or more diplomatic than Elizabeth, and no king has left a more
brilliant renown. As the coldest of male historians is bound to
admit, "her singular powers of government were founded equally on
her temper and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over
herself, she soon obtained an uncontrolled ascendant over her
people. Few sovereigns of England succeeded to the throne under
more difficult circumstances, and none ever conducted the
government with such uniform success and felicity." Had Elizabeth
been weak, the Duke of Anjou might have realised his ambitious
dream, with the unhappiest results for England; and that he
fortunately failed was entirely due to her sagacity and her quick
perception of his irresolute and feeble character. In the
sumptuous train attendant upon this "Petit Grenouille," as he
styled himself in one of his babyish epistles to England's
sovereign majesty, there was a certain knight more inclined to the
study of letters than to the breaking of lances,--the Sieur Amadis
de Jocelin, who being much about the court in the wake of his
somewhat capricious and hot-tempered master, came, unfortunately
for his own peace of mind, into occasional personal contact with
one of the most bewitching young women of her time, the Lady
Penelope Devereux, afterwards Lady Rich, she in whom, according to
a contemporary writer, "lodged all attractive graces and beauty,
wit and sweetness of behaviour which might render her the mistress
of all eyes and hearts." Surrounded as she was by many suitors,
his passion was hopeless from the first, and that he found it so
was evident from the fact that he suddenly disappeared from the
court and from his master's retinue, and was never heard of by the
great world again. Yet he was not far away. He had not the
resolution to leave England, the land which enshrined the lady of
his love,--and he had lost all inclination to return to France. He