
 
 <#ngli0l) Jtten of Cettera 
 
 EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
 
 Sir pbilip Si 
 
 by 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " RENAISSANCE IN ITALY " " LIFE OF MICHELANGELO " 
 " STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS " ETC. 
 
 EngUsb /IDen of ^Letters 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 1902
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE chief documents upon which a life of Sir Philip 
 Sidney must be grounded are, at present, his own works 
 in prose and verse, Collins' Sidney Papers (2 vols., 1745), 
 Sir Henry Sidney's Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham 
 (Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Nos. 9-31), Languet's 
 Latin Letters (Edinburgh, 1776), Pears' Correspondence of 
 Languet and Philip Sidney (London, 1845), Fulke Grev- 
 ille's so-called Life of Sidney (1652), the anonymous 
 u Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney," prefixed to old 
 editions of the Arcadia, and a considerable mass of memo- 
 rial writings in prose and verse illustrative of his career. 
 In addition to these sources, which may be called original, 
 we possess a series of modern biographies, each of which 
 deserves mention. These, in their chronological order, 
 are: Dr. Zouch's (1809), Mr. William Gray's (1829), an 
 anonymous Life and Times of Sir Philip Sidney (Boston, 
 1859), Mr. Fox Bourne's (1862), and Mr. Julius Lloyd's 
 (later in 1862). With the American Life I am not ac- 
 quainted ; but the two last require to be particularly no- 
 ticed. Mr. Fox Bourne's Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney 
 combines a careful study of its main subject with an able 
 review of the times. The author's industrious researches 
 in State Papers and other MS. collections brought many 
 new facts to light. This book is one upon which all later
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 handlings of the subject will be based, and his deep in- 
 debtedness to which every subsequent biographer of Sid- 
 ney must recognise. Mr. Lloyd's Life of Sir Philip Sidney 
 appearing in the same year as Mr. Fox Bourne's, is slightei 
 in substance. It has its own value as a critical and con- 
 scientious study of Sidney under several aspects; and in 
 one or two particulars it supplements or corrects the more 
 considerable work of Mr. Bourne. For Sidney's writings 
 Professor Arber's reprint of the Defence of Poesy, and 
 Dr. Grosart's edition of the poems in two volumes (The 
 Fuller Worthies' Library, 1873), will be found indispen- 
 sable. 
 
 In composing this sketch I have freely availed myself 
 of all that has been published about Sidney. It has been 
 my object to present the ascertained facts of his brief life, 
 and my own opinions regarding his character and literary 
 works, in as succinct a form as I found possible. 
 
 BADENWEILER, May 11, 188ft.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD ..... .... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 FOREIGN TRAVEL .............. 19 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY ..... 32 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA" ..... 59 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE ...... 87 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA" ..... o . . . . 106 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 DEFENCE OF POESY" .......... 145 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 LAST YEARS AND DEATH ...... ..... 160
 
 SIB PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 
 
 SHELLEY, in his memorial poem on the death of Keats, 
 named Sir Philip Sidney among "the inheritors of unful- 
 filled renown." If this praise be applicable to Chatterton 
 and Keats, it is certainly, though in a less degree perhaps, 
 true also of Sidney. His best friend and interpreter put 
 on record that " the youth, life, and fortune of this gentle- 
 man were, indeed, but sparks of extraordinary greatness in 
 him, which, for want of clear vent, lay concealed, and, in a 
 manner, smothered up." The real difficulty of painting an 
 adequate portrait of Sidney at the present time is that his 
 renown transcends his actual achievement. Neither hi& 
 poetry nor his prose, nor what is known about his action, 
 quite explains the singular celebrity which he enjoyed in 
 his own life, and the fame which has attended his memory 
 with almost undimmed lustre through three centuries. In 
 an age remarkable for the great deeds of its heroes, no less 
 than for the splendour of its literature, he won and retained 
 a homage which was paid to none of his contemporaries. 
 All classes concurred in worshipping that marvellous youth, 
 1*
 
 2 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 who displayed the choicest gifts of chivalry and scholar- 
 ship, of bravery and prudence, of creative and deliberative 
 genius, in the consummate harmony of a noble character. 
 The English nation seemed instinctively to recognise in 
 him the impersonation of its manifold ideals. He was 
 beautiful, and of illustrious ancestry, an accomplished 
 courtier, complete in all the exercises of a cavalier. He 
 was a student, possessed of the new learning which Italy 
 had recently bequeathed to Europe. He was a poet and 
 the " warbler of poetic prose," at a moment when the 
 greater luminaries of the Elizabethan period had scarcely 
 risen above the horizon. Yet his beauty did not betray 
 him into levity or wantonness; his noble blood bred in 
 him neither pride nor presumption. Courtly habits failed 
 to corrupt his rectitude of conduct, or to impair the can- 
 dour of his utterance. The erudition of the Renaissance 
 left his Protestant simplicity and Christian faith untouched. 
 Literary success made him neither jealous nor conceited ; 
 and as the patron and friend of poets, he was even more 
 eminent than as a writer. These varied qualities were so 
 finely blent in his amiable nature that, when Wotton called 
 him " the very essence of congruity," he hit upon the hap- 
 piest phrase for describing Sidney's charm. 
 
 The man, in fact, was greater than his words and actions. 
 His whole life was " a true poem, a composition, and pat- 
 tern of the best and honourablest things ;" and the fascina- 
 tion which he exerted over all who came in contact with 
 him a fascination which extended to those who only 
 knew him by report must now, in part at least, be taken 
 upon trust. We cannot hope to present such a picture of 
 him as shall wholly justify his fame. Personalities so 
 unique as Sidney's exhale a perfume which evanesces when 
 the lamp of life burns out. This the English nation felt
 
 i.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. S 
 
 when they put on public mourning for his death. They 
 felt that they had lost in Sidney, not only one of their 
 most hopeful gentlemen and bravest soldiers, but some- 
 thing rare and beautiful in human life, which could not be 
 recaptured, which could not even be transmitted, save by 
 hearsay, to a future age. The living Euphues of that era 
 (so conscious of its aspirations as yet but partially attained, 
 so apt to idealise its darlings) had perished just when all 
 men's eyes were turned with certainty of expectation on 
 the coming splendours of his maturity. " The president 
 of nobleness and chivalry " was dead. " That most heroic 
 spirit, the heaven's pride, the glory of our days," had passed 
 away like young Marcellus. Words failed the survivors to 
 express their sense of the world's loss. This they could 
 not utter, because there was something indescribable, in- 
 calculable, in the influence his personality had exercised. 
 We, then, who have to deal with meagre records and scanty 
 written remains, must well weigh the sometimes almost in- 
 coherent passion which emerges in the threnodies poured 
 out upon his grave. In the grief of Spenser and of Cam- 
 den, of Fuller and of Jonson, of Constable and Nash, of the 
 Countess of Pembroke and Fulke Greville, as in a glass 
 darkly, we perceive what magic spell it was that drew the 
 men of his own time to love and adore Sidney. The truth 
 is that Sidney, as we now can know him from his deeds 
 and words, is not an eminently engaging or profoundly in- 
 teresting personage. But, in the mirror of contemporary 
 minds, he shines with a pure lustre, which the students of 
 his brief biography must always feel to be surrounding 
 him. 
 
 Society, in the sixteenth century, bestowed much in- 
 genuity upon the invention of appropriate mottoes and 
 significant emblems. When, therefore, we read that Sir
 
 4 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Philip Sidney inscribed his shield with these words Vix ea 
 nostra voco (" These things I hardly call our own "), we 
 may take it for a sign that he attached no undue value to 
 noble birth; and, indeed, he makes one of the most re- 
 spectable persons in his Arcadia exclaim : " I am no her- 
 ald to enquire of men's pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I 
 know their virtues." This might justify his biographers 
 in silence regarding his ancestry, were it not that his con- 
 nections, both on the father's and the mother's side, were 
 all-important in determining the tenor of his life. 
 
 The first Sidney of whom we hear anything came into 
 England with Henry II., and held the office of Chamber- 
 lain to that king. His descendant, Nicholas Sidney, mar- 
 ried a daughter of Sir William Brandon and aunt of 
 Charles, Duke of Suffolk. Their son, Sir William Sidney, 
 played an important part during the reign of Henry VIII. ; 
 he served in the French wars, and commanded the right 
 wing of the English army at Flodden. To him was given 
 the manor of Penshurst in Kent, which has remained in 
 the possession of the Sidneys and their present representa- 
 tives. On his death in 1554 he left one son and four 
 daughters. The eldest of these daughters was ancestress 
 of Lord Bolingbroke. From the marriage of the second 
 to Sir James Harrington descended, by female alliances, 
 the great house of Montagu and the families of North and 
 Noel. Through the marriage of the third with Sir Will- 
 iam Fitz- William, Lord Byron laid claim to a drop of 
 Sidney blood. The fourth, who was the wife of Thomas 
 Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, dying childless, founded Sidney 
 Sussex College at Cambridge. With the only son, Sir 
 Henry Sidney (b. 1529-89), we shall have much to do in 
 the present biography. It is enough now to mention that 
 Henry VIII. chose him for bedfellow and companion to
 
 I.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 5 
 
 his only son. " I was, by that most famous king," he 
 writes, " put to his sweet son, Prince Edward, my most 
 dear master, prince, and sovereign ; my near kinswoman 
 being his only nurse, my father being his chamberlain, my 
 mother his governess, my aunt in such place as among 
 meaner personages is called a dry nurse ; for, from the time 
 he left sucking, she continually lay in bed with him, so 
 long as he remained in woman's government. As the 
 prince grew in years and discretion so grew I in favour and 
 liking of him." A portion of Hollingshed's Chronicle, 
 contributed by Edward Molineux, long time Sir Henry 
 Sidney's secretary, confirms this statement. " This right 
 famous, renowned, worthy, virtuous, and heroical knight, 
 by father and mother very nobly descended, was from his 
 infancy bred and brought up in the prince's court and in 
 nearness to his person, used familiarly even as a compan- 
 ion." Nothing but Edward VL's untimely death prevent- 
 ed Sir Henry Sidney from rising to high dignity and pow- 
 er in the realm. It was in his arms that the king expired 
 in 1553 at Greenwich. 
 
 One year before this event Sir Henry had married the 
 Lady Mary Dudley, daughter of Edmund, Viscount De 1'Isle 
 and Duke of Northumberland. The Dudleys were them- 
 selves of noble extraction, though one of their ancestors 
 had perished ignobly on the scaffold. Edmund Dudley, 
 grandson of John Lord Dudley, K.G., joined with Sir Rich- 
 ard Empson in those extortions which disgraced the last 
 years of Henry VII.'s reign, and both were executed in the 
 second year of his successor. His son, Sir John Dudley, 
 was afterwards relieved of the attainder, and restored to 
 those honours which he claimed from his mother. His 
 mother, Elizabeth Grey, was heiress of a very ancient house, 
 whose baronies and titles had passed by an almost unex-
 
 6 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 ampled series of female successions. The first founder of 
 the family of De 1'Isle appears in history during the reign 
 of King John. The last baron of the male blood died in 
 the reign of Richard II., leaving an heiress, who was mar- 
 ried to Thomas Lord Berkeley. Their daughter and sole 
 heiress married Richard, Earl of Warwick, and also left an 
 only heiress, who married John Talbot, the great Earl of 
 Shrewsbury. ' Her eldest son, John Talbot, Baron De 1'Isle, 
 created Viscount De 1'Isle, left an only daughter, Elizabeth, 
 who was wedded to Sir Edward Grey, created Baron and 
 Viscount De 1'Isle. It was the daughter and heiress of 
 this marriage who gave birth to the ambitious and unfort- 
 unate Duke of Northumberland. From these dry facts it 
 will be seen that the descendants of Edmund Dudley were 
 not only heirs and representatives of the ancient barony 
 of De 1'Isle, but that they also inherited the blood and 
 arms of the illustrious houses of Berkeley, Beauchamp, 
 Talbot, and Grey. When we further remember to what an 
 eminence the Duke of Northumberland climbed, and how 
 his son, the Earl of Leicester, succeeded in restoring the 
 shattered fortunes of the family after that great prince's 
 fall, we can understand why Sir Henry Sidney used the 
 following language to his brother-in-law upon the occasion 
 of Mary Sidney's betrothal to the Earl of Pembroke : " I 
 find to my exceeding great comfort the likelihood of a 
 marriage between my Lord of Pembroke and my daugh- 
 ter, which great honour to me, my mean lineage and kin, I 
 attribute to my match in your noble house." Philip Sid- 
 ney, too, when he was called to defend his uncle Leicester 
 against certain libels, expressed his pride in the connection. 
 " I am a Dudley in blood ; that Duke's daughter's son ; and 
 do acknowledge, though in all truth I may justly affirm that 
 I am by my father's side of ancient and always well-ear
 
 I.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 7 
 
 teemed and well-matched gentry, yet I do acknowledge, 
 I say, that my chiefest honour is to be a Dudley." 
 
 Philip was born at Penshurst on the 29th of November 
 1554. At that epoch their alliance with the Dudleys 
 seemed more likely to bring ruin on the Sidneys than new 
 honours. It certainly made their home a house of mourn- 
 ing. Lady Mary Sidney had recently lost her father and 
 her brother Guilford on the scaffold. Another of her 
 brothers, John, Earl of Warwick, after his release from the 
 Tower, took refuge at Penshurst, and died there about a 
 month before his nephew's birth. 1 Sir Henry's loyalty 
 and prudence at this critical time saved the fortunes of his 
 family. He retired to his country seat, taking no part in 
 the Duke of Northumberland's ambitious schemes; and 
 though he was coldly greeted at Mary's Court, the queen 
 confirmed him in the tenure of his offices and honours by a 
 deed of 8th November 1554. She also freed his wife from 
 participation in the attainder of her kinsfolk. Their eldest 
 son was christened Philip in compliment to Mary's Spanish 
 consort. It appears that Sir Henry Sidney subsequently 
 gained his sovereign's confidence ; for in this reign he was 
 appointed Vice-Treasurer and Controller of the royal reve- 
 nues in Ireland. 
 
 Of Philip's birthplace Ben Jonson has bequeathed to us 
 a description, animated with more of romantic enthusiasm 
 than was common to his muse. 
 
 " Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show 
 Of touch 8 or marble, nor canst boast a row 
 
 1 Duke of Northumberland, d. 22d August 1553 ; Lord Guilford 
 Dudley and Lady Jane Grey, 12th February 1554 ; John Dudley, Earl 
 of Warwick, 21st October 1554. 
 
 3 Touch is a superlative sort of marble, the classic basanites. The 
 reference to a lantern in the next line but one might pass for a proph- 
 ecy of Walpole's too famous lantern at Houghton. 
 28
 
 8 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Of polished pillars or a roof of gold: 
 
 Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told ; 
 
 Or stair, or courts ; but stand'st an ancient pile ; 
 
 And these, grudged at, are reverenced the while. 
 
 Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air, 
 
 Of wood, of water ; therein art thou fair. 
 
 Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport : 
 
 Thy mount, to which thy dryads do resort, 
 
 Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts hare made, 
 
 Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut shade ; 
 
 That taller tree, which of a nut was set, 
 
 At his great birth, where all the muses met ; 
 
 There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names 
 
 Of many a Sylvan taken with his flames ; 
 
 And there the ruddy satyrs oft provoke 
 
 The lighter fauns to reach thy lady's oak." 
 
 The tree here commemorated by Jonson as having been 
 planted at Sir Philip Sidney's birth, was cut down in 1768, 
 not, however, before it had received additional fame from 
 Edmund Waller. His Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea 
 Sidney; and the poet was paying her court at Penshurst 
 when he wrote these lines : 
 
 " Go, boy, and carve this passion on the bark 
 Of yonder tree, which stands the sacred mark 
 Of noble Sidney's birth." 
 
 Jonson expatiates long over the rural charms of Pens- 
 hurst, which delighted him on many a summer's holiday. 
 He celebrates the pastures by the river, the feeding-grounds 
 of cattle, the well-stocked game preserves, the fish-ponds, 
 and the deer-park, which supplied that hospitable board 
 with all good things in season. 
 
 " The painted partridge lies in every field, 
 And for thy mess is willing to be killed ;
 
 L] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 9 
 
 And if the high-swol'n Medway fail thy dish 
 Thou hast the ponds that pay thee tribute fish, 
 Fat aged carps that run into thy net, 
 And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat, 
 As loth the second draught or cast to stay, 
 Officiously at first themselves betray." 
 
 Next he turns to the gardens : 
 
 " Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, 
 Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours ; 
 The early cherry, with the later plum, 
 Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come; 
 The blushing apricot and woolly peach, 
 Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach." 
 
 The trellised walls remind him of the ancient habitation, 
 which, though homely, is venerable, rearing itself among 
 the humbler dwellings of the peasants, with patriarchal 
 rather than despotic dignity. 
 
 " And though thy walls be of the country stone, 
 They're reared with no man's ruin, no man's groan ; 
 There's none that dwell about them wish them down, 
 But all come hi, the farmer and the clown, 
 And no one empty-handed to salute 
 Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. 
 Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, 
 Some nuts, some apples ; some that think they make 
 The better cheeses, bring them ; or else send 
 By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend 
 This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear 
 An emblem of themselves in plum or pear." 
 
 This poem, composed in the days when Philip's brother 
 Sir Robert Sidney, was master of Penshurst, presents so 
 charming a picture of the old-world home in which Philip 
 was born, and where he passed his boyhood, that I have 
 
 been fain to linger over it. 
 B
 
 10 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Sir Henry Sidney was sent to Ireland in 1556 as Vice- 
 Treasurer and General Governor of the royal revenues in 
 that kingdom. He distinguished himself, soon after his 
 arrival, by repelling an invasion of the Scots in Ulster, and 
 killing James MacConnel, one of their leaders, with his own 
 hand. Next year he was nominated Lord Justice of Ire- 
 land ; and, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, he obtained 
 the confirmation of his offices. In 1558 the queen nomi- 
 nated him Lord President of Wales, which dignity he held 
 during the rest of his life. It does not exactly appear 
 when he first took the rank of Lord Deputy of Ireland, 
 a title corresponding to that of Lord Lieutenant. But 
 throughout the first seven years of Elizabeth's reign he dis- 
 charged functions there which were equivalent to the su- 
 preme command. In 1564 he received the honour of the 
 Garter, being installed in the same election with King 
 Charles IX. of France. On this occasion he was styled 
 " The thrice valiant Knight, Deputy of the Eealm of Ire- 
 land, and President of the Council of Wales." Next year 
 he was again despatched to Ireland with the full title and 
 authority of Lord Deputy. 
 
 The administration of Wales obliged Sir Henry Sidney 
 to reside frequently at Ludlow Castle, and this was the rea- 
 son which determined him to send Philip to school at 
 Shrewsbury. Being the emporium of English commerce 
 with North Wales and Ireland, and the centre of a thriving 
 wool-trade, Shrewsbury had then become a city of impor- 
 tance. The burgesses established there a public school, 
 which flourished under the able direction of Thomas Ash- 
 ton. From a passage in Ben Jonson's prose works it is 
 clear that the advantages of public-school education were 
 well appreciated at that time in England. Writing to a 
 nobleman, who asked him how he might best train up his
 
 I.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 11 
 
 sons, he says : " I wish them sent to the best school, and a 
 public. They are in more danger in your own family 
 among ill servants than amongst a thousand boys, however 
 immodest. To breed them at home is to breed them in a 
 shade, whereas in a school they have the light and heat of 
 the sun. They are used and accustomed to things and 
 men. When they come forth into the commonwealth, they 
 find nothing new or to seek. They have made their friend- 
 ships and aids, some to last till their age." One such 
 friend, whose loving help was given to Sidney till death 
 parted them, entered Shrewsbury school together with him 
 on the 19th of November 1564. This was Fulke Greville, 
 a distant relative, and a boy of exactly the same age. To 
 the sincere attachment which sprang up between them, and 
 strengthened with their growing age, we owe our most val- 
 uable information regarding Philip's character and opinions. 
 Fulke Greville survived his friend, became Lord Brooke, 
 and when he died in 1628 the words "Friend to Philip 
 Sidney " were inscribed upon his tomb. From the short 
 biography of his friend, prefixed to a collection of his own 
 works, which was dedicated to Sidney's memory, we obtain 
 a glimpse of the boy while yet at school : 
 
 " Of his youth I will report no other wonder but this, that though 
 I lived with him, and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him 
 other than a man ; with such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar 
 gravity as carried grace and reverence above greater years. His talk 
 ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind. So 
 as even his teachers found something to observe and learn above that 
 which they had usually read or taught. Which eminence, by nature 
 and industry, made his worthy father style Sir Philip in my hearing 
 (though I unseen) Lumen families suce" 
 
 According to our present notions, we do not consider it al- 
 together well if a boy between the ages of ten and fifteen
 
 12 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 wins praise for exceptional gravity. Yet Fulke Greville 
 does not call Philip bookish ; and we have abundant evi- 
 dence that, while he was early heedful of nourishing his 
 mind, he showed no less eagerness to train his body in such 
 exercises as might be serviceable to a gentleman, and use- 
 ful to a soldier. Nevertheless, his friend's admiring eulogy 
 of the lad's deportment indicates what, to the end, remained 
 somewhat chilling in his nature a certain stiffness, want 
 of impulse want, perhaps, of salutary humour. He could 
 not take the world lightly could not act, except in rare 
 moments of anger, without reflection. Such a character is 
 admirable ; and youths at our public schools, who remain 
 overgrown boys in their games until they verge on twenty, 
 might well take a leaf from Sidney's book. But we can- 
 not refrain from thinking that just a touch of recklessness 
 would have made him more attractive. We must, how- 
 ever, remember that he was no child of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. He belonged to the age of Burleigh and of Bacon, 
 and the circumstances of his birth forced on him precocity 
 in prudence. Being the heir of Sir Henry Sidney and 
 Lady Mary Dudley, he could not but be early conscious of 
 the serious difficulties which perplexed his parents. Had 
 he not been also conscious of a calling to high things, he 
 would have derogated from his illustrious lineage. His 
 gravity, then, befitted his blood and position in that still 
 feudal epoch, his father's eminent but insecure station, and 
 the tragic fate of his maternal relatives. 
 
