from Plutarch's Lives, may be thought at present a more incompatible and extraordinary character, than a canon of Windfor understanding no Greek and but little Latin, yet Elifabeth's paffion for thefe acquifitions was then natural, and refulted from the genius and habitudes of her age.

In

The books of antiquity being thus familiarifed to the great, every thing was tinctured with antient history and mythology. The heathen gods, although discountenanced by the Calvinists on a fufpicion of their tending to cherish and revive a fpirit of idolatry, came into general vogue. When the queen paraded through a country-town, almoft every pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a vifit at the house of any of her nobility, at entering the hall fhe was faluted by the Penates, and conducted to her privy-chamber by Mercury. Even the pastry-cooks were expert mythologists. At dinner, felect transformations of Ovid's metamorphofes were exhibited in confectionary: and the fplendid iceing of an immense historic plumb-cake, was emboffed with a delicious baffo-relievo of the deftruction of Troy. the afternoon, when the condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with Tritons and Nereids: the pages of the family were converted into Wood-nymphs who peeped from every bower and the footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of Satyrs. I fpeak it without defigning to infinuate any unfavourable suspicions, but it seems difficult to fay, why Elifabeth's virginity should have been made the theme of perpetual and exceffive panegyric: nor does it immediately appear, that there is lefs merit or glory in a married than a maiden queen. Yet, the next morning, after fleeping in a room hung with the tapestry of the voyage of Eneas, when her majefty hunted in the Park, she was met by Diana, who pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon of unfpotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrufions of Acteon. The truth is, she was fo profufely flattered for this virtue, because it was esteemed the characteristical ornament of the heroines, as fantastic honour was the chief pride of the champions, of the old barbarous romance.

It was in conformity to the fentiments of chivalry, which still continued in vogue, that he was celebrated for chastity: the compliment, however, was paid in a claffical allufion.

Queens must be ridiculous when they would appear as women. The fofter attractions of fex vanish on the throne. Elifabeth fought all occafions of being extolled for her beauty, of which indeed in the prime of her youth she poffeffed but a small fhare, whatever might have been her pretenfions to abfolute virginity. Notwithstanding her exaggerated habits of dignity and ceremony, and a certain affectation of imperial feverity, fhe did not perceive this ambition of being complimented for beauty, to be an idle and unpardonable levity, totally inconsistent with her high station and character. As the conquered all nations with her arms, it matters not what were the triumphs of her eyes. Of what confequence was the complexion of the mistress of the world? Not lefs vain of her person than her politics, this ftately coquet, the guardian of the proteftant faith, the terror of the sea, the mediatrix of the factions of France, and the fcourge of Spain, was infinitely mortified, if an embassador, at the first audience, did not tell her she was the finest woman in Europe. No negosiation fucceeded unlefs fhe was addreffed as a goddefs. Encomiaftic harangues drawn from this topic, even on the fuppofition of youth and beauty, were surely fuperfluous, unsuitable, and unworthy; and were offered and received with an equal impropriety. Yet when the rode through the ftreets of the city of Norwich, Cupid, at the command of the mayor and aldermen, advancing from a groupe of gods who had left Olympus to grace the proceffion, gave her a golden arrow, the most effective weapon of his well-furnished quiver, which under the influence of fuch irresistible charms was fure to wound the most obdurate heart." A gift, says honest Hollinshed, which her majefty, now verging to her fiftieth year, received "very thankfullie '.' In one of the fulfome interludes at

CHRON. iii. f. 1297.

court,

court, where she was prefent, the finging-boys of her chapel presented the story of the three rival goddesses on mount Ida, to which her majesty was ingeniously added as a fourth: and Paris was arraigned in form for adjudging the golden apple to Venus, which was due to the queen alone.

