As a woman, they regarded her
just as she wished them to regard her, as the throned Vestal, the watery
Moon, whose chaste beams could quench the fiery darts of Cupid. She was
to them, in fact, the Belphoebe of Spenser, "with womanly graces,
but not womanly affections--passionless, pure, self-sustained, and
self-dependent"; shining "with a cold lunar light and not the warm glow
of day." This feeling was increased by the spirit of chivalry which
still lingered in English society, and, like the setting sun, poured a
flood of golden light over the court.
The incense, then, that was offered to the Queen by such men as Spenser,
Raleigh, Essex, Shakespeare, and Sidney, the most noble, chivalrous, and
gifted spirits that ever gathered round a throne, is not to be judged of
as the flattery which cringing courtiers pay to a dreaded tyrant; but
rather as the outpouring of a general enthusiasm, the echo of the
stirring voice of chivalry, and the expression of the feelings of a
devoted yet free people.
An age of tyranny is always an age of frivolity, of heartless levity,
of dwarfish objects and pursuits, of dreadful contrasts--laughter amid
mourning, rioting and wantonness amid judgments and executions; dancing
and music at the hour of death. Such was the frivolity of the days of
Nero; such was the mirth of the "death-dance" in the days of Robespierre.
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