These are the points, concluded he, I could wish you to speak to. The rest may be left to the judgment of the historian, or rather to the curiosity of the nice and critical politician.
You shall be obeyed, Mr. ADDISON said. I thought it not amiss to take off the glare of those applauded qualities, which have dazzled the public at a distance, by shewing that they were either feigned or over-rated. But I come now to unmask the real character of this renowned princess. I shall paint her freely indeed, but truly as she appears to me. And, to speak my mind at once; I think it is not so much to her virtues, which at best were equivocal, as to her very VICES, that we are to impute the popular admiration of her character and government.
I before took notice of the high, indecent PASSION, she discovered towards her courtiers. This fierceness of temper in the softer sex was taken for heroism; and, falling in with the slavish principles of the age, begot a degree of reverence in her subjects, which a more equal, that is a more becoming, deportment would not have produced. Hence, she was better served than most of our princes, only because she was more feared; in other words, because she less deserved to be so. But high as she would often carry herself in this unprincely, I had almost said, unwomanly, treatment of her servants; awing the men by her oaths, and her women by blows; it is still to be remembered, that she had a great deal of natural TIMIDITY in her constitution.
What! interrupted Dr. ARBUTHNOT hastily, the magnanimous ELIZABETH a coward? I should as soon have expected that charge against CÆSAR himself, or your own MARLBOROUGH.
I distinguish, Mr. ADDISON said, betwixt a parade of courage, put on to serve a turn, and keep her people in spirits, and that true greatness of mind, which, in one word, we call _magnanimity_. For this last, I repeat it, she either had it not, or not in the degree in which it has been ascribed to her. On the contrary, I see a littleness, a pusillanimity, in her conduct on a thousand occasions. Hence it was, that both to her people and such of the neighbouring states as she stood in awe of, she used an excessive hypocrisy, which, in the language of the court, you may be sure, was called policy. To the _Hollanders_, indeed, she could talk big; and it was not her humour to manage those over whom she had gained an ascendant. This has procured her, with many, the commendation of a princely magnanimity. But, on the other hand, when discontents were apprehended from her subjects, or when _France_ was to be diverted from any designs against her, no art was forgotten that might cajole their spirits with all the professions of cordiality and affection. Then she was _wedded_, that was the tender word, to her people: and then the interest of religion itself was sacrificed by this Protestant queen to her newly-perverted brother on the Continent.