As for this "strange letter," as he denominates it, from which I have quoted, the sincere, as well as brusque, humour attests more than ordinary acquaintance with, and genuine admiration of, Elizabeth, the poetic and only child of Sir Philip Sidney. The Countess lived but twenty-five miles north-west of Charnwood, and in the same country of Leicestershire. One can see the towers from the heights above Grace-Dieu. The Beaumonts undoubtedly had been at Belvoir, time and again. "If I should sing your praises in my rhyme," says he to her of the "white soul" and "beautiful face,"
I lose my ink, my paper and my time
And nothing add to your o'erflowing store,
And tell you nought, but what you knew before.
Nor do the virtuous-minded (which I swear,
Madam, I think you are) endure to hear
Their own perfections into question brought,
But stop their ears at them; for, if I thought
You took a pride to have your virtues known,
(Pardon me, madam) I should think them none.
Many a writer of the day agreed with Beaumont concerning Elizabeth Sidney,—"every word you speak is sweet and mild." She, said Jonson to Drummond of Hawthornden, "was nothing inferior to her father in poesie"; she encouraged it in others. But her husband, Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, though a lover of plays himself, does not appear to have favoured his Countess's patronage of literary men. He burst in upon her, one day when Ben Jonson was dining with her, and "accused her that she kept table to poets." Of her excellence Jonson bears witness in four poems. Most pleasantly in that Epistle included in his The Forrest, where speaking of his tribute of verse, he says:
With you, I know my off'ring will find grace:
For what a sinne 'gainst your great father's spirit,
Were it to think, that you should not inherit
His love unto the Muses, when his skill
Almost you have, or may have, when you will?
Wherein wise Nature you a dowrie gave,
Worth an estate treble to that you have.
Beauty, I know is good, and blood is more;
Riches thought most: but, Madame, think what store
The world hath scene, which all these had in trust,
And now lye lost in their forgotten dust.
And in an Epigram[97] To the Honour'd —— Countesse of ——, evidently sent to her during the absence of her husband on the continent, he compliments her conduct,—
Not only shunning by your act, to doe
Ought that is ill, but the suspition too,—
at a time when others are following vices and false pleasures. But "you," he says,
admit no company but good,
And when you want those friends, or neare in blood,
Or your allies, you make your bookes your friends,
And studie them unto the noblest ends,
Searching for knowledge, and to keepe your mind
The same it was inspired, rich, and refin'd.
Among other admirers of the Countess of Rutland was Sir Thomas Overbury, who, according to Ben Jonson, was "in love with her." Beaumont would have known the brilliant and ill-starred Overbury, of Compton Scorpion, who was not only an intimate of Jonson's, but a devoted admirer of their mutual friend, Sir Henry Nevill of Billingbear.
And if Beaumont was on terms of affectionate familiarity with Sidney's daughter, he could not but have known Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, as well, the idol of William Browne's epitaph, and of his old friend Drayton's eulogy, on the "Fair Shepherdess,"