The Earl of Essex Author:Charles Whitehead Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Mas ! wliat is't for us to sound, to explore, To watch, oppose, plot, practise, or prevent, If he, for whom it is so strongly labonr'd, Shall, ou... more »t of greatness and free spirit, be Supremely negligent'. BEN JONSON. One of the many noble mansions which, in Elizabeth's days, stood on the south side of the Strand, was Essex House. It had formerly been occupied by the Earl of Leicester, and had come into the possession of Robert Devereux, his stepson, at his death. Could the reader have seen this mansion, he would have said that a greater magnificence of structure was to have been looked for in a house tenanted by so splendid a nobleman as Leicester:—but it was well adapted to his successor, since it was large enough to serve the purposes of his almost boundless hospitality; and just so plain that, without detracting from, it added nothing to the reputation for grandeur he was desirous to maintain—a reputation whichRobert Devereux, the darling of the people, sought to establish by popular shows of extraordinary splendour, and by acts of the most prodigal munificence. In an ante-room of Essex House, in the afternoon of the day on which the proceedings we have described took place, there was a person alone, about, forty years of age, dressed with the utmost decency of plainness, and otherwise in no degree remarkable. He sat, or rather reclined, upon a bench, in the deep recess of the window, and apparently was employed in revolving those more immediate thoughts, which spontaneously arise, or are summoned at pleasure, to afford relief to lassitude. Idly expanding the fingers of one hand, he dallied from time to time with the sunbeams that came laterally through the casement, or hummed a few bars of an amorous ditty, made and " set" by the now-forgotten Campion, w...« less