rn editor, Kippis, whose researches were
always limited; Kippis had gleaned from Oldys's precious manuscripts a
single note which shook to its foundations the whole structure before
him; and he had also found, in Ballard, to his utter confusion, some
hints that the Lady Arabella was a learned woman, and of a poetical
genius, though even the writer himself, who had recorded this discovery,
was at a loss to ascertain the fact! It is amusing to observe honest
George Ballard in the same dilemma as honest Andrew Kippis. "This lady,"
he says, "was not more distinguished for the dignity of her birth than
celebrated for her fine parts and learning; and yet," he adds, in all
the simplicity of his ingenuousness, "I know so little in relation to
the two last accomplishments, that I should not have given her a place
in these memoirs had not Mr. Evelyn put her in his list of learned
women, and Mr. Philips (Milton's nephew) introduced her among his modern
poetesses."

"The Lady Arabella," for by that name she is usually noticed by her
contemporaries, rather than by her maiden name of Stuart, or by her
married one of Seymour, as she latterly subscribed herself, was, by her
affinity with James the First and our Elizabeth, placed near the throne;
too near, it seems, for her happiness and quiet![324] In their common
descent from Margaret, the elder daughter of Henry the Seventh, she was
cousin to the Scottish monarch, but born an Englishwoman, which gave
her some advantage in a claim to the throne of England. "Her double
relation to royalty," says Mr. Lodge, "was equally obnoxious to the
jealousy of Elizabeth and the timidity of James, and they secretly
dreaded the supposed danger of her having a legitimate offspring." Yet
James himself, then unmarried, proposed for the husband of the Lady
Arabella one of her cousins, Lord Esme Stuart, whom he had created Duke
of Lennox, and designed for his heir. The first thing we hear of "the
Lady Arabella" concerns a marriage: marriages are the incidents of her
life, and the fatal event which terminated it was a marriage. Such was
the secret spring on which her character and her misfortunes revolved.

This proposed match was desirable to all parties; but there was one
greater than them all who forbad the banns. Elizabeth interposed; she
imprisoned the Lady Arabella, and would not deliver her up to the king,
of whom she spoke with asperity, and even with contempt.[325] The
greatest infirmity of Eliza