''Sir Walter Raleigh'' is an essay by

Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural su ...

that has been reconstructed from notes he wrote for an 1843 lecture and drafts of an article he was preparing for ''

The Dial ''The Dial'' was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. From the 1880s to 1919 it was revived as a political review and ...

''. It was first published in 1950, in a collection of Thoreau's writings edited by Henry Aiken Metcalf. Another version, with significant differences, can be found in ''Henry D. Thoreau: Early Essays and Miscellanies'', edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer and Edwin Moser, with Alexander C. Kern. Metcalf writes in his introduction that he knew of three drafts of this essay, and he drew on all three of them to construct the version he prepared. He hinted that there may have been an additional fourth draft that had yet to surface. The notes to the Moldenhauer, Moser & Kern version say that Metcalf "misread the holograph at several points, omitted occasional words and phrases, ignored some pencil cancellations, and amplified Thoreau's text with passages from the working manuscripts and from the Raleigh Works. None of these changes carry authority."

Themes

The essay praises

Sir Walter Raleigh Sir Walter Raleigh (; – 29 October 1618) was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebellion ...

as a flawed but heroic figure, who failed to use his heroic character to heroic ends. Thoreau concludes by begging America to produce such a hero:

We have considered a fair specimen of an Englishman in the sixteenth century; but it behooves us to be fairer specimens of American men in the nineteenth. The gods have given man no constant gift, but the power and liberty to act greatly. How many wait for health and warm weather to be heroic and noble! We are apt to think there is a kind of virtue which need not be heroic and bravebut in fact virtue is the deed of the bravest; and only the hardy souls venture upon it, for it deals in what we have no experience, and alone does the rude pioneer work of the world. In winter is its campaign, and it never goes into quarters. "Sit not down," said Sir Thomas Browne, "in the popular seats and common level of virtues, but endeavor to make them heroical. Offer not only peace-offerings, but holocausts, unto God".

Sixteen years later, in 1859, Thoreau delivered his lecture A Plea for Captain John Brown (published as an essay in 1860). The essayist's judgment of the character of

John Brown John Brown most often refers to: *John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859), American who led an anti-slavery raid in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859 John Brown or Johnny Brown may also refer to: Academia * John Brown (educator) (1763–1842), Ir ...

resumed and expanded upon the themes launched here.

Online text

*
''Sir Walter Raleigh''
at ''The Picket Line''.

Printed sources

* ''Sir Walter Raleigh'' () * ''My Thoughts are Murder to the State'' by H.D. Thoreau () * ''The Higher Law: Thoreau on Civil Disobedience and Reform'' () * ''Collected Essays and Poems'' by Henry David Thoreau () {{Henry David Thoreau Essays by Henry David Thoreau 1843 essays Walter Raleigh