om hence
as closely as they can, either to join with the Spanish navy or to land,
and they may be very easily scattered, by God's grace." And, with the
honest pride of a protocol-maker, he added, "our postulates do trouble
the King's commissioners very much, and do bring them to despair."

The excellent Doctor had not even yet discovered that the King's
commissioners were delighted with his postulates; and that to have kept
them postulating thus five months in succession, while naval and military
preparations were slowly bringing forth a great event--which was soon to
strike them with as much amazement as if the moon had fallen out of
heaven--was one of the most decisive triumphs ever achieved by Spanish
diplomacy. But the Doctor thought that his logic had driven the King of
Spain to despair.

At the same time he was not insensible to the merits of another and more
peremptory style of rhetoric,--"I pray you," said he to Walsingham, "let
us hear some arguments from my Lord Harry out of her Majesty's navy now
and then. I think they will do more good than any bolt that we can shoot
here. If they be met with at their going out, there is no possibility for
them to make any resistance, having so few men that can abide the sea;
for the rest, as you know, must be sea-sick at first."

But the envoys were completely puzzled. Even at the beginning of July,
Sir James Croft was quite convinced of the innocence of the King and the
Duke; but Croft was in his dotage. As for Dale, he occasionally opened
his eyes, and his ears, but more commonly kept them well closed to the
significance of passing events; and consoled himself with his protocols
and his classics, and the purity of his own Latin.

"'Tis a very wise saying of Terence," said he, "omnibus nobis ut res dant
sese; ita magni aut humiles sumus.' When the King's commissioners hear of
the King's navy from Spain, they are in such jollity that they talk loud.
. . . In the mean time--as the wife of Bath sath in Chaucer by her
husband, we owe them not a word. If we should die tomorrow; I hope her
Majesty will find by our writings that the honour of the cause, in the
opinion of the world, must be with her Majesty; and that her
commissioners are, neither of such imperfection in their reasons, or so
barbarous in language, as they who fail not, almost in every line, of
some barbarism not to be borne in a grammar-school, although in
subtleness and impudent affirming of untruths and denyi