the witchery of his tuneful pen ;" but "no single exploit, no single well-timed resolution lifts him amongst the great captains. His immortal Virginian dream, failure as it was, is his real monument. If that be put aside, and if, by an effort hardly possible, we can free our judgment from the spell of his pen and personality in order to follow dispassionately his career at sea, it will look as cold and bare to us, as it did to those of his contemporaries who were best able to judge." Besides these two, many other great Elizabethans live and move in Mr. Corbett's pages : Vere, the dashing hero of the Low Country wars, Mountjoy, the defender of Ireland, and his trusty lieutenant "good George Carew," the old Lord Admiral whose service against the Spaniards lasted long after the glory of 1588, stout-hearted Lord Thomas Howard who deserves a place amongst the highest in the roll of Elizabeth's great sailors, Cumberland the great privateering earl, first to conquer the "virgin city of the Indies." On the Spanish side, too, apart from the ill-starred Sidonia, Drake's old foe, who still more helpless than in 1588 witnesses the triumph of Drake's successors, we meet many glorious names, above all perhaps Spinola, over the achievements of whose courage and skill Mr. Corbett lingers not only with the impartiality of the true historian, but with such unfeigned admiration as a great commander, whether friend or foe, elicits from a true lover of the great game of war. As to the further contents of the brilliant historical narrative, a sum- mary will not be out of place. After a description of the complex open- ing war moves of the year 1596, we see the Spaniards take Calais and England preparing the great expedition to Cadiz, which Mr. Corbett proceeds to tell most carefully and graphically on the basis of rich orig- inal authorities which he discusses in a learned and valuable appendix. Mr. Corbett gives us further a careful account of Philip's three re- vengeful attempts to repeat with better success the enterprise of 1588, the ' ' New Armada, " the " Last Armada, ' ' and the armada which never even started for its destination, giving rise to the gibe, really a sigh of relief, that, having begun with an Armada Invincible, he had ended with an "Armada Invisible." The naval mobilization to meet this Armada is noteworthy, as is also the first great galley feat of Spinola, who now opens his brief but dazzling career. On the English side we have, after the dispersion of the " New Armada," the last attempt to invade Spain, a kind of futile invisible counter-armada, followed by the " Islands Voy- age " with Raleigh's gallant deeds at Tagal to give a little tinge of brightness to his new portrait, and with the breathlessly interesting story of the missing of the treasure fleet. After a fine graphic description of Cumberland's capture of Puerto Rico and a short sad chapter on the decline of the navy at the close of
