I rejoice that the name of no one woman is popularly identified with that of Shakspeare. He belongs to us all!--the creator of Desdemona, and Juliet, and Ophelia, and Imogen, and Viola, and Constance, and Cornelia, and Rosalind, and Portia, was not the poet of one woman, but the POET OF WOMANKIND. FOOTNOTES: [94] She was the grandmother of Lady Russell. [95] Elizabeth Vernon was first cousin to Essex. "Was it treason?" asks Essex indignantly, in one of his eloquent letters; "Was it treason in my Lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long imprisonment, nor any punishment besides that hath been usual in such cases can satisfy or appease?" [96] Sonnets 127, 130 [97] Sonnet 128. [98] See "Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare." [99] Sonnets 80, 83. [100] Sonnet 172. [101] Sonnets 110, 111. CHAPTER XVI. SYDNEY'S STELLA. At the very name of Sir Philip Sydney,--the generous, gallant, all-accomplished Sydney,--the roused fancy wakes, as at the sound of a silver trumpet, to all the gay and splendid associations of chivalry and romance. He was in the court of Elizabeth, what Surrey had been in that of her father, Henry the Eighth; and like his prototype. Sir Calidore in the Fairy Queen,-- Every look and word that he did say Was like enchantment, that through both the ears And both the eyes, did steal the heart away. And as Surrey had his Fair Geraldine, Sydney had his STELLA. Simplicity was not the fashion of Elizabeth's age in any particular: the conversation and the poetry addressed by her stately romantic courtiers to her and her maids of honour, were like the dresses they wore,--stiff with jewels and standing on end with embroidery, gorgeous of hue and fantastic in form; but with many a brilliant gem of exceeding price, scattered up and down, where one would scarce think to find them; losing something of their effect by being misplaced, but none of their inherent beauty and value. The poetry of Sir Philip Sydney was extravagantly admired in his own time, and it has since been less read than it deserves. It contains much of the pedantic quaintness, the laboured ornament, the cumbrous phraseology, which was the taste, the language of the day: but he had elegance of mind and tenderness of feeling; above all, he was in earnest, and accordingly, there are beautiful and brilliant things scattered through both his poetry and prose. If his "Phoenix-Stella" be less popularly celebrated than the Fair Geraldine,--her name less intimate with our fancy,--it is not because her poet lacked skill to immortalize her in superlatives: it is the recollection of the mournful fate and darkened fame of that beautiful but ill-starred woman, contrasted with the brilliant career and spotless glory of her lover, which strikes the imagination with a painful contrast, and makes us reluctant to dwell on her memory.