 A letter written by Sir Henry Sidney to his son, while 
 still at school in Shrewsbury, may here be cited. It helps 
 to show why Philip, even as a boy, was earnest. Sympa- 
 thetic to his parents, bearing them sincere love, and owing 
 them filial obedience, he doubtless read with veneration, 
 and observed with loyalty, the words of wisdom wiser
 
 L] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 13 
 
 than those with which Polonius took farewell of Laertes 
 dictated for him by the upright and valiant man whom 
 he called father. Long as it is, I shall give it in full ; for 
 nothing could better bring before our eyes the ideal of 
 conduct which then ruled English gentlefolk : 
 
 " I have received two letters from you, one written in Latin, the 
 other in French ; which I take in good part, and wish you to exercise 
 that practice of learning often ; for that will stand you in most stead 
 in that profession of life that you are bom to live in. And since this 
 is my first letter that ever I did write to you, I will not that it be all 
 empty of some advices, which my natural care for you provoketh me 
 to wish you to follow, as documents to you in this your tender age. 
 Let your first action be the lifting up of your mind to Almighty God 
 by hearty prayer ; and feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer, 
 with continual meditation and thinking of Him to whom you pray and 
 of the matter for which you pray. And use this as an ordinary act, 
 and at an ordinary hour, whereby the time itself shall put you in re- 
 membrance to do that which you are accustomed to do in that time. 
 Apply your study to such hours as your discreet master doth assign 
 you, earnestly ; and the time I know he will so limit as shall be both 
 sufficient for your learning and safe for your health. And mark the 
 sense and the matter of that you read, as well as the words. So shall 
 you both enrich your tongue with words and your wit with matter ; 
 and judgment will grow as years groweth in you. Be humble and 
 obedient to your master, for unless you frame yourself to obey others, 
 yea, and feel in yourself what obedience is, you shall never be able to 
 teach others how to obey you. Be courteous of gesture and affable to 
 all men, with diversity of reverence according to the dignity of the 
 person: there is nothing that winneth so much with so little cost. 
 Use moderate diet, so as after your meal you may find your wit fresher 
 and not duller, and your body more lively and not more heavy. Sel- 
 dom drink wine, and yet sometimes do, lest being enforced to drink 
 upon the sudden you should find yourself inflamed. Use exercise of 
 body, yet such as is without peril of your joints or bones ; it will in- 
 crease your force and enlarge your breath. Delight to be cleanly, as 
 well in all parts of your body as in your garments : it shall make you 
 grateful in each company, and otherwise loathsome. Give yourself to
 
 14 SIK PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 be merry, for you degenerate from your father if you find not your- 
 self most able in wit and body and to do anything when you be most 
 merry; but let your mirth be ever void of all scurrility and biting 
 words to any man, for a wound given by a word is oftentimes harder 
 to be cured than that which is given with the sword. Be you rather 
 a hearer and bearer away of other men's talk than a beginner and 
 procurer of speech ; otherwise you shall be counted to delight to hear 
 yourself speak. If you hear a wise sentence or an apt phrase commit 
 it to your memory with respect of the circumstance when you shall 
 speak it. Let never oath be heard to come out of your mouth nor 
 word of ribaldry ; detest it in others ; so shall custom make to your- 
 self a law against it in yourself. Be modest in each assembly ; and 
 rather be rebuked of light fellows for maiden-like shamef astness than 
 of your sad friends for pert boldness. Think upon every word that 
 you will speak before you utter it, and remember how nature hath 
 ramparted up, as it were, the tongue with teeth, lips, yea, and hair 
 without the lips, and all betokening reins or bridles for the loose use 
 of that member. Above all things, tell no untruth ; no, not in trifles : 
 the custom of it is naughty. And let it not satisfy you that, for a 
 tune, the hearers take it for truth ; for after it will be known as it is, 
 to your shame ; for there cannot be a greater reproach to a gentleman 
 than to be accounted a liar. Study and endeavour yourself to be virt- 
 uously occupied, so shall you make such a habit of well-doing in you 
 that you shall not know how to do evil, though you would. Remem- 
 ber, my son, the noble blood you are descended of, by your mother's 
 side ; and think that only by virtuous life and good action you may 
 be an ornament to that illustrious family, and otherwise, through vice 
 and sloth you shall be counted labes generis, one of the greatest cursea 
 that can happen to man. Well, my little Philip, this is enough for 
 me, and too much, I fear, for you. But if I shall find that this light 
 meal of digestion nourisheth anything in the weak stomach of your 
 capacity, I will, as I find the same grow stronger, feed it with tougher 
 food. Your loving father, so long as you live in the fear of God, 
 
 " H. SIDNEY." 
 
 To this epistle Lady Mary Sidney added a postscript, 
 which, if it is less correct in style and weighty with wise 
 counsel, interests us by its warm and motherly affection.
 
 i.] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 15 
 
 " Tour noble and careful father hath taken pains (with his own 
 hand) to give you in this his letter so wise, so learned, and most req- 
 uisite precepts for you to follow with a diligent and humble thank- 
 ful mind, as I will not withdraw your eyes from beholding and rever- 
 ent honouring the same, no, not so long time as to read any letter 
 from me ; and therefore at this time I will write no other letter than 
 this : and hereby I first bless you with my desire to God to plant in 
 you His grace, and secondarily warn you to have always before the eyes 
 of your mind those excellent counsels of my lord, your dear father, 
 and that you fail not continually once in four or five days to read 
 them over. And for a final leave-taking for this time, see that you 
 show yourself a loving obedient scholar to your good master, and that 
 my lord and I may hear that you profit so in your learning as there- 
 by you may increase our loving care of you, and deserve at his handa 
 the continuance of his great joys, to have him often witness with his 
 own hand the hope he hath in your well-doing. 
 
 " Farewell, my little Philip, and once again the Lord bless you.~- 
 Your loving mother, MARY SIDNEY." 
 
 In those days boys did not wait till they were grown 
 men before they went to college. Sidney left Shrewsbury 
 in 1568, and began residence at Christ Church. He was 
 still in his fourteenth year. There he stayed until some 
 time in 1571, when he quitted Oxford without having tak- 
 en a degree. In this omission there was nothing singular. 
 His quality rendered bachelorship or mastership of arts in- 
 different to him ; and academical habits were then far freer 
 than in our times. That he studied diligently is, however, 
 certain. The unknown writer named Philophilippus, who 
 prefixed a short essay on "The Life and Death of Sir 
 Philip Sidney " to the Arcadia, speaks thus in his quaint 
 language of the years spent at Oxford : " Here an excellent 
 stock met with the choicest grafts; nor could his tutors 
 pour in so fast as he was ready to receive." The Dean of 
 Christ Church, Dr. Thomas Thornton, had it afterwards en-
 
 16 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 graved upon his own tomb at Ledbury that he had been 
 the preceptor of " Philip Sidney, that most noble Knight." 
 We possess few particulars which throw any light upon 
 Sidney's academical career. There is some reason, how- 
 ever, to believe that liberal learning at this period flourished 
 less upon the banks of the Isis than at Cambridge and in 
 our public schools. Bruno, in his account of a visit to 
 Oxford ten years later, introduces us to a set of pompous 
 pedants, steeped in mediaeval scholasticism and heavy with 
 the indolence of fat fellowships. Here, however, Sidney 
 made the second great friendship of his youth. It was 
 with Edward Dyer, a man of quality and parts, who claims 
 distinction as an English poet principally by one faultless 
 line : " My mind to me a kingdom is." Sir Edward Dyer 
 and Sir Fulke Greville lived in bonds of closest affection 
 with Sir Philip Sidney through his life, and walked togeth- 
 er as pall-bearers at his funeral. That was an age in which 
 friendship easily assumed the accents of passionate love. 
 I may use this occasion to quote verses which Sidney 
 wrote at a later period regarding his two comrades. He 
 had recently returned from Wilton to the Court, and found 
 there both Greville and Dyer. 
 
 " My two and I be met, 
 A blessed happy trinity, 
 
 As three most jointly set 
 In firmest bond of unity. 
 
 Join hearts and hands, so let it be; 
 
 Make but one mind in bodies three. 
 
 " Welcome my two to me, 
 The number best beloved ; 
 
 Within the heart you be 
 In friendship unremoved. 
 
 Join hearts and hands, so let it be ; 
 
 Make but one mind in bodies three."
 
 t] LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD. 11 
 
 And again, when tired of the Court, and sighing for the 
 country, he offers up a prayer to Pan, according to the pas- 
 toral fashion of the age, in which his two heart's brothers 
 are remembered : 
 
 " Only for my two loves' sake, 
 In whose love I pleasure take ; 
 Only two do me delight 
 With their ever-pleasing sight ; 
 Of all men to thee retaining 
 Grant me with those two remaining." 
 
 As poetry these pieces are scarcely worth citation. But 
 they agreeably illustrate their author's capacity for friend- 
 ship. 
 
 It was also from Oxford that Sidney sent the first lettei 
 still extant in his writing. This is a somewhat laboured 
 Latin epistle to his uncle Leicester. Elizabeth's favourite 
 had taken his nephew under special protection. It was 
 indeed commonly accepted for certain that, failing legiti- 
 mate issue, the Earl intended to make Philip his heir. This 
 expectation helps us to understand the singular respect 
 paid him through these years of early manhood. Sir Hen- 
 ry Sidney was far from being a rich man. His duties in 
 Ireland and Wales removed him from the circle of the 
 Court, and his bluntness of speech made him unacceptable 
 to the queen. Philip therefore owed more of his prestige 
 to his uncle than to his father. At this time Leicester ap- 
 pears to have been negotiating a marriage contract between 
 the lad at Christ Church and Anne Cecil, daughter of Lord 
 Burleigh. Articles had been drawn up. But the matter 
 fell through ; the powerful Secretary of State judging that 
 he could make a better match for his girl than with the 
 son of a needy knight, whose expectations of succeeding to 
 Leicester's estate were problematical. Politely but plainly 
 2
 
 18 Sffi PHILIP SIDNEY. [OIUP.I, 
 
 lie extricated himself from the engagement, and bestowed 
 Anne upon Edward de Vere, the dissolute and brutal Earl 
 of Oxford. This passage in the life of Sidney is insignifi- 
 cant. That the boy of sixteen could have entertained any 
 strong feeling for his projected bride will hardly admit of 
 belief. One of his biographers, however, notices that about 
 the time when the matter terminated in Anne's betrothal 
 to the Earl of Oxford, Philip fell into bad health. Leices- 
 ter had to obtain permission for him to eat flesh in Lent 
 from no less a personage than Doctor Parker, the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury.
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 FOREIGN TRAVEL. 
 
 IT is not the business of Sir Philip Sidney's biographer to 
 discuss Elizabeth's Irish policy at length. Yet his father's 
 position as governor of the island renders some allusion to 
 those affairs indispensable. Sir Henry Sidney was a brave 
 and eminently honest man, the sturdy servant of his sov- 
 ereign, active in the discharge of his duties, and untainted 
 by corrupt practice. But he cannot be said to have dis- 
 played the sagacity of genius in his dealings with the Irish. 
 He carried out instructions like a blunt proconsul extir- 
 pating O'Neil's rebellion, suppressing the Butlers' war, 
 maintaining English interests, and exercising impartial jus- 
 tice. The purity of his administration is beyond all doubt. 
 Instead of enriching himself by arts familiar to viceroys, 
 he spent, in each year of his office more than its emolu- 
 ments were worth, and seriously compromised his private 
 fortune. Instead of making friends at Court he contrived, 
 by his straightforward dealing, to offend the brilliant and 
 subtle Earl of Ormond. While Sir Henry was losing 
 health, money, and the delights of life among the bogs and 
 wastes of Ulster, Ormond remained attached to the queen's 
 person. His beauty and adroit flattery enabled him to 
 prejudice Elizabeth against her faithful henchman. Broken 
 in health by a painful disease contracted in the hardship
 
 20 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 of successive campaigns, maddened by his sovereign's re- 
 criminations, and disgusted by her parsimony, Sir Henry 
 Sidney returned in 1571 to England. He was now a man 
 of forty-three, with an impaired constitution and a dimin- 
 ished estate. His wife had lost her good looks in the 
 small -pox, which she caught while nursing the queen 
 through an attack of that malady. Of this noble lady, so 
 patient in the many disasters of her troubled life, Fulke 
 Greville writes: "She chose rather to hide herself from 
 the curious eyes of a delicate time than come upon the 
 stage of the world with any manner of disparagement ; 
 this mischance of sickness having cast such a veil over her 
 excellent beauty as the modesty of that sex doth many 
 times upon their native and heroical spirits." Neither Sir 
 Henry Sidney nor Lady Mary uttered a word of reproach 
 against their royal mistress. It was Elizabeth's good fort- 
 une to be devotedly served by men and women whom she 
 rewarded with ingratitude or niggardly recognition. And 
 on this occasion she removed Sir Henry from his dignity 
 of Lord Deputy, which she transferred to his brother-in- 
 law, Sir William Fitz-Williarn. As a kind of recompense 
 she made him the barren offer of a peerage. The distinc- 
 tion was great, but the Sidneys were not in a position to 
 accept it. A letter, addressed by Lady Mary to Lord Bur- 
 leigh, explains the difficulty in which they stood. Her 
 husband, she says, is " greatly dismayed with his hard 
 choice, which is presently offered him ; as, either to be a 
 baron, now called in the number of many far more able 
 than himself to maintain it withal, or else, in refusing it, 
 to incur her Highness's displeasure." She points out that 
 the title, without an accompanying grant of land, would be 
 an intolerable burden. Elizabeth had clearly no intention 
 of bestowing estates on the Sidney family ; and Lady Mary
 
 n.J FOREIGN TRAVEL. 21 
 
 was forced to beg the secretary's good offices for mitigat- 
 ing the royal anger in the event of Sir Henry's refusal. 
 Of the peerage we hear no more ; and it is probable that 
 Elizabeth took the refusal kindly. She had paid the late 
 Deputy for his long service and heavy losses by a compli- 
 ment, his non-acceptation of which left her with a seat in 
 the House of Lords at her disposal. 
 
 After leaving Oxford, Philip passed some months at 
 Ludlow with his father, who continued to be President of 
 Wales. In the spring of 1572 the project of a French 
 match was taken up at Court. Mr. Francis Walsingham, 
 the resident ambassador at Paris, had already opened ne- 
 gotiations on the subject in the previous autumn ; and the 
 execution of the Duke of Norfolk for treasonable practice 
 with Mary, Queen of Scots, now rendered Elizabeth's mar- 
 riage more than ever politically advisable. It was to be 
 regretted that the queen should meditate union with the 
 Duke of Alen^on. He was the youngest member of the 
 worthless family of Valois, a Papist, and a man green in 
 years enough to be her son. Yet at this epoch it seemed 
 not wholly impossible that France might still side with 
 the Protestant Powers. Catherine de' Medici, the queen- 
 mother, had favoured the Huguenot party for some years; 
 and Charles IX. was scheming the marriage of his sister 
 Margaret with Henry of Navarre. The interests, more- 
 over, of the French Crown were decidedly opposed to those 
 of Spain. The Earl of Lincoln was, therefore, nominated 
 Ambassador Extraordinary to sound the matter of his 
 queen's contract with a prince of the French blood-royal. 
 Sir Henry Sidney seized this opportunity for sending 
 Philip on the grand tour; and Elizabeth granted licence 
 to " her trusty and well-beloved Philip Sidney, Esq., to go 
 out of England into parts beyond the sea, with three serv-
 
 22 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. (CHAE 
 
 ants and four horses, etc., to remain the space of two years 
 immediately following his departure out of the realm, for 
 the attaining the knowledge of foreign languages." On 
 the 26th of May the expedition left London, Philip carry- 
 ing a letter from his uncle Leicester to Francis Walsing- 
 ham. This excellent man, who was destined after some 
 years to become his father-in-law, counted among the best 
 and wisest of English statesmen. He was a man of Sir 
 Henry Sidney's, rather than of Leicester's, stamp ; and it 
 is recorded of him, to his honour, that, after a life spent in 
 public service, he died so poor that his funeral had to be 
 conducted at night. 
 
 When Lincoln returned to England with advice in favour 
 of Alencjon's suit, Philip stayed at Paris. The summer of 
 1572 was an eventful one in French history. Charles IX. 
 had betrothed his sister, Margaret of Valois, to Henry of 
 Navarre; and the Capital welcomed Catholic and Hugue- 
 not nobles, the flower of both parties which divided France, 
 on terms of external courtesy and seeming friendship. 
 Fulke Greville tells us that the king of Navarre was so struck 
 with Philip's excellent disposition that he admitted him 
 to intimacy. At the same time Charles IX., who had been 
 installed Knight of the Garter on the same day as Philip's 
 father, appointed him Gentleman in Ordinary of his bed- 
 chamber. The patent runs as follows : " That considering 
 how great the house of Sidenay was in England, and the 
 rank it had always held near the persons of the kings and 
 queens, their sovereigns, and desiring well and favourably 
 to treat the young Sir Philip Sidenay for the good and 
 commendable knowledge in him, he had retained and re- 
 ceived him," etc. On the 9th of August " Baron Sidenay," 
 as he is also described in this document, took the oaths 
 and entered on his new office. His position at the French
 
 n.] FOREIGN TKAVEL. 28 
 
 Court made him to some extent an actor in the ceremonial 
 of Henry's wedding, which took place upon the 18th of 
 August. It will be remembered that Margaret of Navarre 
 had previously been pledged to the Duke of Guise, the am- 
 bitious leader of the League, the sworn enemy to Reform, 
 and the almost openly avowed aspirant after the French 
 Crown. Before the altar she refused to speak or bend her 
 head, when asked if she accepted Henry for her husband ; 
 and her brother had to take her by the neck and force her 
 into an attitude of assent. Already, then, upon the nuptial 
 morning, ominous clouds began to gather over the political 
 horizon. When the Duke of Guise marched his armed 
 bands into Paris, the situation grew hazardous for the Hu- 
 guenots. Then followed the attack upon Coligny's life, 
 which exploded like the first cannon shot that preludes a 
 general engagement. Yet the vain rejoicings in celebra- 
 tion of that ill-omened marriage continued for some days ; 
 until, when all was ready, on the 24th of August, Paris 
 swam with the blood of the Huguenots. Anarchy and 
 murder spread from the Capital to the provinces ; and dur- 
 ing the seven days and more which followed, it is not known 
 how many thousands of Protestants perished. In Rome 
 Te Deums were sung, and commemorative medals struck. 
 In England the Court went into mourning. The French 
 ambassador, when ordered by his master to explain the 
 reasons of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew to Elizabeth, 
 excused himself from the performance of this duty. His 
 words deserve to be recorded : " I should make myself an 
 accomplice in that terrible business were I to attempt to 
 palliate." The same man has also left a vivid account of 
 his reception at Woodstock when the news arrived. " A 
 gloomy sorrow sat on every face. Silence, as in the dead 
 of night, reigned through all the chambers of the royal
 
 24 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 apartments. The ladies and courtiers were ranged on each 
 side, all clad in deep mourning ; and as I passed them, not 
 one bestowed on me a civil look or made the least return 
 of my salutes." 
 
 Philip had taken refuge at the English embassy, and to 
 this circumstance he possibly owed his life. The horrors 
 of St. Bartholomew must, however, have made a terrible 
 impression on his mind ; for there was no street in Paris 
 which did not resound with the shrieks of the assassinated, 
 the curses of their butchers, and the sharp ring of musket- 
 ry. He knew that the king, intoxicated with a sudden 
 blood-thirst, had levelled his harquebus from that window 
 in the Louvre ; he knew that the Duke of Guise had tram- 
 pled with his heel upon Coligny's naked corpse. It can- 
 not be doubted that the bold and firm opposition which 
 Philip subsequently offered to Elizabeth's French schemes 
 of marriage had its root in the awful experience of those 
 days of carnage. 
 
 Early in September Lords Leicester and Burleigh de- 
 spatched a formal letter from the Privy Council to Francis 
 Walsingham, requesting him to provide for the safety of 
 young Lord Wharton and Master Philip Sidney by procur- 
 ing passports in due form, and sending them immediately 
 back to England. It seems, however, that Sir Henry Sid- 
 ney did not think a return to England necessary in his son's 
 case. Philip left Paris, passed through Lorraine, visited 
 Strasburg, stopped at Heidelberg, and came thence to Frank- 
 fort. 
 
 It would be interesting to know what social and political 
 impressions the young man, now in his eighteenth year, 
 carried away with him from Paris. Had he learned the 
 essential baseness and phlegmatic wickedness of the Flor- 
 entine queen-mother? Had he discerned that the king,
 
 ii. j FOREIGN TRAVEL S5 
 
 crazy, misled, and delirious in his freaks and impulses, was 
 yet the truest man of all his miserable breed? Had he 
 taken a right measure of the Duke of Anjou ghastly, 
 womanish, the phantom of a tyrant; oscillating between 
 Neronian debauchery and hysterical relapses into pietism ? 
 And the Duke of Alenon, Elizabeth's frog-faced suitor, 
 had he perceived in him the would-be murderer of his broth- 
 er, the poisonous traitor, whose innate malignancy justified 
 his sister Margaret in saying that, if fraud and cruelty were 
 banished from the world, he alone would suffice to repeople 
 it with devils? Probably not; for the backward eye of 
 the historian is more penetrative into the realities of char- 
 acter than the broad, clear gaze of a hopeful gentleman 
 upon his travels. We sound the depths revealed to us by 
 centuries of laborious investigation. He only beheld the 
 brilliant, the dramatic, the bewilderingly fantastic outside 
 of French society, as this was displayed in nuptial pomps 
 and tournaments and massacres before him. Yet he ob- 
 served enough to make him a firmer patriot, a more deter- 
 mined Protestant, and an abhorrer of Italianated Courts. 
 At Frankfort he found a friend, who, having shared the 
 perils of St. Bartholomew, had recently escaped across the 
 Rhine to Germany. This was Hubert Languet, a man 
 whose conversation and correspondence exercised no small 
 influence over the formation of Sidney's character. 
 
 Languet was a Frenchman, born in 1518 at Viteaux in 
 Burgundy. He studied the humanities in Italy, and was 
 elected Professor of Civil Law at Padua in 1547. Two 
 years later he made the acquaintance of Melanchthon. Their 
 intercourse ripened into friendship. Languet resigned his 
 professorship in order to be near the man whom he had 
 chosen for his teacher ; and under Melanchthon's influence 
 he adopted the reformed religion. From 1550 forwards 
 2* C
 
 86 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 he was recognised as one of the leading political agents of 
 the Protestant Powers, trusted by princes, and acquainted 
 with the ablest men of that party in France, Holland, and 
 the German States. No one was more competent to guide 
 Sidney through the labyrinth of European intrigues, to un- 
 mask the corruption hidden beneath the splendours of the 
 Valois Court, and to instil into his mind those principles 
 of conduct which governed reformed statesmen in those 
 troubled times. They were both staying, as was then the 
 custom, in the house of the printer Wechel at Frankfort. 
 A few years later, Giordano Bruno also sojourned under 
 that hospitable roof, whence he departed on his fatal jour- 
 ney to Venice. The elder man immediately discerned in 
 Sidney a youth of no common quality, and the attachment 
 he conceived for him savoured of romance. We possess a 
 long series of Latin letters from Languet to his friend, 
 which breathe the tenderest spirit of affection, mingled with 
 wise counsel and ever-watchful thought for the young man's 
 higher interests. It was indeed one of Sidney's singular 
 felicities that he fell so early under the influence of char- 
 acters like Walsingham and Languet. Together with his 
 father, they helped to correct the bias which he might have 
 taken from his brilliant but untrustworthy uncle Leicester. 
 There must have been something inexplicably attractive in 
 his person and his genius at this time; for the tone of 
 Languet's correspondence can only be matched by that of 
 Shakespeare in the sonnets written for his unknown friend. 
 Fulke Greville has penned a beautiful description of 
 "this harmony of an humble hearer to an excellent teacher," 
 which grew up between Sidney and Languet at Frankfort ; 
 but he is mistaken in saying that the latter threw up all 
 other business for the sake of attending his new-found 
 friend upon his three years' travel. It is true that they
 
 n.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 27 
 
 went together to Vienna in the summer of 1573. But 
 Sidney visited Hungary alone, and in November crossed 
 the Alps without Languet to Venice. He was accom- 
 panied by a gentleman of his own age and station, not 
 very distantly connected with him, named Thomas Con- 
 ingsby. Two of his attendants, Griffin Madox and Lewis 
 Brysket, are also known to us. The latter writes thus of 
 their journey : 
 
 " Through many a hill and dale, 
 Through pleasant woods, and many an unknown way, 
 Along the banks of many silver streams 
 Thou with him yodest ; and with him didst scale 
 The craggy rocks of the Alps and Apennine ; 
 Still with the muses sporting." 
 
 One incident of the tour has to be recorded for the light it 
 throws on Sidney's character. An innkeeper contrived to 
 get his bill twice paid ; and Sidney finding himself out of 
 pocket, charged Coningsby with having made away with 
 the money. In a letter to Languet he cleared the matter 
 up, and exculpated his travelling companion. But the in- 
 cident was not greatly to his credit. With all his gravity 
 and suavity of nature, he was apt to yield to temper and to 
 unamiable suspicion. I shall have to revert to this point 
 again. 
 
