And why should I not? Could a gentleman have a more worthy love? Some speak of her littlenesses, and mumble over her womanly faults. I, for one, will not listen to them. I did not see them. I worshipped what I saw. What that was all men know.
What witnesses could I call in her defence were she arraigned before a Court of Perfect Womanhood! And those not her own subjects either—it is only natural that they should praise—but foreigners, as any may know who have heard, as I have, Signor Giordano Bruno, the wisest of all who in my time have travelled hither, and my good friend, exhaust his surpassing eloquence in praising her.
'I hold her,' so I have heard him say, 'for a princess without peer or rival, a woman so gifted and favoured of Heaven, that whether for heroism or learning or sagacity, no soldier, or lawyer, or statesman in her kingdom is her equal. I tell you that the wisdom, the dignity, the statesmanship, the wit, the beauty of that most royal lady has won her a throne upon the steps of which must humbly take their place, Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, and all princesses of whom the world has boasted hitherto. See where she sits upon her lofty seat, with the eyes of Christendom fixed upon her in astonishment and admiration, wondering to see how, in her beauty and dignity, as by the mere force that shines from her glorious face, she kept back from her beloved kingdom for well-nigh thirty years the storm that surged and roared upon the face of Europe; and, when at last it burst in frantic fury on your shores, hurled it back with one majestic sweep of her arm, and bound it down once more to receive what it was her will to send.'
Happy, happy for the world if thou, my peerless Queen, like the new sun-goddess Aphrodite that thou art, shouldst open thy girdle till it embraced not only England and Ireland, but the whole globe. Then under thy benignant universal rule it should deserve the title thou hast won for thine own realm amongst the wisest of other lands; then should it be named, as they have named England, 'the pattern of perfect monarchy,' 'domicilium quietatis et humanitatis.'
Such, at any rate, was Cambridge while the sun stayed with us; and such indeed was England by the side of other realms. So completely did the fair flowers of scholarship which blossomed in the sunbeams of her presence obscure the thorns beneath, that Cambridge indeed appeared the garden of learning that she thought it.
It was a sight I am proud to have seen when she sat in great St. Mary's Church beneath her canopy, with the Doctors and Bachelors in due order around her upon the great stage that had been erected there for the disputations.
'Surely it is a second Sheba,' whispered Mr. Cartwright to me, as I stood by his side with the books he required for setting forth his arguments. 'She has come from the South to hear the wisdom of Heaven. Pray God he may give me this day some shred of the spirit of Solomon.'
'Would God, sir,' said I, 'you might turn her heart, though I fear the ungodly have sorely hardened it.'
'Why do you say that?' asked he.
'Did she not last night,' I answered, 'listen to a play of Plautus in King's Chapel after evening prayer, and did they not use the rood-loft as a gallery for her women?'