126 Four-in-Hand iJi Britain. 



their revels? In his pages we live over again the days 

 of old, and take part with the Virgin Queen and her 

 train of lords and ladies in the grand reception so lav- 

 ishly prepared for her amusement by the then reigning 

 favorite ; ruined walls and towers and courts assume 

 their ancient proportions and resound with music and 

 revelry, and the noble park, now so quiet, is alive once 

 more with huntsmen and gayly clad courtiers. But 

 vivid as is Scott's picture, it is exceeded in quaint inter- 

 est by the original account of the festivities from which 

 the great romancer drew his facts, but which is as little 

 known to the ordinary reader of " Kenilworth " as is 

 the prototype of Hamlet to the common play-goer. 

 Master Robert Laneham, the writer, was a sort of 

 hanger-on of the court, and appears to have accompa- 

 nied Leicester to Kenilworth. His account is in the 

 form of a letter addressed to " my good friend. Master 

 Humfrey Martin, Mercer," in London, and is written, 

 says Scott, " in a style of the most intolerable affecta- 

 tion, both in point of composition and orthography." 



After a brief account of the preliminary journey of 

 the queen, this veracious chronicler informs us that she 

 was " met in the Park, about a flight shoot from the 

 Brayz and first gate of the castl" by a person repre- 

 senting " one of the ten Sibills, comely clad in a Pall of 

 white Sylk, who pronounced a proper Poezi in English 

 Rime and meeter." . . . " This her majestie benignly 

 accepting, passed foorth untoo the next gate of the 



