a courtier writing for the Court, he was also, let
us add, anxious to obtain a certain coveted post at the Revels' Office.
He was an artist not entirely without ideals, yet ever ready to curry
favour and to aim at material advantages by his literary facility. The
idea therefore of writing dramas which should be, from beginning to end,
nothing but an ingenious compliment to his royal mistress would not be
in the least distasteful to him. But we must not attribute too much to
motives of personal ambition. Spenser's _Faery Queen_ was not published
until 1590; but Lyly had known Spenser before the latter's departure for
Ireland, and, even if the scheme of that poet's masterpiece had not been
confided to him, the ideas which it contained were in the air. The cult
of Elizabeth, which was far from being a piece of insincere adulation,
had for some time past been growing into a kind of literary religion.
Even to us, there is something magical about the great Queen, and we can
hardly be surprised that the pagans of those days hailed her as half
divine. When Lyly commenced his career, she had been on the throne for
twenty years, in itself a wonderful fact to those who could remember the
gloom which had surrounded her accession. Through a period of infinite
danger both at home and abroad she had guided England with intrepidity
and success; and furthermore she had done all this single-handed,
refusing to share her throne with a partner even for the sake of
protection, and yet improving upon the Habsburg policy[115] by making
coquetry the pivot of her diplomacy. It was no wonder therefore that,

"As the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation fancy free,"

the courtiers she fondled, and the artists she patronized, should half
in fancy, half in earnest, think of her as something more than human,
and search the fables of their newly discovered classics for examples of
enthroned chastity and unconquerable virgin queens.

[115] "Alii bella gerunt, tu felix Austria nube."

All Lyly's plays except _Campaspe_ and _Mother Bombie_ are written in
this vein; each, as Symonds beautifully puts it, is "a censer of
exquisitely chased silver, full of incense to be tossed before Elizabeth
upon her throne." In the three plays _Sapho and Phao_, _Endymion_, and
_Midas_ this element of flattery is more prominent than in the others,
inasmuch as they are not only full of compliments unmistakeably directed
towards the Queen, but the