were few of the inferior
suitors and court-attendants composing the crowd by which she had a
vanity in seeing herself constantly surrounded, who did not find cause
bitterly to rue the day when first her hollow smiles and flattering
speeches seduced them to long years of irksome, servile, and often
profitless assiduity.

[Note 105: Lists of the New Year's Gifts received by Elizabeth
during many years have more than once appeared in print. They show that
not only jewels, trinkets, rich robes, and every ornamental article of
dress, were abundantly supplied to her from this source, but that sets
of body linen worked with black silk round the bosom and sleeves, were
regarded as no inappropriate offering from peers of the realm to the
maiden-queen. The presents of the bishops and of some of the nobility
always consisted of gold pieces, to the value of from five to twenty or
thirty pounds, contained in embroidered silk purses. Her majesty
distributed at the same season pieces of gilt plate; but not always to
the same persons from whom she had received presents, nor, apparently,
to an equal amount.]

Bacon in his Apophthegms relates on this subject the following anecdote.
"Queen Elizabeth, seeing sir Edward---- in her garden, looked out at
her window and asked him, in Italian, 'What does a man think of when he
thinks of nothing?' Sir Edward, who had not had the effect of some of
the queen's grants so soon as he had hoped and desired, paused a little,
and then made answer; 'Madam, he thinks of a woman's promise.' The queen
shrunk in her head, but was heard to say; 'Well, sir Edward, I must not
confute you: Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.'"

"Queen Elizabeth," says the same author, "was dilatory enough in suits
of her own nature; and the lord treasurer Burleigh, being a wise man,
and willing therein to feed her humor, would say to her; 'Madam, you do
well to let suitors stay; for I shall tell you, _Bis dat qui cito dat_;
if you grant them speedily, they will come again the sooner.'"

It is probable that the popular story of this minister's intercepting
the very moderate bounty which her majesty had proposed to herself the
honor of bestowing on Spenser, is untrue with respect to this great
poet; since the four lines relating to the circumstance,

"Madam,
You bid your treasurer on a time
To give me reason for my rhime,
But from that time and that season
I have had nor rhyme nor reason,