minster Abbey. The Countess contributed four epitaphs in English verse, written on the death of her son, to the 'Diana' of John Southern. The only one quoted by Park is affected and awkward in style, heathen in sentiment, and utterly heartless. Her lustre appears to have been not inherent, but derived from her illustrious parents, kinswomen, and husband. MARGARET ASCHAM. Margaret How was a wealthy gentlewoman, who, in the year 1554, became the wife of the eminent scholar Roger Ascham. He died in 1568, and posterity are indebted to her for the preservation of his celebrated work, The Schoolmaster,' which she published in 1570, with a dedication to Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, written by herself. The date of her death is uncertain; she is supposed to have shared her husband's grave in St. Sepulchre's Church, London. ANNE WHEATHILL. In the Censura Literaria,' vol. x. p. 109, the following title is given of a work now scarce:-"A Handfull of wholesom (though homeley) Hearbs, gathered out of the goodly garden of God's most Holy Word; for the common benefit and comfortable exercise of all such as are devoutly disposed. Collected and dedicated to all religious Ladies, Gentlewomen, and others; by Anne Wheathill, Gentlewoman. Imprinted at London by H. Denham, 1584." It is quaintly inscribed :-"To all Ladies, Gentlewomen, and others, which love true religion and virtue, and be devoutly disposed: grace, mercy, and peace, in Christ Jesus. "For a testimony to all the world, how I have and do (I praise God) bestow the precious treasure of time, even now in the state of my virginity or maidenhood; lo here I dedicate to all good ladies, gentlewomen, and others, who have a desire to invocate and call upon the name of the Lord, a small handfull of grose hearbs; which I have presumed to gather out of the garden of God's most holy word. Not that there is any unpureness therein, but that, (peradventure) my rudeness may be found to have plucked them up unreverentle and without zeal." Who or what Anne Wheathill was, the writer has vainly tried to ascertain. Sir Richard and Dame Elizabeth Wheathell, and their son Sir Robert Wheathell, are mentioned in the second and third volumes of the Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies;' and several epistles written by Lady Wheathell are printed there, in which she bitterly complains to Lord Cromwell of her son, with whom, being then a widow, she was at variance. Probably Anne Wheathill was a sister of Sir Robert. FRANCES SYDNEY, Countess of Sussex, by her last will and testament, founded Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, in the year 1598. CHAPTER IV. A.D. 1600-1650. Queen Elizabeth - Elizabeth Grymston - Elizabeth Jane Leon - The Lady Elizabeth Carew - Mary Countess of Pembroke - The Lady Mary Wroth - Elizabeth Countess of Lincoln - Anne Countess of Arundel. If they have nothing else, the least gifted of them have at least something of the freshness and airiness of that balmy morn, some tones_caught from their greater contemporaries, some echoes of the spirit of music that then filled the universal air."-Craik's 'Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England,” vol. iii., p. 127. QUEEN ELIZABETH. ELIZABETH TUDOR, the only child of King Henry VIII. and Queen Anne Boleyn, was born on the 7th of September, 1533, crowned Queen of England, January 15, 1558, and died March 24, 1603. Elaborately educated, both by appointed teachers and by the events and circumstances of life, she failed so to profit by them as to become either an amiable woman or a good Christian. The arrogant sagacity of the Tudor, and the coquettish levity of the Boleyn, were to the last conjoined and unitedly predominant in her character, unsoftened and unhallowed by time or piety: but her invariable and perfect self-possession in the most painful vicissitudes and the most sudden emergencies commands respect. How much tutors had to do with the boasted performances of erudite young ladies is made evident by a brief survey of Queen Elizabeth's F 6 studies: she, under the guidance of the learned William Grindal, translated, when only eleven years of age, from French verse into English prose, The Mirror, or Glass for a Sinful Soul;' and at twelve, from English into Latin, French, and Italian, Queen Catherine Parr's collection of Prayers and Meditations;' and into English from the French, The Meditations of Margaret Queen of Navarre.' William Grindal dying, the Princess Elizabeth, after her father's death, chose for her preceptor the celebrated Roger Ascham; and, having already become conversant with the Greek and Latin languages, zealously pursued the study of their literature. She also devoted much time to the works of Melanchthon and to the Holy Scriptures. She spoke five languages. She read Isocrates and Sophocles in the original Greek, translated the Hiero and Simonides from Xenophon, and wrote a commentary upon Plato. Besides these scholastic exercises, her orations, speeches, and letters afford proofs of her extraordinary knowledge and sagacity. She acquired in her day a high reputation as a poet; and Puttenham, whose Art of English Poesy' was published in 1589, after extolling Sir Philip Sydney, Chaloner, Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others, adds: "But last in Tecital 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 for sense, sweetness, and subtilty, be it in the ode, elegy, epigram, or any other kind of poem, heroic or lyric, wherein it shall please her pen, even by so much odds as her own excellent estate and degree exceedeth all the rest of her most humble vassals." In the true spirit of a crouching vassal this egregious flattery was certainly administered; and it seems to have been a tacit law of the Elizabethan Court, that in all things practised by the Queen her supreme and excellent pre-eminence must be acknowledged. Edward Bolton, a critic of English literature, although not setting a good example of English style, writing in or about the year 1616, says: "Queen Elizabeth's verses, those which I have seen and read, extant in the elegant, witty, and artificial book of the Art of English Poetry,' the work, as the fame is, of one of her gentlemen pensioners, Puttenham, are princely as her prose."* This is ambiguous praise, and may perhaps be construed to convey a covert censure. When a state-prisoner at Woodstock, during her sister's reign, Elizabeth wrote the following verses with charcoal on a shutter:: "Oh Fortune, how thy restless wavering state Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit! So God send to my foes all they have thought. A.D. MDLV. ELIZABETH, Prisoner."† The tone is heathen and the spirit malevolent, but the language and versification are not below mediocrity. The chief fault lies in the change of Fortune's person in the last couplet from the second of the singular to the possessive pronoun. The line 64 And freeing those that death hath well deserved," looks at first sight like bad grammar; but, supposing Death a personification, it may be understood that he hath deserved to have those guilty persons, who would * Warton's ' History of English Poetry,' vol. iii. sect. li. |