ost impersonal of poets, paid tribute to her in
_Henry VIII_., and, in a more delicate and indirect way, in the little
allegory introduced into _Midsummer Night's Dream_.

"That very time I marked--but thou could'st not--
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow
As he would pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid's fiery dart
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy free"--

an allusion to Leicester's unsuccessful suit for Elisabeth's hand.

The praises of the queen, which sound through {78} all the poetry of
her time, seem somewhat overdone to a modern reader. But they were not
merely the insipid language of courtly compliment. England had never
before had a female sovereign, except in the instance of the gloomy and
bigoted Mary. When she was succeeded by her more brilliant sister, the
gallantry of a gallant and fantastic age was poured at the latter's
feet, the sentiment of chivalry mingling itself with loyalty to the
crown. The poets idealized Elisabeth. She was to Spenser, to Sidney,
and to Raleigh, not merely a woman and a virgin queen, but the champion
of Protestantism, the lady of young England, the heroine of the
conflict against popery and Spain. Moreover Elisabeth was a great
woman. In spite of the vanity, caprice, and ingratitude which
disfigured her character, and the vacillating, tortuous policy which
often distinguished her government, she was at bottom a sovereign of
large views, strong will, and dauntless courage. Like her father, she
"loved a _man_," and she had the magnificent tastes of the Tudors. She
was a patron of the arts, passionately fond of shows and spectacles,
and sensible to poetic flattery. In her royal progresses through the
kingdom, the universities and the nobles and the cities vied with one
another in receiving her with plays, revels, masques, and triumphs, in
the mythological taste of the day. "When the queen paraded through a
country town," says Warton, the historian of English poetry, "almost
every {79} pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house
of any of her nobility, at entering the hall she was saluted by the
Penates. In the afternoon, when she condescended to walk in the
garden, the lake was covered with trit