They Have A Very Quaint Conceit Of Him, That Mars And Mercury Fell
At Variance Whose Servant He Should Be;
And there is an
epigrammatist that saith that Art and Nature had spent their
excellences in his fashioning, and, fearing
They could not end what
they had begun, they bestowed him up for time, and Nature stood mute
and amazed to behold her own mark; but these are the particulars of
poets.
Certain it is he was a noble and matchless gentleman, and it may be
said justly of him, without these hyperboles of faction, as it was
of Cato Uticensis, that he seemed to be born only to that which he
went about, VIR SATILIS INGENII, as Plutarch saith it; but to speak
more of him were to make them less.
WALSINGHAM.
Sir Francis Walsingham, as we have said, had the honour to be Sir
Philip Sidney's father-in-law; he was a gentleman at first, of a
good house, and of a better education, and from the University
travelled for the rest of his learning. Doubtless he was the only
linguist of his times, how to use his own tongue, whereby he came to
be employed in the chiefest affairs of State.
He was sent Ambassador to France, and stayed there LEGAR long in the
heat of the civil wars, and at the same time that Monsieur was here
a suitor to the Queen; and, if I be not mistaken, he played the very
same part there as since Gondomar did here. {59} At his return he
was taken principal Secretary, and for one of the great engines of
State, and of the times, high in his mistress's (the Queen's)
favour, and a watchful servant over the safety of his mistress.
They note him to have certain courtesies and secret ways of
intelligence above the rest; but I must confess I am to seek
wherefore he suffered Parry {60} to play so long as he did, hang on
the hook, before he hoisted him up; and I have been a little curious
in the search thereof, though I have not to do with the ARCANA
REGALIA IMPERII, for to know it is sometimes a burden; and I
remember it was Ovid's criminant error that he saw too much, but I
hope these are collaterals, and of no danger.
But that Parry, having an intent to kill the Queen, made the way of
his access by betraying of others, and in impeaching of the priests
of his own correspondency, and thereby had access to confer with the
Queen, as oftentimes private and familiar discourse with Walsingham,
will not be the query of the mystery, for the Secretary might have
had an end of a further discovery and maturity of the treason; but
that, after the Queen knew Parry's intent, why she would then admit
him to private discourse, and Walsingham to suffer him, considering
the conditions of all the designs, and to permit him to go where and
whither he listed, and only under the secrecy of a dark sentinel set
over him, was a piece of reach and hazard beyond my apprehension. I
must again profess that I have read many of his letters, for they
are commonly sent to my Lord of Leicester and of Burleigh out of
France, containing many fine passages and secrets, yet, if I might
have been beholding to his cyphers, they would have told pretty
tales of the times; but I must now close him up, and rank him
amongst the TOGATI, yet chief of those that laid the foundations of
the French and Dutch wars, which was another piece of his fineness
of the times, with one observation more, that he was one of the
greatest always of the Austrian embracements, for both himself and
Stafford that preceded him might well have been compared to him in
the Gospel that sowed his tares in the night; so did they their
seeds in division in the dark; and as it is a likely report that
they father on him at his return, the Queen speaking to him with
some sensibility of the Spanish designs on France: "Madam," he
answered, "I beseech you be content, and fear not; the Spaniard hath
a great appetite and an excellent digestion, but I have fitted him
with a bone for these twenty years that your Majesty should have no
cause to doubt him, provided that, if the fire chance to slake which
I have kindled, you will be ruled by me, and cast in some of your
fuel, which will revive the flame."
WILLOUGHBY.
My Lord Willoughby was one of the Queen's first swordsmen; he was of
the ancient extract of the Bartewes, but more ennobled by his
mother, who was Duchess of Suffolk. He was a great master of the
art MILITARY, and was sent general into France, and commanded the
second army of five the Queen had sent thither, in aid of the
French. I have heard it spoken that, had he not slighted the Court,
but applied himself to the Queen, he might have enjoyed a plentiful
portion of her grace; and it was his saying, and it did him no good,
that he was none of the REPTILIA, intimating that he could not creep
on the ground, and that the Court was not his element; for, indeed,
as he was a great soldier, so he was of a suitable magnanimity, and
could not brook the obsequiousness and assiduity of the Court; and
as he was then somewhat descending from youth, happily he had an
ANIMAM REVERTENDI, or a desire to make a safe retreat.
BACON.
And now I come to another of the TOGATI, Sir Nicholas Bacon, an
arch-piece of wit and of wisdom. He was a gentleman, and a man of
law, and of a great knowledge therein, whereby, together with his
after-part of learning and dexterity, he was promoted to be Keeper
of the Great Seal, and being of kin to the Treasurer Burleigh, and
{61} also the help of his hand to bring him to the Queen's great
favour, for he was abundantly facetious, which took much with the
Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge
of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to
good purpose, "that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his
friend;" and that, though he knew that "VERUS QUISQUE SUAE FORTUNAE
FABER," was a true and good principle, yet the most in number were
those that numbered themselves, but I will never forgive that man
that loseth himself to be rid of his jests.
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