 Since Sidney is now launched, without guide or tutor, 
 upon his Italian travels, it will not be out of place to col- 
 lect some contemporary opinions regarding the benefit to 
 be derived by Englishmen from Italy. In a fine passage 
 of "The Schoolmaster" Ascham relates a conversation 
 which he had at Windsor with Sir Richard Sackville on 
 this subject. His judgment was that young men lost far 
 more than they gained by an Italian tour. Too many of
 
 28 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 them returned Papists, or Atheists, experienced in new- 
 fangled vices, apt for treason, lying, and every form of 
 swinish debauchery. Taking for his text the well-known 
 proverb, " Inglese italianato e un diavolo incarnate" 
 which Sidney, by the way, has translated thus : 
 
 " An Englishman that is Italianato, 
 Doth lightly prove a devil incarnate," 
 
 Ascham preaches an eloquent sermon, with allegories from 
 Plato and Homer, to prove that Italy is but a garden of 
 Circe or an isle of sirens to our northern youth. Parker, 
 Howell, Fuller, Hall, Gabriel Harvey, Marston, Greene, all 
 utter the same note, and use the same admonishments, 
 proving how very dangerous an Italian tour was reckoned 
 in those days. Sidney, in a remarkable letter to Languet, 
 insists upon the point. He says he wishes the Turks could 
 come to Italy in order to find corruption there : " I am 
 quite sure that this ruinous Italy would so poison the Turks 
 themselves, would so ensnare them in its vile allurements, 
 that they would soon tumble down without being pushed." 
 Venice, in particular, had an evil reputation. There, as 
 Ascham says, he saw in nine days' sojourn " more liberty 
 to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble city of London 
 in nine years." He admits, however, that while he knows 
 of many who " returned out of Italy worse transformed 
 than ever was any in Circe's court," yet is he acquainted 
 with " divers noble personages and many worthy gentle- 
 men of England, whom all the siren songs of Italy could 
 never untwine from the mast of God's word, nor no en- 
 chantment of vanity overturn them from the fear of God 
 and love of honesty." To the former class belonged the 
 Earl of Oxford. Of the latter Philip Sidney was an emi-
 
 n.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 29 
 
 nent example. Like the bee which sucks honey from 
 poisonous flowers, he gained only good from the travels 
 which were so pernicious to his fellow-countrymen at 
 large. 
 
 His correspondence with Languet was doubtless useful 
 to him, while residing at Venice and Padua. From it we 
 learn something about his studies, which seem at this time 
 to have been chiefly in philosophy and science. Languet 
 urges him not to overwork himself; and he replies: "I 
 am never so little troubled with melancholy as when my 
 mind is employed about something particularly difficult." 
 Languet on another occasion dissuades him from geometry : 
 " You have too little mirthfulness in your nature, and this is 
 a study which will make you still more grave." He recom- 
 mends him to devote his time to such things as befit a 
 man of high rank in life, and to prepare himself for the 
 duties of a statesman rather than for the leisure of a liter- 
 ary man. Sidney begs for a copy of Plutarch in Amyot's 
 translation, says he is " learning astronomy and getting a 
 knowledge of music," and is anxious to read the Politics 
 of Aristotle. Meanwhile he frequented the sumptuous 
 houses of the Venetian nobles : " Yet I would rather have 
 one pleasant chat with you, my dear Languet, than enjoy 
 all the magnificent magnificences of these magnificoes." 
 He seems indeed to have been a grave youth. Who his 
 intimate friends were, we do not know. Sarpi was away 
 at Mantua; so it is not likely that he made his acquaint- 
 ance. We hear, however, much of the young Count Philip 
 Lewis of Hannau. 
 
 At Venice Sidney sat for his portrait to Paolo Vero- 
 nese, and sent the picture afterwards to Languet. What 
 has become of this painting is not known. Possibly it still 
 lies buried in some German collection. Of all the por-
 
 80 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 traits which are supposed to represent Sidney, the best to 
 my mind is one now preserved at Warwick Castle. It is 
 said to have belonged to Fulke Greville, and therefore we 
 may trust its resemblance to the original. John Aubrey, 
 the useful anecdote-monger, tells us that he was " extreme- 
 ly beautiful. He much resembled his sister ; but his hair 
 was not red, but a little inclining, namely a dark amber 
 colour. If I were to find a fault in it, methinks 'tis not 
 masculine enough ; yet he was a person of great courage." 
 The Warwick Castle portrait answers very closely to this 
 description, especially in a certain almost girlish delicacy 
 of feature and complexion. That Sidney was indeed beau- 
 tiful may be taken for granted, since there is considerable 
 concurrence of testimony on this point. The only dissen- 
 tient I can call to mind is Ben Jonson, who reported that 
 he " was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being 
 spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, and long." But 
 Jonson was only thirteen years of age when Sidney died, 
 and the conversations with Drummond, from which this 
 sentence was quoted, abound in somewhat random state- 
 ments. 
 
 It was natural that a Telemachus of Sidney's stamp should 
 wish to visit Rome before he turned his face northwards. 
 But his Huguenot Mentor, and perhaps also his friends at 
 home, so urgently dissuaded him from exposing his imma- 
 turity to the blandishments of the Catholic Calypso, that 
 he prudently refrained. After a short excursion to Genoa, 
 he returned to Venice, crossed the Alps, and was again 
 with Languet at Vienna in July. Here the grave youth, 
 who had set his heart on becoming perfect in all gentle ac- 
 complishments, divided his time between discourse on poli- 
 tics and literature, courtly pleasures, and equestrian exer- 
 cises. In the Defence of Poesy he has given us an agreeable
 
 n.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 31 
 
 picture of his Italian master in horsemanship, the gascon- 
 ading Pugliano. 
 
 The winter of 1574-75 passed away at Vienna. In the 
 spring he attended the Emperor Maximilian to Prague, 
 where he witnessed the opening of the Bohemian Diet. 
 Thence he moved homewards through Dresden, Heidel- 
 berg, Strasburg, and Frankfort, reaching London in June. 
 During his absence one of his two sisters, Ambrozia, had 
 died at Ludlow Castle. The queen took the other, Mary, 
 under special protection, and attached her to her person. 
 A new chapter was now opened in the young man's life. 
 His education being finished, he entered upon the life of 
 Courts.
 
 CHAPTER EL 
 
 ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 
 
 SIDNEY'S prospects as a courtier were excellent His 
 powerful uncle Leicester, now at the height of royal favor, 
 displayed marked partiality for the handsome youth, who 
 was not unnaturally regarded by the world as his pre- 
 sumptive heir. In July 1575 Philip shared those famous 
 festivities with which the earl entertained Elizabeth at 
 Kenil worth ; and when the Court resumed its progress, he 
 attended her Majesty to Chartley Castle. This was the 
 seat of the Earl of Essex, who was then in Ireland. The 
 countess, in his absence, received her royal guest ; and here 
 Sidney, for the first time, met the girl with whom his fort- 
 unes and his fame were destined' to be blended. Lady 
 Penelope Devereux, illustrious in English literature as Sir 
 Philip Sidney's Stella, was now in her thirteenth year; 
 and it is not likely that at this time she made any strong 
 impression on his fancy. Yet we find that soon after the 
 return of Essex from Ireland in the autumn of 1575, he 
 had become intimate with the earl's family. At Durham 
 House, their London residence, he passed long hours dur- 
 ing the following winter ; and when Essex went again to 
 Ireland as Earl-Marshal in July 1576, Philip accompanied 
 him. It should here be said that Sir Henry Sidney had 
 been nominated for the third time Lord Deputy in August
 
 CH. in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 33 
 
 1575. Philip's visit was therefore paid to his father; but 
 he made it in company with the man whom he had now 
 come to regard as his future father-in-law. There is little 
 doubt that had Lord Essex lived, the match would have 
 been completed. But the Earl-Marshal died at Dublin on 
 the 21st of September, after a painful illness, which raised 
 some apparently ill-founded suspicions of poison. Philip 
 was in Galway with his father, and Essex sent him this 
 message on his deathbed : " Tell him I sent him nothing, 
 but I wish him well ; so well that, if God do move their 
 hearts, I wish that he might match with my daughter. I 
 call him son ; he is so wise, virtuous, and godly. If he 
 go on in the course he hath begun, he will be as famous 
 and worthy a gentleman as ever England bred." These 
 words are sufficient to prove that Philip's marriage with 
 Penelope was contemplated by her father. That the 
 world expected it appears from a letter of Mr. Edward 
 Waterhouse to Sir Henry Sidney under date 14th Novem- 
 ber. After first touching upon the bright prospects opened 
 for "the little Earl of Essex," this gentleman proceeds: 
 " and I suppose all the best sort of the English lords, be- 
 sides, do expect what will become of the treaty between 
 Mr. Philip and my Lady Penelope. Truly, my Lord, I 
 must say to your Lordship, as I have said to my Lord of 
 Leicester and Mr. Philip, the breaking off from their 
 match, if the default be on your parts, will turn to more 
 dishonour than can be repaired with any other marriage in 
 England." 
 
 What interrupted the execution of this marriage treaty 
 is not certain. Penelope's mother, the widowed Lady 
 Essex, was privately wedded to the Earl of Leicester soon 
 after her first husband's death. The Sidneys were poor. 
 Lady Mary Sidney writes to Lord Burleigh about this
 
 84 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. \CHAP. 
 
 time : " My present estate is such by reason of my debts, 
 as I cannot go forward with any honourable course of liv- 
 ing." It is remarkable that, so far as we know, she placed 
 but little confidence in her brother Leicester, preferring to 
 appeal in difficulties to a friend like Cecil. Philip was 
 often at a loss to pay his debts. We possess, for instance, 
 the copy of a long bill from his bootmaker which he re- 
 quests his father's steward to discharge " for the safeguard 
 of his credit." Thus Leicester's marriage, which seriously 
 impaired Philip's prospects, Lady Mary's want of cordiality 
 toward her brother, and the poverty of the Sidneys, may 
 be reckoned among the causes which postponed Penelope's 
 betrothal. It should also here be noticed that Sir Henry 
 Sidney entertained a grudge against the Earl of Essex. 
 Writing to Lord Leicester, he couples Essex with his old 
 enemy the Earl of Ormond, adding that "for that their 
 malice, I take God to record, I could brook nothing of 
 them both." We may therefore conclude that Philip's 
 father was unfavourable to the match. But the chief 
 cause remains to be mentioned. Up to this time the pro- 
 posed bridegroom felt no lover's liking for the lady. 
 Languet frequently wrote, urging him to marry, and using 
 arguments similar to those which Shakespeare pressed on 
 his " fair friend." Philip's answers show that, unless he 
 was a deep dissembler, he remained heart-free. So time 
 slipped by. Perhaps he thought that he might always 
 pluck the rose by only asking for it. At any rate, he dis- 
 played no eagerness, until one morning the news reached 
 him that his Penelope was contracted to a man unworthy 
 of her, Lord Rich. Then suddenly the flame of passion, 
 which had smouldered so obscurely as to be unrecognised 
 by his own heart, burst out into a blaze ; and what was 
 worse, he discovered that Penelope too loved him. In the
 
 in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 35 
 
 chapter devoted to Sidney's poetry I shall return to this 
 subject. So much, however, had to be said here, in order 
 to present a right conception of his character. For at 
 least four years, between the death of Essex, in September 
 1576, and Penelope's marriage, which we may place in the 
 spring or summer of 1581, he was aware that her father 
 with his last breath had blessed their union. Yet he never 
 moved a step or showed any eagerness until it was too 
 late. It seems that this grave youth, poet as he was, pas- 
 sionate lover as he undoubtedly became, and hasty as he 
 occasionally showed himself in trifles, had a somewhat 
 politic and sluggish temperament. Fulke Greville recorded 
 that he never was a boy ; Languet could chide him for 
 being sad beyond his years ; he wrote himself, amid the 
 distractions of Venetian society, that he required hard 
 studies to drive away melancholy. Moreover, he indulged 
 dreams of high and noble ambition. Self - culture, the 
 preparation of his whole nature for some great task in life, 
 occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of a woman's image. 
 This saved him from the faults and follies of his age ; but 
 it rendered him cold, until the poet's fire leaped up and 
 kindled a slumbering emotion. 
 
 Not love, but the ambition of a statesman, then was 
 Sidney's ruling passion at this time. He had no mind to 
 " sport with Amaryllis in the shade," or even to " meditate 
 the thankless Muse," when work could be done for Eng- 
 land and the affairs of Europe called for energetic action. 
 In the spring of 1577 Elizabeth selected him for a mission, 
 which flattered these aspirations. Rodolph of Hapsburg 
 had just succeeded to the imperial throne, and the Elector 
 Palatine had died, leaving two sons, Lewis and John 
 Casimir. She sent Philip to congratulate the emperor 
 and to condole with the bereaved princes. He stipulated
 
 86 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 that, after performing the ceremonial part of this embassy, 
 he should be permitted to confer with the German Powers 
 upon the best means of maintaining reformed principles 
 and upholding political liberties. Instructions were ac- 
 cordingly drawn up which empowered the youthful envoy 
 to touch upon these points. At the end of February he 
 set out upon his travels, attended by Fulke Greville and by 
 a train of gentlefolk. In the houses where he lodged he 
 caused tablets to be fixed, emblazoned with his arms, under 
 which ran a Latin inscription to this effect : " Of the most 
 illustrious and well-born English gentleman, Philip Sidney, 
 son of the Viceroy of Ireland, nephew of the Earls of 
 Warwick and Leicester, Ambassador from the most Serene 
 Queen of England to the Emperor." This ostentation was 
 not out of harmony with the pompous habits of that age. 
 Yet we may perhaps discern in it Sidney's incapacity to 
 treat his own affairs with lightness. He took himself and 
 all that concerned him au serieux; but it must also be ob- 
 served that he contrived to make others accept him in like 
 manner. As Jonson puts it, when comparing himself, 
 under the name of Horace, with men of less sterling merit : 
 
 " If they should confidently praise their works, 
 In them it would appear inflation ; 
 Which, in a full and well-digested man, 
 Cannot receive that foul, abusive name, 
 But the fair title of erection." 
 
 He first proceeded to Heidelberg, where he failed to find 
 the Elector Lewis, but made acquaintance with the younger 
 prince, his brother Casimir. The palatinate, like many of 
 the petty German states, was torn by religious factions. 
 The last elector had encouraged Calvinism ; but his son 
 Lewis was now introducing Lutheran ministers into his do*
 
 ra.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 37 
 
 minions. The Calvinists, after enduring considerable hard- 
 ships, had to emigrate ; and many of them took refuge 
 with Prince Casimir. It seems that before he reached 
 Heidelberg, Sidney had been met by Hubert Languet ; and 
 this good counsellor attended him through all his German 
 wanderings. They went together to Prague, where the 
 new emperor was holding his Court. Here, even more 
 than at Heidelberg, the English Envoy found matter for 
 serious disquietude. Rodolph had grown up under Catho- 
 lic influences, and the Jesuits were gaining firm hold upon 
 his capital. Students of history will remember that a Jes- 
 uit Father had negotiated the participation of the Emperor 
 Ferdinand in the closing of the Tridentine Council. Aus- 
 tria, under his grandson Rodolph's rule, bid fair to become 
 one of their advanced posts in northern Europe. Sidney 
 meant, so far as in him lay, to shake the prestige of this 
 "extremely Spaniolated" and priestridden emperor. It 
 was his intention to harangue in Germany against the 
 " fatal conjunction of Rome's undermining superstition 
 with the commanding forces of Spain." Fulke Greville 
 has sketched the main line of his argument ; but it is hard- 
 ly probable that he bearded the lion in his den and spoke 
 his mind out before the imperial presence. The substance 
 of the policy he strove to impress upon those German 
 princes who took the Protestant side, and upon all well- 
 wishers to the people, was that the whole strength of their 
 great nation could not save them from the subtle poison 
 which Sarpi styled the Diacatholicon, unless they made a 
 vigorous effort of resistance. Rome, by her insidious arts 
 and undermining engines by her Jesuits and casuistical 
 sophistications sapped the social fabric and dissolved the 
 ancestral loyalties of races. Into the dismembered and 
 disintegrated mass marched Spain with her might of arms,
 
 88 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 her money, her treaties, marriages, and encouragement of 
 sedition. In short, Sidney uttered a prophecy of what 
 happened in the Thirty Years' War, that triumph of Jesu- 
 itical diplomacy. As a remedy he proposed that all the 
 German Powers who valued national independence, and 
 had a just dread of Spanish encroachment, should "asso- 
 ciate by an uniform bond of conscience for the protection 
 of religion and liberty." In other words, he espoused the 
 policy of what was known as the Foedus Evangelicum. 
 
 Theoretically, this plan was not only excellent, but also 
 necessary for stemming the advance of those reactionary 
 forces, knit together by bonds of common interest and 
 common enthusiasm, which governed the Counter Refor- 
 mation. But unfortunately it rested upon no solid basis 
 of practical possibilities. A Protestant Alliance, formed to 
 secure the political and religious objects of the Reforma- 
 tion in its warfare with Catholicism, had been the cherish- 
 ed scheme of northern statesmen since the days of Henry 
 VIII. The principles of evangelical piety, of national free- 
 dom, of progressive thought, and of Teutonic emancipation 
 upon regulated methods, might perhaps have been estab- 
 lished, if the Church of England could have combined with 
 the Lutherans of Germany, the Calvinists of Geneva, and of 
 France, Sweden, and the Low Countries, in a solid confed- 
 eration for the defence of civil and religious liberty. But 
 from the outset, putting national jealousies and diplomatic 
 difficulties aside, there existed in the very spirit of Protest- 
 antism a power antagonistic to cohesion. Protestantism 
 had its root in critical and sceptical revolt. From the first 
 it assumed forms of bewildering diversity on points of doc- 
 trine. Each of its sects passed at an early stage into dog- 
 matism, hardly less stubborn than that of the Catholic 
 Church. It afforded no common or firm groundwork for
 
 in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 89 
 
 alliance. Lutherans, Zwinglians, Anglicans, Anabaptists, 
 Hussites, Calvinists, Sacramentarians, Puritans, could not 
 work together for a single end. It has always been thus 
 with the party of progress, the Liberals of world-transform- 
 ing moments in the march of thought. United by no 
 sanctioned Credo, no fixed Corpus Fidei, no community of 
 Conservative tradition ; owing no allegiance to a spiritual 
 monarch ; depending for their being on rebellion against 
 authority and discipline ; disputing the fundamental prop- 
 ositions from which organisation has hitherto been ex- 
 panded, they cannot act in concert. These men are in- 
 novators, scene-shifters, to whom the new scene, as in the 
 plan of God it will appear, is still invisible. They are 
 movers from a fixed point to a point yet unascertained. 
 Each section into which they crystallise, and where as sects 
 they sterilise, conceives the coming order according to its 
 narrow prejudices. Each sails toward the haven of the 
 future by its own ill-balanced compass, and observes self- 
 chosen stars. The very instinct for change, the very ap- 
 prehension which sets so-called Reformers in motion, im- 
 plies individualities of opinion and incompatibilities of 
 will. Therefore they are collectively weak when ranged 
 against the ranks of orthodoxy and established discipline. 
 It is only because the life of the world beats in their hearts 
 and brains, because the onward faces of humanity are with 
 them, that they command our admiration. The victory of 
 liberalism in modern Europe was won at the cost of retro- 
 grade movements such as the extinction of free thought 
 in Italy and Spain, the crushing of the Huguenots in 
 France, the bloody persecution of the Netherlands, the 
 Thirty Years' War, and the ossification of the Reformed 
 Churches into inorganic stupidity. And the fruits of the 
 victory fall not to any sect of Protestantism, but to a new 
 
 30
 
 40 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 spirit which arose in Science and the Revolution. To ex- 
 pect, therefore, as Sidney and the men with whom he sym- 
 pathised expected, that a Protestant League could be form- 
 ed, capable of hurling back the tide of Catholic reaction, 
 was little short of the indulgence of a golden dream. Facts 
 and the essence of the Reformation were against its possi- 
 bility. As a motive force in the world, Protestantism was 
 already well-nigh exhausted. Its energy had already pass- 
 ed into new forms. The men of the future were now rep- 
 resented by philosophers like Bruno and Bacon, by naviga- 
 tors of the world- like Drake, by explorers of the heavens 
 like Galileo, by anatomists and physicists like Vesalius, 
 Servetus, Sarpi, Harvey. 
 
 Whatever Sidney's hopes and dreams may have been, the 
 religious discords of Germany, torn asunder by Protestant 
 sectarians and worm-eaten to the core by Jesuitical propa- 
 gandists, must have rudely disilluded him. And no one 
 was better fitted than Languet to dissect before his eyes 
 the humours and imposthumes of that unwieldy body pol- 
 itic. They left Prague at the end of April, travelled togeth- 
 er to Heidelberg, visited the Landgrave of Hesse, and ar- 
 rived at Cologne in May. Here Sidney thought that he 
 must turn his face immediately homewards, though he great- 
 ly wished to pass into Flanders. Languet dissuaded him, 
 on grounds of prudence, from doing so without direct com- 
 mission from the queen. Great therefore was the satisfac- 
 tion of both when letters arrived from England, ordering 
 Sidney to compliment William the Silent, Prince of Orange, 
 on the birth of his son. During this visit to the Nether- 
 lands he made acquaintance with the two most distinguished 
 men there, and won the respect of both. Don John of 
 Austria, the victor of Lepanto, was then acting as viceroy 
 to the Bang of Spain. Sidney paid him his respects, and
 
 in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 41 
 
 this is the account Fulke Greville gives of his recep- 
 tion : 
 
 " Though at the first, in his Spanish haughture, he (Don John) 
 gave him access as by descent to a youth, of grace as to a stranger, 
 and in particular competition, as he conceived, to an enemy ; yet after 
 a while that he had taken his just altitude, he found himself so 
 stricken with this extraordinary planet that the beholders wondered 
 to see what ingenuous tribute that brave and high-minded prince 
 paid to his worth, giving more honour and respect to this hopeful 
 young gentleman than to the ambassadors of mighty princes." 
 
 What happened at Sidney's interview with William of 
 Orange is not told us. That he made a strong impression 
 on the stadtholder appears from words spoken to Fulke 
 Greville after some years. Greville had been sent as am- 
 bassador to the prince at Delft. Among other things Will- 
 iam bade him report to Queen Elizabeth his opinion " that 
 her Majesty had one of the ripest and greatest counsellors 
 of estate in Sir Philip Sidney that at this day lived in 
 Europe ; to the trial of which he was pleased to leave his 
 own credit engaged until her Majesty might please to em- 
 ploy this gentleman either amongst her friends or enemies." 
 Sidney's caution prevented his friend from delivering this 
 message to a sovereign notoriously jealous of foreign inter- 
 ference in her home affairs. 
 
 Philip was in London again in June, when he presented 
 his respects to her Majesty at Greenwich. That he had 
 won credit by the discharge of his embassy appears from 
 a letter written by Mr. Secretary Walsingham to Sir Henry 
 Sidney soon after his arrival. " There hath not been any 
 gentleman, I am sure, these many years that hath gone 
 through so honourable a charge with as great commenda- 
 tions as he : in consideration whereof I could not but com- 
 municate this part of my joy with your Lordship, being no 
 3 D
 
 42 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 less a refreshing unto me in these my troublesome businesses 
 than the soil is to the chafed stag." Henceforth we may 
 regard our hero as a courtier high in favour with the queen, 
 esteemed for his solid parts by the foremost statesmen of 
 the realm, in correspondence with the leaders of the Re- 
 formed party on the Continent, and surely marked out for 
 some employment of importance. He had long to wait, 
 however, before that craving for action in the great world 
 which we have already indicated as his leading passion, 
 could even in part be gratified. Meanwhile it was his duty 
 to hang about the Court ; and how irksome he found that 
 petty sphere of compliments, intrigues, and gallantries, can 
 be read in the impatient letters he addressed to Langr.et. 
 Their correspondence was pretty regularly maintained, al- 
 though the old man sometimes grumbled at his young 
 friend's want of attention. " Weigh well, I beseech you, 
 what it is to grudge through so long a space of time one 
 single hour to friends who love you so dearly, and who are 
 more anxious for you than for themselves. By omitting 
 one dance a month you could have abundantly satisfied 
 us." In this strain Languet writes occasionally. But his 
 frequent reference to Philip's " sweetest letters," and the 
 familiarity he always displays with his private affairs, show 
 that the young courtier was a tolerably regular correspond- 
 ent. It is difficult for elderly folk, when they have con- 
 ceived ardent affection for their juniors, to remember how 
 very much more space the young occupy in the thoughts 
 of the old than the old can hope to command in youthful 
 brains distracted by the multifarious traffic of society. 
 Languet had little to do but to ply his pen in his study. 
 Sidney had to follow the queen on progress, trifle with her 
 ladies, join in games of skill and knightly exercises with the 
 gentlemen about the Court. Yet it is certain that this life
 
 in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 43 
 
 wearied him. He was for ever seeking to escape ; at one 
 time planning to join Prince Casimir in the Low Countries ; 
 at another to take part in Frobisher's expedition ; and more 
 than once contemplating " some Indian project." Languet 
 did his best to curb these wandering ambitions. He had 
 conceived a very firm opinion that Sidney was born to be 
 a statesman, not a soldier of fortune, not an explorer of the 
 ocean. At the same time, he greatly dreaded lest his friend 
 should succumb to the allurements of fashionable idleness. 
 " My noble Sidney, you must avoid that persistent siren, 
 sloth." " Think not that God endowed you with parts so 
 excellent to the end that you should let them rot in leisure. 
 Rather hold firmly that He requires more from you than 
 from those to whom He has been less liberal of talents." 
 " There is no reason to fear lest you should decay in idle- 
 ness if only you will employ your mind ; for in so great a 
 realm as England opportunity will surely not be wanting 
 for its useful exercise." Nature has adorned you with the 
 richest gifts of mind and body ; fortune with noble blood 
 and wealth and splendid family connections ; and you from 
 your first boyhood have cultivated your intellect by those 
 studies which are most helpful to men in their struggle af- 
 ter virtue. Will you then refuse your energies to your coun- 
 try when it demands them? Will you bury that distin- 
 guished talent God has given you ?" The career Languet 
 had traced out for Philip was that of a public servant ; and 
 he consistently strove to check the young man's restless- 
 ness, to overcome his discouragement, and to stimulate him 
 while depressed by the frivolities of daily life. It was his 
 object to keep Philip from roaming or wasting his powers 
 on adventure, while he also fortified his will against the se- 
 ductions of an idle Court. 
 
