the most imperious woman in the world, whose favour was the breath of his
life, had expressly forbidden him to do. The step having been taken, the
prize so tempting to his ambition having been snatched, and the policy
which had governed the united action of the States and himself seeming so
sound, what ought he to have done in order to avert the tempest which he
must have foreseen? Surely a man who knew so much of woman's nature and
of Elizabeth's nature as he did, ought to have attempted to conciliate
her affections, after having so deeply wounded her pride. He knew his
power. Besides the graces of his person and manner--which few women, once
impressed by them, could ever forget--he possessed the most insidious and
flattering eloquence, and, in absence, his pen was as wily as his tongue.
For the Earl was imbued with the very genius of courtship. None was
better skilled than he in the phrases of rapturous devotion, which were
music to the ear both of the woman and the Queen; and he knew his royal
mistress too well not to be aware that the language of passionate
idolatry, however extravagant, had rarely fallen unheeded upon her soul.
It was strange therefore, that in this emergency, he should not at once
throw himself upon her compassion without any mediator. Yet, on the
contrary, he committed the monstrous error of entrusting his defence to
envoy Davison, whom he determined to despatch at once with instructions
to the Queen, and towards whom he committed the grave offence of
concealing from him her previous prohibitions. But how could the Earl
fail to perceive that it was the woman, not the Queen, whom he should
have implored for pardon; that it was Robert Dudley, not William Davison,
who ought to have sued upon his knees. This whole matter of the
Netherland sovereignty and the Leicester stadholderate, forms a strange
psychological study, which deserves and requires some minuteness of
attention; for it was by the characteristics of these eminent personages
that the current history was deeply stamped.

Certainly, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the first letter
conveying intelligence so likely to pique the pride of Elizabeth, should
have been a letter from Leicester. On the contrary, it proved to be a
dull formal epistle from the States.

And here again the assistance of the indispensable Davison was considered
necessary. On the 3rd February the ambassador--having announced his
intention of going to Engla