Elizabeth’s knowledge and acquirements from an early age made her famous, and Hentzner, the German traveller, mentions having seen a little volume in the royal library at Whitehall, written in French by her, when a child, on vellum, and which was thus inscribed: “A tres haut, et tres puissant, et redoubté Prince Henry VIII. de ce nom, roy d’Angleterre, de France, et de Irelande, defendeur de la foy. Elizabeth, sa tres humble fille, rend salut et obedience.” When imprisoned by her sister Mary, she wrote several poems, and it is said that Mary Queen of Scots during her long incarceration by Elizabeth produced many pleasing poetic compositions. When Henry IV. of France abjured the Protestant faith and joined the Church of Rome, Elizabeth was greatly troubled at his apostasy, and to divert her mind she entered into a course of theological studies, and finally occupied her time by reading “Boethius on the Consolations of Philosophy,” of the first five books of which she made a very elegant English translation. Her Majesty, too, showed her sympathy for the literary characters of her day, and when the antiquary Lambarde waited upon her at Greenwich Palace to present his “Pandecta of the Tower Records,” she received him most graciously, and after looking through the volume, “she commended the work,” writes Lambarde, “not only for the pains therein taken,” but also “for that she had not received, since her first coming to the crown, any one thing that brought therewith so great a delectation to her”; and Walpole[151] has chronicled her various other contributions to literature.