 During this summer of 1577 Languet once or twice al-
 
 44 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 ludes in very cautious language to some project of great 
 importance which had recently been mooted between them 
 on the Continent. It involved the participation of emi- 
 nent foreigners. It required the sanction and active as- 
 sistance of the queen. What this was we do not know. 
 Some of Sidney's biographers are of opinion that it con- 
 cerned his marriage with a German noblewoman. Others 
 perhaps with better reason conjecture that his candidat- 
 ure for the Polish Crown had then been mooted. When 
 Henri III. resigned the throne of Poland for that of France 
 in 1574 Stephen Bathori was elected king. He lived un- 
 til 1585. But in 1577, the year of Languet's mysterious 
 letters, he had not yet given substantial proof of his future 
 policy ; and the Protestant party in Europe might have 
 been glad to secure a nominee of the English queen as can- 
 didate in the case of a vacancy. There is no doubt that a 
 belief prevailed after Sidney's death that the crown of Po- 
 land had in some sort been offered him. The author of 
 The Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney mentions it. Sir 
 Robert Naunton asserts that the queen refused " to further 
 his advancement, not onh out of emulation, but out of fear 
 to lose the jewel of her times." Fuller says that Sidney 
 declined the honour, preferring to be " a subject to Queen 
 Elizabeth than a sovereign beyond the seas." It would be 
 far too flattering to Philip to suppose that a simple Eng- 
 lish gentleman in his twenty-third year received any actual 
 offer of a throne which a king of France had recently va- 
 cated, and which was generally given by election to such 
 as could afford to pay dearly for the honour. Yet it is 
 not impossible that the Reformed princes of Germany may 
 have thought him a good pawn to play, if Elizabeth were 
 willing to back him. The Foedus Evangelicum, it must be 
 remembered, was by no means yet devoid of actuality.
 
 Hi.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 45 
 
 Mary Sidney's recent marriage to the Earl of Pembroke 
 had strengthened the family by an alliance with one of 
 England's chief noblemen. After coming home Philip 
 paid his sister a visit at Wilton, returning, however, soon 
 to Court in order to watch his father's interests. Sir Hen- 
 ry Sidney was still at his post as Lord Deputy of Ireland ; 
 and in his absence the usual intrigues were destroying his 
 credit with the queen. Brilliant, unscrupulous, mendacious, 
 Ormond poured calumnies and false insinuations into her 
 ear. She gave the earl too easy credence, partly because 
 he was handsome, and partly because the government of 
 Ireland was always costing money. There seems little 
 doubt that Sir Henry made no pecuniary profit for himself 
 out of his viceroyalty, and that he managed the realm as 
 economically and as justly as was possible. Ormond and 
 the nobles of his party, however, complained that the Lord 
 Deputy decided cases inequitably against them, that his 
 method of government was ruinously expensive, and that 
 he tyrannously exacted from them land-taxes which had 
 been remitted by his predecessors. Philip undertook his 
 father's defence in a written statement, only the rough 
 notes of which, and those imperfect, have come down to 
 us. He met the charge of injustice by challenging the ac- 
 cusers to show evidence. On the question of the land-tax, 
 or cess, which Ormond and others claimed to have remit- 
 ted, he proved the inequity and the political imprudence of 
 freeing great nobles from burdens which must be paid by 
 the poor. These poor, moreover, were already taxed by 
 their lords, and shamefully ill-treated by them. " And priv- 
 ileged persons, forsooth, be all the rich men of the pale, 
 the burden only lying upon the poor, who may groan, for 
 their cry cannot be heard." Sir Henry had proposed to 
 convert the cess, computed at an average of ten pounds,
 
 46 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 into a fixed annual payment of five marks. At this the 
 nobles cried out that they were being robbed. Philip 
 demonstrated that, according to their own showing, a very 
 easy compromise had been offered them. On the head of 
 economy, he was able to make it clear that his father's ad- 
 ministration tended to save money to the State, allowing 
 always for the outlay needed by an army in occupation of 
 a turbulent and disaffected country. Such a government 
 as that of Ireland could not be conducted cheaper. But 
 some had urged that the Lord Deputy exceeded measure 
 in the severity of his justice and the cruelty of his execu- 
 tive. Philip contended that a greater lenity than that 
 which his father showed would have been worse than folly. 
 What he wrote upon this point is worthy of careful peru- 
 sal at the present day. It reminds us that the Irish diffi- 
 culty has been permanent, and without appreciable altera- 
 tion, through three centuries. " Little is lenity to prevail 
 in minds so possessed with a natural inconstancy ever to 
 go in a new fortune, with a revengeful hate to all English 
 as to their only conquerors, and that which is most of all, 
 with so ignorant obstinacy in Papistry that they do in 
 their souls detest the present Government." And again : 
 " Truly the general nature of all countries not fully con- 
 quered is against it (i. e. against gentle dealing and conces- 
 sions). For until by time they find the sweetness of due 
 subjection, it is impossible that any gentle means should 
 put out the remembrance of their lost liberty. And that 
 the Irishman is that way as obstinate as any nation, with 
 whom no other passion can prevail but fear (besides their 
 history, which plainly points it out), their manner of life, 
 wherein they choose rather all filthiness than any law, and 
 their own consciences, who best know their own natures, 
 give sufficient proof of. For under the sun there is not a
 
 in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 47 
 
 nation that live more tyrannously than they do one over 
 the other." 
 
 This defence seems to have satisfied Elizabeth and excul- 
 pated the Lord Deputy, without impairing its writer's cred- 
 it at Court. It is the first of a series of semi-official doc- 
 uments, in which, more perhaps than in any other species 
 of composition, Sidney showed his power as a master of 
 language. Waterhouse wrote to Sir Henry that it was the 
 most excellent discourse he had ever read, adding, " Let no 
 man compare with Sir Philip's pen." During the dispute, 
 and before the queen had expressed her satisfaction with 
 the Lord Deputy's defence, Ormond addressed some re- 
 marks to Philip in the presence of the Court. The young 
 man made no reply, marking his hostility by silence. It 
 was expected that a duel would follow upon this affront to 
 the great Irish earl. But Ormond, judging it expedient to 
 treat Sidney as a virtuous gentleman who was bound to 
 defend his father's cause, conceded him the indulgence of 
 a superior. 
 
 The storm which threatened Sir Henry Sidney blew 
 over, in great measure owing to his son's skilful advocacy. 
 Still Elizabeth retained her grudge against the Viceroy. 
 He had not yet contrived to flatter that most sensitive 
 member of the royal person her pocket. Consequently, 
 the year 1578 scarcely opened before new grievances arose. 
 The queen talked of removing Sir Henry from his office 
 with, perchance, the cumbrous honour of a peerage. He, 
 on the other hand, presented bills to the amount of three 
 thousand and one pounds, for money disbursed from his 
 private estate in the course of public business. She re- 
 fused to sign a warrant for their payment, alleging, appar- 
 ently, that the Lord Deputy was creating debts of State in 
 his own interest. Sir Henry retorted and all the extant
 
 48 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 documents tend to the belief that his retort was true that 
 he had spent thus much of his own moneys upon trust for 
 her Majesty ; and that he needed the sum, barring one 
 pound, for the payment of his daughter's marriage portion 
 to the Earl of Pembroke. Perusal of the correspondence 
 seems to me to prove that, however bad a diplomatist and 
 stubborn a viceroy Sir Henry may have been, he was, at 
 any rate, a thoroughly honest man. And this honest man's 
 debts, contracted in her name and in her service, the queen 
 chose to repudiate. It is not wonderful that, under these 
 circumstances, the Lord Deputy thought of throwing up 
 his appointment and retiring into private life in England. 
 Philip's persuasions induced his father to abandon this de- 
 sign. He pointed out that the term of office would expire 
 at Michaelmas, and that it would be more for the Deputy's 
 credit to tender his resignation at that time without an 
 open rupture. One of his letters shows how valuable in 
 these domestic counsels was the Lady Mary Sidney. Philip 
 writes that in the meantime that is, between Ladyday and 
 Michaelmas Sir Henry's friends would do their best to 
 heal the breach ; " Among which friends, before God, there 
 is none proceeds either so thoroughly or so wisely as your 
 lady, my mother. For mine own part, I have had only 
 light from her." 
 
 These sentences afford a very pleasing insight into the 
 relations between father, mother, and eldest son. But the 
 tension of the situation for Philip at Court, playing his 
 part as queen's favourite while his father was disgraced, 
 shouldering the Irish braggarts whom she protected, and 
 who had declared war against her viceroy, presenting a 
 brave front before the world, with only an impoverished 
 estate to back him, the tension of this situation must 
 have been too great for his sensitive nerves. We find that
 
 in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 49 
 
 he indulged suspicions. Things transpired at Court which 
 he believed had been committed only in most private cor- 
 respondence to Sir Henry. He wrote to his father: "I 
 must needs impute it to some men about you that there is 
 little written from you or to you that is not perfectly 
 known to your professed enemies." A few weeks after 
 penning these words he thought that he had caught the 
 culprit in Mr. Edmund Molineux, Sir Henry's secretary. 
 This explains the following furious epistle, which no biog- 
 rapher of Sidney should omit in its proper place : 
 
 " MR. MOLINEUX Few words are best. My letters to my father 
 have come to the ears of some : neither can I condemn any but you. 
 If it be so, you have played the very knave with me ; and so I will 
 make you know, if I have good proof of it. But that for so much as 
 is past. For that is to come, I assure you, before God, that if ever I 
 know you to do so much as read any letter I write to my father with- 
 out his commandment or my consent, I will thrust my dagger into 
 you. And trust to it, for I speak in earnest. In the meantime, fare- 
 well. From Court, this last of May 1678. By me, 
 
 "PHILIP SIDNEY." 
 
 Philip had made a great mistake a mistake not unlike 
 that which betrayed him into false judgment of his com- 
 rade Coningsby. Molineux was as true as steel to his fa- 
 ther, as loyal as Abdiel to the house of Sidney. It was he 
 who composed for Hollingshed the heartfelt panegyrics of 
 Sir Henry, Sir Philip, and Lady Mary. On this occasion 
 he met the young man's brutal insults with words which 
 may have taught him courtesy. The letter deserves to be 
 given in its integrity : 
 
 " SIB I have received a letter from you which as it is the first, 
 so the same is the sharpest that I ever received from any ; and there- 
 fore it amazeth me the more to receive such an one from you, since I 
 have (the world can judge) deserved better somewhere, howsoever it 
 3*
 
 60 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 pleased you to condemn me now. But since it is (I protest to God) 
 without cause, or yet just ground of suspicion, you use me thus, I 
 bear the injury more patiently for a time, and mine innocency I hope 
 in the end shall try mine honesty, and then I trust you will confess 
 that you have done me wrong. And since your pleasure so is ex- 
 pressed that I shall not henceforth read any of your letters (although 
 I must confess I have heretofore taken both great delight and profit 
 in reading some of them) yet upon so hard a condition as you seem 
 to offer, I will not hereafter adventure so great peril, but obey you 
 herein. Howbeit, if it had pleased you, you might have commanded 
 me in a far greater matter with a less penalty. Yours, when it shall 
 please you better to conceive of me, humbly to command, 
 
 " F. MOLINKUX." 
 
 We doubt not that Philip made honourable amends for 
 his unjust imputations, since good friendship afterwards 
 subsisted between him and Molineux. The incident, on 
 which I have thought fit to dwell, reveals something not 
 altogether pleasing in our hero's character. But the real 
 deduction to be drawn from it is that his position at this 
 time was well-nigh intolerable. 
 
 In the midst of these worrying cares he remained in at- 
 tendance on the queen. It seems that he journeyed with 
 the Court in all her progresses ; and in May he formed part 
 of the royal company which Leicester welcomed to his 
 house at Wanstead. The entertainment provided for her 
 Majesty was far simpler than that so famous one at Kenil- 
 worth in 1575. Yet it has for us a special interest, inas- 
 much as here Philip produced his first literary essay. This 
 was a rural masque entitled, The Lady of the May. How 
 it came to be written we know not ; peradventure at two 
 sittings, between the evening's dance and retirement to bed. 
 The thing is slight and without salt. If it were not still 
 quoted in the list of Sidney's works, we should not notice 
 it ; and why it ever was printed I am unable to conjecture,
 
 m.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 51 
 
 except upon the supposition that even in Elizabeth's days 
 the last drops from a famous pen, however dull they were, 
 found publishers. Of dramatic conception or of power in 
 dialogue it shows nothing ; nor are the lyrics tuneful. 
 There is plenty of flattery introduced, apparently to glut 
 the queen's appetite for mud-honey, but yet so clumsily 
 applied as to suggest a suspicion whether the poet were 
 not laughing at her. The only character which reveals 
 force of portraiture and humour is that of Rombus, the 
 pedagogue, into whose mouth Sidney has put some long- 
 winded speeches, satirising the pedantic and grossly igno- 
 rant style in vogue among village school-masters. Rombus, 
 in fact, is a very rough sketch for the picture of Master 
 Holof ernes, as may be judged by his exordium to Queen 
 Elizabeth 
 
 " Stage Direction. Then came forward Master Rombus, and, with 
 
 many special graces, made this learned oration : 
 "Now the thunder-thumping Jove transfund his dotes into your 
 excellent formosity, which have, with your resplendent beams, thus 
 segregated the enmity of these rural animals : I am ' potentissima 
 domina,' a school-master ; that is to say, a pedagogue, one not a little 
 versed in the disciplinating of the juvenile fry, wherein, to my laud I 
 say it, I use such geometrical proportion, as neither wanted mansue- 
 tude nor correction : for so it is described 
 
 " ' Parcare subjectos, et debellire superbos.' 
 
 Yet hath not the pulchritude of my virtues protected me from the 
 contaminating hands of these plebeians ; for coming, ' solummodo,' 
 to have parted their sanguinolent fray, they yielded me no more rev- 
 erence than if I had been some ' pecorius asinus.' I, even I, that am, 
 who am I ? ' Dixi ; verbus sapiento satum est.' But what said that 
 Trojan JSneas, when he sojourned in the surging sulks of the sandif- 
 
 erous seas ? 
 
 " ' Haec olim memonasse juvebit .' 
 
 Well, well, ' ad propositos revertebo ;' the purity of the verity is, that
 
 62 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 a certain ' pulchra puella profecto,' elected and constituted by the in- 
 tegrated determination of all this topographical region, as the sover- 
 eign lady of this dame Maia's month, hath been, ' quodammodo,' hunt- 
 ed, as you would say ; pursued by two, a brace, a couple, a cast of 
 young men, to whom the crafty coward Cupid had, ' inquam,' deliv- 
 ered his dire dolorous dart." 
 
 During this summer Philip obtained a place at Court, 
 the importance of which his friend Languet seems to have 
 exaggerated. Zouch says it was the post of cup-bearer to 
 the queen ; and in this statement there is no improbability, 
 but there is also nothing to warrant it. At any rate the 
 office failed to satisfy his ambition; for he wrote com- 
 plainingly, as usual, of the irksomeness of Court existence. 
 How disagreeable that must in some respects have been is 
 made clear to us by Lady Mary's letters in the autumn of 
 this year. She was expecting her husband home from Ire- 
 land. He had to reside with her at Hampton Court, where 
 she could only call one bedroom her own. To the faithful 
 Molineux she writes : 
 
 "I have thought good to put you in remembrance to move my 
 Lord Chamberlain in my Lord's name, to have some other room 
 than my chamber for my Lord to have his resort unto, as he was 
 wont to have ; or else my Lord will be greatly troubled, when he 
 shall have any matters of despatch : my lodgings, you see, being very 
 little, and myself continually sick and not able to be much out of my 
 bed. For the night-time one roof, with God's grace, shall serve us. 
 For the daytime, the queen will look to have my chamber always in 
 a readiness for her Majesty's coming thither ; and though my Lord 
 himself an be no impediment thereto by his own presence, yet bis 
 Lordship, trusting to no place else to be provided for him, will be, 
 as I said before, troubled for want of a convenient place for the de- 
 spatch of such people as shall have occasion to come to him. There- 
 fore, I pray you, in my Lord's own name, move my Lord of Sussex 
 for a room for that purpose, and I will have it hanged and lined for
 
 in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 63 
 
 him with stuff from hence. I wish you not to be unmindful hereof ; 
 and so for this time I leave you to the Almighty. From Chiswick, 
 this llth October 1678." 
 
 It would appear that Lady Mary's very modest request 
 for a second room, which she undertook to furnish out of 
 her own wardrobe, was not at once granted. Another letter 
 to Molineux shows that he had made some progress in the 
 matter, but had not succeeded. Hampton Court, she writes, 
 however full it may be, has always several spare rooms. 
 Perhaps there are those who " will be sorry my Lord should 
 have so sure footing in the Court." Could not Molineux 
 contrive the loan of a parlour for her husband in the day- 
 time ? Yet, after all, " when the worst is known, old Lord 
 Harry and his old Moll will do as well as they can in part- 
 ing, like good friends, the small portion allotted our long 
 service in Court." There is something half pathetic and 
 half comic in the picture thus presented to our minds of 
 the great Duke of Northumberland's daughter, with her 
 husband, the Viceroy of Ireland and Wales, dwelling at 
 hugger-mugger in one miserable chamber she well-nigh 
 bedridden, he transacting his business in a corner of it, and 
 the queen momently expected upon visitations, not always, 
 we may guess, of friendship or affection. Yet the touch 
 of homely humour in the last sentence I have quoted from 
 the noble lady's letter, sheds a pleasant light upon the sor- 
 did scene. 
 
 Studying the details of Court life both in Italy and Eng- 
 land at this period, we are often led to wonder why noble- 
 men with spacious palaces and venerable mansions of their 
 own to dwell in why men of genius whose brilliant gifts 
 made them acceptable in every cultivated circle should 
 have submitted so complacently to its ignoble conditions. 
 Even those who seemed unable to breathe outside the sphere
 
 64 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 of the Court spoke most bitterly against it. Tasso squan- 
 dered his health, his talents, nay, his reason, in that servi- 
 tude. Guarini, after impairing his fortune, and wasting the 
 best years of his manhood at Ferrara, retired to a country 
 villa, and indulged his spleen in venomous invectives against 
 the vices and the ignominies he had abandoned. Marino, 
 who flaunted his gay plumage at Turin and Paris, screamed 
 like a cockatoo with cynical spite whenever the word Court 
 was mentioned. The only wise man of that age in Italy 
 was the literary bravo Aretino. He, having debauched his 
 youth in the vilest places of the Roman Courts, resolved to 
 live a free man henceforth. Therefore he took refuge in 
 Venice, where he caressed his sensual appetites and levied 
 blackmail on society. From that retreat, which soon be- 
 came a sty of luxury, he hurled back upon the Courts the 
 filth which he had gathered in them. His dialogue on 
 Court service is one of the most savage and brutally naked 
 exposures of depravity which satirical literature contains. 
 In England there was indeed a far higher tone of manliness 
 and purity and personal independence at the Court than 
 obtained in Italy. Yet listen to Spenser's memorable lines, 
 obviously poured forth from the heart and coloured by bit- 
 terest experience : 
 
 " Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, 
 
 What hell it is in suing long to bide : 
 
 To lose good days, that might be better spent ; 
 
 To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; 
 
 To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; 
 ' To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; 
 
 To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers' ; 
 
 To have thy asking, yet wait many years ; 
 
 To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ; 
 
 To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs ;
 
 HI.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 55 
 
 To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, 
 To spend, to give, to want, to be undone : 
 Unhappy wight, born to disastrous end, 
 That doth his life in so long tendance spend !" 
 
 Therefore we return to wondering what it was in Courts 
 which made gentlefolk convert broad acres into cash that 
 they might shine there, which lured noblemen from their 
 castles and oak-shaded deer-parks to occupy a stuffy bed- 
 room in a royal palace, and squires from their moss-grown 
 manor-houses to jolt along the roads on horseback in at- 
 tendance on a termagant like Elizabeth or a learned pig 
 like James I. The real answer to these questionings is 
 that, in the transition from mediaeval to modern conditions 
 of life, the Court had become a social necessity for folk of 
 a certain quality and certain aspirations. It was the only 
 avenue to public employment; the only sphere in which 
 a man of ambition, who was neither clerk in orders nor 
 lawyer, could make his mark ; the only common meeting- 
 ground for rank, beauty, wealth, and genius. Thus it exer- 
 cised a splendid fascination, the reflex of which is luminous 
 in our dramatic literature. After reading those sad and 
 bitter lines of Spenser, we should turn the pages of Fletch- 
 er's Valentinian, where the allurements of the Court are 
 eloquently portrayed in the great scene of Lucina's attempt- 
 ed seduction. Or better, let us quote the ecstasies of For- 
 tainatus from the most fanciful of Dekker's plays : 
 
 " For still in all the regions I have seen, 
 I scorned to crowd among the muddy throng 
 Of the rank multitude, whose thickened breath, 
 Like to condensed fogs, do choke that beauty 
 Which else would dwell in every kingdom's cheek. 
 No, I still boldly stepped into their courts, 
 
 For there to live 'tis rare, oh, 'tis divine ! 
 31
 
 66 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 There shall you see faces angelical ; 
 
 There shall you see troops of chaste goddesses, 
 
 Whose star-like eyes have power (might they still shine) 
 
 To make night day, and day more crystalline : 
 
 Near these you shall behold great heroes, 
 
 White-headed counsellors, and jovial spirits, 
 
 Standing like fiery cherubims to guard 
 
 The monarch who in god-like glory sits 
 
 In midst of these, as if this deity 
 
 Had with a look created a new world, 
 
 The standers-by being the fair workmanship." 
 
 Philip, like so many of his contemporaries, continued to 
 waver between the irresistible attraction of the Court and 
 the centrifugal force which urged him to be up and doing, 
 anywhere, at any occupation, away from its baneful and 
 degrading idleness. Just now, in the summer of 1578, he 
 was hankering to join his friend, John Casimir, at Zutphen. 
 Elizabeth had nominated this prince to her lieutenancy in 
 the Low Countries, supplying him with money in small 
 quantities for the levying of troops. When he took the 
 field, Philip burned to accept an invitation sent him by the 
 prince. But first he had to gain his father's permission. 
 Sir Henry's answer is the model of kindness and of gentle 
 unselfishness. He begins by acknowledging the honour 
 paid his son, and commending Philip's eagerness. But 
 " when I enter into the consideration of mine own estate, 
 and call to mind what practices, informations, and wicked 
 accusations are devised against me, and what an assistance 
 in the defence of those causes your presence would be unto 
 me, reposing myself so much both upon your help and judg- 
 ment, I strive betwixt honour and necessity what allowance 
 I may best give of that motion for your going." Then he 
 goes on to say that he leaves the consideration of these 
 matters to his son, and will in no way check his inclination
 
 in.] ENTRANCE INTO COURT-LIFE AND EMBASSY. 57 
 
 or refuse his consent. Philip sacrificed his wishes, and 
 remained in England to assist his father. This act of filial 
 compliance cost him, as it happened, nothing ; for Casimir's 
 dealings in the Netherlands brought no credit to himself or 
 his companions. None the less should we appreciate the 
 amiable trait in Sidney's character. 
 
