ors but one;
all officers twice or thrice; some bishops four times: only the
uncertainty of succession gave hopes to foreigners to attempt fresh
invasions and breed fears in many of her subjects of a new conquest. The
only way then, said he, that is in policy left to quail those hopes and
to assuage those fears, were to establish the succession... at last,
insinuating as far as he durst the nearness of blood of our present
sovereign, he said plainly, that the expectations and presages of all
writers went northward, naming without any circumlocution Scotland;
which, said he, if it prove an error, yet will it be found a learned
error.

"When he had finished this sermon, there was no man that knew queen
Elizabeth's disposition, but imagined that such a speech was as welcome
as salt to the eyes, or, to use her own word, to pin up her winding
sheet before her face, so to point out her successor and urge her to
declare him; wherefore we all expected that she would not only have been
highly offended, but in some present speech have showed her displeasure.
It is a principle not to be despised, _Qui nescit dissimulare nescit
regnare_; she considered perhaps the extraordinary auditory, she
supposed many of them were of his opinion, she might suspect some of
them had persuaded him to this motion; finally, she ascribed so much to
his years, to his place, to his learning, that when she opened the
window we found ourselves all deceived; for very kindly and calmly,
without shew of offence (as if she had but waked out of some sleep) she
gave him thanks for his very learned sermon. Yet when she had better
considered the matter, and recollected herself in private, she sent two
councillors to him with a sharp message, to which he was glad to give a
patient answer."

The premature death of Edmund Spenser, under circumstances of severe
distress, now called forth the universal commiseration and regret of the
friends and patrons of English genius. After witnessing the plunder of
his house and the destruction of his whole property by the Irish rebels,
the unfortunate poet had fled to England for shelter,--the annuity of
fifty pounds which he enjoyed as poet-laureat to her majesty apparently
his sole resource; and having taken up his melancholy abode in an
obscure lodging in London, he pined away under the pressure of penury
and despondence.

The genius of this great poet, formed on the most approved models of the
time, and exercised upon t