There was something extremely poetical in her situation, as a maiden queen, raised from a prison to a throne, exposed to unceasing danger from without and treason from within, and supported through all by her own extraordinary talents, and by the devotion of the chivalrous, gallant courtiers and captains, who paid to her, as their queen and mistress, a homage and obedience they would scarce have paid to a sovereign of their own sex. All this display of talent and heroism, and chivalrous gallantry, has a fine gorgeous effect to the imagination;--but for the woman herself,--as a woman, with her pedantry, and her absurd affectation; her masculine temper and coarse insolence; her sharp, shrewish, cat-like face, and her pretension to beauty, it is impossible to conceive any thing more anti-poetical. Yet had she praises in all plenteousness Pour'd upon her, like showers of Castalie.[113] She was a favourite theme of the poets of the time, and by right divine of her sceptre and her sex, an object of glorious flattery, not always feigned, even where it was false. She is the Gloriana of Spenser's Fairy Queen,--she is the "Cynthia, the ladye of the sea,"--she is the "Fair Vestal throned in the West," of Shakspeare-- That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,) Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair Vestal, throned by the West, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon; And the imperial vot'ress passed on In maiden meditation, fancy free. And the previous allusion to Mary of Scotland, as the "Sea Maid on the Dolphin's back," Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song, is not less exquisite. It would, in truth, have been easier for Mary to have calmed the rude sea than her ruder and wilder subjects. These two queens, so strangely misplaced, seem as if, by some sport of destiny, each had dropt into the sphere designed for the other. Mary should have reigned over the Sydneys, the Essexes, the Mountjoys;--and with her smiles, and sweet words; and generous gifts, have inspired and rewarded the poets around her. Elizabeth should have been transferred to Scotland, where she might have bandied frowns and hard names with John Knox, cut off the heads of rebellious barons, and boxed the ears of ill-bred courtiers.