 Sir Henry returned in due course to England in the au- 
 tumn, and tendered his resignation of the Irish Viceroyalty. 
 He still maintained his post as Lord President of Wales. 
 On New Year's Day, 1579, presents were exchanged, as 
 usual, between Elizabeth and her chief courtiers. Poor Sir 
 Henry, out of pocket as he was, presented her Majesty with 
 a jewel of gold, diamonds, pearls, and rubies, upon which 
 was wrought a figure of Diana. She returned a hundred 
 and thirty-eight ounces of gold plate. Lady Mary and 
 Philip offered articles of dress, receiving their equivalent in 
 plate. Prince Casimir, who had to answer for his malcon- 
 duct of affairs in the Low Countries, reached London in 
 the month of January. The queen gave him a gracious 
 reception. He was nominated to a stall in St. George's 
 chapel, and entertained with various amusements. Among 
 other sports, we hear that he shot a stag in Hyde Park. 
 On the 12th of February he again left England with pres- 
 ents from the queen. A letter of the day significantly al- 
 ludes to her unwilling bestowal of money on the prince: 
 "There hath been somewhat to do to bring her unto it, 
 and Mr. Secretary Walsingham bare the brunt thereof." 
 
 One incident of Casimir's visit must not be omitted. 
 Hubert Languet, old as he now was, and failing in health, 
 resolved to set his eyes once more on his beloved Philip. 
 " I am almost afraid," he wrote in January, " that my 
 great desire of seeing you may betray me into thinking I 
 
 am better than I am, yet I will do my very utmost to be 
 E
 
 68 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. in. 
 
 ready for the journey, even though I should take it at the 
 peril of my life." He came and went safely, had the 
 pleasure of conversing with Philip, and made friends with 
 the chief members of the Sidney family. A letter written 
 in the autumn of the next year shows that this experienced 
 judge of men and cities formed no very favourable opin- 
 ion of the English Court. " I was pleased last winter to 
 find you flourishing in favour, and highly esteemed by all 
 men. Yet, to conceal nothing, it appeared to me that the 
 manners of your Court are less manly than I could wish ; 
 and the majority of your great folk struck me as more 
 eager to gain applause by affected courtesy, than by such 
 virtues as benefit the commonwealth, and are the chief 
 ornament of noble minds and high-born personages. It 
 grieved me then, as also your other friends, that you 
 should waste the flower of your youth in such trifles. I 
 began to fear lest your excellent disposition should at last 
 be blunted, lest you should come by habit to care for 
 things which soften and emasculate our mind." 
 
 We have already seen that Sidney was not otherwise 
 than himself alive to these dangers, and that he chafed 
 continually at the " expense of spirit in a waste " of frivoli- 
 ties. As a couplet in one of his occasional poems puts it 
 
 " Greater was the shepherd's treasure, 
 Than this false, fine, courtly pleasure." 
 
 From the same poem we learn that his friendship for 
 Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer continued to be his main- 
 stay at the Court; and when I enter upon the details of 
 his literary career, it will become apparent that much of 
 his time had been already spent with these and other cul- 
 tivated gentlefolk in the prosecution of serious studies. 
 For the present it seems better not to interrupt the history 
 of his external life.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FRENCH MATCH AND " THE ARCADIA." 
 
 THE years 1579 and 1580 are of importance in the bi- 
 ography of Sidney, owing to the decided part he took in 
 the discussion of the French match. Elizabeth's former 
 suitor, d'Alenon, now bore the title of Duke of Anjou, 
 by his brother Henri's accession to the throne of France. 
 Time had cast a decent veil over the memory of St. Bar- 
 tholomew, and Anjou was now posing as the protector of 
 national liberties in the Low Countries. He thought the 
 opportunity good for renewing negotiations with the 
 Queen of England. That the Court of the Valois was 
 anxious to arrange the marriage admits of no doubt. The 
 sums of money spent in presents and embassies render 
 this certain, for Catherine de' Medici and her sons were 
 always in pecuniary difficulties. They could not afford to 
 throw gold away on trifles. 
 
 Elizabeth showed a strong inclination to accept the 
 duke's proposal. She treated his envoy, Du Simiers, with 
 favour, and kept up a brisk correspondence with Paris. 
 The match, however, was extremely unpopular with the 
 English people. In the autumn of 1579 there appeared a 
 pamphlet entitled: "The Discovery of the Gaping Gulf, 
 whereinto England is like to be swallowed, by a French 
 marriage, if the Lord forbid not the Banns, by letting her
 
 60 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Majesty see the Sin and Punishment thereof." This suf- 
 ficed to indicate the temper of the best part of the nation, 
 the Protestants, who saw their religious and political liber- 
 ties in danger. Stubbs and Page, the author and the 
 printer of this " lewd and seditious book," as it was termed 
 by royal proclamation, were each condemned to lose the 
 right hand. Stubbs, when_the hangman had performed 
 his office, waved his hat with the left hand, crying " God 
 save the Queen !" Page pointed to his bloody hand upon 
 the ground, and said, " There lies the hand of a true Eng- 
 lishman !" 
 
 At Court opinion was divided. Elizabeth's flatterers, 
 with Oxford at their head, declared themselves loudly in fa- 
 vour of the match. Leicester opposed it ; but Du Simiers' 
 opportune discovery of the secret marriage with Lady 
 Essex ruined his credit. The great earl had to retire in 
 disgrace. Camden relates that the queen banished him 
 until further notice to Greenwich Castle. Fulke Greville 
 says " the French faction reigning had cast aspersions upon 
 his (Sidney's) uncle of Leicester, and made him, like a 
 wise man (under colour of taking physic) voluntarily be- 
 come prisoner in his chamber." Whether his retirement 
 was compulsory or voluntary matters little. For the time 
 he lost his influence, and was unable to show his face at 
 Court. Thus Philip who had already elected to "join 
 with the weaker party and oppose this torrent," found 
 himself at the moment of his greatest need deprived of 
 the main support which powerful connections gave him. 
 
 Greville has devoted a chapter to his action in this mat- 
 ter, analysing with much detail the reasons which moved 
 him to oppose the queen's inclination. It is not necessary 
 to report his friend's view of the case, since I shall shortly 
 have to present an abstract of the famous document which
 
 IT.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 61 
 
 Sidney drew up for Elizabeth's perusal. Yet the exordium 
 to this chapter may be quoted, as representing in brief his 
 position at the close of 1579. 
 
 " The next doubtful stage he had to act upon (howsoever it may 
 seem private) was grounded upon a public and specious proposition 
 of marriage between the late famous queen and the Duke of Anjou. 
 With which current, although he saw the great and wise men of the 
 time suddenly carried down, and every one fishing to catch the queen's 
 humour in it ; yet when he considered the difference of years, person, 
 education, state, and religion between them ; and then called to mind 
 the success of our former alliances with the French ; he found many 
 reasons to make question whether it would prove poetical or real on 
 their part. And if real, whether the balance swayed not unequally, 
 by adding much to them and little to his sovereign. The duke's great- 
 ness being only name and possibility ; and both these either to wither 
 or to be maintained at her cost. Her state, again, in hand ; and 
 though royally sufficient to satisfy that queen's princely and moder- 
 ate desires or expenses, yet perchance inferior to bear out those 
 mixed designs into which his ambition or necessities might entice or 
 draw her." 
 
 It came to pass, through Leicester's disgrace, that Philip 
 stood almost alone at Court as the resolute opponent of 
 the French faction. The profligate and unscrupulous Earl 
 of Oxford, now foremost in the queen's favour, was carrying 
 his head aloft, boastful of his compliance with her wishes, 
 and counting doubtless on the highest honours when the 
 match should be completed. An accident brought the 
 two champions of the opposed parties into personal col- 
 lision. One of Languet's letters enables us to fix the date 
 of the event in September 1579, and Greville's minute ac- 
 count of the same is so curious that I shall transcribe it 
 without further comment. 
 
 " Thus stood the Court at that time ; and thus stood this ingenuous 
 spirit hi it If dangerously in men's opinions who are curious of the
 
 62 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 present, and in it rather to do craftily than well : yet, I say, that 
 princely heart of hers was a sanctuary unto him ; and as for the peo- 
 ple, in whom many times the lasting images of worth are preferred 
 before the temporary visions of art or favour, he could not fear to suf- 
 fer any thing there, which would not prove a kind of trophy to him. 
 ... In this freedom of heart, being one day at tennis, a peer of this 
 realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the prince's 
 favour, abruptly came into the tennis - court ; and, speaking out of 
 these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that which he 
 could not legally command. When, by the encounter of a steady ob- 
 ject, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great lord) not re- 
 spected by this princely spirit, he grew to expostulate more roughly. 
 The returns of which style coming still from an understanding heart, 
 that knew what was due to itself and what it ought to others, seemed 
 (through the mists of my lord's passion, swollen with the wind of this 
 faction then reigning) to provoke in yielding. Whereby, the less 
 amazement or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the 
 more shadows this great lord's own mind was possessed with ; till at 
 last with rage (which is ever ill-disciplined) he commands them to de- 
 part the court. To this Sir Philip temperately answers ; that if his 
 lordship had been pleased to express desire in milder characters, per- 
 chance he might have led out those that he should now find would 
 not be driven out with any scourge of fury. This answer (like a bel- 
 lows) blowing up the sparks of excess already kindled, made my lord 
 scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of puppy. In which progress 
 of heat, as the tempest grew more and more vehement within, so did 
 their hearts breathe out their perturbations in a more loud and shrill 
 accent. The French Commissioners unfortunately had that day au- 
 dience in those private galleries whose windows looked into the ten- 
 nis-court. They instantly drew all to this tumult : every sort of quar- 
 rels sorting well with their humours, especially this. Which Sir 
 Philip perceiving, and rising with an inward strength by the prospect 
 of a mighty faction against him, asked my lord with a loud voice that 
 which he heard clearly enough before. Who (like an echo that still 
 multiplies by reflexions) repeated this epithet of puppy the second 
 time. Sir Philip, resolving hi one answer to conclude both the atten- 
 tive hearers and passionate actor, gave my lord a lie, impossible (as he 
 averred) to be retorted ; in respect all the world knows, puppies are 
 gotten by dogs and children by men.
 
 IY.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 63 
 
 " Hereupon these glorious inequalities of fortune in his lordship were 
 put to a kind of pause by a precious inequality of nature in this gen- 
 tleman ; so that they both stood silent a while, like a dumb show in 
 a tragedy ; till Sir Philip, sensible of his own wrong, the foreign and 
 factious spirits that attended, and yet even hi this question between 
 him and his superior tender of his country's honour, with some words 
 of sharp accent led the way abruptly out of the tennis-court ; as if so 
 unexpected an incident were not fit to be decided in that place. 
 Whereof the great lord making another sense, continues his play, 
 without any advantage of reputation, as by the standard of humours 
 in those times it was conceived." 
 
 Thus the Earl of Oxford called Sidney a puppy ; and Sid- 
 ney gave him the lie. It was judged inevitable that the for- 
 mer would send a challenge and a duel would ensue. But 
 Oxford delayed to vindicate his honour. The Lords of the 
 Council intervened, and persuaded the queen to effect a 
 reconciliation. She pointed out to Sidney that he owed 
 deference to a peer of the realm. " He besought her Maj- 
 esty to consider that although he were a great lord by 
 birth, alliance, and grace ; yet he was no lord over him." 
 As free men and gentlemen the earl and himself were 
 equals, except in the matter of precedency. Moreover, he 
 reminded Elizabeth that it had been her father's policy to 
 shield the gentry from the oppression of the grandees, in 
 the wise opinion that the Crown would gain by using the 
 former as a balance to the power and ambition of the lat- 
 ter. But having stated his case, he seems to have deferred 
 to her wishes. We do not hear that apologies were made 
 on either side. The matter, however, dropped ; Oxford so 
 far retaining his resentment that Sidney's friends believed 
 he entertained a scheme for his assassination. 
 
 After reading this passage, we may remember with what 
 spirit on a former occasion Philip gave the cut direct to 
 Ormond. It is also interesting to compare his carriage
 
 64 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 upon both occasions with that of his nephew, the Viscount 
 1'Isle, who bearded James' favourite, James Hay, at that 
 time Viscount Doncaster, in his own chamber. A detailed 
 account of this incident, written by Lord 1'Isle in vindica- 
 tion of his honour, is printed among the Sidney papers. 
 It casts valuable light upon the manners of the English 
 Court, and illustrates the sturdy temper of the Sidney 
 breed. 
 
 Philip contrived apparently to keep the queen's good- 
 will until the beginning of 1580; for she accepted his 
 present of a crystal cup on New Year's Day. But his po- 
 sition at Court was difficult. Oxford, it was commonly be- 
 lieved, had planned his murder ; and being an Italianated 
 Englishman in other words, a devil incarnate he may 
 well have entertained some project of the sort. As the 
 avowed champion of the opposition, wielding a pen with 
 which no man could compete, Sidney thought the time had 
 now come to bring matters to an issue by plain utterance. 
 Therefore he drew up a carefully-prepared memorial, set- 
 ting forth in firm but most respectful language those argu- 
 ments which seemed to him decisive against the French 
 match. This he presented to Elizabeth early in 1580. 
 Immediately after its perusal, she began to show her re- 
 sentment, and Philip, like his uncle, found it convenient to 
 leave the Court. His retreat was Wilton, where he re- 
 mained in privacy for seven months. 
 
 I have elsewhere remarked that Sidney showed his pow- 
 ers as a thinker and prose-writer nowhere more eminently 
 than in documents, presenting a wide survey of facts, mar- 
 shalling a series of arguments, combining the prudence of 
 a statesman and the cunning of an orator. This memorial 
 to the queen is a gem in its own species of composition. 
 It well deserves the high praise which has been given it as
 
 IT.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 65 
 
 " at once the most eloquent and the most courageous piece 
 of that nature which the age can boast. Every important 
 view of the subject is comprised in this letter, which is 
 long, but at the same time so condensed in style and so 
 skilfully compacted as to matter that it well deserves to 
 be read entire ; and must lose materially either by abridg- 
 ment or omission." In it Sidney appeals to what Fulke 
 Greville quaintly calls " that princely heart of hers which 
 was a sanctuary unto him." He enters the sanctuary with 
 reverence, and stands alone there, pleading like a servant 
 before his mistress. He speaks to Elizabeth in the char- 
 acter of a simple gentleman and loyal subject, relying on 
 no support of party, nor representing himself as the mouth- 
 piece of an indignant nation. This independent attitude 
 gives singular lucidity and beauty to his appeal. It is the 
 grave but modest warning of a faithful squire to his liege 
 lady in the hour of danger. Although extracts can do but 
 scanty justice to the merits of Sidney's oratory, I must 
 present such specimens as may serve as samples of his 
 English style and display his method of exposition. He 
 begins as follows: 
 
 " MOST FEARED AND BELOVED, MOST SWEET AND GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN 
 To seek out excuses of this my boldness, and to arm the acknowl- 
 edging of a fault with reasons for it, might better show I knew I did 
 amiss, than any way diminish the attempt, especially in your judgment ; 
 who being able to discern lively into the nature of the thing done, it 
 were folly to hope, by laying on better colours, to make it more ac- 
 ceptable. Therefore, carrying no other olive branch of intercession, 
 than the laying of myself at your feet ; nor no other insinuation, ei- 
 ther for attention or pardon, but the true vowed sacrifice of unfeigned 
 love ; I will, in simple and direct terms (as hoping they shall only 
 come to your merciful eyes), set down the overflowing of my mind in 
 this most important matter, importing, as I think, the continuance of 
 your safety ; and as I know, the joys of my life. And because my 
 4
 
 66 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 words (I confess shallow, but coming from the deep well-spring of 
 most loyal affection) have delivered to your most gracious ear, what is 
 the general sum of my travelling thoughts therein ; I will now but 
 only declare, what be the reasons that make me think, that the mar- 
 riage with Monsieur will be unprofitable unto you ; then will I an- 
 swer the objection of those fears, which might procure so violent a 
 refuge." 
 
 Having finished these personal explanations, he proceeds 
 to show that the French marriage must be considered from 
 a double point of view, first as regarding the queen's estate, 
 and secondly as touching her person. Her real power as 
 " an absolute born, and accordingly respected princess," 
 rests upon the affection of her subjects, who are now di- 
 vided between Protestants and Catholics. The former, 
 
 "As their souls live by your happy government, so are they your 
 chief, if not your sole, strength : these, howsoever the necessity of hu- 
 man life makes them lack, yet can they not look for better conditions 
 than presently they enjoy : these, how their hearts will be galled, if 
 not aliened, when they shall see you take a husband, a Frenchman 
 and a Papist, in whom (howsoever fine wits may find farther dealings 
 or painted excuses) the very common people well know this, that he 
 is the son of a Jezebel of our age : that his brother made oblation of 
 his own sister's marriage, the easier to make massacres of our breth- 
 ren in belief : that he himself, contrary to his promise, and all grate- 
 fulness, having his liberty and principal estate by the Hugonot's 
 means, did sack La Charite, and utterly spoil them with fire and 
 sword. This, I say, even at first sight, gives occasion to all, truly re- 
 ligious, to abhor such a master, and consequently to diminish much 
 of the hopeful love they have long held to you." 
 
 The Catholics are discontented and disaffected. They will 
 grasp easily at any chance of a revolution in religion and 
 the State ; and to such folk the French match is doubtless 
 acceptable, not as producing good to the commonwealth, 
 but as offering them the opportunity of change.
 
 IT.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 67 
 
 " If then the affectionate side have their affections weakened, and 
 the discontented have a gap to utter their discontent, I think it will 
 seem an ill preparative for the patient (I mean jour estate) to a great 
 sickness." 
 
 From these general reflections upon the state of parties 
 in England, Sidney passes to a consideration of the Duke 
 of Anjou's personal qualities. The following paragraph is 
 marked by skilful blending of candour with reserve. Eliz- 
 abeth had declared a special partiality for the French prince. 
 It is her subject's duty to paint him as inconstant, restless 
 in ambition, uncertain in his affections, swayed by light- 
 brained and factious counsellors, greedy of power at any 
 cost. His profession of the Catholic faith renders him a 
 dangerous tool in the hands of disaffected English Papists. 
 His position as next heir to the French Crown makes him 
 an inconvenient consort for the queen of Great Britain. It 
 is not likely that a man of his temper and pretensions 
 should put up with a subordinate place in his wife's king- 
 dom. And why, asks Sidney, has Elizabeth set her heart 
 upon a marriage so fraught with dangers ? " Often have I 
 heard you with protestation say no private pleasure nor 
 self-affection could lead you to it." Is it because she looks 
 forward to the bliss of children? If so she may marry 
 where the disadvantages are less. But she has herself al- 
 leged that she is moved by " fear of standing alone in re- 
 spect to foreign dealings," and also by " doubt of contempt 
 in them from whom you should have respect." These two 
 points, since they bias the queen's mind, have to be sepa- 
 rately entertained. Leagues are usually cemented by the 
 desires or the fears of the contracting parties. What pub- 
 lic desires have Elizabeth and the duke in common ? 
 
 " He of the Romish religion ; and if he be a man, must needs have 
 that man-like property to desire that all men be of his mind : you the
 
 68 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 erector and defender of the contrary, and the only sun that dazzleth 
 their eyes : he French, and desiring to make France great ; your Maj- 
 esty English, and desiring nothing less than that France should not 
 grow great : he, both by his own fancy and his youthful governors, 
 embracing all ambitious hopes ; having Alexander's image in his head, 
 but perhaps evil-painted : your Majesty with excellent virtue taught 
 what you should hope, and by no less wisdom what you may hope ; 
 with a council renowned over all Christendom for their well-tempered 
 minds, having set the utmost of their ambition in your favor, and the 
 study of their souls in your safety." 
 
 The interests and the dangers of France and England are 
 so diverse that these realms have no fears in common to 
 unite them. Elizabeth, therefore, can expect nothing but 
 perplexity in her foreign dealings from the match. Is it 
 reasonable that she should hope to secure the affection of 
 her subjects, and to guard herself against their contempt, by 
 marriage with a Frenchman? Can she be ignorant that 
 she is the idol of her people ? It is indeed true that the 
 succession is uncertain through lack of heirs of her body : 
 
 " But in so lineal a monarchy, wherever the infants suck the love 
 of their rightful prince, who would leave the beams of so fair a sun 
 for the dreadful expectation of a divided company of stars ? Virtue 
 and justice are the only bonds of people's love ; and as for that point, 
 many princes have lost their crowns whose own children were mani- 
 fest successors ; and some that had their own children used as in- 
 struments of their ruin ; not that I deny the bliss of children, but 
 only to show religion and equity to be of themselves sufficient stays." 
 
 It may be demurred that scurrilous libels have been vent- 
 ed against her Majesty, proving some insubordination in 
 her subjects. She ought, however, to " care little for the 
 barking of a few curs." Honest Englishmen regard such 
 attacks upon her dignity as blasphemous. 
 
 "No, no, most excellent lady, do not raze out the impression you 
 have made in such a multitude of hearts ; and let not the scum of
 
 IT.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 6S 
 
 such vile minds bear any witness against your subjects' devotions. 
 The only means of avoiding contempt are love and fear ; love, as you 
 have by divers means sent into the depth of their souls, so if any- 
 thing can stain so true a form, it must be the trimming yourself not 
 in your own likeness, but in new colours unto them." 
 
 In other words, Sidney means that the Queen's proposed 
 course will alienate instead of confirming the affections of 
 the nation. He then passes to his peroration, which I shall 
 quote in full as a fair specimen of his eloquence : 
 
 " Since then it is dangerous for your state, as well because by in- 
 ward weakness (principally caused by division) it is fit to receive 
 harm ; since to your person it can be no way comfortable, you not 
 desiring marriage ; and neither to person nor estate he is to bring 
 any more good than anybody ; but more evil he may, since the causes 
 that should drive you to this are either fears of that which cannot 
 happen, or by this means cannot be prevented ; I do with most hum- 
 ble heart say unto your Majesty (having assayed this dangerous help) 
 for your standing alone, you must take it for a singular honour God 
 hath done you, to be indeed the only protector of his Church ; and 
 yet hi worldly respects your kingdom very sufficient so to do, if you 
 make that religion upon which you stand, to carry the only strength, 
 and have abroad those that still maintain the same course ; who as 
 long as they may be kept from utter falling, your Majesty is sure 
 enough from your mightiest enemies. As for this man, as long as he 
 is but Monsieur in might, and a Papist in profession, he neither can 
 nor will greatly shield you ; and if he get once to be king, his defence 
 will be like Ajax's shield, which rather weighed them down than de- 
 fended those that bare it. Against contempt, if there be any, which 
 I will never believe, let your excellent virtues of piety, justice, and 
 liberality daily, if it be possible, more and more shine. Let such par- 
 ticular actions be found out (which be easy as I think to be done) by 
 which you may gratify all the hearts of your people. Let those hi 
 whom you find trust, and to whom you have committed trust hi your 
 weighty affairs be held up in the eyes of your subjects. Lastly, do- 
 ing as you do, you shall be, as you be, the example of princes, the or. 
 nament of this age, and the most excellent fruit of your progenitors,
 
 70 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 and the perfect mirror of your posterity. Tour Majesty's faithful, 
 humble, and obedient subject, P. SYDNEY." 
 
 In the early spring of 1580 Sidney went to stay at Wil- 
 ton, and remained there during the summer. His sister, 
 the Countess of Pembroke, for whom Jonson wrote the fa- 
 mous epitaph, and whom Spenser described as 
 
 " The gentlest shepherdess that lives this day, 
 And most resembling both in shape and spright 
 Her brother dear," 
 
 was united to him by the tenderest bonds of affection and 
 by common literary interests. Good judges, among whom 
 Jonson may be reckoned, valued her poetry at least as high 
 as Philip's ; and this opinion is confirmed by what remains 
 to us of her compositions. The accent of deep and pas- 
 sionate feeling which gives force to some of the Astropkel 
 and Stella sonnets, is indeed lacking to her verse. But if 
 we are right in believing that only the first forty-two psalms 
 in their joint translation belong to him, her part in that 
 work exhibits the greater measure of felicity. It was appar- 
 ently upon this visit to Wilton that the brother and sister 
 began to render the Psalms of David into various lyrical 
 metres. After the Vulgate and the Prayer-book all trans- 
 lations of the Psalms, even those done by Milton, seem tame 
 and awkward. Nor can I except the Sidneys from this 
 criticism. In an essay, then, which must of necessity be 
 economical of space, I shall omit further notice of this ver- 
 sion. The opportunity, however, is now given for digress- 
 ing from Philip's biography to the consideration of his 
 place and achievements in English literature. 
 
