THE FIRST EARL OF SALISBURY 149
day, and especially the large ruff, contributed. 1 Anthony Bacon, in a letter to Essex, 2 tells an anecdote which shows that his diminutive stature was a source of merriment to the Court. " Lord Wemyss," he says, " coming out of the Privy Chamber after an audience with the Queen, asked the Lord Chamberlain for Sir Robert Cecil. ' Why, Sir,' said he, ' he was within.' ' By my soul,' saith the Lord Wemyss, ' I could not see him.' ' No marvel,' said Sir George Carey, ' being so little.' Whereat the Lord Wemyss confessed he burst out of laughing."
Yet, in spite of these disadvantages, he was the only one of Elizabeth's courtiers whose career suffered no reverse. Her affection for his father, and his own great abilities above all, perhaps, his steadiness and discretion, in which qualities his rivals were lamentably deficient counted for much. But even his personal defects may have helped to maintain him in the Queen's good graces. She liked to treat him with a mixture of affection and raillery, calling him her " pigmy," or her " elf," and though such terms galled him, he had the good sense and good temper to hide his mortification. His very infirmities, too, perhaps roused her dormant spirit of pro- tection, and provoked her to defend him against the slanders and malice of his rivals. A story is told, which belongs to this period, and has been
1 See article on " Hatfield House," by J. S. Brewer, in his English Studies, to which I am considerably indebted.
2 January 24th, 1594 (Hatfield MSS., V. 98).
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