y outrageous protestations of anxious devotion to her person. The
following passage from a letter to Sir Robert Cecil is remarkable in
many ways, curious as an example of affected passion in a soldier of
forty for a maiden of sixty, curious as a piece of carefully modulated
Euphuistic prose in the fashion of the hour, most curious as the
language of a man from whom the one woman that he really loved was
divided by the damp wall of a prison:

My heart was never broken till this day, that I hear the Queen
goes away so far off, whom I have followed so many years with so
great love and desire, in so many journeys, and am now left
behind her, in a dark prison all alone. While she was yet nigher
at hand, that I might hear of her once in two or three days, my
sorrows were the less; but even now my heart is cast into the
depth of all misery. I that was wont to behold her riding like
Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle
wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks, like a nymph;
sometime sitting in the shade like a goddess; sometime singing
like an angel; sometime playing like Orpheus. Behold the sorrow
of this world! Once amiss, hath bereaved me of all. O Glory,
that only shineth in misfortune, what is become of thy
assurance? All wounds have scars, but that of fantasy; all
affections their relenting, but that of womankind. Who is the
judge of friendship, but adversity? or when is grace witnessed,
but in offences? There were no divinity, but by reason of
compassion for revenges are brutish and mortal. All those times
past, the loves, the sights, the sorrows, the desires, can they
not weigh down one frail misfortune? Cannot one drop of salt be
hidden in so great heaps of sweetness? I may then conclude,
_Spes et fortuna, valete_! She is gone in whom I trusted, and of
me hath not one thought of mercy, nor any respect of that that
was. Do with me now, therefore, what you list. I am more weary
of life than they are desirous I should perish.

He kept up this comedy of passion with wonderful energy. One day, when
the royal barge, passing down to Gravesend, crossed below his window, he
raved and stormed, swearing that his enemies had brought the Queen
thither 'to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus' torment.' Another
time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman, and just
catch a sight of