 It is of importance to bear steadily in mind the date of 
 Sidney's birth in order to judge correctly of his relation to 
 predecessors and successors. Wyatt, Surrey, Sackville, and 
 
 \
 
 rv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 71 
 
 Norton had already acclimatised Italian forms of poetry 
 and classical principles of metre upon English soil. But 
 very little of first-rate excellence can be referred to this pe- 
 riod of our Renaissance. A form of the sonnet peculiar 
 to English literature,' and blank verse, destined to become 
 its epic and dramatic metre, were the two chief results of 
 these earliest innovating experiments. Fulke Qreville, him- 
 self no mean poet, was born in 1554, the same year as Sid- 
 ney; Raleigh had been born in 1552; Spenser and Lyly 
 in 1553 ; Drayton followed in 1563 ; Shakespeare and Mar- 
 lowe in 1564; Donne not till 1573, and Jonson one year 
 later yet ; Wyatt and Surrey were both dead some while 
 before Sidney saw the light ; and Sackville, though he still 
 lived, was not much occupied with literature. It will there- 
 fore be seen that he belonged to that intermediate group of 
 writers, of whom Spenser was the greatest, and who pre- 
 ceded the brilliant burst of genius in the last decade of 
 the sixteenth century. It was as the morning star of an 
 unexampled day of lyric and dramatic splendour that his 
 contemporaries hailed him. 
 
 In the year 1578 Philip attended Queen Elizabeth on one 
 of her progresses when she stayed at Audley End, and there 
 received the homage of some Cambridge scholars. Among 
 these came Gabriel Harvey, a man of character and parts, 
 but of no distinguished literary talent. He was what we 
 now should call a doctrinaire ; yet he possessed so tough a 
 personality as to exercise considerable influence over his 
 contemporaries. Harvey enthusiastically declared himself 
 for the remodelling of English metres on the classic meth- 
 od. The notion was not new. Ascham, in the School- 
 master, pointed' out "how our English tongue in avoiding 
 barbarous rhyming may as well receive right quantity of 
 
 syllables and true order of versifving as either Greek or 
 82
 
 72 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Latin, if a cunning man have it in handling." He quoted 
 Bishop Watson's hexameters in proof of this proposition : 
 
 " All travellers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses 
 For that he knew many men's manners and saw many cities." 
 
 Yet his good sense saved him from the absurdities into 
 which Stanyhurst, the translator of the Aeneid, fell when 
 he attempted Virgil in a " rude and beggarly " modern im- 
 itation of the Latin rhythm. Ascham summed the ques- 
 tion up in a single sentence, prophetic of the future course 
 of English versification. " Although Carmen Hexametrum 
 doth rather trot and hobble than run smoothly in our Eng- 
 lish tongue, yet I am sure our English tongue will receive 
 Carmen lambicum as naturally as either Greek or Latin." 
 Harvey was not so finely gifted as Ascham to perceive the 
 native strength and weakness of our language. He could 
 see no reason why the hexameter should not flourish, and 
 wrote verses, which, for grotesqueness, may pass muster with 
 the most " twitching and hopping " of their kind. Robert 
 Greene, who also tried his hand at the new style, composed 
 smoother but more insipid numbers in the eclogue of Alex- 
 is. But Harvey, as I have said, exercised the influence of 
 an imperious personality ; and one of his friends was Ed- 
 mund Spenser. Through Harvey, Sidney became acquaint- 
 ed with Spenser ; and it is well known that the latter ded- 
 icated The Shepherd's Calendar to him in 1579. The 
 publication was anonymous. The dedication ran as fol- 
 lows : " To the noble and virtuous gentleman, most worthy 
 of all titles, both of learning and chivalry, Master Philip 
 Sidney." The envoy opened with these charming trip- 
 lets: 
 
 " Go, little book ! thyself present, 
 
 As child whose parent is unkent, 
 
 To him that is the president
 
 iv.J THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 78 
 
 Of nobleness and chivalry ; 
 And if that envy bark at thee, 
 As sure it will, for succour flee 
 Under the shadow of his wing ; 
 And, asked who thee forth did bring, 
 A shepherd's swain, say, did thee sing, 
 All as his straying flock he fed ; 
 And when his honour has thee read 
 Crave pardon for thy hardihead." 
 
 In the midst, then, of his Court life Sidney made friends 
 with Harvey and with Spenser. He associated his dearer 
 intimates, Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer, in the same 
 companionship. And thus a little academy, formed ap- 
 parently upon the Italian model, came into existence. Its 
 critical tendency was indicated by the name Areopagus, 
 given it perhaps in fun by Spenser; and its practical ob- 
 ject was the reformation of English poetry upon Italian 
 and classical principles. Unless I am mistaken, no mem- 
 ber of the club applied its doctrines so thoroughly in prac- 
 tice as Sidney. It is true that Harvey wished to have it 
 inscribed upon his grave that he had fostered hexameters 
 on English soil. But in the history of our poetical litera- 
 ture Harvey occupies no place of honor. It is also true 
 that Spenser elaborated some lame hexameters. But his 
 genius detected the imposture ; he wrote to Harvey, point- 
 ing out the insurmountable difficulties of English accent, 
 and laughing at the metre as being "either like a lame 
 gosling that draweth up one leg after, or like a lame dog 
 that holdeth one leg up." 
 
 Sidney, with his usual seriousness, took the search after 
 a reformed style of English poetry in earnest. He made 
 'xperiments in many kinds and various metres, which are 
 now preserved to us embedded in the text of his Arcadia. 
 Those poems form the most solid residuum from the exer- 
 4* F
 
 74 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 cises of the Areopagus. They are not very valuable ; but 
 they are interesting as showing what the literary temper 
 of England was, before the publication of the Faery Queen 
 and the overwhelming series of the romantic dramas de- 
 cided the fate of English poetry. Like Gorboduc and 
 other tragedies in the manner of Seneca, these " reformed 
 verses " were doomed to be annihilated by the strong blast 
 of the national genius. But they have their importance 
 for the student of crepuscular intervals between the dark- 
 ness and the day-spring ; and it must not be forgotten that 
 their author did not intend them for the public eye. While 
 studying and using these verses as documents for the elu- 
 cidation of literary evolution, let us therefore bear in mind 
 that we are guilty of an indiscretion, and are prying on 
 the privacy of a gentleman who never sought the suffrage 
 of the vulgar. 
 
 It was at Wilton, then, in 1580, that Sidney began the 
 Arcadia in compliance with his sister's request. The dedi- 
 catory epistle teaches us in what spirit we ought to ap- 
 proach the pages which he left unfinished, and which were 
 given to the press after his decease : 
 
 "Here now have you, most dear, and most worthy to be most dear 
 lady, this idle work of mine ; which, I fear, like the spider's web, will 
 be thought fitter to be swept away than worn to any other purpose. 
 For my part, in very truth, as the cruel fathers among the Greeks 
 were wont to do to the babes they would not foster, I could well find 
 it in my heart to cast out in some desert of forgetfulness this child 
 which I am loath to father. But you desired me to do it, and your 
 desire to my heart is an absolute commandment. Now it is done 
 only for you, only to you. If you keep it to yourself, or to such 
 friends who will weigh error in the balance of good-will, I hope for 
 the father's sake it will be pardoned, perchance made much of, though 
 in itself it have deformities. For, indeed, for severer eyes it is not, 
 being a trifle, and that trifliugly handled."
 
 IT.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 75 
 
 These words were doubtless penned long after the first 
 sheets of the Arcadia. That they were sincere is proved 
 by Sidney's dying request to have the manuscript de- 
 stroyed. He goes on to say that "his chief safety shall 
 be the not walking abroad ; and his chief protection the 
 using of your name, which, if much good-will do not de- 
 ceive me, is worthy to be a sanctuary for a greater offend- 
 er." We have, therefore, the strongest possible security 
 that this famous Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, this " charm 
 of ages," as Young pompously calls it, which passed through 
 seventeen editions before 1674, was intended by its author 
 only for his sister and a friendly circle. Yet, though we 
 must approach it now like eavesdroppers, we may read in 
 it, better perhaps than elsewhere, those tendencies of Eng- 
 lish literature which were swallowed up and trampled over 
 by the legionaries of the great dramatic epoch. 
 
 It is not improbable that Lyly's Euphues, which first 
 saw the light in 1579, suggested to Sidney the notion of 
 writing a romance in a somewhat similar style. He did 
 not, however, catch the infection of Lyly's manner; and 
 the Arcadia, unlike Euphues, has no direct didactic pur- 
 pose. Critics, soon after its appearance, imagined that they 
 could discern in its structure hidden references to the main 
 events of the age. But this may be considered a delusion, 
 based upon the prevalent tendency to seek allegories in 
 works of art and fancy the tendency to which Tasso 
 bowed whe.n he supplied a key to the moralities of the 
 Gerusalemme, and which induced Spenser to read esoteric 
 meanings into the Orlando Furioso. Sidney had clearly 
 in mind the Arcadia of Sannazzaro ; he also owed much 
 to Montemayor's Diana and the Greek romantic novelists. 
 The style at first is noticeably Italian, as will appear from 
 certain passages I mean to quote. After a while it be-
 
 76 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 comes less idyllic and ornate, and at last it merges into ra- 
 pidity of narration. To sustain the manner of the earlier 
 pages, which remind us of Boccaccio and Sannazzaro, 
 throughout the labyrinthine intricacies of the fable, would 
 have been tedious. Perhaps, too, we may connect the al- 
 teration of literary tone with Sidney's departure from 
 Wilton to the Court. 
 
 I shall not attempt a complete analysis of the Arcadia. 
 The main story is comparatively slender ; but it is so com- 
 plicated by digressions and episodes that a full account of 
 the tangled plot would take up too much space, and would 
 undoubtedly prove wearisome to modern readers. Horace 
 Walpole was not far wrong when he asserted that "the 
 patience of a young virgin in love cannot now wade 
 through " that jungle of pastoral, sentimental, and heroical 
 adventures. A brief outline of the tale, together with some 
 specimens of Sidney's descriptive and sententious styles, 
 must, however, here be given, since it is not very likely 
 that any readers of my book will be impelled to turn the 
 pages of the original. 
 
 Musidorus, Prince of Thessalia, and Pyrocles, Prince of 
 Macedon, were cousins. An affection, such as bound the 
 knights of elder Greek romance together, united them even 
 more than the nearness of their blood. Pyrocles, being the 
 elder, taught his friend all that he knew of good, and brave, 
 and gracious. Musidorus learned willingly ; and thus the 
 pair grew up to manhood in perfect love, twin flowers of 
 gentleness and chivalry. When the story opens the two 
 heroes have just been wrecked on the Laconian coast. A 
 couple of shepherds, Claius and Strephon, happened to be 
 pacing the sea-shore at that moment. They noticed a young 
 man floating on a coffer, which the waves washed gradually 
 landward. He was " of so goodly shape and well-pleasing
 
 iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 77 
 
 favour that one would think death had in him a lovely 
 countenance ; and that, though he were naked, nakedness 
 was to him an apparel." This youth proved to be Musi- 
 dorus. Pyrocles meanwhile remained upon the wreck; 
 and, while the shepherds were in the act to rescue him, he 
 was carried off by pirates under the eyes of his sorrowing 
 comrade. There was nothing for it but to leave him to 
 his fate ; and Musidorus, after a moment of wild despair, 
 yielded to the exhortations of the good shepherds, who 
 persuaded him to journey with them to the house of a 
 just and noble gentleman named Kalander. The way 
 was long; but, after two days' march, it brought them 
 to Arcadia. The description of that land is justly cele- 
 brated. 
 
 " The third day after, in the time that the morning did strew roses 
 and violets in the heavenly floor, against the coming of the sun, the 
 nightingales (striving one with the other which could in most dainty 
 variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow) made them put off their 
 sleep ; and rising from under a tree (which that night had been their 
 pavilion), they went on their journey, which by-and-by welcomed Mu- 
 sidorus's eyes (wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia) with delight- 
 ful prospects. There were hills which garnished their proud heights 
 with stately trees : humble vallies, whose base estate seemed comfort- 
 ed with the refreshing of silver rivers : meadows enamelled with all 
 sorts of eye-pleasing flowers ; thickets, which being lined with most 
 pleasant shade were witnessed so too by the cheerful disposition of 
 many well-tuned birds ; each pasture stored with' sheep, feeding with 
 sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating outcry craved the 
 dam's comfort : here a shepherd's boy piping, as though he should 
 never be old : there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal sing- 
 ing ; and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and 
 her hands kept time to her voice-music. As for the houses of the 
 country (for many houses came under their eye), they were all scat- 
 tered, no two being one by the other, and yet not so far off as that it 
 barred mutual succour ; a show, as it were, of an accompanable soli- 
 tariness and of a civil wildness."
 
 78 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 In due course of time they arrived at the house of Ka- 
 lander, where Musidorus was hospitably received. 
 
 " The house itself was built of fair and strong stone, not affecting 
 so much any extraordinary kind of fineness as an honourable repre- 
 senting of a firm stateliness." " The servants not so many in number 
 as cleanly in apparel and serviceable in behaviour, testifying even in 
 their countenances that their master took as well care to be served as 
 of them that did serve." 
 
 Perhaps Sidney, when he penned these sentences, thought 
 of Penshurst. At any rate they remind us of Jonson's 
 lines upon that venerable country seat. The pleasance, also, 
 had the same charm of homeliness and ancient peace : 
 
 " The backside of the house was neither field, garden, nor orchard ; 
 or rather it was both field, garden, and orchard : for as soon as the 
 descending of the stairs had delivered them down, they came into a 
 place cunningly set with trees of the most taste-pleasing fruits : but 
 scarcely had they taken that into their consideration, but that they 
 were suddenly stepped into a delicate green ; of each side of the green 
 a thicket, and behind the thickets again new beds of flowers, which 
 being under the trees, the trees were to them a pavilion, and they to 
 the trees a mosaical floor, so that it seemed that art therein would 
 needs be delightful by counterfeiting his enemy error and making or- 
 der in confusion." 
 
 Here Musidorus sojourned some while, until he happened 
 to hear that his host's son, Clitophon, had been taken pris- 
 oner by the Helots, who were now in revolt against their 
 Laconian masters. Musidorus begged permission to go to 
 the young man's rescue ; and when he reached the rebels, 
 he entered their walled city by a stratagem and began a 
 deadly battle in the market-place. The engagement at first 
 was general between the Helots and the Arcadians, but at 
 length it resolved itself into a single combat, Musidorus at- 
 tacking the leader of the Helots with all his might. This
 
 iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 79 
 
 duel remained for some time equal and uncertain, when 
 suddenly the brigand chief threw down his sword, exclaim- 
 ing, " What ! hath Palladius forgotten the voice of Dai- 
 phantus ?" It should here be said that Pyrocles and Musi- 
 dorus had agreed to call each other by these assumed names. 
 A joyful recognition of course ensued. Pyrocles related 
 the series of events by which he had been forced to head 
 the rebels, after being captured by them. Clitophon was 
 released, and all returned together to Arcadia. 
 
 At this point the love intrigue, which forms the main 
 interest of what Milton called " the vain amatorious poem 
 of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia" begins to unfold itself. 
 An eccentric sovereign, Basilius, Prince of Arcadia, was 
 married to an accomplished and beautiful woman, Gynecia. 
 They had two daughters, Pamela the elder, and Philoclea 
 the younger, equally matched in loveliness of mind and 
 person, yet differing by subtle contrasts of their incompa- 
 rable qualities. Basilius, in a fit of jealousy and suspicion, 
 had left his palace, and was now residing with his wife 
 and daughters in two rustic lodges, deep-embowered by the 
 forest. Gynecia, Philoclea, and himself occupied one of 
 these retreats. Pamela dwelt in the other, under the care 
 of a clownish peasant family, consisting of Dametas, his 
 hideous wife Miso, and their still more odious daughter 
 Mopsa. It need not be related how Musidorus fell in love 
 with Pamela and Pyrocles with Philoclea. In order to be 
 near the ladies of their choice, the princes now assumed 
 new names and strange disguises. Pyrocles donned Ama- 
 zon's attire and called himself Zelmane. Musidorus became 
 a shepherd and was known as Dorus. Both contrived to 
 win the affections of the princesses, but meanwhile they 
 got entangled in embarrassing and dangerous complications. 
 Dorus had to feign love for the disgusting Mopsa. Zel-
 
 80 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 mane was persecuted by the passion of both Basilius and 
 Gynecia ; Basilius deeming him a woman, Gynecia recog- 
 nising a man through his disguise. When Milton con- 
 demned the Arcadia as " a book in that kind full of mirth 
 and witty, but among religious thoughts and duties not 
 worthy to be named, nor to be read at any time without 
 due caution," he was assuredly justified by the unpleasant 
 situation created for Zelmane. A young man, travestied 
 as a girl, in love with a princess, and at the same time har- 
 assed by the wanton solicitations of both her father and 
 her mother, is, to say the least, a very risky subject for ro- 
 mance. Yet Sidney treated it with sufficient delicacy, and 
 contrived in the end to bring both Basilius and Gynecia to 
 their senses. " Loathsomely loved and dangerously loving," 
 Zelmane remained long in this entanglement ; but when he 
 and Philoclea eventually attained their felicity in marriage, 
 both of them concealed Gynecia's error. And she "did, 
 in the remnant of her life, duly purchase [their good opin- 
 ion] with observing all duty and faith, to the example and 
 glory of Greece ; so uncertain are mortal judgments, the 
 same person most infamous and most famous, and neither 
 justly." 
 
 I have dwelt on this part of the story because it antici- 
 pates the plots of many Elizabethan dramas which turned 
 upon confusions of sex, and to which the custom of boys 
 acting female parts lent a curious complexity. If space 
 allowed I might also follow the more comic fortunes of 
 Dorus, and show how the tale of Amphialus (another lover 
 of Philoclea) is interwoven with that of Pyrocles and Musi- 
 dorus. This subordinate romance introduces one of the 
 longest episodes of the work, when Cecropia, the wicked 
 mother of Amphialus, imprisons Zelmane, Philoclea, and 
 Pamela together in her castle. It is during this imprison-
 
 iv.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND "THE ARCADIA." 81 
 
 ment that Pamela utters the prayer made famous by the 
 fact that Charles I. is supposed to have used it just before 
 his execution. I will quote it here at length, both for its 
 beauty of style and for the sake of this historical associa- 
 tion : 
 
 " All-seeing Light and Eternal Life of all things, to whom noth- 
 ing is either so great that it may resist, or so small that it is con- 
 temned ; look upon my misery with Thine eye of mercy, and let Thine 
 infinite power vouchsafe to limit out some proportion of deliverance 
 unto me, as to Thee shall seem most convenient. Let not injury, 
 Lord, triumph over me, and let my faults by Thy hand be corrected, 
 and make not mine unjust enemy the minister of Thy justice. But 
 yet, my God, if, in Thy wisdom, this be the aptest chastisement for 
 my inexcusable folly, if this low bondage be fitted for my over high 
 desires, if the pride of my not enough humble heart be thus to be 
 broken, Lord, I yield unto Thy will, and joyfully embrace what sor- 
 row Thou wilt have me suffer. Only thus much let me crave of Thee : 
 let my craving, Lord, be accepted of Thee, since even that proceeds 
 from Thee ; let me crave, even by the noblest title which in my great- 
 est affliction I may give myself, that I am Thy creature, and by Thy 
 goodness, which is Thyself, that Thou wilt suffer some beam of Thy 
 majesty so to shine into my mind that it may still depend confidently 
 on Thee. Let calamity be the exercise, but not the overthrow of my 
 virtue ; let their power prevail, but prevail not to destruction. Let 
 my greatness be their prey; let my pain be the sweetness of their re- 
 venge ; let them, if so it seem good unto Thee, vex me with more and 
 more punishment ; but, Lord, let never their wickedness have such 
 a hand but that I may carry a pure mind in a pure body." 
 
 Among the papers given to Bishop Juxon by Charles 
 upon the scaffold was this prayer, slightly altered in some 
 particulars. His enemies made it a cause of reproach 
 against him, especially Milton, in a memorable passage of 
 " Iconoclastes," from which I have already quoted certain 
 phrases. " Who would have imagined," writes the Latin 
 secretary, " so little fear in him of the true all-seeing Deity,
 
 82 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 so little reverence of the Holy Ghost, whose office it is to 
 dictate and present our Christian prayers, so little care of 
 truth in his last words, or honour to himself or to his friends, 
 or sense of his afflictions, or that sad hour which was upon 
 him, as immediately before his death to pop into the hand 
 of that grave bishop who attended him, as a special relique 
 of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from 
 the mouth of a heathen woman praying to a heathen god ; 
 and that in no serious book, but in the vain amatorious 
 poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia ?" Charles' defenders 
 pointed out that the papers given to Juxon had been seized 
 by the regicides, and accused them of foisting this prayer 
 in on purpose to have the opportunity of traducing their 
 victim to Puritan England. It is also noticeable that it 
 does not appear in the first edition of Eikon Basilike, nor 
 in Dr. Earl's Latin version of that book. However the case 
 may be, Dr. Johnson showed good sense when he wrote? 
 " The use of it (the prayer) by adaptation was innocent ; and 
 they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension 
 of their malice could contrive what they wanted to ac- 
 cuse." 
 
 Pamela's prayer has led me so far away from the intri- 
 cacies of Sidney's Arcadia that I shall not return to fur- 
 ther analyses of the fable. The chief merits of the book, 
 as a whole, seem to be an almost inexhaustible variety of 
 incidents, fairly correct character-drawing, purity of feeling, 
 abundance of sententious maxims, and great richness of 
 colouring in the descriptive passages. Its immense popu- 
 larity may be ascribed to the fact that nothing exactly like 
 it had appeared in English literature ; for Euphues is by 
 no means so romantically interesting or so varied in mate- 
 rial, while the novels of Greene are both shorter and more 
 monotonous. The chivalrous or heroic incidents are so
 
 IT.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND " THE ARCADIA." 83 
 
 well combined with the sentimental, and these again are so 
 prettily set against the pastoral background, that, given an 
 appetite for romance of the kind, each reader found some- 
 thing to stimulate his curiosity and to provide him with 
 amusement. The defects of the Arcadia are apparent ; as, 
 for instance, its lack of humour, the extravagance of many 
 of its situations, the whimsicality of its conceits, and the 
 want of solid human realism in its portraits. These defects 
 were, however, no bar to its popularity in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury ; nor would they count as such at present were it not, 
 as Dr. Zouch pertinently remarks, that " the taste, the man- 
 ners, the opinions, the language of the English nation, have 
 undergone a very great revolution since the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth." Such a revolution condemns all works which 
 fascinated a bygone age, and which are not kept alive by 
 humour and by solid human realism, to ever-gradually-deep- 
 ening oblivion. 
 
 Before concluding this chapter there is another point of 
 view under which the Arcadia must be considered. Sidney 
 interspersed its prose with verses, after the model of Sannaz- 
 zaro's pastoral, sometimes introducing them as occasion 
 suggested into the mouths of his chief personages, and 
 sometimes making them the subject of poetical disputes 
 between the shepherds of the happy country. Some of 
 these poems are among the best which he composed. I 
 would cite in particular the beautiful sonnet which begins 
 and ends with this line : " My true love hath my heart, and 
 I have his ; " and another opening with " Beauty hath 
 force to catch the human sight." But what gives special 
 interest to the verses scattered over the pages of Arcadia 
 is that in a large majority of them Sidney put in practice 
 the theories of the Areopagus. Thus we have English 
 hexameters, elegiacs, sapphics, phaleuciacs or hendecasylla-
 
 84 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 bles, asclepiads, and anacreontics. I will present some 
 specimens of each. Here then are hexameters : 
 
 " Lady reserved by the heavens to do pastors' company honour, 
 Joining your sweet voice to the rural muse of a desert, 
 Here you fully do find thia strange operation of love, 
 How to the woods love runs as well as rides to the palace ; 
 Neither he bears reverence to a prince nor pity to beggar, 
 But (like a point in midst of a circle) is still of a nearness. 
 All to a lesson he draws, neither hills nor caves can avoid him." 
 
