f Oxford,--in which he refused to make the
concessions required by the queen, reminding her at the same time that
it had been her father's policy, and ought to be hers, rather to
countenance the gentry against the arrogance of the great nobles than
the contrary,--sent him in disgust from court. Retiring to Wilton, the
seat of his brother-in-law the earl of Pembroke, he composed the
Arcadia. This work he never revised or completed; it was published
after his death, probably contrary to his orders; and it is of a kind
long since obsolete. Under all these disadvantages, however, though
faulty in plan and as a whole tedious, this romance has been found to
exhibit extensive learning, a poetical cast of imagination, nice
discrimination of character, and, what is far more, a fervor of
eloquence in the cause of virtue, a heroism of sentiment and purity of
thought, which stamp it for the offspring of a noble mind,--which evince
that the workman was superior to his work.

But the world re-absorbed him; and baffled at court he meditated, in
correspondence with one of his favorite mottoes,--"_Aut viam inveniam
aut faciam_,"--to join one of the almost piratical expeditions of Drake
against the Spanish settlements. Perhaps he might then be diverted from
his design by the strong and kind warning of his true friend Languet,
"to beware lest the thirst of lucre should creep into a mind which had
hitherto admitted nothing but the love of truth and an anxiety to
deserve well of all men." After the death of this monitor, however, he
engaged in a second scheme of this very questionable nature, and was
only prevented from embarking by the arrival of the queen's peremptory
orders for his return to court and that of Fulke Greville who
accompanied him.

It would certainly be difficult to defend in point of dignity and
consistency his conspicuous appearance, as formerly recorded, at the
triumph held in honor of the French embassy, or his attendance upon the
duke of Anjou on his return to the Netherlands.

The story of his nomination to the throne of Poland deserves little
regard; it is certain that such an elevation was never within his
possibilities of attainment. His reputation on the continent was however
extremely high; Don John of Austria himself esteemed him; the great
prince of Orange corresponded with him as a real friend; and Du Plessis
Mornay solicited his good offices on behalf of the French protestants.
Nothing but the highest prai