Page:The Queens of England.djvu/463

ELIZABETH. 417 of her chiefly distinguished' lovers being now disposed of, we have only to deal with the last and most influential — Essex. Robert Devereux, who bore this title, which he rendered trag- ically celebrated, was born in 1567, consequently was thirty- four years younger than Elizabeth. Though Leicester never entirely acquired her favor after the revelation to her of his marriage, it was until after his death that Essex seems to have laid any hold upon the partiality of the queen. In 1591, when she confided to him the command of the expedition dispatched to support Henry the Fourth, he had evidently attracted her favorable notice; but in 1597, when Lord Effingham was in- trusted by her with secret orders to prevent Essex from expos- ing himself to the chief risk in the attack upon Cadiz, her pred- ilection had become so strong that she seems not even to have possessed the decent desire to disguise it ; yet at this time she had nearly perfected thirteen lustres, or, in other words, had just arried at the sober age of sixty-five. Lord Bacon has left an elaborate attempt at an apology for his own shameful conduct to Essex in his disgrace, in which, without at all clearing himself, he describes, in the most char- acteristic manner, the universal peremptoriness and willful- ness of this authoritative and wayward sovereign. Nothing was too large or too small, too wide or too narrow, to escape her supervision and imperious interference. A curious extract from the pages of Hentzner, a traveler cited by Hume, shall now be laid before the reader ; and we imagine we shall then have finally demonstrated that a residence at the court of Eliza- beth could neither have been very pleasant, nor at all encour- aging to a man of sense, of feeling, and self-respect. "No one spoke to Queen Elizabeth without kneeling, though now and then she raised some with waving her hand. Nay, wherever she turned her eyes every one fell on his knees. Even when she was absent, those who covered her table, though often persons of quality, neither approached it, nor retired from it without kneeling, and that often three times." The names of Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sydney,, and Spenser have cast an imperishable luster over the reign of Elizabeth ; yet, after all, this was not a school in which to have reared high-minded and honest men. The intensity of their emula- tion stimulated the talents of her ministers and courtiers ; the state and its mistress had brilliant and indefatigable servants ; but among the courtiers Diogenes would have failed to dis- cover the object of his search.