It was perhaps natural in those days that when Queen Elizabeth visited the great seats of learning she should be greeted with a shower of Latin verses and orations. Pages after pages of these have been preserved, but it seems extremely doubtful whether the recipient of them could have found time to master their contents. The orations she listened to and understood, for the expression of her face is said to have changed with the subject-matter of the speeches, and some of them she answered in the same tongue. But it was by no means to Eton or to Oxford and Cambridge that Latin verses and orations were confined: obscure parsons in small towns seized their opportunities, and were often handsomely praised by the Queen for their skill. As to verses, when she visited Sandwich in 1573, "upon every post and corner, from her first entry to her lodging, were fixed certain verses, and against the court gate all these verses put into a table [_i.e._, a frame] and there hanged up." The Queen's visit to Kenilworth Castle in July, 1575, is one of the best known episodes of her Progresses, and the "Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle," recorded (and largely devised) by George Gascoigne, consisted of the same kind of entertainments as greeted her at her coronation. They are too long to quote extensively, but a few of the principal efforts will serve to show the kind of spirit that was abroad at the time. As the Queen approached the castle, Sybilla met her and prophesied prosperity in a number of verses. On entering the gate Hercules, who acted as porter, seemed inclined to dispute her entry, but being overcome by the "rare beauty and princely countenance" of her Majesty, he gave up his keys, and burst into poetry. In the base-court there came a lady, attended by two nymphs, and the lady welcomed her Majesty in another set of verses. A few steps further on came an actor clad like a poet, who pronounced a number of Latin verses, which were also fixed over the gate in a frame. After leaving the poet, she was received into the inner court with sweet music, and then escaped to her own "lodgings." A day or two after her arrival there met her in the forest, as she came from hunting, one clad like a Savage man, all in ivy, who was so much overcome with wonder at the Queen's presence that he fell to quarrelling with Jupiter, and called upon Echo to explain who the resplendent personage might be, incidentally contriving to lavish a number of compliments in the course of the inquiry. Then Triton came, and the Lady of the Lake, and Proteus sitting on a dolphin's back, who all delivered themselves of further compliments in lengthy verses. It is just conceivable that her Majesty grew a little weary of these pedantic interludes, for one long show was prepared by Master Gascoigne, in which Diana and her nymphs, Mercury, Iris, and others were to have acted; but in spite of every actor being ready in his garment for two or three days together, it never came to