dolphins, overlaid with gold': and the man himself, tall, beautiful,
and graceful, perfect alike in body and in mind, walking to and fro,
his beautiful wife upon his arm, his noble boy beside his knee, in
his 'white satin doublet, embroidered with pearls, and a great chain
of pearls about his neck,' lording it among the lords with an
'awfulness and ascendency above other mortals,' for which men say
that 'his naeve is, that he is damnable proud'; and no wonder. The
reduced squire's younger son has gone forth to conquer the world; and
he fancies, poor fool, that he has conquered it, just as it really
has conquered him; and he will stand now on his blood and his
pedigree (no bad one either), and all the more stiffly because
puppies like Lord Oxford, who instead of making their fortunes have
squandered them, call him 'jack and upstart,' and make impertinent
faces while the Queen is playing the virginals, about 'how when jacks
go up, heads go down.' Proud? No wonder if the man be proud! 'Is
not this great Babylon, which I have built?' And yet all the while
he has the most affecting consciousness that all this is not God's
will, but the will of the flesh; that the house of fame is not the
house of God; that its floor is not the rock of ages, but the sea of
glass mingled with fire, which may crack beneath him any moment, and
let the nether flame burst up. He knows that he is living in a
splendid lie; that he is not what God meant him to be. He longs to
flee away and be at peace. It is to this period, not to his death-
hour, that 'The Lie' belongs; {4} saddest of poems, with its
melodious contempt and life-weariness. All is a lie--court, church,
statesmen, courtiers, wit and science, town and country, all are
shams; the days are evil; the canker is at the root of all things;
the old heroes are dying one by one; the Elizabethan age is rotting
down, as all human things do, and nothing is left but to bewail with
Spenser 'The Ruins of Time'; the glory and virtue which have been--