On glancing back at the age of Elizabeth,—so adorned by masculine talent, in arts, in letters, and in arms,—we are at first surprised to find so few distinguished women. It seems remarkable that a golden epoch in our literature, to which she gave her name "the Elizabethan age,"—a court in which a female ruled,—a period fruitful in great poets, should have produced only one or two women who are interesting from their poetical celebrity. Of these, Alice Spenser, Countess of Derby, and Mary Sydney, Countess of Pembroke, (the sister of Sir Philip Sydney) are the most remarkable; the first has enjoyed the double distinction of being celebrated by Spenser in her youth, and by Milton in her age,—almost too much honour for one woman, though she had been a muse, and a grace, and a cardinal virtue, moulded in one. Lady Pembroke has been celebrated by Spenser and by Ben Jonson, and was, in every respect, a most accomplished woman. To these might be added other names, which might have shone aloft like stars, and "shed some influence on this lower world:" if the age had not produced two women, so elevated in station, and so every way illustrious by accidental or personal qualities, that each, in her respective sphere, extinguished all the lesser orbs around her. It would have been difficult for any female to seize on the attention, or claim either an historical or poetical interest, in the age of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart.
In her own court, Elizabeth was not satisfied to preside. She could as ill endure a competitor in celebrity or charms, as in power. She arrogated to herself all the incense around her; and, in point of adulation, she was like the daughter of the horse-leech, whose cry was, "give! give!" Her insatiate vanity would have been ludicrous, if it had not produced such atrocious consequences. This was the predominant weakness of her character, which neutralized her talents, and was pampered, till in its excess it became a madness and a vice. This precipitated the fate of her lovely rival, Mary Queen of Scots. This elevated the profligate Leicester to the pinnacle of favour, and kept him there, sullied as he was by every baseness and every crime;[112] this hurried Essex to the block; banished Southampton; and sent Raleigh and Elizabeth Throckmorton to the Tower. Did one of her attendants, more beautiful than the rest, attract the notice or homage of any of the gay cavaliers around her,—was an attachment whispered, a marriage projected,—it was enough to throw the whole court into consternation. "Her Majesty, the Queen, was in a passion;" and, then, heaven help the offenders! It was the spirit of Harry the Eighth let loose again. Yet such is the reflected glory she derives from the Sydneys and the Raleighs, the Walsinghams and Cecils, the Shakspeares and Spensers of her time, that we can scarce look beyond it, to stigmatise the hard unfeminine egotism of her character.
There was something extremely poetical in her situation, as a maiden queen, raised from a prison to a throne, exposed to unceasing danger from without and treason from within, and supported through all by her own extraordinary talents, and by the devotion of the chivalrous, gallant courtiers and captains, who paid to her, as their queen and mistress, a homage and obedience they would scarce have paid to a sovereign of their own sex. All this display of talent and heroism, and chivalrous gallantry, has a fine gorgeous effect to the imagination;—but for the woman herself,—as a woman, with her pedantry, and her absurd affectation; her masculine temper and coarse insolence; her sharp, shrewish, cat-like face, and her pretension to beauty, it is impossible to conceive any thing more anti-poetical.
Yet had she praises in all plenteousness
Pour'd upon her, like showers of Castalie.[113]
She was a favourite theme of the poets of the time, and by right divine of her sceptre and her sex, an object of glorious flattery, not always feigned, even where it was false.
She is the Gloriana of Spenser's Fairy Queen,—she is the "Cynthia, the ladye of the sea,"—she is the "Fair Vestal throned in the West," of Shakspeare—
That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,)
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took
At a fair Vestal, throned by the West,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon;
And the imperial vot'ress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy free.
And the previous allusion to Mary of Scotland, as the "Sea Maid on the Dolphin's back,"