Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
It would, in truth, have been easier for Mary to have calmed the rude sea than her ruder and wilder subjects. These two queens, so strangely misplaced, seem as if, by some sport of destiny, each had dropt into the sphere designed for the other. Mary should have reigned over the Sydneys, the Essexes, the Mountjoys;—and with her smiles, and sweet words; and generous gifts, have inspired and rewarded the poets around her. Elizabeth should have been transferred to Scotland, where she might have bandied frowns and hard names with John Knox, cut off the heads of rebellious barons, and boxed the ears of ill-bred courtiers.
This is no place to settle disputed points of history, nor, if it were, should I presume to throw an opinion in to one scale or the other; but take the two queens as women merely, and with a reference to apparent circumstances, I would rather have been Mary than Elizabeth; I would rather have been Mary, with all her faults, frailties, and misfortunes,—all her power of engaging hearts,—betrayed by her own soft nature, and the vile or fierce passions of the men around her, to die on a scaffold, with the meekness of a saint and the courage of a heroine, with those at her side who would willingly have bled for her,—than I would have been that heartless flirt, Elizabeth, surrounded by the oriental servility, the lip and knee homage of her splendid court; to die at last on her palace-floor, like a crushed wasp—sick of her own very selfishness—torpid, sullen, and despairing,—without one friend near her, without one heart in the wide world attached to her by affection or gratitude.
There is more true and earnest feeling in some little verses written by Ronsard on the unhappy Queen of Scots, than in all the elegant, fanciful, but extravagant flattery of Elizabeth's poets. After just mentioning the English Queen, whom he dispatches in a single line,—
Je vis leur belle reine, honnête et vertueuse;
he thus dwells on the charms of Mary:—
Je vis des Ecossais la Reine sage et belle,
Qui de corps et d'esprits ressemble une immortelle;
J'approchai de ses yeux, mais bien de deux soleils,
Deux soleils de beauté, qui n'ont point leurs pareils.
Je les vis larmoyer d'une claire rosée,
Je vis d'un clair crystal sa paupière arrosée,
Se souvenant de France, et du sceptre laissé,
Et de son premier feu, comme un songe passé!
And when Mary was a prisoner, he dedicated to her a whole book of poems, in which he celebrates her with a warmth, the more delightful that it was disinterested. He thanks her for selecting his poems, to amuse her solitary hours, and adds feelingly,—
Car, je ne veux en ce monde choisir
Plus grand honneur que vous donner plaisir!