character, for us the Lady ARABELLA has no palpable historical
existence; and we perceive rather her shadow than herself! A writer of
romance might render her one of those interesting personages whose
griefs have been deepened by their royalty, and whose adventures,
touched with the warm hues of love and distraction, closed at the bars
of her prison gate: a sad example of a female victim to the state!

Through one dim lattice, fring'd with ivy round,
Successive suns a languid radiance threw,
To paint how fierce her angry guardian frown'd,
To mark how fast her waning beauty flew!

SEYMOUR, who was afterwards permitted to return, distinguished himself
by his loyalty through three successive reigns, and retained his
romantic passion for the lady of his first affections; for he called the
daughter he had by his second lady by the ever-beloved name of ARABELLA
STUART.

DOMESTIC HISTORY OF SIR EDWARD COKE.

Sir Edward Coke--or Cook, as now pronounced, and occasionally so written
in his own times--that lord chief-justice whose name the laws of England
will preserve--has shared the fate of his great rival, the Lord
Chancellor Bacon; for no hand worthy of their genius has pursued their
story. Bacon, busied with nature, forgot himself. Coke who was only the
greatest of lawyers, reflected with more complacency on himself; for
"among those thirty books which he had written with his own hand, most
pleasing to himself was a manual which he called _Vade Mecum_, from
whence, at one view, he took a prospect of his life past." This
manuscript, which Lloyd notices, was among the fifty which, on his
death, were seized on by an order of council, but some years after were
returned to his heir; and this precious memorial may still be
disinterred.[340]

Coke was "the oracle of law," but, like too many great lawyers, he was
so completely one as to have been nothing else. Coke has said, "the
common law is the absolute perfection of all reason;" a dictum which
might admit of some ridicule. Armed with law, he committed acts of
injustice; for in how many cases, passion mixing itself with law,
_summum jus_ becomes _summa injuria_. Official violence brutalised, and
political ambition extinguished, every spark of nature in this great
lawyer, when he struck at his victims, public or domestic. His solitary
knowledge, perhaps, had deadened his judgment in other studies; and yet
his narrow spirit could shrink with jealo