218 THE CECILS
heartless and designing individual that some writers have imagined. Sir Edward Wotton writes on the occasion of Cecil's embassy to France, " My Lord Ambassador, only three words, I love, I honour you unfeignedly." " I will no longer live," says Lord Sheffield, " than I will deserve your love." And Sir Thomas Bodley writes, " Give me leave to protest, as I do very truly and sincerely, that I hold it for one of the greatest parts of the sweetness and comfort of my life, in my later years, that I know I may rely, when my need shall so require, upon your favour, which I beseech you, be not weary to continue still unto me."
The best testimony of all is contained in the will of the Earl of Dorset, who left some jewels to Salisbury,
" of whose excelling virtues and sweet conditions, so well known to me, in respect of our long communication by so many years in most true love and friendship together, I am desirous to leave some faithful remembrance in this my last will and testament, that since the living speech of my tongue when I am gone from hence must then cease and speak no more, that yet the living speech of my pen, which never dieth, may herein thus for ever testify and declare the same."
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