man wan

59

Got from great Atlas daughters, hence be- Of the cold liquor which he waded in; gan,

And stretching forth his hand did often And planted there did bring forth fruit of thinke gold;

To reach the fruit which grew upon the And those with which th’ Eubæan young brincke;

But both the fruit from hand, and flood Swift Atalanta, when through craft he her from mouth, out ran.

Did fly abacke, and made him vainely 55

swincke; Here also sprong that goodly golden fruit, The whiles he sterv'd with hunger, and with

drouth, With which Acontius got his lover trew, Whom he had long time sought with fruit

He daily dyde, yet never throughly dyen lesse suit;

couth. Here eke that famous golden Apple grew, The which emongst the gods false Ate The knight, him seeing labour so in vaine, threw;

Askt who he was, and what he ment thereby? For which th' Idæan Ladies disagreed, Who, groning deepe, thus answerd him Till partiall Paris dempt it Venus dew,

againe; And had of her fayre Helen for his meed,

"Most cursed of all creatures under skye, That many noble Greekes and Trojans made

Lo! Tantalus, I here tormented lye: to bleed.

Of whom high Jove wont whylome feasted 56

bee; The warlike Elfe much wondred at this tree, Lo! here I now for want of food doe dye: So fayre and great that shadowed all the But, if that thou be such as I thee see, ground,

Of grace I pray thee, give to eat and drinke And his broad braunches, laden with rich to mee!” fee,

60 Did stretch themselves without the utmost

"Nay, nay, thou greedy Tantalus,” (quoth bound

he) Of this great gardin, compast with a mound;

“Abide the fortune of thy present fate; Which over-hanging, they themselves did

And unto all that live in high degree, steepe In a blacke flood, which flow'd about it

Ensample be of mind intemperate,

To teach them how to use their present round.

state." That is the river of Cocytus deepe,

Then gan the cursed wretch alowd to cry, In which full many soules do endlesse wayle

Accusing highest Jove and gods ingrate; 57

And eke blaspheming heaven bitterly,

As author of unjustice, there to let him dye. Which to behold he clomb up to the bancke, And looking downe saw many

damned

61 wightes In those sad waves, which direfull deadly

He lookt a litle further, and espyde stancke,

Another wretch, whose carcas deepe was

drent Plonged continually of cruell Sprightes. That with their piteous cryes, and yelling

Within the river, which the same did hyde; shrightes,

But both his handes, most filthy feculent, They made the further shore resounden

Above the water were on high extent, wide.

And faynd to wash themselves incessantly, Emongst the rest of those same ruefull Yet nothing cleaner were for such intent, sightes,

But rather fowler seemed to the eye; One cursed creature he by chaunce espide,

So lost his labour vaine and ydle industry. That drenched lay full deepe under the Garden side.

62 58

The knight him calling asked who he was? Deepe was he drenched to the upmost chin, Who, lifting up his head, him answerd thus; Yet gaped still as covering to drinke “I Pilate am, the falsest Judge, alas!

and weepe.

25

II. A GREATER BRITAIN

THE CHARACTER OF ELIZABETH shot, a graceful dancer, a skilled musician,

and an accomplished scholar. She studied JOHN RICHARD GREEN

every morning the Greek Testament, and [From A Short History of the English

followed this by the tragedies of Sophocles People]

or orations of Demosthenes, and could "rub

up her rusty Greek” at need to bandy Never had the fortunes of England sunk pedantry with a Vice-Chancellor. But she to a lower ebb thân at the moment when was far from being a mere pedant. The Elizabeth mounted the throne. The country new literature which was springing up was humiliated by defeat and brought to the around her found constant welcome in her verge of rebellion by the bloodshed and mis- court. She spoke Italian and French as government of Mary's reign. The old social fluently as her mother-tongue. She was discontent, trampled down for a time by the familiar with Ariosto and Tasso. Even horsemen of Somerset, remained a menace amidst the affection and love of anagrams to public order. The religious strife had and puerilities which sullied her later passed beyond hope of reconciliation, now years, she listened with delight to the that the reformers were parted from their “Faery Queen," and found a smile for opponents by the fires of Smithfield and "Master Spenser" when he appeared in her the party of the New Learning all but dis- presence. Her moral temper recalled in solved. The more earnest Catholics were its strange contrasts the mixed blood within bound helplessly to Rome. The temper of her veins. She was at once the daughter of the Protestants, burned at home or driven Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From her into exile abroad, had become a fiercer thing, father she inherited her frank and hearty and the Calvinistic refugees were pouring address, her love of popularity and of free back from Geneva with dreams of revolu- intercourse with the people, her dauntless tionary change in Church and State. Eng- courage and her amazing self-confidence. land, dragged at the heels of Philip into a Her harsh, manlike voice, her impetuous useless and ruinous war, was left without an will, her pride, her furious outbursts of ally save Spain; while France, mistress of anger came to her with her Tudor blood. Calais, became mistress of the Channel. Not She rated great nobles as if they were only was Scotland a standing danger in the schoolboys; she met the insolence of Essex north, through the French marriage of its with a box on the ear; she would break now Queen Mary Stuart and its consequent bond- and then into the gravest deliberations to age to French policy; but Mary Stuart and swear at her ministers like a fish wife. But her husband now assumed the style and strangely in contrast with the violent outarms of English sovereigns, and threatened lines of her Tudor temper stood the sento rouse every Catholic throughout the suous, self-indulgent nature she derived realm against Elizabeth's title. In pres- from Anne Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure ence of this host of dangers the country were with Elizabeth the very air she lay helpless, without army or fleet, or the breathed. Her delight was to move in permeans of manning one, for the treasury, petual progresses from castle to castle already drained by the waste of Edward's through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanreign, had been utterly exhausted by Mary's ciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. restoration of the Church-lands in posses- She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A sion of the Crown, and by the cost of her happy retort or a finished compliment never war with France.

