The quotation from Raleigh's "History of the World," which follows, will be seen to hold in many lines the identical words.
"Alexander stood behind a partition, and heard all that was spoken, waiting but an opportunity to be revenged on Callisthenes, who being a man of free speech, honest, learned, and a lover of the king's honour, was yet soon after tormented to death, not for that he had betrayed the king to others, but because he never would condescend to betray the king to himself, as all his detestable flatterers did. For in a conspiracy against the king, made by one Hermolaus and others, (which they confessed,) he caused Callisthenes, without confession, accusation or trial, to be torn assunder upon the rack. This deed, unworthy of a king, Seneca thus censureth. [He gives the Latin, and thus translates it.] 'This is the eternal crime of Alexander, which no virtue nor felicity of his in war shall ever be able to redeem. For as often as any man shall say, He slew many thousand Persians, it shall be replied, He did so, and he slew Callisthenes; when it shall be said, He slew Darius, it shall be replied, And Callisthenes; when it shall be said, He won all as far as to the very ocean, thereon also he adventured with unusual navies, and extended his empire from a corner of Thrace, to the utmost bounds of the orient; it shall be said withal, But he killed Callisthenes. Let him have outgone all the ancient examples of captains and kings, none of all his acts makes so much to his glory, as Callisthenes to his reproach'."
The school girl of the present day could furnish such arrangements of her historical knowledge with almost as fluent a pen as that of Mistress Bradstreet, who is, however, altogether innocent of any intention to deceive any of her readers. The unlearned praised her depth of learning, but she knew well that every student into whose hands the book might fall, would recognize the source from which she had drawn, and approve the method of its use. Evidently there was nothing very vital to her in these records of dynasties and wars, for not a line indicates any thrill of feeling at the tales she chronicles. Yet the feeling was there, though reserved for a later day. It is with her own time, or with the "glorious reign of good Queen Bess," that she forgets to be didactic and allows herself here and there, a natural and vigorous expression of thought or feeling. There was capacity for hero-worship, in this woman, who repressed as far as she had power, the feeling and passion that sometimes had their way, though immediately subdued and chastened, and sent back to the durance in which all feeling was held. But her poem on Queen Elizabeth has here and there a quiet sarcasm, and at one point at least rises into a fine scorn of the normal attitude toward women:
She hath wip'd off the aspersion of her Sex,
That women wisdome lack to play the Rex.
Through the whole poem runs an evident, almost joyous delight in what a woman has achieved, and as she passes from point to point, gathering force with every period, she turns suddenly upon all detractors with these ringing lines:
Now say, have women worth or have they none?
Or had they some, but with our Queen is't gone?
Nay, masculines, you have thus taxed us long;
But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong.
Let such as say our sex is void of reason,
Know 'tis a slander now, but once was treason.
Sir Philip Sidney fills her with mixed feeling, her sense that his "Arcadia" was of far too fleshly and soul-beguiling an order of literature, battling with her admiration for his character as a man, and making a diverting conflict between reason and inclination. As with Queen Elizabeth, she compromised by merely hinting her opinion of certain irregularities, and hastened to cover any damaging admission with a mantle of high and even enthusiastic eulogy.
AN ELEGIE
upon that Honourable and renowned Knight Sir Philip Sidney, who was untimely slain at the Siege of Zutphen, Anno, 1586.
When England did enjoy her Halsion dayes,
Her noble Sidney wore the Crown of Bayes;
As well an honour to our British Land,
As she that swayed the Scepter with her hand;
Mars and Minerva did in one agree,
Of Arms and Arts he should a pattern be,
Calliope with Terpsichore did sing,
Of poesie, and of musick, he was King;
His Rhetorick struck Polimina dead,
His Eloquence made Mercury wax red;
His Logick from Euterpe won the Crown,
More worth was his then Clio could set down.
Thalia and Melpomene say truth,
Witness Arcadia penned in his youth,
Are not his tragick Comedies so acted,
As if your ninefold wit had been compacted.
To shew the world, they never saw before,
That this one Volume should exhaust your store;
His wiser dayes condemned his witty works,
Who knows the spels that in his Rhetorick lurks,
But some infatuate fools soon caught therein,
Fond Cupids Dame had never such a gin,
Which makes severer eyes but slight that story,
And men of morose minds envy his glory:
But he's a Beetle-head that can't descry
A world of wealth within that rubbish lye,
And doth his name, his work, his honour wrong,
The brave refiner of our British tongue,
That sees not learning, valour and morality,
Justice, friendship, and kind hospitality,
Yea and Divinity within his book,
Such were prejudicate, and did not look.
In all Records his name I ever see
Put with an Epithite of dignity,
Which shows his worth was great, his honour such,
The love his Country ought him, was as much.
Then let none disallow of these my straines
Whilst English blood yet runs within my veins,
O brave Achilles, I wish some Homer would
Engrave in Marble, with Characters of gold
The valiant feats thou didst on Flanders coast,
Which at this day fair Belgia may boast.
The more I say, the more thy worth I stain,
Thy fame and praise is far beyond my strain,
O Zutphen, Zutphen that most fatal City
Made famous by thy death, much more the pity:
Ah! in his blooming prime death pluckt this rose
E're he was ripe, his thread cut Atropos.
Thus man is born to dye, and dead is he,
Brave Hector, by the walls of Troy we see.
O who was near thee but did sore repine
He rescued not with life that life of thine;
But yet impartial Fates this boon did give,
Though Sidney di'd his valiant name should live:
And live it doth in spight of death through fame,
Thus being overcome, he overcame.
Where is that envious tongue, but can afford
Of this our noble Scipio some good word.