hat of
fantasy: all affections their relenting but that of womankind. Who is
the judge of friendship but adversity, only when is grace witnessed but
in offences? There were no divinity but by reason of compassion; for
revenges are brutish and mortal. All those times past, the loves,
the sighs, the sorrows, the desires, cannot they weigh down one
frail misfortune? Cannot one drop of gall be hid in so great heaps of
sweetness? I may then conclude, 'Spes et fortuna, valete.' She is gone
in whom I trusted; and of me hath not one thought of mercy, nor any
respect of that which was Do with me now, therefore, what you list. I am
more weary of life than they are desirous I should perish; which, if it
had been for her, as it is by her, I had been too happily born." Murden,
657. It is to be remarked, that this nymph, Venus, goddess, angel, was
then about sixty. Yet five or six years after, she allowed the same
language to be held to her. Sir Henry Unton, her ambassador in France,
relates to her a conversation which he had with Henry IV. That monarch,
after having introduced Unton to his mistress, the fair Gabrielle, asked
him how he liked her. "I answered sparingly in her praise," said the
minister, "and told him, that if, without offence, I might speak it,
I had the picture of a far more excellent mistress, and yet did her
picture come far short of her perfection of beauty. As you love me, said
he, show it me, if you have it about you. I made some difficulties; yet,
upon his importunity, offered it to his view very secretly, holding it
still in my hand. He beheld it with passion and admiration, saying, that
I had reason, 'Je me rends,' protesting that he had never seen the like;
so, with great reverence, he kissed it twice or thrice, I detaining it
still in my hand. In the end, with some kind of contention, he took
it from me, vowing that I might take my leave of it; for he would not
forego it for any treasure; and that to possess the favor of the lovely
picture, he would forsake all the world, and hold himself most happy;
with many other most passionate speeches." Murden, p. 718. For further
particulars on this head, see the ingenious author of the Catalogue of
Royal and Noble Authors, article Essex.]

[Footnote 38: NOTE LL, P. 337.

It may not be amiss to subjoin some passages of these speeches; which
may serve to give us a just idea of the government of that age, and of
the political principles which prevailed during the r