Pamela, who that day having wearied her selfe with reading, * * * was working upon a purse certaine roses and lillies. * * * The flowers shee had wrought caried such life in them, that the cunningest painter might have learned of her needle:  which, with so pretty a manner, made his careers to & fro through the cloth, as if the needle it selfe would haue been loth to haue gone fromward such a mistresse, but that it hoped to returne thitherward very quickly againe; the cloth looking with many eyes vpon her, and louingly embracing the wounds she gaue it:  the sheares also were at hand to behead the silke that was growne too short.  And if at any time shee put her mouth to bite it off, it seemed, that where she had beene long in making of a rose with her hands, she would in an instant make roses with her lips; as the lillies seemed to haue their whitenesse rather of the hand that made them, than of the matter whereof they were made; & that they grew there by the suns of her eyes, and were refreshed by the most * * * comfortable ayre, which an unawares sigh might bestow upon them.[74]

Charles I. passed many hours of his prison life in reading the “Arcadia,” and Milton[75] accused him of stealing a prayer of Pamela to insert in the “Eikon Basilike”:  “And that in no serious book, but the vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Arcadia’; a book in that kind, full of worth and wit, but among religious thoughts and duties not worthy to be named:  nor to be read at any time without good caution, much less in time of trouble and affliction to be a Christian’s prayerbook.”  This prayer is in itself so beautiful, coming from the lips of Pamela, and the greater part of it suits so perfectly the unhappy circumstances of King Charles, that at the risk of unduly multiplying our extracts from the “Arcadia,” it will be inserted here:—­

And therewith kneeling downe, euen where shee stood, she thus said:  O All-seeing Light, and eternall Life of all things, to whom nothing is either so great, that it may resist; or so small, that it is condemned:  looke vpon my misery with thine eye of mercie, and let thine infinite power vouchsafe to limite out some proportion of deliuerance vnto me, as to thee shall seeme most conuenient.  Let not injurie, O Lord, triumph ouer me, and let my faults by thy hand bee corrected, and make not mine vnjust enemy the minister of thy justice.  But yet, my God, if in thy wisdome this be the aptest chastisement for my vnexcusable folly:  if this low bondage be fittest to my ouerhigh desires:  if the pride of my not inough humble heart be thus to be broken, O Lord I yeeld vnto thy will, and joyfully embrace what sorrow thou will haue mee suffer.  Onely thus much let me craue of thee, (let my crauing, O Lord, be accepted of thee, since euen that proceeds from thee,) let me craue, euen by the noblest title, which in my greatest affliction I may give myself, that I am thy creature, and by thy goodness (which is thyselfe) that thou