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years after she had ceased to have learned leisure, are well known; and her ingenious evasion of a captious theological question, is still more and deservedly applauded :

"Christ was the word that spake it;

He took the bread and brake it ;

And what that word did make it:

That I believe and take it."

She excelled even in things of a much more trifling nature. There cannot be a sillier species of poetry than the rebus; yet of that kind there are few better than the following which the queen made upon Mr. Noel: "The word of denial and letter of fifty

Is that gentleman's name that will never be thrifty." For this we have the authority of Collins, who in his account of the house of Stanhope, mentions the following distich, in which her Majesty gave the characters of four Knights of Nottinghamshire:-

"Gervase the gentle, Stanhope the stout,

Markham the lion, and Sutton the lout."

Fuller records on English hexameter, composed by this queen in imitation of Sir P. Sidney. Coming into a grammar school, she thus expressed her opinion of three classic authors:

"Persius a crabstaff; bawdy Martial; Ovid a fine wag."

The same author relates that Sir Walter Raleigh haying written on a window obvious to the queen's eye, "Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall :"

she immediately wrote under it

"If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.”

A greater instance of genius, and that too in latin, was her extempore reply to an insolent prohibition delivered to her from Philip the second, by his embassador, in this tetrastic :

"Te veto ne pergas bello defendere Belgas:
Quæ Dracus eripuit, nunc restituantur oportet;
Quas pater evertit, jubeo te condere cellas;

Religio Papæ fac restituatur ad unguem." She instantly answered, with as much spirit as she used to return his threatened invasion.

"Ad Græcas, bone rex, fient mandata Calendas."

An instance of the same spirit, and a proof that her compositions even in the learned tongues, were her own, is that rapid piece of eloquence with which she interrupted an insolent embassador from Poland. "Having ended her oration, she, lion-like, rising," saith Speed her contemporary, "daunted the malapert orator no less with her stately port, and majestic deporture, than with the tartness of her princely checks; and turning to the train of her attendants, said, "God's death! my lords, I have been forced this day, to scour up my old latin, that hath long been rusting."

Puttenham, in his "Art of English Poesie," published in 1589, thus sums up the character of Queen Elizabeth's poetry. "But last in recital, and first in degree, is the queen, our sovereign lady, whose learned, delicate, noble muse, easily surmounteth all the rest that have written before her time or since, be it in ode, elegy, epigram, or any other kind of poem, wherein it shall please her majesty to employ her pen, even by as much odds, as her own excellent estate and degree exceedeth all the rest of her most humble

vassals." 'I find no example so well maintaining the figure of the gorgeous (Exargasia) as that ditty of her Majesty's own making, passing sweet and harmonical. And this was the action-our sovereign lady, perceiving how the Scottish queen's residence within this realm, at so great liberty and ease, as were scarce worthy of so great and dangerous a prisoner, bred secret factions among her people, and made many of her nobility inclined to favour her party-to declare that she was nothing ignorant in those secret favours, though she had long with great wisdom and patience dissembled it, writeth this ditty, most sweet and sententious.” The doubt of future foes

Exiles my present joy,

And wit me warns to shun such snares

As threaten my annoy.
For falsehood now doth flow,

And subject faith doth ebb;

Which would not be if reason ruled,
Or wisdom weaved the webb-

But clouds of toys untried

Do cloak aspiring minds,

Which turn to rain of late repent,

By course of changed winds.

The top of hope supported

The root of ruth will be,

And fruitless all their grafted guiles,
As shortly ye shall see.

Then dazzled eyes with pride,

Which great ambition blinds,

Shall be unsealed by worldly wights,

Whose foresight falsehood finds.

The daughter of debate,

That eke discord doth sow,

Shall reap no gain where former rule
Hath taught still peace to grow.
No foreign banished wight

Shall anchor in this port ;

Our realm it brooks no stranger force,

Let them elsewhere resort.

Our rusty sword with rest,

Shall find his edge employ

To poll their tops that seek such change,
And gape for eager joy.

There is more merit in this poem than appears at first reading. It is strikingly characteristic of the illustrious author; written evidently with much pains; very har monious; and so overflowing with metaphor, that every line almost, contains one, and some two conceits.Several other poetical compositions by Queen Elizabeth are extant; one may be found at length in Mr. Park's additions to the Royal and Noble Authors,' being a translation in blank verse of a chorus in the Hercules Etæus of Seneca. A few lines of this may amuse, and will doubtless satisfy the reader.

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The weight of sceptre's sway if choice must bear,
Albeit the vulgar crew fill full thy gates,

And hundred thresholds with their feet be smoothed;
Though with thy gleaves and axes thou be armed,
And root full great do glory give thy name;"
Amid the view of all these sundry sortsTM

One faultless faith her room even frank may claim.

* The lines in the original are of twelve and fourteen sylla lables; they are here divided for the convenience both of the reader and the printer.

It is amusing to contrast this bombast with the simplicity of the original.

Tu, quicunque es, qui sceptra tenes,
Licet omne tuâ vulgus in aulâ
Centum pariter limina pulset;
Cum tot popnlis stipatus eas
In tot populis vix unâ fides.

There is an air of originality in these, and other poems of Queen Elizabeth, which leaves very little reason to doubt their being genuine and uncontaminated by a meaner hand. In truth, who but ancient Pistol himself could have produced their like? The same remark cannot with justice be applied to her father's compositions, otherwise his name as a Kentish man should have adorned our pages, in due form. Henry the eighth was also born at the palace at Greenwich. In the Nuga Antiquæ is a letter from Sir John Harrington to Prince Henry, inclosing "a special verse" of King Henry the eighth, when he conceived love for Anne Boleyn; "and hereof," says Sir John, "I entertain no doubt of the author; for if I had no better reason than the rhyme, it were sufficient to think that no other than such a King could write such a sonnet; but of this my father oft gave me good assurance, who was in his household. This sonnet was sung to the lady at his commandment,-and here followeth."

The eagle's force subdues each bird that flies;
What metal can resist the flaming fire?

Does not the sun dazzle the clearest eyes,

And melt the ice, and make the frost retire? The hardest stones are pierced through with tools: The wisest are, with princes, made but fools.

This is too good for a King of the age of Henry the eighth, and was more probably made for him, than by him. The following, taken from a manuscript of that

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