"Could I even surmount these obstacles, I should shrink with
terror from the modern history of England, where every character is a
problem and every reader a friend or an enemy: when a writer is
supposed to hoist a flag of party, and is devoted to damnation by the
adverse faction. Such would be _my_ reception at home; and abroad the
historian of Raleigh must encounter an indifference far more bitter
than censure or reproach. The events of his life are interesting; but
his character is ambiguous; his actions are obscure; his writings are
English, and his fame is confined to the narrow limits of our language
and our island. _I must embrace a safer and more extensive theme._"
Here we see the first gropings after a theme of cosmopolitan interest.
He has arrived at two negative conclusions: that it must not be
English, and must not be narrow. What it is to be, does not yet
appear, for he has still a series of subjects to go through, to be
taken up and discarded. The history of the liberty of the Swiss, which
at a later period he partially achieved, was one scheme; the history
of Florence under the Medici was another.
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