in his memoirs how he was present when Robert
Dudley was made "Earl of Leicester and baron of Denbigh; which was done
at Westminster with great solemnity, the Queen herself helping to put on
his ceremonial, he sitting upon his knees before her with a great
gravity. But she could not refrain from putting her hand in his neck,
smilingly tickling him, the French Ambassadour and I standing by. Then
she turned, asking at me, 'how I liked him?'"[58]

The earliest attempts at the novel in the modern style bore a
resemblance to these social and intellectual manners. Let us not be
surprised if these works are too heavily bedizened for our liking: the
toilettes and fashions of that time were less sober than those of
to-day; it was the same with literature. Queen Elizabeth, who was wholly
representative of her age, and shared even its follies, liked and
encouraged finery in everything. All that was ornament and pageantry
held her favour; in spite of public affairs, she remained all her life
the most feminine of women; on her gowns, in her palaces, with her
poets, she liked to find ornaments and embellishments in profusion. The
learned queen who read Plutarch in Greek, a thing Shakespeare could
never do, and translated Boetius into English,[59] found, in spite of
her philosophy, an immense delight in having herself painted in
fantastic costumes, her thin person hidden in a silken sheath, covered
by a light gauze, over which birds ran. Around her was a perpetual field
of cloth of gold, and the nobles sold their lands in order to appear at
Court sufficiently embroidered. She liked nothing better than to hear
and take part in conversations on dresses and fashions. This was so well
known, that when Mary, Queen of Scots, sent the same Sir James Melville
on his mission to the English Court, in 1564, she was careful to advise
him not to forget such means to propitiate her "dear sister." The
account left by Melville of the way in which he carried into effect this
part of his instructions is highly characteristic of the times, and
gives an idea of the way in which a courtly conversation was then
conducted:

"The Queen my mistress," says Melville, in his "Memoires," "had
instructed me to leave matters of gravity sometimes, and cast in merry
purposes, lest otherwise I should be wearied [wearying], she being well
informed of that queens natural temper. Therefore in declaring my
observations of the customs of Dutchland, Poland and Italy, the b