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’s behalf. Burghley had good reason to be satisfied with his ward’s intellectual promise. ‘He spent,’ wrote a contemporary, ‘his childhood and other younger terms in the study of good letters.’ At the age of twelve, in the autumn of 1585, he was admitted to St. John’s College, Cambridge, ‘the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all the University.’ Southampton breathed easily the cultured atmosphere. Next summer he sent his guardian, Burghley, an essay in Ciceronian Latin on the somewhat cynical text that ‘All men are moved to the pursuit of virtue by the hope of reward.’ The argument, if unconvincing, is precocious. ‘Every man,’ the boy tells us, ‘no matter how well or how ill endowed with the graces of humanity, whether in the enjoyment of great honour or condemned to obscurity, experiences that yearning for glory which alone begets virtuous endeavour.’ The paper, still preserved at Hatfield, is a model of calligraphy; every letter is shaped with delicate regularity, and betrays a refinement most uncommon in boys of thirteen. Southampton remained at the University for some two years, graduating M.A. at sixteen in 1589. Throughout his after life he cherished for his college ‘great love and affection.’

Before leaving Cambridge, Southampton entered his name at Gray’s Inn. Some knowledge of law was deemed needful in one who was to control a landed property that was not only large already but likely to grow. Meanwhile he was sedulously cultivating his literary tastes. He took into his ‘pay and patronage’ John Florio, the well-known author and Italian tutor, and was soon, according to Florio’s testimony, as thoroughly versed in Italian as ‘teaching or learning’ could make him.

‘When he was young,’ wrote a later admirer, ‘no ornament of youth was wanting in him;’ and it was naturally to the Court that his friends sent him at an early age to display his varied graces. He can hardly have been more than seventeen when he was presented to his sovereign. She showed him kindly notice, and the Earl of Essex, her brilliant favourite, acknowledged his fascination. Thenceforth Essex displayed in his welfare a brotherly interest which proved in course of time a very doubtful blessing.

Recognition of Southampton’s youthful beauty.

While still a boy, Southampton entered with as much zest into the sports and dissipations of his fellow courtiers as into their literary and artistic pursuits. At tennis, in jousts and tournaments, he achieved distinction; nor was he a stranger to the delights of gambling at primero. In 1592, when he was in his eighteenth year, he was recognised as the most handsome and accomplished of all the young lords who frequented the royal presence. In the autumn of that year Elizabeth paid Oxford a visit in state. Southampton was in the throng of noblemen who bore her company. In a Latin poem describing the brilliant ceremonial, which was published at the time at the University Press, eulogy was lavished without stint on all the Queen’s attendants; but the academic poet declared that Southampton’s personal attractions exceeded those of any other in the royal train. ‘No other youth who was present,’ he wrote, ‘was more beautiful than this prince of Hampshire (quo non formosior alter affuit), nor more distinguished in the arts of learning, although as yet tender down scarce bloomed on his cheek.’ The last words testify to Southampton’s boyish appearance. Next year it was rumoured, that his ‘external grace’ was to receive signal recognition by his admission, despite his juvenility, to the Order of the Garter. ‘There be no Knights of the Garter new chosen as yet,’ wrote a well-informed courtier on May 3, 1593, ‘but there were four nominated.’ Three were eminent public servants, but first on the list stood the name of young Southampton. The purpose did not take effect, but the compliment of nomination was, at his age, without precedent outside the circle of the Sovereign’s kinsmen. On November 17, 1595, he appeared in the lists set up in the Queen’s presence in honour of the thirty-seventh anniversary of her accession. The poet