Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

ELIZABETH'S PORTRAIT 177
which more fitly might be called the dress of an
Arcadian shepherdess. It is all in the style of the
literary rusticity of the day. The Queen, with her
fantastic dress worked with birds and flowers, her open
bosom, and her high head-dress, worked like the gown,
stands in a woodland scene with her hand on a stag
decked with flowers. Perhaps she is " Dian chaste and
fair," or a " passionate shepherdess." Certainly she is
very sentimental, and the picture is loadedwith mottoes
more or less intelligible. Verses, perhaps her own,
which seem to contain an allusion to one of her love
affairs, complete the mystery of the picture : —
" The restles swallow fits my restles minde,
Instill revivinge, still renewinge wronges;
Her just complaintesof cruelty unkinde
Areall the musique that my life prolonges.
With pensive thoughtes my weepinge staggIcrowne,
Whose melancholytears my cares expresse;
Hes teares in sylence,and my sighes unknowne,
Are all thephysicke that my harmes redresse.
Myonely hope was in this goodly tree,
WhichIdidplant inlove, bringe up in care,
But allin vaine, for now to lateIsee
The shales be mine, the kernels others are.
My musique may be plaintes, my physique teares,
If this beall the fruite my love-treebeares."
It is a picture which should be looked at again and
again. There is no other which so happily conveys
the idea of Elizabeth's coquetry and quaintness with
her shrewd, direct common sense.
M