might with her honour, she would visit him "." These are more than symptoms of favour: royal favour is not romantic; it is extravagant, not gallant2. If these instances are problematic, are the following so? In one of the curious letters of Rowland White, he says, "The queen hath of late used the fair Mrs. Bridges with words and blows of anger 3." In a subsequent letter he says, "The earl is again fallen in love with his fairest B.; it cannot choose but come to the queen's ears, and then he is undone: the countess hears of it, or rather suspects it, and is greatly unquiet 4." I think there can be no doubt but that the fairest B. and the fair Mrs. Bridges were the same: if so, it is evident why she felt the weight of her majesty's displeasure. It is indeed a very trifling matter for what Sidney Papers, vol. ii. p. 151. [The queen's jealous behaviour on the earl's matrimonial union, is shown by the following passage in a letter from John Stanhope to lord Talbot, 1590: "She (queen Elizabeth) wyll on Saterdaye next to Somersett house, and yf she could overcum her passyon agaynst my lord of Essex for his maryadge, no dowbt she would be much the quyeter: yett doth she use yt more tenperately then was thought for, and (God be thanked) doth not stryke all she thretes." Lodge's Illustr. vol. iii, p. 16.] Sidney Papers, vol. ii. p. 38. • P. 90. reason a prince chooses a favourite; nor is it meant as any reproach to this great woman, that she could not divest herself of all sensibility: her feeling, and mastering her passion, adds to her character. The favourites of other princes never fail to infuse into them their own prejudices against 'their enemies: that was not the case with Elizabeth. She was more jealous of the greatness she bestowed, than her subjects could be. How did she mortify Leicester, when the States heaped unusual honours on him! For Essex, it is evident from multiplied instances, that his very solicitation was prejudicial. Bacon 5 says to his brother Antony, "Against me she is never peremptory, but to lord of Essex." Amongst the papers of the Bacons, is a most extraordinary letter from lord treasurer Burleigh to lord Essex, recounting unmeasured abuse that he had received from the queen, on her suspecting Burleigh of favouring the earl.-So quick was her nature to apprehend union where she loved to disunite; and with such refinement did old Cecil colour his inveteracy 7. Her majesty was wont my Bacon Papers, vol. i. p. 196. Ib. p. 146. It may be worth while to direct the reader to another curious letter, in which that wise man forgot himself most in to accuse the earl of opiniastreté, and that "he would not be ruled; but she would bridle and stay him." On another occasion she said, "she observed such as followed her, and those which accompanied such as were in her displeasure; and that they should know as much before it was long"." No wonder the earl complained "that he was as much distasted with the glorious greatness of a favourite, as he was before with the supposed happiness of a courtier 2." No wonder his mind was so tossed with contradictory passions, when her soul, on whom he depended, was a composition of tenderness and haughtiness!-nay, when even economy combated her affection! He professes, "that her fond parting with him, when he set out for Ireland, pierced his very soul3."-In a few weeks she quarrelled with him for demanding a poor supply of one thousand foot and three hundred horse+. decently, speaking of Henry the fourth to his embassador in most illiberal terms, and with the greatest contempt for the person of the embassador himself. Bacon Papers, vol.i. p. 328. Bacon Papers, vol. i. p. 5. 389. 9 Ib. p. Ib. p. 116. 3 Ib. p. 425. ♦ Camden and Bacon. She even mortified him so bitterly, as to oblige him to dispossess his dear friend, the earl of South Having pretty clearly ascertained the existence of the sentiment, it seems that the earl's ruin was in great measure owing to the little homage he paid to a sovereign, jealous of his person and of her own, and not accustomed to pardon the want of a proper degree of awe and adoration! Before his voyage to Ireland, she had treated him as she did the fair Mrs. Bridges-in short, had given him a box on the ear for turning his back on her in contempt. What must she have felt on hearing he had said, "that she grew old and cankered, and that her mind was become as crooked as her carcase!" What provocation to a woman so disposed to believe all the flattery of her court5! How did she torture ampton, of the generalship of horse, which the earl had conferred upon him. P. 423. [In her 66th year she was thus complimented by an epigrammatist: "When in thy flowring age thou did'st beginne Thy happy reigne, ELIZA, blessed queene! All things, as after winter, waxed greene. And as thou, so thy country florisheth; As if that greennesse and felicitie Thy land did give, which it receives from thee." Bastard's Chrestoleros, 1598, p. 88. "There is almost none," says Harington, "that wayted in Melville to make him prefer her beauty to his charming queen's! Elizabeth's foible about her person was so well known, that when she was sixty-seven, Veriken, the Dutch embassador, told her at his audience, "that he had longed to undertake that voyage to see her majesty, who for beauty and wisdom excelled all other princes of the world "." The next year lord Essex's sister lady Rich, interceding for him, tells her majesty, "Early did I hope this morning to have had mine eyes blessed with your majesty's beauty.—That her brother's life, his love, his service to her beauties, did not deserve so hard a punishment. That he would be disabled from ever serving again his sacred goddess! whose excellent beauties and perfections ought to feel more compassion "." Whenever the weather queen Elizabeth's court, and observed any thing, but can tell that it pleased her much to seeme and to be thought, and to be told, that she looked younge. The majestie and gravitie of a scepter, borne forty-four yeare, could not alter that nature of a woman in her." Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. ii. p. 215. 6 Vide his Memoirs. "Sidney Papers, vol. ii. p. 171. Bacon Papers, p. 442, 443. [" The only objection," says Dr. Robertson, "to the account we have given of Elizabeth's attachment to Essex, arises from her great age. At the age of sixty-eight, the amorous passions are commonly abundantly cool, and the violence of all the passions, except one, is much abated. But the force of this objection is entirely removed, |