man life,
above which the gratitude of posterity has long elevated them. A few of
Leicester's interlocutory sentences ran as follows:--

"Poynings, good morrow; and how does your wife and fair daughter? Why
come they not to court?--Adams, your suit is naught; the Queen will
grant no more monopolies. But I may serve you in another matter.--My
good Alderman Aylford, the suit of the City, affecting Queenhithe,
shall be forwarded as far as my poor interest can serve.--Master Edmund
Spenser, touching your Irish petition, I would willingly aid you, from
my love to the Muses; but thou hast nettled the Lord Treasurer."

"My lord," said the poet, "were I permitted to explain--"

"Come to my lodging, Edmund," answered the Earl "not to-morrow, or next
day, but soon.--Ha, Will Shakespeare--wild Will!--thou hast given my
nephew Philip Sidney, love-powder; he cannot sleep without thy Venus and
Adonis under his pillow! We will have thee hanged for the veriest wizard
in Europe. Hark thee, mad wag, I have not forgotten thy matter of the
patent, and of the bears."

The PLAYER bowed, and the Earl nodded and passed on--so that age would
have told the tale; in ours, perhaps, we might say the immortal had done
homage to the mortal. The next whom the favourite accosted was one of
his own zealous dependants.

"How now, Sir Francis Denning," he whispered, in answer to his exulting
salutation, "that smile hath made thy face shorter by one-third than
when I first saw it this morning.--What, Master Bowyer, stand you back,
and think you I bear malice? You did but your duty this morning; and if
I remember aught of the passage betwixt us, it shall be in thy favour."

Then the Earl was approached, with several fantastic congees, by a
person quaintly dressed in a doublet of black velvet, curiously slashed
and pinked with crimson satin. A long cock's feather in the velvet
bonnet, which he held in his hand, and an enormous ruff; stiffened to
the extremity of the absurd taste of the times, joined with a sharp,
lively, conceited expression of countenance, seemed to body forth a
vain, harebrained coxcomb, and small wit; while the rod he held, and
an assumption of formal authority, appeared to express some sense
of official consequence, which qualified the natural pertness of his
manner. A perpetual blush, which occupied rather the sharp nose than the
thin cheek of this personage, seemed to speak more of "good life," as
it was called, than of modesty;