This inundation of claffical pedantry foon infected our poetry. Our writers, already trained in the school of fancy, were fuddenly dazzled with these novel imaginations, and the divinities and heroes of pagan antiquity decorated every compofition. The perpetual allufions to antient fable were often introduced without the least regard to propriety. Shakespeare's Mrs. Page, who is not intended in any degree to be a learned or an affected lady, laughing at the cumbersome courtship of her corpulent lover Falstaffe, fays, "I had rather be a giantess and lie under mount "Pelion "." This familiarity with the pagan ftory was not, however, fo much owing to the prevailing study of the original authors, as to the numerous English verfions of them, which were confequently made. The tranflations of the claffics, which now employed every pen, gave a currency and a celebrity to these fancies, and had the effect of diffufing them among the people. No fooner were they delivered from the pale of the fcholaftic languages, than they acquired a general notoriety. Ovid's metamorphofes just tranflated by Golding, to instance no farther, disclosed a new world of fiction, even to the illiterate. As we had now all the antient fables in English, learned allufions, whether in a poem or a pageant, were no longer obscure and unintelligible to common readers and common fpectators. And here we are led to observe, that at this restoration of the claffics, we were firft ftruck only with their fabulous inventions. We did not attend to their regularity of defign and juftness of sentiment. A rude age, beginning to read these writers, imitated their extravagancies, not their natural beauties. And thefe, like i other novelties, were pursued to a blameable excess.

MERRY W. A&t ii. Sc. i.

I have before given a sketch of the introduction of claffical ftories, in the fplendid fhow exhibited at the coronation of queen Anne Boleyn. But that is a rare and a premature instance and the pagan fictions are there complicated with the barbarisms of the catholic worship, and the doctrines of scholaftic theology. Claffical learning was not then so widely spread, either by study or tranflation, as to bring these learned fpectacles into fashion, to frame them with fufficient fkill, and to present them with propriety.

Another capital fource of the poetry peculiar to this period, confifted in the numerous tranflations of Italian tales into Eng-~~ lish. These narratives, not dealing altogether in romantic inventions, but in real life and manners, and in artful arrangements of fictitious yet probable events, afforded a new gratification to a people which yet retained their antient relish for taletelling, and became the fashionable amusement of all who profeffed to read for pleasure. They gave rife to innumerable plays and poems, which would not otherwise have existed; and turned the thoughts of our writers to new inventions of the fame kind. Before these books became common, affecting situations, the combination of incident, and the pathos of catastrophe, were almost unknown. Diftrefs, especially that arifing from the conflicts of the tender paffion, had not yet been fhewn in its most interesting forms. It was hence our poets, particularly the dramatic, borrowed ideas of a legitimate plot, and the complication of facts neceffary to constitute a story either of the comic or tragic fpecies. In proportion as knowledge encreased, genius had wanted subjects and materials. These pieces ufurped the place of legends and chronicles. And although the old historical fongs of the minstrels contained much bold adventure, heroic enterprife, and ftrong touches of rude delineation, yet they failed in that multiplication and difpofition of circumstances, and in that defcription of characters and events approaching nearer to truth and reality, which were demanded by a more

difcerning

difcerning and curious age. Even the rugged features of the original Gothic romance were softened by this fort of reading: and the Italian paftoral, yet with fome mixture of the kind of incidents described in Heliodorus's Ethiopic history now newly tranflated, was engrafted on the feudal manners in Sydney's ARCADIA.

But the reformation had not yet destroyed every delufion, nor difinchanted all the ftrong holds of fuperftition. A few dim characters were yet legible in the mouldering creed of tradition. Every goblin of ignorance did not vanish at the first glimmerings of the morning of science. Reason fuffered a few demons ftill to linger, which the chofe to retain in her fervice under the guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hovering around, who brought with them airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, that the ghost was duely released from his prison of torment at the sound of the curfue, and that fairies imprinted myfterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this credulity was even confecrated by the name of science and profound fpeculation. Profpero had not yet broken and buried his ftaff, nor drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet found. It was now that the alchymift, and the judicial astrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came obfequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his feverest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers, to evoke the queen of the Fairies in the folitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent luftre". The Shakespeare of a more instructed and polished age, would not have given us a magician darkening the fun at noon, the fabbath of the witches, and the cauldron of incantation.

Lilly's LIFE, p. 151.

Undoubtedly