Elizabeth and Her Court

Elizabeth and Essex a Tragic History. By Lytton Strachey. (Chatto and Whidisa. 15s.) Elizabeth and_Essex tells again,- brilliantly and - vividly, the old, rich story of the rise and fall of the last of Elizabeth's Tivourite courtiers. There are four chief parts in this tragical- -historical drama : the old Queen and the young Earl—Heroes ; Robert Cecil—Master Mind ; Francis Bacon, with the viper's eyes—Villain. Countless others pass to and fro, but the Main plot is played out !between these four.

The Queen lives most -vitally and the long analysis of her character in the second chapter is one of the most memorable things in the boil& The portrait of the Earl of Essex is less convincing. He was a man of action, and Mr. Strachey, *ho has sometimes regarded such men with delicate derision, understands him less. Muddle-headed, bewildered, incom- • petent, this Essex has few of the qualities that made the real -man the darling- of professional soldiers, Puritans, and the common people of England. Yet a single incident from Coningsby's journal will show how the legend was created. !In December 1591, before-Rouen, Essex would take his tarn lit the trenches every third night :— .. - "being within three pikes' length of the enemy's guard, where they have continual shooting, and divers of our pioneers slain; and Sit: Edmund Yorke hurt. on the head. My Lord General hard great speech with Chevalier Pickard [across no-man's land] who asked him for his mistress that he had in England, and promised to come and dine with his lordship one day, and there Assed many fair speeches between them, but the bullets went apace the mean time."

There are many such stories, but Mr. Strachey has denied tIS most of them.

.He has omitted, too, the element of tragical-comical in thiS drama. Essek was over-sensitive to laughter ; and he often made himself ridiculous. When he commanded in the field '-at Rouen, at Cadiz, in Ireland—he bestowed knighthoods -With such profuse generositythat a .young man cynically volunteered for service with him because he was tired of being a plain squire. Essex destroyed the wretched Lopez not (as Mr. Strachey would have us believe) from motives of noble-hearted, though mistaken, patriotism, but in revenge, Ji&ause Lopez had made the Queen and others laugh at him, After the Queen, Robert Cecil emerges as the greatest of the figures here portrayed, though the tribute is a little satirical, for li'0Sex has to be the hero, and Cecil was his opposite ; a stunted little man who worked with his goose-quill pen at a writing table. Yet he survives as the tragedy closes and the old queen lies dead at Richmond.

" But meanwhile, in an inner chamber, at his table, alone, the Secretary sat writing. All the eventualities had been foreseen, everything was arranged, only the last soft touches remained' to bef given. The momentous transition would, come now with exquisite facility. As the hand moved, the mind moved too: ranging sadly over the vicissitudes of mortal beings, reflecting

upon the revolutions of kingdoms, and dreaming, with quiet • clarity, of what the hours, even then, were bringing—the union of two nations—the triumph of the new' rulers—success, power, riches—a name in after-ages—a noble lineage— a great Howie." .

It is the right ending ; for Robert Cecil saved England froth a -bitter and desperate civil war ; he also saved England from the Earl of Essex.

Mr. Strachey's Bacon is admirable and dissected with .especial skill, though some of his meditations are a trifle jejune:

" Francis smiled • he saw a great career opening before his imagination—judgeslipshigh otfiCes of state—might he nit 'Cie long be given, like his father before him, the keeping of the Great Seal of England ? A peerage !—Verulam, St. Albans. dorhambury—what resounding title should he take ` My manor of Gorhambury '—the phrase rolled on his tongue. .

• " To be Count Malvolio " . . . the echo is unfortunate.

In this sad eventful history Bacon's part in the condemnatiOn of Essex is the most regrettable incident, but it was amazingly clever ; so, too, was the official pamphlet which he wrote to justify the execution. It evokes this comment :

" This result was achieved with the greatest skill and neatness ; certain passages in the confessions were silently suppressed; bgt only manipulations were reduced to a minimum ; and there Was only one actually false statement of fact,. . . . Yet such beautiful economy—could it have arisen unbeknownst Who can tell ? The serpent glides off with his secret."

No wonder Mr. Strachey admires such handiwork, for their al.e his own methods. W'otton describes Essex absorbed in his -own affairs even while . being dressed, giving

" his legs, arm, and breast to his ordinary servants to button and dress him, with little heed, his head and face to his harbor, his eyes to his letters, and eats "to petitioners, and many times all at once ; then the gentleman of his robes throwing a cloak Over his shoulders, he would make a step into his closet., and' after ,

a short prayer he was gone," • ' . •• Mr. Strachey quotes down to " petitioners," but continues in his own words, " and so, clad in lie knew not what, a cloak hastily thrown about him, would pass out, with his odd lonk steps, and his head pushed forward, to the Queen." , , . -As the hand of the Master Biographer moved over the paper, the mind stifled that short prayer, reflecting that modern heroes do not pray. Of such arc the privileges denied to Bib pedestrian scholar. We may admit that the whole art of moderii biography is in this beautiful economy attained by silent sup- pression here and there, " manipulations reduced to a mini- mum." But let the biographer stick to his last and, above all, make no concession to pedantry. At the end of Elizabeth and

Essex there is a bibliography which is disturbing to the creeping Critic—the pedant—who reads such things ; for it omits at least five of the most important sources for the life of Esselr. 'But, doubtless, with the general reader Elizabeth and Esser will enhance Mr. Lytton Strachey's great reputation.

G. B. HARRISON,