p
to read with the Queen's majesty that noble oration of Demosthenes
against AEschines." At a later time her Latin served her to rebuke the
insolence of a Polish ambassador, and she could "rub up her rusty Greek"
at need to bandy pedantry with a Vice-Chancellor. But Elizabeth was far
as yet from being a mere pedant. She could already speak French and
Italian as fluently as her mother-tongue. In later days we find her
familiar with Ariosto and Tasso. The purity of her literary taste, the
love for a chaste and simple style, which Ascham noted with praise in
her girlhood, had not yet perished under the influence of euphuism. But
even amidst the affectation and love of anagrams and puerilities which
sullied her later years Elizabeth remained a lover of letters and of all
that was greatest and purest in letters. She listened with delight to
the "Faery Queen," and found a smile for "Master Spenser" when he
appeared in her presence.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and Mary.]

From the bodily and mental energy of her girlhood, the close of Edward's
reign drew Elizabeth at nineteen to face the sterner problems of
religion and politics. In the daring attempt of Northumberland to place
Jane Grey on the throne Elizabeth's rights were equally set aside with
those of Mary; and the first public act of the girl was to call the
gentry to her standard and to join her sister with five hundred
followers in her train. But the momentary union was soon dissolved. The
daughter of Catharine could look with little but hate on the daughter of
Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth's tendency to the "new religion" jarred with the
Queen's bigotry; and the warnings of the imperial ambassador were hardly
needful to spur Mary to watch jealously a possible pretender to her
throne. The girl bent to the Queen's will in hearing mass, but her
manner showed that the compromise was merely a matter of obedience, and
fed the hopes of the Protestant zealots who saw in the Spanish marriage
a chance of driving Mary from the throne. The resolve which the Queen
showed to cancel her sister's right of succession only quickened the
project for setting Elizabeth in her place; and it was to make Elizabeth
their sovereign that Suffolk rose in Leicestershire and Wyatt and his
Kentishmen marched against London Bridge. The failure of the rising
seemed to ensure her doom. The Emperor pressed for her death as a
security for Philip on his arrival; and the detection of a
correspondence with the French