Note 58 — Book I. LETTERS TO MAXIMILIAN.

Miss Freer, in her history of Henry III., has charged Busbecq’s Queen with heartlessness. ‘Under these circumstances Elizabeth gladly accepted her father’s invitation to return to Vienna. With all her virtue and simplicity Elizabeth appears not to have possessed much tenderness of character; else, herself feeling so keenly the disadvantages of a residence at Paris, she could not have abandoned her infant daughter to the care of Catherine de Medici; nor even, as far as it can be discovered, made any attempt to convey her to be educated far from the levity of the Court.’—Vol. ii. p. 39. Miss Freer evidently did not know of Busbecq’s letters to Maximilian; she frequently quotes the letters to Rodolph, but does not appear to be aware that they were written by the man whom she describes as ‘Auger de Ghislin, Seigneur de Boësbecq, a German noble resident in France.’