[The custom was observed at a much earlier period; for we find that King Edward II. and his queen Isabella of France kept their court at Westminster during the Whitsuntide festival of 1317; and on one occasion, as they were dining in public in the great banqueting-hall, a woman in a mask entered on horseback, and riding up to the royal table, delivered a letter to King Edward, who, imagining that it contained some pleasant conceit or elegant compliment; ordered it to be opened and read aloud for the amusement of his courtiers; but, to his great mortification, it was a cutting satire on his unkingly propensities, setting forth in no measured terms all the calamities which his misgovernment had brought upon England. The woman was immediately taken into custody, and confessed that she had been employed by a certain knight. The knight boldly acknowledged what he had done, and said, "That, supposing the King would read the letter in private, he took that method of apprising him of the complaints of his subjects."—Strickland's Queens of England, vol. i. p. 487.—Ed.]
PARALLEL IDEAS FROM POETS.
Longfellow and Tennyson:
"And like a lily on a river floating,
She floats upon the river of his thoughts."
Spanish Student, Act II. Sc. 3.
"Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake;
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip