Page:The Queens of England.djvu/447

 ELIZABETH. 403 was eleven or twelve years old, gave her the celebrated Roger Ascham for a tutor. In the severely classical and masculine studies in which he engaged her, and in a certain natural con- geniality to them in her, may probably be discovered the foun- dation of much of the singularity of her' subsequent career. During the reign of Edward the Sixth her life was tran- quil enough, the most exciting incident during it being the at- tempt of Lord Seymour, the brother. of the Duke of Somerset, the protector, to induce her to marry him, when she was only sixteen years of age. Certainly the celibacy of this sovereign was not in consequence of a want of suitors ; excepting Pene- lope, never lady was so pursued with matrimonial proposals. Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, was a second pretender to the possession of her hand ; and then followed a proposition that she should unite herself to the King of Sweden. Subse- quently she was successively importuned to wed, inter alios, Philip of Spain, the Earl of Arran, the Dukes of Alencon and Anjou, the Archduke Charles, a son of the elector palatine, the Duke of Holstein, the Earl of Arundel, Sir William Pick- ering, and at last any body; her parliament promising in their own name and that of the people, to serve, honor and obey him faithfully, "whoever he might be." But Elizabeth re- jected all their propositions, and asserted and verified in the sequel her intention to die a spinster. For this strange deter- mination various and contradictory explanations are given. During the reign of Mary, Elizabeth certainly had no oppor- tunity of manifesting the fantastic notions of pleasure and happiness which Fontenelle has so lightly and playfully sup- posed her to possess ; her whole life was but one ceaseless peril and adversity. These harsh trials, however, which are generally so beneficial and mollifying to the heart, made no permanent impression on the unfeminine mind of this ener- getic princess ; and when, in her turn, she obtained the power of persecuting and oppressing, she manifested to another Mary a far greater extent of hate and cruelty than she herself had ever experienced. Yet she must have undergone suffer- ings which might have tempted her, one would have thought, to have practiced a precept of the scholastic knowledge to which she was so partial, which Virgil puts into the mouth of a lady almost as erring as herself, — "Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco,"