When she had finished, she turned about to her courtiers, and said, "God's death, my lords," (for she was much addicted to swearing,) "I have been forced this day to scour up my old Latin, that hath long lain rusting."[*] * Speed.
Elizabeth, even after she was queen, did not entirely drop the ambition of appearing as an author; and, next to her desire of admiration for beauty, this seems to have been the chief object of her vanity.

She translated Boethius of the Consolation of Philosophy; in order, as she pretended, to allay her grief for Henry IV.'s change of religion.

As far us we can judge from Elizabeth's compositions, we may pronounce that, notwithstanding her application, and her excellent parts, her taste in literature was but indifferent: she was much inferior to her successor in this particular, who was himself no perfect model of eloquence.
Unhappily for literature, at least for the learned of this age, the queen's vanity lay more in shining by her own learning, than in encouraging men of genius by her liberality.

Spenser himself, the finest English writer of his age, was long neglected; and after the death of Sir Philip Sidney, his patron, was allowed to die almost for want.

This poet contains great beauties, a sweet and harmonious versification, easy elocution, a fine imagination; yet does the perusal of his work become so tedious, that one never finishes it from the mere pleasure which it affords; it soon becomes a kind of task-reading, and it requires some effort and resolution to carry us on to the end of his long performance.
This effect, of which every one is conscious, is usually ascribed to the change of manners: but manners have more changed since Homer's age; and yet that poet remains still the favorite of every reader of taste and judgment.