By the following extract from a letter from one of her gentlemen, we discover that her usual habits, though studious, were not of the gentlest kind, and that the service she exacted from her attendants was not borne without concealed murmurs. The writer groans in secrecy to his friend. Sir John Stanhope writes to Sir Robert Cecil in 1598: "I was all the afternowne with her majestie, at my booke; and then thinking to rest me, went in agayne with your letter. She was pleased with the Filosofer's stone, and hath ben all this daye reasonably quyett. Mr. Grevell is absent, and I am tyed so as I cannot styrr, but shall be at the wourse for yt, these two dayes!"[76]
Puttenham, p. 249, has also recorded an honourable anecdote of Elizabeth, and characteristic of that high majesty which was in her thoughts, as well as in her actions. When she came to the crown, a knight of the realm, who had insolently behaved to her when Lady Elizabeth, fell upon his knees and besought her pardon, expecting to be sent to the Tower: she replied mildly, "Do you not know that we are descended of the lion, whose nature is not to harme or prey upon the mouse, or any other such small vermin?"
Queen Elizabeth was taught to write by the celebrated Roger Ascham. Her writing is extremely beautiful and correct, as may be seen by examining a little manuscript book of prayers, preserved in the British Museum. I have seen her first writing book, preserved at Oxford in the Bodleian Library: the gradual improvement in her majesty's handwriting is very honourable to her diligence; but the most curious thing is the paper on which she tried her pens; this she usually did by writing the name of her beloved brother Edward; a proof of the early and ardent attachment she formed to that amiable prince.
The education of Elizabeth had been severely classical; she thought and she wrote in all the spirit of the characters of antiquity; and her speeches and her letters are studded with apophthegms, and a terseness of ideas and language, that give an exalted idea of her mind. In her evasive answers to the Commons, in reply to their petitions to her majesty to marry, she has employed an energetic word: "Were I to tell you that I do not mean to marry, I might say less than I did intend; and were I to tell you that I do mean to marry, I might say more than it is proper for you to know; therefore I give you an answer, Answerless!"
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE.
The Chinese language is like no other on the globe; it is said to contain not more than about three hundred and thirty words, but it is by no means monotonous, for it has four accents; the even, the raised, the lessened, and the returning, which multiply every word into four; as difficult, says Mr. Astle, for an European to understand, as it is for a Chinese to comprehend the six pronunciations of the French E. In fact, they can so diversify their monosyllabic words by the different tones which they give them, that the same character differently accented signifies sometimes ten or more different things.
P. Bourgeois, one of the missionaries, attempted, after ten months' residence at Pekin, to preach in the Chinese language. These are the words of the good father: "God knows how much this first Chinese sermon cost me! I can assure you this language resembles no other. The same word has never but one termination; and then adieu to all that in our declensions distinguishes the gender, and the number of things we would speak: adieu, in the verbs, to all which might explain the active person, how and in what time it acts, if it acts alone or with others: in a word, with the Chinese, the same word is substantive, adjective, verb, singular, plural, masculine, feminine, &c. It is the person who hears who must arrange the circumstances, and guess them. Add to all this, that all the words of this language are reduced to three hundred and a few more; that they are pronounced in so many different ways, that they signify eighty thousand different things, which are expressed by as many different characters. This is not all: the arrangement of all these monosyllables appears to be under no general rule; so that to know the language after having learnt the words, we must learn every particular phrase: the least inversion would make you unintelligible to three parts of the Chinese.
"I will give you an example of their words. They told me chou signifies a book: so that I thought whenever the word chou was pronounced, a book was the subject. Not at all! Chou, the next time I heard it, I found signified a tree. Now I was to recollect; chou was a book or a tree. But this amounted to nothing; chou, I found, expressed also great heats; chou is to relate; chou is the Aurora; chou means to be accustomed; chou expresses the loss of a wager, &c. I should not finish, were I to attempt to give you all its significations.
"Notwithstanding these singular difficulties, could one but find a help in the perusal of their books, I should not complain. But this is impossible! Their language is quite different from that of simple conversation. What will ever be an insurmountable difficulty to every European is the pronunciation; every word may be pronounced in five different tones, yet every tone is not so distinct that an unpractised ear can easily distinguish it. These monosyllables fly with amazing rapidity; then they are continually disguised by elisions, which sometimes hardly leave anything of two monosyllables. From an aspirated tone you must pass immediately to an even one; from a whistling note to an inward one: sometimes your voice must proceed from the palate; sometimes it must be guttural, and almost always nasal. I recited my sermon at least fifty times to my servant before I spoke it in public; and yet I am told, though he continually corrected me, that of the ten parts of the sermon (as the Chinese express themselves), they hardly understood three. Fortunately the Chinese are wonderfully patient; and they are astonished that any ignorant stranger should be able to learn two words of their language."