'There is no fear, methinks, for you or Philip; but, after all, it is the heart which keeps us really young, despite age, yes, and infirmity. Philip, as he rode forth this morning, looked as young, methinks, as when on the first expedition he went to Paris, when scarce eighteen years had passed over his head.'

'That is true,' Sir Fulke answered, 'and none can look at Philip now without seeing that happiness has the effect of renewing youth.'

'Yes,' Lady Pembroke said; 'he is happy, as he could not be while that hunger for forbidden fruit was upon him. At times I am tempted to wish Frances had more tastes in sympathy with her husband, but one cannot have all that is desired for them we love, and she is as loving a wife as any man ever possessed. But, tell me sure, how fares it with the young trio of scholars? Has aught come lately from your pens? and does the sage Harvey yet rule over your metres, and render your verses after ancient model?'

'Nay, we have withdrawn from the good old man's too overbearing rule. As you must know, Sir Philip has written an admirable Defence of Poesie, and he there is the advocate for greater simplicity of expression. We have had too much of copies from Italian models.'

'The Italians vary in merit,' Lady Pembroke said. 'Sure Dante rises to the sublime, and Philip has been of late a devout student of the Vita Nuova, and caught the spirit of that mighty genius who followed Beatrice from depths of hell to heights of Paradise.'

'Yes, I have had the same feeling about Sir Philip which you express,' Sir Fulke Greville said. 'Dante has raised love far above mere earthly passion to a religion, which can worship the pure and the spiritual rather than the mere beauty of the bodily presence. This breathes in much of Philip's later verse. You know how he says he obeyed the muse, who bid him "look in his heart, and write, rather than go outside for models of construction." That great work—great work of yours and Sir Philip, the Arcadia—teams with beauties, and Pamela is the embodiment of pure and noble womanhood.'

'Ah!' Lady Pembroke said, 'my brother and I look forward to a time of leisure and retirement, when we will recast that lengthy romance, and compress it into narrower limits. We know full well it bears the stamp of inexperience, and there is much concerning Philoclea that we shall expunge. But that time of retirement!' Lady Pembroke said, 'it seems a mockery to speak of it, now that the chief author has just left us to plunge into the very thick of the battle of life.'

'I am well pleased,' Sir Fulke said, 'that Sir Philip should have so able a secretary at his elbow—Mr William Temple. The scholar's element will be a refreshment to Philip when the cares of government press heavily. Mr William Temple's Dialectics is dedicated, with no empty profession of respect and affection, to one who has ever been his friend. Forsooth,' Sir Fulke Greville said, 'friends, true and loyal to your brother, Madam, are as numerous as the leaves that rustle under our feet.'

'Yes,' Lady Pembroke said; 'that is a consoling thought; and he goes to friends, if one may judge by the terms Count Maurice of Nassau writes of him to the English Ambassador, Master Davison. My father has shown me a copy of that letter, which speaks of Philip as his noble brother, and honoured companion-in-arms.'

'How proud one of the chiefest of the friends you speak of would be could he know that Philip is gone forth to wage war against Spain.'