The influence of Elizabeth on literature was real, though, by sympathy
with its finer productions, she was no more entitled to give name to
an era than Queen Anne. It was simply that the fact of having a female
sovereign on the throne affected the course of a writer's thoughts. In
this sense, the presence of a woman on the throne always makes its
mark. Life is lived before the eyes of men, by which their
imaginations are stimulated as to the possibilities of Woman. "We will
die for our king, Maria, Theresa," cry the wild warriors, clashing
their swords; and the sounds vibrate through the poems of that
generation. The range of female character in Spenser alone might
content us for one period. Britomart and Belphoebe have as much room
on the canvas as Florimel; and, where this is the case, the haughtiest
Amazon will not murmur that Una should be felt to be the fairest type.

Unlike as was the English queen to a fairy queen, we may yet conceive
that it was the image of a queen before the poet's mind that called up
this splendid court of women. Shakspeare's range is also great; but he
has left out the heroic characters, such as the Macaria of Greece, the
Britomart of Spenser. Ford and Massinger have, in this respect, soared
to a higher flight of feeling than he. It was the holy and heroic
Woman they most loved, and if they could not paint an Imogen, a
Desdemona, a Rosalind, yet, in those of a stronger mould, they showed
a higher ideal, though with so much less poetic power to embody it,
than we see in Portia or Isabella, the simple truth of Cordelia,
indeed, is of this sort. The beauty of Cordelia is neither male nor
female; it is the beauty of virtue.

The ideal of love and marriage rose high in the mind of all the
Christian nations who were capable of grave and deep feeling. We may
take as examples of its English aspect the lines,