But neither Zeuxis nor Praxiteles was called from the dead to mar her
perfections, nor record her negative charms. Poetry was the only art
that flourished in the Virgin reign. The pure Gothic, after attaining
its full efflorescence under Henry VII., departed, never to return. The
Grecian orders were not only absurdly jumbled together, but yet more
outrageously conglomerated with the Gothic and Arabesque. "To gild
refined gold--to paint the lily," was all the humour of it. A similar
inconsistency infected literature. The classic and the romantic (to use
those terms, which, though popular, are not logically exact) were
interwoven. The Arcadia and the Fairy Queen are glorious offences, which
"make defect perfection." Perhaps, Shakspeare's "small Latin and less
Greek," preserved him from worse anachronisms than any that he has
committed. Queen Bess's patronage was of the national breed: she loved
no pictures so well as portraits of herself. As, however, her painters
have not flattered her, it may not uncharitably be concluded that they
were no great deacons in their craft. It is a much easier thing to
assure a homely female, in prose or rhyme, that she is beautiful, than
to represent her so upon canvass.
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