 One elegiac couplet will suffice : 
 
 " Fortune, Nature, Love, long have contended about me, 
 Which should most miseries cast on a worm that I am." 
 
 Nor will it be needful to quote more than one sapphic 
 stanza : 
 
 " If mine eyes can speak to do hearty errand, 
 Or mine eyes' language she do hap to judge of, 
 So that eyes' message be of her received, 
 Hope, we do live yet." 
 
 The hendecasyllables, though comparatively easy to write 
 in English, hobble in a very painful manner, as thus : 
 
 " Reason, tell me thy mind, if here be reason, 
 In this strange violence to make resistance, 
 Where sweet graces erect the stately banner 
 Of virtue's regiment, shining in harness." 
 
 So do the asclepiads, which, however, are by no means so 
 easy of execution : 
 
 " sweet woods, the delight of solitariness ! 
 how much I do like your solitariness ! 
 Where man's mind hath a freed consideration 
 Of goodness to receive lovely direction ; 
 Where senses do behold the order of heavenly host, 
 And wise thoughts do behold what the Creator is."
 
 IT.] THE FRENCH MATCH AND " THE ARCADIA." 85 
 
 The anacreontics, being an iambic measure, come off 
 somewhat better, as may be judged by this transcript from 
 a famous fragment of Sappho : 
 
 " My Muse, what ails this ardour ? 
 Mine eyes be dim, my limbs shake, 
 My voice is hoarse, my throat scorched, 
 My tongue to this my roof cleaves, 
 My fancy amazed, my thoughts dulled, 
 My heart doth ache, my life faints, 
 My soul begins to take leave." 
 
 It is obvious from these quotations that what the school 
 called " our rude and beggarly rhyming " is not only more 
 natural, but also more artistic than their " reformed verse." 
 Indeed, it may be said without reserve that Sidney's ex- 
 periments in classical metres have no poetical value what- 
 soever. They are only interesting as survivals from an 
 epoch when the hexameter seemed to have an equal chance 
 of survival with the decasyllabic unrhymed iambic. The 
 same is true about many of Sidney's attempts to acclima- 
 tise Italian forms of verse. Thus we find embedded in the 
 Arcadia terza rima and ottava rima, sestines and madrigals, 
 a canzone in which the end of each line rhymes with a 
 syllable in the middle of the next. So conscientious was 
 he in the attempt to reproduce the most difficult Italian 
 metres that he even attempted terza rima with sdrucciolo 
 or trisyllabic rhymes. I will select an example : 
 
 " If sunny beams shame heavenly habitation, 
 If three-leaved grass seem to the sheep unsavory, 
 Then base and sore is Love's most high vocation. 
 Or if sheep's cries can help the sun's own bravery, 
 Then may I hope my pipe may have ability 
 To help her praise who decks me in her slavery." 
 
 But enough of this. It has proved a difficult task to in-
 
 86 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. IT. 
 
 troduce terza rima at all into English literature; to make 
 so exceptionally exacting a species of it as the sdrucciolo 
 at all attractive, would almost be beyond the powers of Mr. 
 Swinburne. The octave, as handled by Sidney, is passable, 
 as will appear from the even flow of this stanza : 
 
 " While thus they ran a low but levelled race, 
 While thus they lived (this was indeed a life !) 
 With nature pleased, content with present case, 
 Free of proud fears, brave beggary, smiting strife 
 Of clime-f^ll court, the envy-hatching place, 
 While those restless desires in great men rife 
 To visit folks so low did much disdain, 
 This while, though poor, they in themselves did reign." 
 
 Of the sestines I will not speak. That form has always 
 seemed to me tedious even in the hands of the most ex- 
 pert Italian masters ; and Sidney was not the sort of poet 
 to add grace to its formality by any sprightliness of treat- 
 ment. It should be noticed that some of the songs in the 
 Arcadia are put into the mouth of a sad shepherd who is 
 Sidney himself. Phillisides (for so he has chosen to Latin- 
 ise the first syllables of his Christian and surnames) ap- 
 pears late in the romance, and prepares us to expect the 
 higher poetry of Astrophel and Stella.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LIFE AT COUKT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 WHILE Philip was in retirement at Wilton two events of 
 interest happened. His nephew, William Herbert, saw the 
 light upon the 28th of April ; and Edmund Spenser left 
 England for Ireland as secretary to the new Viceroy, Lord 
 Grey of Wilton. The birth of the future Earl of Pem- 
 broke forcibly reminds us of Sidney's position in the his- 
 tory of English literature. This baby in the cradle was 
 destined to be Shakespeare's friend and patron ; possibly 
 also to inspire the sonnets which a publisher inscribed in 
 Shakespeare's name to Master W. H. We are wont to re- 
 gard those enigmatical compositions as the product of 
 Shakespeare's still uncertain manhood. But William Her- 
 bert was yet a child when his uncle Philip's life-work end- 
 ed. Astrophel and Stella had circulated among its au- 
 thor's private friends for at least four years when Zutphen 
 robbed England of her poet-hero. At that date little Her- 
 bert, for whom Shakespeare subsequently wrote the lines 
 
 " Take all my lovea, my love, yea, take them all ; 
 What hast thou then more than thou hadst before ?" 
 
 this little Herbert was but in his seventh year. 
 
 It is also possible, but not probable, that, while Philip 
 
 was away in Wiltshire, his half-affianced bride, the daugh- 
 38
 
 88 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 ter of the Earl of Essex, gave her hand to another suitor. 
 Her guardian, the Earl of Huntingdon, wrote upon the 10th 
 of March, in 1580, to Lord Burleigh, that he considered 
 Lord Rich " a proper gentleman, and one in years very fit 
 for my Lady Penelope Devereux, if, with the favour and 
 liking of her Majesty, the matter might be brought to 
 pass." Lord Rich certainly married Penelope Devereux ; 
 but whether it was in 1580, or rather in 1581, admits of 
 discussion. To fix the exact date of her betrothal is a 
 matter of some moment. I must therefore point out that, 
 at that time in England, the commencement of the year 
 dated officially from March 25. In private correspond- 
 ence, however, the 1st of January had already begun to 
 mark the opening of a new year. Privately, then, Lord 
 Huntingdon's letter may have carried the date, 1580, as we 
 understand it ; but, officially, it must have been reckoned 
 into the year which we call 1581. Now this letter is en- 
 dorsed by Burleigh or his secretary, officially, under the 
 year 1580; and, therefore, we have a strong presumption 
 in favour of Penelope's not having been engaged to Lord 
 Rich until 1581, seeing that the month of March in 1580 
 counted then for our month of March in 1581. When I 
 review Astrophel and Stella it will appear that I do not at- 
 tach very great importance to this question of dates. But 
 I think it safer, on the evidence, to place Stella's marriage 
 in the spring or summer of 1581. 
 
 Lord Rich was the son of the Lord Chancellor of Eng- 
 land, who had lately died, bequeathing to his heir a very 
 substantial estate, and a large portion of his own coarse 
 temperament. If we may trust the Earl of Devonshire's 
 emphatic statement, made some twenty-five years later to 
 King James, this marriage was not to the mind of the 
 lady. He says that Penelope, " being in the power of her
 
 v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 89 
 
 friends, was married against her will unto one against 
 whom she did protest at the solemnity and ever after ; be- 
 tween whom, from the very first day, there ensued con- 
 tinual discord, although the same fears that forced her to 
 marry constrained her to live with him." I may here re- 
 mind my readers of her subsequent history. During her 
 husband's lifetime she left him and became the mistress of 
 Sir Charles Blount, to whom she bore three children out 
 of wedlock. He advanced to the peerage with the in- 
 herited title of Lord Mountjoy, and was later on created 
 Earl of Devonshire ; while Lady Rich, in spite of her 
 questionable conduct, received, by patent, the dignity and 
 precedence of the most ancient Earldom of Essex. Hav- 
 ing been divorced from Lord Rich, she was afterwards at 
 liberty to marry her lover; and in 1605 she became the 
 Countess of Devonshire. James refused to countenance 
 the nuptials. He had tolerated the previous illicit connec- 
 tion. But his opinions upon divorce made him regard its 
 legalisation with indignant horror. Stella died in 1607 a 
 disgraced woman, her rights of wifehood and widowhood 
 remaining unrecognised. 
 
 In the course of the summer (1580), Leicester left his 
 retirement and returned to Court. It was understood that 
 though still not liking the French match, he would in fut- 
 ure offer no opposition to the queen's wishes ; and on these 
 terms he induced Philip also to make his peace with her 
 Majesty. We find him, accordingly, again in London be- 
 fore the autumn. Two of the longest private letters from 
 his pen may be referred to this period. They are address- 
 ed to his brother Robert Sidney, who afterwards became 
 Lord Leicester. This young man was then upon his trav- 
 els, spending more money than his father's distressed cir- 
 cumstances could well afford. Philip sent him supplies, 
 5 G
 
 90 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 using language of great delicacy and warm brotherly affec- 
 tion : " For the money you have received, assure yourself 
 (for it is true) there is nothing I spend so pleaseth me, as 
 that which is for you. If ever I have ability, you will find 
 it ; if not, yet shall not any brother living be better beloved 
 than you of me." " For 200 a year, assure yourself, if 
 the estates of England remain, you shall not fail of it; 
 use it to your best profit." Where Philip found the 
 money may be wondered ; but that he gave it with good 
 grace is unquestionable. Probably he received more from 
 the queen in allowances than we are aware of; for he 
 ranked among the favoured courtiers then known as " pen- 
 sioners." As was the fashion of those times, he lectured 
 his brother somewhat pompously on how to use the op- 
 portunities of the grand tour. Robert was constantly to 
 observe the " virtue, passion, and vices " of the foreign 
 countries through which he travelled. 
 
 " Even in the Kingdom of China, which is almost as far as the 
 Antipodes from us, their good laws and customs are to be learned ; 
 but to know their riches and power is of little purpose for us, since 
 that can neither advance nor hinder us. But in our neighbouring 
 countries, both these things are to be marked, as well the latter, 
 which contain things for themselves, as the former, which seek to 
 know both those, and how their riches and power may be to us avail- 
 able, or otherwise. The countries fittest for both these are those you 
 are going into. France is above all other most needful for us to 
 mark, especially in the former kind ; next is Spain and the Low 
 Countries ; then Germany, which in my opinion excels all others as 
 much in the latter consideration, as the other doth in the former, yet 
 neither are void of neither ; for as Germany, methinks, doth excel in 
 good laws, and well administering of justice, so are we likewise to 
 consider in it the many princes with whom we may have league, the 
 places of trade, and means to draw both soldiers and furniture thence 
 in time of need. So on the other side, as in France and Spain, we are 
 principally to mark how they stand towards us both in power and in-
 
 V.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 91 
 
 elination ; so are they not without good and fitting use, even in the 
 generality of wisdom to be known. As in France, the courts of par- 
 liament, their subaltern jurisdiction, and their continual keeping of 
 paid soldiers. In Spain, their good and grave proceedings ; their 
 keeping so many provinces under them, and by what manner, with 
 the true points of honour ; wherein since they have the most open 
 conceit, if they seem over curious, it is an easy matter to cut off when 
 a man sees the bottom. Flanders likewise, besides the neighbourhood 
 with us, and the annexed considerations thereunto, hath divers things 
 to be learned, especially their governing their merchants and other 
 trades. Also for Italy, we knew not what we have, or can have, to 
 do with them, but to buy their silks and wines ; and as for the other 
 point, except Venice, whose good laws and customs we can hardly 
 proportion to ourselves, because they are quite of a contrary gov- 
 ernment ; there is little there but tyrannous oppression, and ser- 
 vile yielding to them that have little or no right over them. And 
 for the men you shall have there, although indeed some be excel- 
 lently learned, yet are they all given to counterfeit learning, as a 
 man shall learn among them more false grounds of things than in 
 any place else that I know ; for from a tapster upwards, they are all 
 discoursers in certain matters and qualities, as horsemanship, weap- 
 ons, painting, and such are better there than in other countries ; but 
 for other matters, as well, if not better, you shall have them in near- 
 er places." 
 
 The second of the two epistles (dated from Leicester 
 House, Oct. 18, 1580) contains more personal matter. 
 " Look to your diet, sweet Robin," he says, " and hold up 
 your heart in courage and virtue ; truly great part of my 
 comfort is in you." And again : " Now, sweet brother, take 
 a delight to keep and increase your music ; you will not 
 believe what a want I find of it in my melancholy times." 
 It appears, then, that Philip, unlike many gentlemen of 
 that age, could not touch the lute or teach the " saucy 
 jacks" of the virginal to leap in measure. Then follows 
 another bit of playful exhortation : " I would by the way 
 your worship would learn a better hand ; you write worse
 
 92 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 than I, and I write evil enough ; once again have a care of 
 your diet, and consequently of your complexion ; remem- 
 ber Gratior est veniens in pulchro corpore virtus." 11 If Ben 
 Jonson was right in what he said of Philip's complexion, 
 this advice had its ground in tiresome experience. On the 
 subject of manly exercises he has also much to say : " At 
 horsemanship, when you exercise it, read Orison Claudio, 
 and a book that is called La Gloria del Cavallo, withal 
 that you may join the thorough contemplation of it with 
 the exercise ; and so shall you profit more in a month than 
 others in a year ; and mark the biting, saddling, and cur- 
 ing of horses." 
 
 "When you play at weapons, I would have you get thick caps 
 and brasers, and play out your play lustily, for indeed ticks and dal- 
 liances are nothing in earnest, for the time of the one and the other 
 greatly differs ; and use as well the blow as the thrust; it is good 
 in itself, and besides exerciseth your breath and strength, and will 
 make you a strong man at the tourney and barriers. First, in any 
 case practise the single sword, and then with the dagger ; let no day 
 pass without an hour or two such exercise ; the rest study, or confer 
 diligently, and so shall you come home to my comfort and credit." 
 
 Studies come in for their due share of attention. " Take 
 delight likewise in the mathematicals ; Mr. Savile is excel- 
 lent in them. I think you understand the sphere ; if you 
 do, I care little for any more astronomy in you. Arithme- 
 tic and geometry I would wish you were well seen in, so as 
 both in matters of number and measure you might have a 
 feeling and active judgment. I would you did bear the 
 mechanical instruments, wherein the Dutch excel." It may 
 be said with reference to this paragraph that Mr. Savile 
 was Robert Sidney's travelling governor. The sphere rep- 
 resented medieval astronomy. Based upon the traditional 
 interpretation of the Ptolemaic doctrine, it lent itself to
 
 V.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 93 
 
 theoretical disquisitions upon cosmology in general, as well 
 as to abstruse speculations regarding the locality of para- 
 dise and heaven, the elements, and superhuman existences. 
 On the point of style Philip observes : " So you can speak 
 and write Latin, not barbarously, I never require great study 
 in Ciceronianism, the chief abuse of Oxford, qui dum verba 
 sectantur res ipsas negligunt" History being Robert Sid- 
 ney's favourite study, his brother discourses on it more at 
 large. 
 
 I have quoted thus liberally from Philip's letters to Rob- 
 ert Sidney, because of the agreeable light they cast upon 
 his character. It is clear they were not penned for perusal 
 by the public. " My eyes are almost closed up, overwatched 
 with tedious business," says the writer ; and his last words 
 are, " Lord ! how I have babbled." Yet, though hastily 
 put together, and somewhat incoherently expressed, the 
 thoughts are of excellent pith ; and one passage upon his- 
 tory, in particular, reads like a rough sketch for part of the 
 " Defence of Poesy." 
 
 After weighing the unaffected words of brotherly coun- 
 sel and of affectionate interest which Philip sent across 
 the sea to Robert, we are prepared for Sir Henry Sidney's 
 warm panegyric of his first-born to his second son. He 
 had indeed good hopes of Robert; but he built more on 
 Philip, as appears from the following sentence in a letter 
 to Sir Francis Walsingham : " I having three sons, one of 
 excellent good proof, the second of great good proof, and 
 the third not to be despaired of, but very well to be liked." 
 Therefore he frequently exhorted Robert to imitate the 
 qualities of his " best brother." " Perge, perge, my Robin, 
 in the filial fear of God, and in the meanest imagination of 
 yourself, and to the loving direction of your most loving 
 brother. Imitate his virtues, exercises, studies, and actions.
 
 94 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 He is the rare ornament of this age, the very formular that 
 all well disposed young gentlemen of our Court do form 
 also their manners and life by. In truth I speak it with- 
 out flattery of him or of myself; he hath the most rare 
 virtues that ever I found in any man. Once again I say 
 imitate him." And once more, at a later date : " Follow 
 your discreet and virtuous brother's rule, who with great 
 discretion, to his great commendation, won love, and could 
 variously ply ceremony with ceremony." 
 
 The last extant letter of Languet to Philip was written 
 in October of this year. The old man congratulates his 
 friend upon returning to the Court ; but he adds a solemn 
 warning against its idleness and dissipations. Familiarity 
 with English affairs confirmed his bad opinion of Eliza- 
 beth's Court circle. He saw that she was arbitrary in her 
 distribution of wealth and honours ; he feared lest Philip's 
 merits should be ignored, while some more worthless fa- 
 vourite was being pampered. Once he had hoped that 
 his service of the queen would speedily advance him to 
 employment in public affairs. Now he recognised the pos- 
 sibility of that young hopeful life being wasted upon for- 
 malities and pastimes; and for England he prophesied a 
 coming time of factions, complicated by serious foreign 
 troubles. It is the letter of a saddened man, slowly de- 
 clining towards the grave, amid forebodings which the im- 
 mediate future of Europe only too well justified. Languet 
 had now just eleven months more to live. He died in 
 September 1581 at Antwerp, nursed through his last ill- 
 ness by the wife of his noble friend Philip du Plessis Mor- 
 nay, and followed to the tomb by William, Prince of 
 Orange. Among the poems given to Phillisides in the Ar- 
 cadia is one which may perhaps have been written about 
 the time when Languet's death had brought to Philip's
 
 V.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 95 
 
 memory the debt of gratitude he owed this faithful coun- 
 sellor : 
 
 " The song I sang old Languet had me taught, 
 Languet the shepherd best swift Ister knew 
 For clerkly reed, and hating what is naught, 
 
 For faithful heart, clean hands, and mouth as true ; 
 With his sweet skill my skilless youth he drew 
 To have a feeling taste of Him that sits 
 Beyond the heaven, far more beyond our wits. 
 
 "He said the music best thilk powers pleased 
 
 Was sweet accord between our wit and will, 
 Where highest notes to godliness are raised, 
 And lowest sink not down to jot of ill ; 
 With old true tales he wont mine ears to fill, 
 How shepherds did of yore, how now they thrive, 
 Spoiling their flocks, or while 'twixt them they strive. 
 
 41 He liked me, but pitied lustful youth ; 
 
 His good strong staff my slippery years upbore ; 
 He still hoped well because I loved truth ; 
 Till forced to part, with heart and eyes even sore, 
 To worthy Corydon he gave me o'er." 
 
 On New Year's Day, 1581, Philip presented the queen 
 with a heart of gold, a chain of gold, and a whip with a 
 golden handle. These gifts symbolised his devotion to her, 
 and her right to chastise him. The year is marked in his 
 biography by his first entrance into Parliament, as knight 
 of the shire for Kent. He only sat two months ; but dur- 
 ing that short period he joined the committees appointed 
 to frame rules for enforcing laws against Catholics, and for 
 suppressing seditious practices by word or deed against hey 
 Majesty. The French match was still uppermost in Eliza- 
 beth's mind. She hankered after it; and some of the 
 wisest heads in Europe, among them William the Silent,
 
 96 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 approved of the project. Yet she was unable to decide. 
 The Duke of Anjou had raised questions as to the event 
 uality of England becoming dependent on the French 
 Crown ; which it might have been, if he had married the 
 Queen, and succeeded to his childless brother. This made 
 her pause and reflect. She was, moreover, debating the 
 scheme of an alliance with Henri III. against Spain. Be- 
 tween the two plans her mind wavered. As Walsingham 
 wrote to Burleigh: "When her Majesty is pressed to the 
 marriage, then she seemeth to effect a league ; and when 
 the league is yielded to, then she liketh better a marriage; 
 and when thereupon she is moved to assent to marriage, 
 then she hath recourse to the league ; and when the mo- 
 tion is for the league, or any request is made for money, 
 then her Majesty returneth to the marriage." 
 
 These hesitations seem to have been augmented by the 
 urgency of the French Court. On the 1 6th of April Fran- 
 cis of Bourbon arrived from Paris at the head of a mag- 
 nificent embassy, with the avowed object of settling pre- 
 liminaries. They were received with due honour by the 
 principal nobles of Elizabeth's Court, all open opposition 
 to the marriage having now been withdrawn by common 
 consent. Among the entertainments provided for the en- 
 voys during their sojourn in London, Philip played a con- 
 spicuous part. Together with the Earl of Arundel, Lord 
 Windsor, and Fulke Greville, he prepared a brilliant display 
 of chivalry. Calling themselves the Four Foster Children 
 of Desire, they pledged their word to attack and win, if 
 possible, by force of arms, the Fortress of Perfect Beauty. 
 This fort, which was understood to be the allegorical abode 
 of the queen, was erected in the Tilt Yard at Whitehall. 
 Seven times the number of the challengers, young gentle- 
 men of knightly prowess, offered themselves as defenders
 
 V.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 97 
 
 of the fortress ; and it was quite clear from the first how 
 the tournament would end. This foregone conclusion did 
 not, however, mar the sport ; and the compliment intended 
 to Elizabeth would have been spoiled, if the Foster Chil- 
 dren of Desire could have forced their way into her Castle 
 of Beauty. The assault upon the Fortress of Perfect Beau- 
 ty began on the 15th of May and was continued on the 
 16th, when the challengers acknowledged their defeat. 
 They submitted their capitulation to the queen, by the 
 mouth of a lad, attired in ash-coloured clothes, and bear- 
 ing an olive-branch. From the detailed accounts which 
 survive of the event, I will only transcribe what serves to 
 bring Philip Sidney and his train before us. The passage 
 describes his entrance on the first day of the lists : 
 
 " Then proceeded Master Philip Sidney in very sumptuous manner, 
 with armour, part blue and the rest gilt and engraven, with four 
 spare horses, having caparisons and furniture very rich and costly, 
 as some of cloth of gold embroidered with pearl, and some embroid- 
 ered with gold and silver feathers, very richly and cunningly wrought. 
 He had four pages that rode on his four spare horses, who had cas- 
 sock coats and Venetian hose, all of cloth of silver, laied with gold 
 lace, and hats of the same with gold bands and white feathers, and 
 each one a pair of white buskins. Then had he thirty gentlemen 
 and yeomen, and four trumpeters, who were all in cassock coats and 
 Venetian hose of yellow velvet laied with silver lace, yellow velvet 
 caps with silver bands and white feathers, and every one a pair of 
 white buskins ; and they had upon their coats a scroll or band of 
 silver, which came scarf-wise over the shoulder, and so down under 
 the arm, with this posy or sentence written upon it, both before and 
 behind : Sic nos rum nobis." 
 
 It behoves us not to ask, but we cannot help wondering, 
 where the money came from for this costly show. Proba- 
 bly Philip was getting into debt. His appeals to friends 
 with patronage at their disposal became urgent during the 
 5*
 
 98 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 ensuing months. Though he obtained no post which com- 
 bined public duties with pay, a sinecure worth 120 a year 
 was given him. It must be said to his credit that he did 
 not so much desire unearned money as some lucrative ap- 
 pointment, entailing labour and responsibility. This the 
 queen would not grant ; even an application made by him 
 so late as the summer of 1583, begging for employment 
 at the Ordnance under his uncle Warwick, was refused. 
 Meanwhile his European reputation brought invitations, 
 which prudence bade him reject. One of these arrived 
 from Don Antonio of Portugal, a bastard pretender to that 
 kingdom, calling upon Philip Sidney to join his forces. 
 The life at Court, onerous by reason of its expenditure, 
 tedious through indolence and hope deferred, sweetened 
 chiefly by the companionship of Greville and Dyer, wore 
 tiresomely on. And over all these months wavered the 
 fascinating vision of Stella, now a wife, to whom Phillisides 
 was paying ardent homage. It may well be called a dan- 
 gerous passage in his short life, the import of which we 
 shall have to fathom when we take up Astrophel and Stella 
 for perusal. Courtly monotony had its distractions. The 
 French match, for instance, afforded matter for curiosity 
 and mild excitement. This reached its climax when the 
 Duke of Anjou arrived in person. He came in November, 
 and stayed three months. When he left England in Feb- 
 ruary 1582, the world knew that this project of a marriage 
 for Elizabeth was at an end. Sidney, with the flower of 
 English aristocracy, attended the French prince to Antwerp. 
 There he was proclaimed Duke of Brabant, and welcomed 
 with shows of fantastic magnificence. We may dismiss 
 all further notice of him from the present work, with the 
 mention of his death in 1584. It happened on the first 
 of June, preceding the Prince of Orange's assassination by
 
 r.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 99 
 
 just one month. People thought that Anjou also had been 
 murdered. 
 
