e declared
his intention with Nebuchodonosor, to make his habitation with the
beasts of the field, to eat hay like an ox, and to be wet with the dews
of heaven, until it should please the queen to restore him. To lord
Henry Howard, who was the bearer of these dutiful phrases, Elizabeth
expressed her unfeigned satisfaction to find him in so proper a frame of
mind; she only wished, she said, that his deeds might answer to his
words; and as he had long tried her patience, it was fit that she
should make some experiment of his humility. Her father would never have
endured such perversity:--but she would not now look back:--All that
glittered was not gold, but if such results came forth from her furnace,
she should ever after think the better of her chemistry. Soon after,
having detected the motive of immediate interest which had inspired such
moving expressions of penitence and devotion, her disgust against Essex
was renewed; and in the end, she not only rejected his suit, but added
the insulting words, that an ungovernable beast must be stinted of his
provender, in order to bring him under management.

The spirit of Essex could endure no more;--rage took possession of his
soul; and equally desperate in fortune and in mind, he prepared to throw
himself into any enterprise which the rashness of the worst advisers
could suggest. It was at this time that he is reported, in speaking of
the queen, to have used the expression, maliciously repeated to her by
certain court ladies,--that through old age her mind was become as
crooked as her carcase:--words which might have sufficed to plunge him
at once from the height of favor into irretrievable ruin.

The doors of Essex-house, hitherto closed night and day since the
disgrace of the earl, were now thrown popularly open. Sir Gilly Merrick,
his steward, kept an open table for all military adventurers, men of
broken fortunes and malcontents of every party. Sermons were delivered
there daily by the most zealous and popular of the puritan divines, to
which the citizens ran in crowds; and lady Rich, who had lately been
placed under restraint by the queen and was still in deep disgrace, on
account of her intermeddling in the affairs of her brother, and on the
further ground of her scandalous intrigue with lord Montjoy, became a
daily visitant. The earl himself, listening again to the suggestions of
his secretary Cuff, whom he had once dismissed on account of his violent
and dangerous cha