y
strength of desire a boldness to make an humble proposition to your
Lordship, such as in me can be no better than a wish: but if your
Lordship should apprehend it, may take some good and worthy effect. The
act I speak of, is the order given by his Majesty, as I understand, for
the erection of a tomb or monument for our late sovereign Lady Queen
Elizabeth: wherein I may note much, but this at this time; that as her
Majesty did always right to his Highness's hopes, so his Majesty doth in
all things right to her memory; a very just and princely retribution.
But from this occasion, by a very easy ascent, I passed furder, being
put in mind, by this Representative of her person, of the more true and
more firm Representative, which is of her life and government. For as
Statuaes and Pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking
Pictures. Wherein if my affection be not too great, or my reading too
small, I am of this opinion, that if Plutarch were alive to write lives
by parallels, it would trouble him for virtue and fortune both to find
for her a parallel amongst women. And though she was of the passive sex,
yet her government was so active, as, in my simple opinion, it made more
impression upon the several states of Europe, than it received from
thence. But I confess unto your Lordship I could not stay here, but went
a little furder into the consideration of the times which have passed
since King Henry the 8th; wherein I find the strangest variety that in
like number of successions of any hereditary monarchy hath ever been
known. The reign of a child; the offer of an usurpation (though it were
but as a Diary Ague); the reign of a lady married to a foreign Prince;
and the reign of a lady solitary and unmarried. So that as it cometh to
pass in massive bodies, that they have certain trepidations and
waverings before they fix and settle; so it seemeth that by the
providence of God this monarchy, before it was to settle in his Majesty
and his generations (in which I hope it is now established for ever), it
had these prelusive changes in these barren princes. Neither could I
contain myself here (as it is easier to produce than to stay a wish),
but calling to remembrance the unworthiness of the history of England
(in the main continuance thereof), and the partiality and obliquity of
that of Scotland, in the latest and largest author that I have seen: I
conceived it would be honor for his Majesty, and a work very memorable,