The elaborate scroll-work of the later composition is altogether missing-but the tendency to such things is clearly apparent in the devices employed to fill out the spaces unoccupied by letters at the end of nearly half the lines. In the other pages of the work, the use of the pear-shaped figure for this purpose is much more frequent.

This priceless volume is, so far as anybody has discovered, Elizabeth's first literary work, and, with the possible exception of a one-sheet letter* in Italian from her to Katherine Parr, is also the first handwriting of Elizabeth known to be in existence. The Italian letter is dated 31st of July, 1544, but as the larger work must have consumed many weeks, it is very probable that among its pages there are many written before that date.t

We are, apparently, the first historian or biographer of Elizabeth who has ever seen this volume, or even known of its survival, and yet it has been resting safely in the Bodleian since 1729.

The pages are contained in their original binding, which is canvas worked over in large silk thread, so carefully done that at first sight the surface has the appearance of a piece of woven cloth. Embossed upon this on the front cover is an elaborate scroll in gold and silver braid, in the midst of which are the initials of Katherine Parr. The edges are bound with gold braid, and there is a thin line in red silk at the top and bottom; while there is a heartsease embroidered in coloured silk, three of the petals of each flower being in purple, and two in yellow, with small gold thread interwoven, and a little green leaf between each two. The entire back cover is devoted to similar flowers, now so worn, however, as to be indistinct. As a piece of needlecraft the production is of the highest excellence of this or of any age-but its great and lasting importance is that it is entirely the sole work of the little Elizabeth.‡

On the eve of the New Year of 1545, one year later than

"

* B.M. MS., Otho C. X. 231 0.n. or 235 n.n. Mumby, in The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth, p. 22, says: "The letter, which is written in elegant Italian, and preserved in the Bodleian Library. . . . The original has never been at the Bodleian. Miss Strickland makes the same error-vide p. 12, vol. iii., Bohn's Hist. Lib. ed.

†The search for the first writing of the Queen became exciting. It is fully detailed in Appendix, note 2.

Heywood's England's Elizabeth, circa 1630, especially notes the princess's skill in this art.

lauit

In carne solit

sua propria persona c57 passus, in spiritu sem per m suis cler tis

Isaq quamuis in carne

exinanitus fuerit, ctrl
cifixus, propter infirmi.

tatem, tamen in spiritu
nunc m virtute viuit

grandis & potentiffimus,
& in fuis electis vin
rendo labores, persequu
tiones, obprobria, aduer
sitates, mortem, mundi,
luxuriam, prudcntiam
carnalem, spiritus infer.

ELIZABETH'S HAND, AT. I.

the date of the book just considered, the little girl presented another embroidered volume all of her own penmanship and needlework to Katherine Parr, the volume of prayers mentioned as being in the British Museum-a work of 233 pages, some 14,000 words. In penmanship it shows an improvement on the similar production of the preceding year, and it consists of Elizabeth's translations into Latin, French, and Italian of some prayers composed in English by Katherine.

Two years later, on the eve of 1548, the girl offered a third volume of her handwriting to her brother, the King: a translation from an Italian sermon into Latin, a most beautiful piece of penmanship, with elaborate scrolled capitals in red ink—a highly artistic work in every particular, two characteristic pages of which we exactly reproduce.

And it may be added that all through her life, whenever free from the tremendous responsibilities of her position, until she was more than sixty-five, she made translations, a number of which have been preserved, from the best Greek and Latin authors; and when, in her sixty-fourth year, an inexperienced Polish Ambassador made her a slighting speech, she turned on him with a long, angry, extempore torrent of Latin that not only took away his breath, but that of the listening Court; while she-how like a woman!-as soon as the gale had passed, burst out laughing with the remark " God's death, my Lords! I have been enforced this day to scour up my old Latin."

Having thus (we may claim) established her genius, we proceed to a brief consideration of our previous statement— that Elizabeth was not only deserving of these encomiums, but, at this early age, had, besides, received what even to-day would be designated as a first-class education, including the very best training ever devised for the development of the native faculties of the brain.

The simple fact is that Henry VIII., a very learned man, a very cultured man-and again we speak in the twentiethcentury sense of the terms—a master of four modern languages, as well as the classical, a musician, a composer, an author, a student of the best in ancient and modern literature, an historical scholar and an enthusiastic promoter of learning and its institutions, had decreed that his three legitimate children should have the best education that the world could then

afford; and when we examine the steps he took to see that this determination be carried into practice, we can but conclude that they were admirably chosen.

The best teachers in England were Elizabeth's tutors, and the slightest study of their methods demonstrates that there are none to-day to excel them. Greek, Latin, French, and Italian-the two latter by those to whom those tongues were native-were mainly taught to Elizabeth by translations from each into English, then back into the original, and then oftentimes from each of the four into the remaining three; a method of study which we have already described as the best ever devised for the development of the thinking and reasoning faculties. The most instructive of the classics were treated in this fashion, and their relative importance explained.

Correspondence between Elizabeth and Edward was conducted in Latin, French, and Italian, and they habitually spoke these tongues. The Queen, indeed, when an old woman, confided to one of the French Ambassadors that when she came to the throne she knew six foreign languages better than she did her own.*

History, astronomy, mathematics, logic, philosophy, architecture, music, poetry, were pursued indefatigably, all day long, for she was fascinated by learning; but the particular bent of her mind is shown in the fact that it was her habit to spend at least three hours each day upon history. That was her favourite subject, for was she not to be the Queen? She was just as certain of it when reading of the reigns of her predecessors as she was during her first serious illness when she adopted the demeanour and dress of a nun-all a part of the play, all a step to regain her lost reputation, all preparation for the time which was to come.

Surely it is evident that no other personage in history began so early in life to work for a throne. It was her one thought, her one ambition, her one passion long before she was fifteen years of age; and we shall see that this fierce determination

*Vide Baschet Transcripts, Bundle No. 30, Journal of M. de Maisse, French Ambassador at London, 1597–8, at p. 241 verso-" She . . . said that when she came to the throne, she knew six languages better than her own, and because I said that that was a great virtue in a princess she said that there was no marvel in a woman learning to speak, but there would be in teaching her to hold her tongue."-P. R. O.