THE ESSEX BOND.

219

lure the bird into his net; that wanton beauty, which can make all ill look lovely, and whose every gesture is a dumb-show that has but one interpretation for those who are caught by her amorous arts and luring lapwing-wiles, and also for those that watch and fear for them. Elizabeth Vernon feels that she is the innocent cause of bringing her dear friend the Earl into this double danger; the danger of too familiar an acquaintanceship with Lady Rich, and the danger of a too-familiar friendship with Essex, whose perturbed spirit and secret machinations are known to her. She blames herself for her unkind abuse in having brought them together. Evil befal that heart,' she exclaims to her lady cousin, for the deep wound it gives to me and my friend. Is it not enough for you to torture me alone in this way, I who am full of timid fears, but you must also make my sweetest friend a slave to this slavery which I suffer, and was content to suffer whilst it only tormented me? You held me in your power by right of the strongest; your proud cruel eye could do with me almost as you pleased. I was your prisoner whom you kept in confinement close pent. You hold me by force, and I will not complain of that if I can only shield my lover from all danger; let my heart be his guard. I plead with you; but, alas! I know it is in vain; you will use rigour in our gaol, and torture your poor prisoners. I confess he is yours, and I myself am mortgaged to do your bidding. Now let me forfeit myself, and do you restore my lover to be my comfort. Ah, you will not, and he will not be free. You are covetous and he is kind. Poor fellow, he did but sign his name, surety-like, for me under that bond that binds him as fast as it binds me, and you will sue him, a friend, who has only come to you as a debtor for my sake, and take the statute of your beauty, the right of might, you 'usurer that put forth all to use ;' that is, she who takes advantage of her loveliness to turn friends into lovers and lovers

into political adherents to the Essex cause; 'take all
take all you
can, in virtue of your beauty and our bond. Him have I
lost; you have us both. He pays all, yet I am not, can-
not be free.' The speaker acknowledges a power which
compels her submission. Then she tries a little coaxing.
Take all my loves, my Love,' what then? You have only
what you had before. All mine was yours in one sense,
but 'be blamed' if you deceive yourself and take it in
another sense. If you would eat of the fruit of my love,
come to it fairly by the right gate; do not climb over the
wall, as a thief and a hireling, to steal. Still, for his sake
I will forgive even robbery, although love knows it is
far harder to bear this wrong done secretly in the name
of love than it would be to suffer the injury of hatred
that was openly known.' And now we have the summing
up of the whole matter, the moral of the story. The
speaker makes her submission almost abject, in obedience
to a hidden cause, though the words are almost spitten
out by the force of suppressed feeling-

'Lascivious Grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.'

Admitting the speaker to be a woman, there must be more than a story of rivalry in love implied in those lines. Because if one woman be too friendly with another woman's lover, the sufferer would argue that the sooner she and the one who robbed her mind of its peace were foes the better for all parties. Rather than continue to suffer and bear until quite 'killed with spites,' she would say we must be foes, for I cannot, need not, will not bear any longer. All the more that it is the woman who pursues, an ordinary case would be simple enough. But there is a secret and sufficiently potent cause why these two should not become foes. The lady knows the fierce vindictive nature of her cousin; she fears lest the black eyes should grow baleful, and would almost rather

THE DARK STORY TOLD FOR THE LAST TIME. 221

they should be turned on the Earl in wanton love than in bitter enmity. So deep is her dread of the one, so great her affection for the other. For his sake she resolves to bear all the spites' which her cousin's conduct can inflict upon her. For his sake, she and this cousin must not be foes. Such is the binding nature of their relationship, that the speaker feels compelled to be an accessory to the sweet thief' that 'sourly robs' from her. She will be the slave of her high imperious will, and bear the tyranny that tortures her, rather than quarrel. She will likewise be subtly politic with her love's profoundest cunning. And this is why there is such 'civil war' in her 'love and hate;' herein lies the covert meaning that has for so long dwelt darkly in these lines.

