tened, and sent back to the durance in which all feeling was held. But her poem on Queen Elizabeth has here and there a quiet sarcasm, and at one point at least rises into a fine scorn of the normal attitude toward women:
She hath wip'd off the aspersion of her Sex,
That women wisdome lack to play the Rex.
Through the whole poem runs an evident, almost joyous delight in what a woman has achieved, and as she passes from point to point, gathering force with every period, she turns suddenly upon all detractors with these ringing lines:
Now say, have women worth or have they none?
Or had they some, but with our Queen is't gone?
Nay, masculines, you have thus taxed us long;
But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong.
Let such as say our sex is void of reason,
Know 'tis a slander now, but once was treason.
Sir Philip Sidney fills her with mixed feeling, her sense that his "Arcadia" was of far too fleshly and soul-beguiling an order of literature, battling with her admiration for his character as a man, and making a diverting conflict between reason and inclination. As with Queen Elizabeth, she compromised by merely hinting her opinion of certain irregularities, and hastened to cover any damaging admission with a mantle of high and even enthusiastic eulogy.
