Lope studied
the exploits of Francis Drake from his first appearance to his end, and
he celebrated those exploits, as England herself has never yet thought
it worth her while to do, by making him the hero of an epic poem. There
are heroes and heroes. Lope de Vega's epic is called 'The Dragontea.'
Drake himself is the dragon, the ancient serpent of the Apocalypse. We
English have been contented to allow Drake a certain qualified praise.
We admit that he was a bold, dexterous sailor, that he did his country
good service at the Invasion. We allow that he was a famous navigator,
and sailed round the world, which no one else had done before him.
But--there is always a but--of course he was a robber and a corsair, and
the only excuse for him is that he was no worse than most of his
contemporaries. To Lope de Vega he was a great deal worse. He was Satan
himself, the incarnation of the Genius of Evil, the arch-enemy of the
Church of God.
It is worth while to look more particularly at the figure of a man who
appeared to the Spaniards in such terrible proportions. I, for my part,
believe a time will come when we shall see better than we see now what
the Reformation was, and what we owe to it, and these sea-captains of
Elizabeth will then form the subject of a great English national epic as
grand as the 'Odyssey.
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