Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/350

336 ''of England. Dedicated by the Princess Elizabeth to King Henry VIII.'' Dated at Hatfield, Dec. 30, 1545, MSS. in the Royal Library at Westminster. About this time she also translated into English, from the French original, The Meditations of Margaret, Queen of Navarre, concerning the Love of her Soul towards Christ.

What farther advances she made in literature, Mr. Ascham signified in a letter to Sir John Cheke. "It can scarce be credited," says he, "to what degree of skill in the Latin and Greek she might arrive, if she shall proceed in that course of study wherein she hath begun by the guidance of Grindal." But she had the misfortune to lose this ingenious and learned instructor, who died of the plague in 1548; at which time, as Camden observes, before she was seventeen years old, she well understood French, Latin, and Italian, Greek indifferently, and was also skilled in music, both vocal and instrumental.

King Edward, her brother, who was fond of her, usually called her his Lady Temper, encouraged her studies, and she was no longer apprehensive of her father's jealousy in regard to her religious principles, and could read such books in divinity as she and her tutors thought proper.

Her next preceptor was the celebrated Ascham. With him she pursued her studies with great ardour, and read the best Greek and Latin historians, philosophers, and orators.

On the death of Edward, 1553, Mary ascended the throne; and having received many testimonies of Elizabeth's esteem, returned her some slight outward forms of civility; but the dislike she bore to her, either on account of her mother, or her religion, could not be long concealed: articles were devised and drawn up against her,