ividual brightness. All eyes are dazzled with the radiance of the
era itself. The few rare and peculiar stars are not discriminated as
shining with a lustre of their own. The Queen would not be better able
than her subjects to measure the particular mode in which Ralegh
overtopped his neighbours. She discerned the special gifts which others
discerned, the 'good presence in a handsome and well compacted person;
the strong natural wit and a better judgment, with a bold and plausible
tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage.' She
was diverted by his flights of fancy emphasized by the broad Devon
accent, which, to the day of his death, he never lost, or tried to lose.
She must have been conscious of depths of capacity, to which, whatever
the exigency, appeal was never made in vain. But the surpassing
attraction for her was the feeling that he and his grandeur were her
creature and creation.

[Sidenote: _Scandal._]

Personally she chose him, and she exacted that his service should be
personally rendered to her. He understood the conditions of his tenure
of influence, and generally fulfilled them faithfully. She knew, and he
knew, that he was selected for gifts which made him a valuable servant
of the State, as impersonated in its chief. Yet it is not strange that,
in an age of coarse feeling, and coarser language, his elevation should
have been attributed to mere feminine weakness. It is much more
surprising that the warning, 'No scandal about Queen Elizabeth,' should
have been disregarded by grave modern historians and biographers. Mr.
Edward Edwards, for instance, Ralegh's most thorough and painstaking
biographer since the learned but unmethodical Oldys, takes the report
for granted, and appears to think it honourable. The belief cannot bear
the least examination. Elizabeth was in the habit of requiring all her
courtiers to kneel to her as woman as well as Queen, to hail her at once
Gloriana and Belphoebe. The fashion was among her instruments of
government. By appealing to the devotion of her courtiers as lovers, she
hoped to kindle their zeal in serving their Queen. They who mock at her
claims to adoration as the Lady of the land are ungrateful to a policy
which preserved the tone of English society for a generation romantic,
poetical, and chivalrous. In pursuance of her usual system, and in
innocence of any vice but vanity, she was sure to invite the language of
passion from the owner of genius