94 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, [1.8. 
ever conducted, had much intermixture with the affairs of 
Europe, balancing and inclining them variably; in whose 
time also began that great alteration in the state eccle- 
siastical, an action which seldom cometh upon the stage. 
Then the reign of a minor: then an offer of an usurpation 
(though it was but as febrzs ephemera). Then the reign of 
a queen matched with a foreigner: then of a queen that 
lived solitary and unmarried, and yet her government so 
masculine, as it had greater impression and operation 
upon the states abroad than it any ways received from 
thence. And now last, this most happy and glorious 
event, that this island of Brittany, divided from all the 
world, should be united in itself: and that oracle of rest 
given to Aineas, anfiguam exquirite matrem, should now 
be performed and fulfilled upon the nations of England 
and Scotland, being now reunited in the ancient mother 
name of Brittany, as a full period of all instability and 
peregrinations. So that as it cometh to pass in massive 
bodies, that they have certain trepidations and waverings 
before they fix and settle, so it seemeth that by the pro- 
vidence of God this monarchy, before it was to settle in 
your majesty and your generations (in which I hope it is 
now established for ever), it had these prelusive changes 
and varieties, 
g. For lives, I do find strange that these times have so 
little esteemed the virtues of the times, as that the writings 
of lives should be no more frequent. For although there 
be not many sovereign princes or absolute commanders, 
and that states are most collected into monarchies, yet 
are there many worthy personages that deserve better 
than dispersed report or barren elogies. For herein 
the invention of one of the late poets is proper, and 
doth well enrich the ancient fiction. For he feigneth 