failed to win her favor. She hoarded jewels. England's one hope lay in the character of Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity her Queen. Elizabeth was now in her remained, even to old age, the vanity of a twenty-fifth year. Personally she had more coquette in her teens. No adulation was than her mother's beauty; her figure was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty commanding, her face long but queenly and too gross. “To see her was heaven,” Hatton intelligent, her eyes quick and fine. She had told her, “the lack of her was hell.” She grown up amidst the liberal culture of

would play with her rings that her courtiers Henry's court a bold horsewoman, a good | might note the delicacy of her hands; or

a

a

one.

dance a coranto that the French ambassador, throne, to keep England out of war, to rehidden dexterously behind curtain, store civil and religious order. Something of might report her sprightliness to his mas- womanly caution and timidity perhaps ter. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, backed the passionless indifference with her unwomanly jests gave color to a thou- which she set aside the larger schemes of sand scandals. Her character in fact, like ambition which were ever opening before her portraits, was utterly without shade. her eyes. She was resolute in her refusal Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she of the Low Countries. She rejected with a knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled laugh the offers of the Protestants to make the voluptuous temper which had broken out her "head of the religion” and “mistress of in the romps of her girlhood and showed the seas." But her amazing success in the itself almost ostentatiously throughout her end sprang mainly from this wise limitation later life. Personal beauty in a man was a of her aims. She had a finer sense than any sure passport to her liking. She patted hand- of her counselors of her real resources; she some young squires on the neck when they knew instinctively how far she could go, and knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled her what she could do. Her cold, critical intel"sweet Robin,” Lord Leicester, in the face lect was never swayed by enthusiasm or by of the court.

panic either to exaggerate or to underIt was

no wonder that the statesmen estimate her risks or her power. whom she outwitted held Elizabeth almost Of political wisdom indeed in its larger to the last to be little more than a frivolous and more generous sense Elizabeth had litwoman, or that Philip of Spain wondered tle or none; but her political tact was unhow "a wanton" could hold in check the erring. She seldom saw her course at a policy of the Escurial. But the Elizabeth glance, but she played with a hundred whom they saw was far from being all of courses, fitfully and discursively, as Elizabeth. The wilfulness of Henry, the musician runs his fingers over the keytriviality of Anne Boleyn played over the board, till she hit suddenly upon the right surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper Her nature was essentially pracpurely intellectual, the very type of reason tical and of the present. She distrusted a untouched by imagination or passion. Lux- plan in fact just in proportion to its urious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, speculative range or its outlook into the Elizabeth lived simply and frugally, and she future. Her notion of statesmanship lay worked hard. Her vanity and caprice had in watching how things turned out around no weight whatever with her in state affairs. her, and in seizing the moment for making The coquette of the presence-chamber be- the best of them. A policy of this limited, came the coolest and hardest of politicians practical, tentative order was not only best at the council-board. Fresh from the flat- suited to the England of her day, to its tery of her courtiers, she would tolerate no small resources, and the transitional charflattery in the closet; she was herself plain acter of its religious and political belief, and downright of speech with her coun- but it was one eminently suited to Elizaselors, and she looked for a corresponding beth's peculiar powers. It was a policy plainness of speech in return. If any trace of detail, and in details her wonderful of her sex lingered in her actual statesman- readiness and ingenuity found scope for ship, it was seen in the simplicity and their exercise. "No War, my Lords,” the tenacity of purpose that often underlies a

Queen used to cry imperiously at the counwoman's fluctuations of feeling. It was cil-board, “No War!” but her hatred of this in part which gave her her marked war sprang less from her aversion to blood superiority over the statesmen of her time.

or to expense, real as was her aversion to No nobler group of ministers ever gathered both, than from the fact that peace left the round a council-board than those who gath-field open to the diplomatic maneuvers and ered round the council-board of Elizabeth. intrigues in which she excelled. Her deBut she was the instrument of none. She light in the consciousness of her ingenuity listened, she weighed, she used or put by broke out in a thousand puckish freaks, the counsels of each in turn, but her policy freaks in which one can hạrdly see any as a whole was her own. It was a policy, purpose beyond the purpose of sheer mysnot of genius, but of good sense. Her aims tification. She revelled in "bye-ways" and were simple and obvious: to preserve her "crooked ways.” She played with grave