Lies the subject of all Verse:
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother,
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Fair and wise and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee![109]
Arabella Stewart, born 1577, the daughter of Charles Stewart Lennox, the youngest brother of Lord Darnley, was a very highly cultured woman, and was appointed by her cousin, James I, to be governess to his daughter the Princess Elizabeth, who loved her dearly. She wrote histories and had a great facility for poetical composition.
Two other names I would like to mention of ladies born in the sixteenth century, who carried into the next its culture with a difference, as the new spirit of science and mathematics, history, and political economy absorbed some of the time hitherto devoted to classics.
Elizabeth Stewart, mentioned above, was born in 1596, at Falkland Palace. When her father came to England she was sent to the charge of Lord Harington at Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire. That nobleman followed the plan of Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, surrounded her by cultured companions, explained to her the meaning of everything, and taught her the foundations of the Christian religion. Mr. Beauchamp was her writing master, and the famous Dr. Bull, the composer, her teacher in music. Lord Harington himself taught her much in history, literature, and geography. She was very fond of animals and of natural history, and she had a little corner of the park, with a lake in it, to preserve her treasures. She built a little cottage for a widow and her children to attend to her animals, and designed it herself. Near it was her fairy farm, with the smallest kind of cattle that could be bought. She studied the changes of insects through the microscope, then newly invented. When ten years old a portrait was painted of her, inexplicable without knowing all this. She has a monkey and a dog at her feet, a love-bird in her hand, a macaw on one shoulder and a parrot on the other. She was familiar also with the use of the telescope, and studied mathematics and astronomy. Her home at Coombe Abbey suggested to Dr. Johnson “The Happy Valley of Rasselas.” She was devoted to her brother Henry, and inconsolable at his death, in 1612. In the following year she married the Count Palatine, and great festivities took place in London. The poets Donne and Daniel call her “the pearl of Britain,” and Sir Henry Wotton wrote verses in her praise:
Tell me, if she were not designed
Th’ Eclipse and glory of her kind.