I think no one accustomed to judge of evidence in poetry can fail to see that the old story of a man speaker

stances.

a man who is married and keeps his mistress too-and that man Shakspeare, has been told for the last time, so soon as we have discovered a woman speaker, who is thus identified by inner character and outward circumThe breath of pure love that breathes fresh as one of those summer airs which are the messengers of morn, is enough to sweeten the imagination that has been tainted by the vulgar story, whilst the look of injured innocence and the absence of self-reproach, the chiding that melts into forgiveness and which was only intended to bring the truant back; the feeling of being left uncovered to the public gaze and cloakless to the threatening storm; the face in tears, the rain on the cheek, those 'women's weapons, water-drops;' the natural womanliness of the expression, Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,' the lines

1

'Myself I'll forfeit so that other mine

Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still!'

'Let not women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks.'-Lear, act ii. sc. 4.

-the wrong done to love, which, though unknown, is worse than the known injury of open hatred; the motive, feeling, and excusing words-all are exquisitely feminine; whilst the imagery and symbols correspond in the thoroughest way to the womanly nature of it all.

The expression" Lascivious Grace, in whom all ill well shows, kill me with spites," as spoken from a woman to a rival, and applied, according to the story now for the first time told, is just one of those flashes of revelation by which we see nature caught in the fact! And by the same sudden illumination we catch sight of that Elizabethan Helen, the Lady Rich, seen and known in a moment, never to be forgotten.

There is a letter written by Lord Rich to the Earl of Essex, dated April 16th, 1597, which has been held to be so dark in meaning, so enigmatical in expression, that nothing has hitherto been made of its contents. Lady Rich had just got out of danger from the small-pox. In a letter dated three days later, Rowland White says, 'My Lady Rich is recovered of her small-pox, without any blemish to her beautiful face.' Lord Rich's letter refers to this illness of his wife, and the consequent danger to her fair face, but it also contained an enclosure touching certain love-matters therein written of, to the perplexity of his lordship, and relating to a 'fair Maid' in whom the Lady Rich was interested, of whose beauty she was so careful as not to send the writing direct for fear of infection: My Lord, your Sister, being loth to send you any of her infection, hath made me an instrument to send you this enclosed epistle of Dutch true or false love; wherein, if I be not in the right, I may be judged more infected than fitteth my profession, and to deserve worse than the pox of the smallest size. If it fall out so, I disburden myself, and am free from such treason, by my disclosing it to a Councillor, who, as your Lordship well knows, cannot be guilty of any such offence. Your Lord

LORD RICH'S MYSTIFICATION.

223

ship sees, by this care of a fair maid's beauty, she doth not altogether despair of recovery of her own again; which, if she did, assured by envy of others' fairness, would make her willingly to send infection among them. This banishment makes me that I cannot attend on you; and this wicked disease will cause your sister this next week to be at more charge to buy a masker's visor to meet you dancing in the fields than she would on [once?] hoped ever to have done. If you dare meet her, I beseech you preach patience unto her, which is my only theme of exhortation. Thus, over saucy to trouble your Lordship's weightier affairs, I take my leave, and ever remain your Lordship's poor brother to command, Ro. RICH.' Now, to my thinking, there is no more natural explanation of this mysterious letter than that the fair Maid' of whose beauty Lady Rich is so thoughtful a guardian, and to whom the epistle of Dutch true or simulated love' evidently belongs, is Elizabeth Vernon, cousin both to Lady Rich and to the Earl of Essex, and that we here catch a glimpse of this very group of sonnets, or a part of them, as they pass from hand to hand. The 'Epistle' over which Lord Rich tries to shake his wise head jocosely, is not sealed up from him. He has read it, and finds it only sealed in the sense; it is, as the unlearned say, all Greek to him, or, as he says, it is "Dutch." The subject, too, is amatory, so much he perceives; but whether it pertains to real life or to fiction is beyond his reach; he merely hopes the brother, who is a Councillor of State, will discover no treason in it. If this love-epistle, the purport of which his Lordship failed to fathom, should have consisted of the sonnets that Elizabeth Vernon speaks to Lady Rich in her jealousy, it would fit the circumstances of the case as nothing else could, and perfectly account for Lord Rich's perplexity. We may imagine how little he would make of them when their meaning has kept concealed from so many other prying eyes for two centuries and a