and beget heirs. In connection with this the sonnet beginning:

"Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee

Gives back the lovely April of her prime

Into him she fine taste, her His future was

is often cited. There is no improbability in this notion. Lady Pembroke adored her firstborn. poured all her love of literature, her generous treatment of men and letters. her constant thought, and his interests a continual distraction from the growing curmudgeonliness of her old husband. In some way her William repaid her nobly. He was a good scholar, delighting in poetry and the practice of poetry and epigram. He was, it is recorded, "of an heroic and public spirit, bountiful to his friends and servants, and a great encourager of learned men." But he was absolutely regardless of money and never forbore to gratify any whim, whether it concerned his own pleasures or those of others. He was constantly in debt, and one supposes that his mother had many a hard tussle with her husband when William drifted home to Wilton or Ramsbury or Barnard's Castle with a pathetic tale of empty pockets. He strikes me as having adopted the pathetic rôle from the beginning, in spite of his "heroic and public spirit." Fortunately, the old Earl died soon after his son appeared at Court, so that financial matters were easier for him, but one looks with apprehension on an historical statement to the effect that the father, instead of entrusting the bulk of his income to the widow for the improvident youth, left Lady Pembroke "as bare as he could, and bestowing all on the young lord, even to her jewels." This, however, is not quite correct, for there is proof that she was, by will, the owner, for her life, of plate, jewels, and household stuff to the value of three thousand marks,

with the lease of the manor of Ivy Church and the manor and park of Devizes.

Her son's marriage was an important matter to her and to his relatives. White reports that he showed no inclination whatever to tie himself to any particular lady, and Clarendon gives him a poor character:

"The Earl was immoderately given up to women. But therein he likewise retained such a power and jurisdiction over his appetites-(Clarendon should surely have used the word taste' here!)-that he was not so much transported with beauty and outward allurements as with those advantages of the mind, as manifested an extraordinary wit and spirit and knowledge, and administered great pleasure in their conversation. To these he sacrificed himself, his precious time, and much of his fortune; and some, who were nearest his trust and friendship, were not without apprehension that his natural vivacity and vigour of mind began to lessen and decline by those excessive indulgences."

He was certainly not a vigorous young man, this creature afflicted with frequent melancholia, though the world was at his feet. It is not surprising that he suffered at times from racking headache and sought rest at Wilton, whence his mother wrote to Germany for special tobacco-for smoking this alone gave him respite from pain. He was another of the many young men for whom parents and guardians hoped to find a bride among the ladies of the house of Cecil. Overtures were once more made for the much-sought-after hand of the Earl of Oxford's daughter and Burleigh's granddaughter, Anne, but the claims of Mary Fitton or other girls were probably far stronger. The imprisonment of Pembroke, for by this time he had inherited the title, was short-only a month. But his disgrace

was long. Like many another who had for a time. basked in Court sunshine and lost it, he found life now insupportable, and begged for official permission to live abroad. "The change of climate may purge me of melancholy," wrote this egotistic young blood-poor descendant indeed of Mary and Philip Sidney—" for else I shall never be fit for any civil society." He had the decency to wish to "wipe out the memory of his disgraces" by long absence. However, the fleshpots of home seem to have settled the question for him, for soon afterwards he appears as a member of a Christmas house-party, and before long was thrust upon the wealthy young daughter of Gilbert Talbot, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, and the granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick, as a husband. He needed her money badly, owing to his unceasing extravagance. He died in a good old Elizabethan fashion "of an apoplexy, after a full and cheerful supper." Let the memory of his mother's nobility and their joint encouragement to the greatest poets of their day wipe away the memory of these things. And let us retain the benefit of the doubt about Mary Fitton as the lady with the bold black eyes, the dun-coloured skin, the raven hair as harsh as black wires.

Pembroke was said to be "majestic rather than elegant" and "full of stately gravity." His marriage was not happy. Current opinion regarded the lady as a much gilded pill. In swallowing her money he had to swallow her unattractive person. This is poetic justice. There is something quite Dantesque about this harvest of the epicurean young courtier, who was, as Clarendon says, so inflammable where ladies were concerned and withal so fastidious!

WE

CHAPTER XIII

THE FAITHFUL CHARLES

E have dismissed as untenable the claim of William Herbert to be one of Penelope's lovers. But the claim of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, increases in insistence, and with every day of the closing years of the last decade of the fifteen hundreds he grows more important to her story and that of her brother. Mountjoy is ever the man-in-waiting, biding his time for greatness and for the bringing to light the facts of his love-story. For years he had been constantly associated with Essex on military and naval service. When Queen Elizabeth wrote to scold the latter in 1597 for lack of judgment, rashness, over-presumption in his conduct of certain naval affairs, and his contempt of her unwise leniency, she took pains to accentuate her trust in Mountjoy. Part of the letter is worth quoting, because it seems like a vivid allegory of that which came to pass in connection with the downfall of the favourite of her last years.

"Eyes of youth "—so it opens-" have sharp sights, but commonly not so deep as those of elder age; this makes me marvel at rash attempts and headstrong counsels, which give not leisure to judgment's warning, nor heeds advice, but laugh at the one and despises the last. . ."

For he has been careless over naval economy and the

manning of his ships with his "full-fed men.' She goes on:

"This makes me like the lunatic man that keeps a smacker of the remains of his frenzy's freak, and makes me yield to a longer proportion than a wiser in my place would ever grant unto; with this caveat, that this lunatic goodness makes you not bold. . . . Also trust not to the grace of your crazed vessel. .. You vex me too much with small regard of what 1 bid. . . Venture not such wonders where approachful mischief might betide you. There remains that you, after your perilous first attempt, do not aggravate that danger with another in a further off climate which must cost blows of good store. . . . Be content when you are well, which hath not ever been your property. . . . Forget not to salute with very great favour good Thomas (Lord Thomas Howard) and faithful Mountjoy."

And because Mountjoy was faithful she came in the end to prefer him as a servant-though not as a courtierto his friend. It was extraordinary that this and Mountjoy's previously expressed distrust of his friend's generalship, which he compared unfavourably with that of Sir John Norris, did not cause an irreparable breach between the men, and that the duel of their youth found no echo in their maturity. For example, when in 1598 O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, so disastrously defeated the Royal forces in Limerick, it was Mountjoy who was suggested as commander of the expedition to crush him. According to Camden, Essex, following up his quarrel with Elizabeth over the governorship of Ireland, as already explained, followed up this after Burleigh's death, and, after a truce-one cannot call it a peace with his Queen, by violent protestations against this nomination. His arguments were copious, and, to a superficial observer, quite enough to make