subtlety, being themselves, as became Italian students, Platonists of
the school of Ficinus and Picus Mirandolensis. So wrote Master Frank,
in a long sententious letter, full of Latin quotations: but the letter
never reached the eyes of him for whose delight it had been penned: and
the widow had to weep over it alone, and to weep more bitterly than ever
at the conclusion, in which, with many excuses, Frank said that he had,
at the special entreaty of the said Budaeus, set out with him down the
Danube stream to Buda, that he might, before finishing his travels,
make experience of that learning for which the Hungarians were famous
throughout Europe. And after that, though he wrote again and again to
the father whom he fancied living, no letter in return reached him from
home for nearly two years; till, fearing some mishap, he hurried back to
England, to find his mother a widow, and his brother Amyas gone to the
South Seas with Captain Drake of Plymouth. And yet, even then, after
years of absence, he was not allowed to remain at home. For Sir Richard,
to whom idleness was a thing horrible and unrighteous, would have him up
and doing again before six months were over, and sent him off to Court
to Lord Hunsdon.

There, being as delicately beautiful as his brother was huge and strong,
he had speedily, by Carew's interest and that of Sidney and his Uncle
Leicester, found entrance into some office in the queen's household; and
he was now basking in the full sunshine of Court favor, and fair ladies'
eyes, and all the chivalries and euphuisms of Gloriana's fairyland, and
the fast friendship of that bright meteor Sidney, who had returned with
honor in 1577, from the delicate mission on behalf of the German and
Belgian Protestants, on which he had been sent to the Court of Vienna,
under color of condoling with the new Emperor Rodolph on his father's
death. Frank found him when he himself came to Court in 1579 as lovely
and loving as ever; and, at the early age of twenty-five, acknowledged