 The greater part of the year 1582 is a blank in Philip's 
 biography. We only know that he was frequently absent 
 from the Court, and in attendance on his father. Sir Hen- 
 ry Sidney's affairs were seriously involved. The Crown 
 refused him substantial aid, and kept him to his post at 
 Ludlow Castle. Yet, at the beginning of 1583, we find 
 Philip again in waiting on the queen ; presenting her with 
 a golden flower-pot, and receiving the gracious gift of a 
 lock of the royal virgin's hair. In January Prince Casimir 
 had to be installed Knight of the Garter. Philip was 
 chosen as his proxy, and obtained the honour of knighthood 
 for himself. Henceforward he takes rank as Sir Philip 
 Sidney of Penshurst. 
 
 Never thoroughly at ease in courtly idleness. Philip 
 formed the habit of turning his eyes westward, v .ross the 
 ocean, towards those new continents where <vealth and 
 boundless opportunities of action lay ready f< c adventurous 
 knights. Frobisher's supposed discovery of gold in 1577 
 drew an enthusiastic letter from him. In 1578 he was 
 meditating some "Indian project." In 1580 he wrote 
 wistfully to his brother Robert about Drake's return, "of 
 which yet I know not the secret points; but about the 
 world he hath been, and rich he is returned." In 1582 
 bis college friend, Richard Hakluyt, inscribed the first col- 
 lection of his Voyages with Sidney's name. All things 
 pointed in the direction of his quitting England for the 
 New World, if a suitable occasion should present itself, 
 and if the queen should grart him her consent. During 
 the spring of 1583 projects for colonisation, or plantation 
 as it then was termed, were afloat among the west country 
 gentlefolk. Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half -brother
 
 100 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Walter Raleigh, with Sir George Peckham and others, 
 thought of renewing the attempts they had already made 
 in 1578. Elizabeth in that year had signed her first char- 
 ter of lands to be explored beyond the seas, in favour of 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert ; and now she gave a second to Sir 
 Philip Sidney. It licensed and authorised him 
 
 " To discover, search, find out, view, and inhabit certain parts of 
 America not yet discovered, and out of those countries by him, his 
 heirs, factors, or assignees, to have and enjoy, to him, his heirs, and 
 assignees for ever, such and so much quantity of ground as shall 
 amount to the number of thirty hundred thousand acres of ground 
 and wood, with all commodities, jurisdictions, and royalties, both by 
 sea and land, with full power and authority that it should and might 
 be lawful for the said Sir Philip Sidney, his heirs and assignees, at 
 all times thereafter to have, take, and lead in the same voyage, to 
 travel thitherwards or to inhabit there with him or them, and every 
 or any of them, such and so many her Majesty's subjects as should 
 willingly accompany him and them and every or any of them, with 
 sufficient shipping and furniture for their transportation." 
 
 In other words, her Majesty granted to Sir Philip Sidney 
 the pretty little estate of three millions of acres in North 
 America. It is true that the land existed, so to say, in nu- 
 bibus, and was by no "means sure to prove an El Dorado. 
 It was far more sure that if the grantee got possession of 
 it, he would have to hold it by his own strength ; for Brit- 
 ain, at this epoch, was not pledged to support her colonies. 
 Yet considering the present value of the soil in Virginia 
 or New England, the mere fantastic row of seven figures 
 in American acres, so lightly signed away by her Majesty. 
 is enough to intoxicate the imagination. How Philip 
 managed to extort or wheedle this charter from Elizabeth 
 we have no means of knowing. She was exceedingly jeal- 
 ous of her courtiers, and would not willingly lose sight of
 
 T.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 101 
 
 them. When Philip two years later engaged himself in a 
 colonising expedition, we shall see that she positively for- 
 bade him to leave England. Now, however, it is probable 
 she knew that he could not take action on her gift. She 
 was merely bestowing an interest in speculations which 
 cost her nothing and might bring him profit. At any rate, 
 the matter took this turn. In July 1583 he executed a 
 deed relinquishing 30,000 acres, together with "all royal- 
 ties, titles, pre-eminences, privileges, liberties, and dignities," 
 which the queen's grant carried, to his friend Sir George 
 Peckham. 
 
 The reason of this act of resignation was that Philip 
 had pledged his hand in marriage to Frances, daughter of 
 Sir Francis Walsingham. So far back as December 1581 
 there are indications that his friendship with Walsingham 
 and his family was ripening into something more intimate. 
 We do not know the date of his marriage for certain ; but 
 it is probable that he was already a husband before the 
 month of July. 
 
 A long letter addressed in March 1583 by Sir Henry 
 Sidney to Walsingham must here be used, since it throws 
 the strongest light upon the circumstances of the Sid- 
 ney family, and illustrates Sir Henry's feeling with regard 
 to his son's marriage. The somewhat discontented tone 
 which marks its opening is, I think, rather apologetical 
 than regretful. Sir Henry felt that, on both sides, the 
 marriage was hardly a prudent one. He had expected 
 some substantial assistance from the Crown through Wal- 
 singham's mediation. This had not been granted ; and he 
 took the opportunity of again laying a succinct report of 
 his past services and present necessities before the secreta- 
 ry of state, in the hope that something might yet be done 
 to help him. The document opens as follows :
 
 102 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 " DEAR SIR I have understood of late that coldness is thought in 
 me in proceeding in the matter of marriage of our children. In 
 truth, sir, it is not so, nor so shall it ever be found ; for compremit- 
 ting the consideration of the articles to the Earls named by you, and 
 to the Earl of Huntingdon, I most willingly agree, and protest, and 
 joy in the alliance with all my heart. But since, by your letters of 
 the 3d of January, to my great discomfort I find there is no hope of 
 relief of her Majesty for my decayed estate in her Highness' service, 
 I am the more careful to keep myself able, by sale of part of that 
 which is left, to ransom me out of the servitude I live in for my 
 debts ; for as I know, sir, that it is the virtue which is, or that you 
 suppose is, in my son, that you made choice of him for your daugh- 
 ter, refusing haply far greater and far richer matches than he, so 
 was my confidence great that by your good means I might have ob- 
 tained some small reasonable suit of her Majesty ; and therefore I 
 nothing regarded any present gain, for if I had, I might have re- 
 ceived a great sum of money for my good will of my son's marriage, 
 greatly to the relief of my private biting necessity." 
 
 After this exordium, Sir Henry takes leave to review his 
 actions as Viceroy of Ireland and Governor of Wales, with 
 the view of showing how steadfastly he had served his 
 queen and how ill he had been recompensed. 
 
 " Three times her Majesty hath sent me her Deputy into Ireland, 
 and in every of the three times I sustained a great and a violent re- 
 bellion, every one of which I subdued, and (with honourable peace) 
 left the country in quiet. I returned from each of these three Depu- 
 tations three hundred pounds worse than I went." 
 
 It would be impertinent to the subject of this essay were 
 I to follow Sir Henry in the minute and interesting account 
 of his Irish administration. Suffice it to say that the let- 
 ter to Walsingham is both the briefest and the most mate- 
 rial statement of facts which we possess regarding that pe- 
 riod of English rule. Omitting then all notice of public 
 affairs, I pass on to confidences of a more personal charac-
 
 T.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 103 
 
 ter. After dwelling upon sundry embassies and other em- 
 ployments, he proceeds : 
 
 " Truly, sir, by all these I neither won nor saved ; but now, by 
 your patience, once again to my great and high office for great it is 
 in that in some sort I govern the third part of this realm under her 
 most excellent Majesty ; high it is, for by that I have precedency of 
 great personages and far my betters : happy it is for the people whom 
 I govern, as before is written, and most happy for the commodity that 
 I have by the authority of that place to do good every day, if I have 
 grace, to one or other; wherein I confess I feel no small felicity; 
 but for any profit I gather by it, God and the people (seeing my 
 manner of life) knoweth it is not possible how I should gather 
 any. 
 
 " For, alas, sir ! how can I, not having one groat of pension be- 
 longing to the office ? I have not so much ground as will feed a 
 mutton. I sell no justice, I trust you do not hear of any order taken 
 by me ever reversed, nor my name or doings in any court ever 
 brought in question. And if my mind were so base and contempti- 
 ble as I would take money of the people whom I command for my 
 labour taken among them, yet could they give me none, or very little, 
 for the causes that come before me are causes of people mean, 
 base, and many very beggars. Only 20 a week to keep an honour- 
 able house, and 100 marks a year to bear foreign charges I have ; 
 . . . but true books of account shall be, when you will, showed unto 
 you that I spend above 30 a week. Here some may object that I 
 upon the same keep my wife and her followers. True it is she is 
 now with me, and hath been this half year, and before not in many 
 years ; and if both she and I had our food and house-room free, as 
 we have not, in my conscience we have deserved it. For my part, I 
 am not idle, but every day I work in my function ; and she, for her 
 old service, and marks yet remaining in her face taken in the same, 
 meriteth her meat When I went to Newhaven I left her a full fair 
 lady, in mine eye at least the fairest ; and when I returned I found 
 her as foul a lady as the small-pox could make her, which she did 
 take by continual attendance of her Majesty's most precious person 
 (sick of the same disease), the scars jf which, to her resolute dis- 
 comfort, ever since have done and doth remain in her face, so as she 
 liveth solitarily, ticut mcticorax in domieilio suo, more to my charge 
 34
 
 104 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 than if we had boarded together, as we did before that evil accident 
 happened." 
 
 The epistle ends with a general review of Sir Henry's 
 pecuniary situation, by which it appears that the Sidney 
 estate had been very considerably impoverished during his 
 tenure of it. 
 
 "The rest of my life is with an over-long precedent discourse 
 manifested to you. But this to your little comfort I cannot omit, 
 that whereas my father had but one son, and he of no great proof, 
 being of twenty-four years of age at his death, and I having three 
 sons ; one of excellent good proof, the second of great good proof, 
 and the third not to be despaired of, but very well to be liked ; if I 
 die to-morrow next I should leave them worse than my father left 
 me by 20,000 ; and I am now fifty- four years of age, toothless and 
 trembling, being 5000 in debt, yea, and 30,000 worse than I was 
 at the death of my most dear king and master, King Edward VI. 
 
 " I have not of the crown of England of my own getting, so much 
 ground as I can cover with my foot. All my fees amount not to 100 
 marks a year. I never had since the queen's reign any extraordi- 
 nary aid by license, forfeit, or otherwise. And yet for all that was 
 done, and somewhat more than here is written, I cannot obtain to 
 have in fee-farm 100 a year, already in my own possession, paying 
 the rent. 
 
 " And now, dear sir and brother, an end of this tragical discourse, 
 tedious for you to read, but more tedious it would have been if it 
 had come written with my own hand, as first it was. Tragical I 
 may well term it ; for that it began with the joyful love and great 
 liking with likelihood of matrimonial match between our most dear 
 and sweet children (whom God bless), and endeth with declaration 
 of my unfortunate and hard estate. 
 
 " Our Lord bless you with long life and happiness. I pray you, 
 sir, commend me most heartily to my good lady, cousin, and sister, 
 your wife, and bless and kiss our sweet daughter. And if you will 
 vouchsafe, bestow a blessing upon the young knight, Sir Philip." 
 
 There is not much to say of Philip's bride. He and she 
 lived together as man and wife barely three years. Nothing
 
 v.] LIFE AT COURT AGAIN, AND MARRIAGE. 105 
 
 remains to prove that she was either of assistance to him 
 or the contrary. After his death she contracted a secret 
 marriage with Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex ; and 
 when she lost this second husband on the scaffold, she 
 adopted the Catholic religion and became the wife of 
 Lord Clanricarde. In this series of events I can see noth- 
 ing to her discredit, considering the manners of that cen- 
 tury. Her daughter by Philip, it is known, made a brill- 
 iant marriage with the Earl of Rutland. Her own repeated 
 nuptials may be taken to prove her personal attractiveness. 
 Sir Philip Sidney, who must have been intimately acquainted 
 with her character, chose her for his wife while his passion 
 for Penelope Devereux had scarcely cooled ; and he did so 
 without the inducements which wealth or brilliant fortunes 
 might have offered. 
 H
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 
 
 AMONG Sidney's miscellaneous poems there is a lyric, which 
 has been supposed, not without reason, I think, to express 
 his feelings upon the event of Lady Penelope Devereux's 
 marriage to Lord Rich. 
 
 "Ring out your bells, let mourning shows bespread: 
 For Love is dead : 
 
 All love is dead, infected 
 With plague of deep disdain : 
 
 Worth, as naught worth, rejected, 
 And faith fair scorn doth gain. 
 
 From so ungrateful fancy, 
 
 From such a female frenzy, 
 
 From them that use men thus, 
 
 Good Lord, deliver us ! 
 
 " Weep, neighbours, weep ; do you not hear it said 
 That Love is dead ? 
 
 His death-bed, peacock's folly ; 
 His winding-sheet is shame ; 
 
 His will, false-seeming holy ; 
 His sole executor, blame. 
 
 From so ungrateful fancy, 
 
 From such a female frenzy, 
 
 From them that use men thus, 
 
 Good Lord, deliver us !
 
 CHAP, vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 107 
 
 " Alas ! I lie : rage hath this error bred ; 
 Love is not dead ; 
 
 Love is not dead, but sleepeth 
 In her unmatched mind, 
 
 Where she his counsel keepeth 
 Till due deserts she find. 
 
 Therefore from so vile fancy, 
 
 To call such wit a frenzy, 
 
 Who Love can temper thus, 
 
 Good Lord, deliver us !" 
 
 These stanzas sufficiently set forth the leading passion 
 of Astrophel and Stella. That series of poems celebrates 
 Sir Philip Sidney's love for Lady Rich after her marriage, 
 his discovery that this love was returned, and the curb 
 which her virtue set upon his too impetuous desire. Be- 
 fore the publication of Shakespeare's sonnets, these were 
 undoubtedly the finest love poems in our language; and 
 though exception may be taken to the fact that they were 
 written for a married woman, their purity of tone and 
 philosophical elevation of thought separate them from the 
 vulgar herd of amatorious verses. 
 
 I have committed myself to the opinion that Astrophel 
 and Stella was composed, if not wholly, yet in by far the 
 greater part, after Lady Rich's marriage. This opinion be- 
 ing contrary to the judgment of excellent critics, and op- 
 posed to the wishes of Sidney's admirers, I feel bound to 
 state my reasons. In the first place, then, the poems would 
 have no meaning if they were written for a maiden. When 
 a friend, quite early in the series, objects to Sidney that 
 
 "Desire 
 
 Doth plunge my well-formed soul even in the mire 
 Of sinful thoughts which do in ruin end," 
 
 what significance could these words have if Stella were still
 
 108 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, [CHAP. 
 
 free ? Stella, throughout two-thirds of the series (after No. 
 xxxiii.), makes no concealment of her love for Astrophel ; 
 and yet she persistently repels his ardent wooing. Why 
 should she have done so, if she was at liberty to obey her 
 father's death-bed wish and marry him ? It may here be 
 objected that the reasons for the breaking off of her in- 
 formal engagement to Sidney are not known ; both he and 
 she were possibly conscious that the marriage could not 
 take place. To this I answer that a wife's refusal of a 
 lover's advances differs from a maiden's; and Stella's re- 
 fusal in the poems is clearly, to my mind at least, that of a 
 married woman. Sidney, moreover, does not hint at un- 
 kind fate or true love hindered in its course by insurmount- 
 able obstacles. He has, on the other hand, plenty to say 
 about the unworthy husband, Stella's ignoble bondage, and 
 Lord Rich's jealousy. 
 
 But, it has been urged, we are not sure that we possess 
 the sonnets and songs of Astrophel and Stella in their 
 right order. May we not conjecture that they were either 
 purposely or unintelligently shuffled by the publisher, who 
 surreptitiously obtained copies of the loose sheets? And 
 again, will not close inspection of the text reveal local and 
 temporal allusions, by means of which we shall be able to 
 assign some of the more compromising poems to dates be- 
 fore Penelope's marriage? 
 
 There are two points here for consideration, which I 
 will endeavour to treat separately. The first edition of 
 Astrophel and Stella was printed in 1591 by Thomas New- 
 man. Where this man obtained his manuscript does not 
 appear. But in the dedication he says : " It was my fortune 
 not many days since to light upon the famous device of 
 Astrophel and Stella, which carrying the general com- 
 mendation of all men of judgment, and being reported to
 
 vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 109 
 
 be one of the rarest things that ever any Englishman set 
 abroach, I have thought good to publish it." Further on 
 he adds: "For my part I have been very careful in the 
 printing of it, and whereas, being spread abroad in written 
 copies, it had gathered much corruption by ill-writers ; I 
 have used their help and advice in correcting and restoring 
 it to his first dignity that I know were of skill and expe- 
 rience in those matters." If these sentences have any 
 meaning, it is that Astrophel and Stella circulated widely 
 in manuscript, as a collected whole, and not in scattered 
 sheets, before it fell into the hands of Newman. It was 
 already known to the world as a "famous device," a "rare 
 thing ;" and throughout the dedication it is spoken of as a 
 single piece. What strengthens this argument is that the 
 Countess of Pembroke, in her lifetime, permitted Astrophel 
 and Stella to be reprinted, together with her own corrected 
 version of the Arcadia, without making any alteration in 
 its arrangement. 
 
 If we examine the poems with minute attention we shall, 
 I think, be led to the conclusion that they have not been 
 shuffled, but that we possess them in the order in which 
 Sidney wrote them. To begin with, the first nine sonnets 
 form a kind of exordium. They set forth the object for 
 which the whole series was composed, they celebrate Stella's 
 mental and personal charms in general, they characterise 
 Sidney's style and source of inspiration, and criticise the 
 affectations of his contemporaries. In the second place, 
 we find that many of the sonnets are written in sequence. 
 I will cite, for example, Nos. 31-34, Nos. 38-40, Nos. 69- 
 72, Nos. 87-92, Nos. 93-100. Had the order been either 
 unintelligently or intentionally confused, it is not probable 
 that these sequences would have survived entire. And upon 
 this point I may notice that the interspersed lyrics occur in
 
 110 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 their proper places, that is to say, in close connection with 
 the subject-matter of accompanying sonnets. It may third- 
 ly be observed that Astrophel and Stella, as we have it, ex- 
 hibits a natural rhythm and development of sentiment, from 
 admiration and chagrin, through expectant passion, followed 
 by hope sustained at a high pitch of enthusiasm, down to 
 eventual discouragement and resignation. As Thomas Nash 
 said in his preface to the first edition : " The chief actor 
 here is Melpomene, whose dusky robes dipped in the ink of 
 tears as yet seem to drop when I see them near. The ar- 
 gument cruel chastity, the prologue hope, the epilogue de- 
 spair." That the series ends abruptly, as though its author 
 had abandoned it from weariness, should also be noticed. 
 This is natural in the case of lyrics, which were clearly the 
 outpouring of the poet's inmost feelings. When he had 
 once determined to cast off the yoke of a passion which 
 could not but have been injurious to his better self, Astro- 
 phel stopped singing. He was not rounding off a subject 
 artistically contemplated from outside. There was no en- 
 voy to be written when once the aliment of love had been 
 abandoned. 
 
 With regard to the second question I have raised, name- 
 ly, whether close inspection will not enable us to fix dates 
 for the composition of Astrophel and Stella, and thus to 
 rearrange the order of its pieces, I must say that very few 
 of the poems seem to me to offer any solid ground for crit- 
 icism of this kind. Sonnets 24, 35, and 37 clearly allude 
 to Stella's married name. Sonnet 41, the famous " Having 
 this day my horse, my hand, my lance," may refer to Sid- 
 ney's assault upon the Castle of Perfect Beauty ; but since 
 he was worsted in that mimic siege, this seems doubtful. 
 The mention of " that sweet enemy France " might lead us 
 equally well to assign it to the period of Anjou's visit. In
 
 TI.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." Ill 
 
 either case, the date would be after Stella's betrothal to 
 Lord Rich. Sonnet 30, " Whether the Turkish new moon 
 minded be," points to political events in Europe which were 
 taking place after the beginning of 1581, and consequent- 
 ly about the period of Penelope's marriage. These five 
 sonnets fall within the first forty-one of a series which 
 numbers one hundred and eight. After them I can dis- 
 cover nothing but allusions to facts of private life, Astro- 
 phel's absence from the Court, Stella's temporary illness, a 
 stolen kiss, a lover's quarrel. 
 
 In conclusion, I would fain point out that any one who 
 may have composed a series of poems upon a single theme, 
 extending over a period of many months, will be aware how 
 impertinent it is for an outsider to debate their order. 
 Nothing can be more certain, in such species of composi- 
 tion, than that thoughts once suggested will be taken up for 
 more elaborate handling on a future occasion. Thus the 
 contention between love and virtue, which occurs early in 
 Astrophel and Stella, .is developed at length towards its 
 close. The Platonic conception of beauty is suggested near 
 the commencement, and is worked out in a later sequence. 
 Sometimes a motive from external life supplies the poet 
 with a single lyric, which seems to interrupt the lover's 
 monologue. Sometimes he strikes upon a vein so fruitful 
 that it yields a succession of linked sonnets and intercalated 
 songs. 
 
 I have attempted to explain why I regard Astrophel and 
 Stella as a single whole, the arrangement of which does not 
 materially differ from that intended by its author. I have 
 also expressed my belief that it was written after Penelope 
 Devereux became Lady Rich, This justifies me in saying, 
 as I did upon a former page, that the exact date of her 
 marriage seems to me no matter of vital importance in Sir
 
 112 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Philip Sidney's biography. My theory of the love which 
 it portrays, is that this was latent up to the time of her be- 
 tr6thal, and that the consciousness of the irrevocable at that 
 moment made it break into the kind of regretful passion 
 which is peculiarly suited for poetic treatment. Stella may 
 have wasted some of Philip's time ; but it is clear that she 
 behaved honestly, and to her lover helpfully, by the firm 
 but gentle refusal of his overtures. Throughout these po- 
 ems, though I recognise their very genuine emotion, I can- 
 not help discerning the note of what may be described as 
 poetical exaggeration. In other words, I do not believe 
 that Sidney would in act have really gone so far as he pro- 
 fesses to desire. On paper it was easy to demand more 
 than seriously, in hot or cold blood, he would have attempt- 
 ed. To this artistic exaltation of a real feeling the chosen 
 form of composition both traditionally and artistically lent 
 itself. Finally, when all these points have been duly con- 
 sidered, we must not forget that society at that epoch was 
 lenient, if not lax, in matters of the passions. Stella's posi- 
 tion at Court, while she was the acknowledged mistress of 
 Sir Charles Blount, suffices to prove this ; nor have we any 
 reason to suppose that Philip was, in this respect, more " a 
 spirit without blot " than his contemporaries. Some of his 
 death-bed meditations indicate sincere repentance for past 
 follies ; but that his liaison with Lady Rich involved noth- 
 ing worse than a young man's infatuation, appears from the 
 pervading tone of Astrophel and Stella. A motto might 
 be chosen for it from the 66th sonnet : 
 
 " I cannot brag of word, much less of deed." 
 
 The critical cobwebs which beset the personal romance 
 of Astrophel and Stella have now been cleared away. Read- 
 ers of these pages know how I for one interpret its prob-
 
 TL] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 113 
 
 lems. Whatever opinion they may form upon a topic 
 which has exercised many ingenious minds, we are able at 
 length to approach the work of art, and to study its beau- 
 ties together. Regarding one point, I would fain submit a 
 word of preliminary warning. However artificial and allu- 
 sive may appear the style of these love poems, let us pre- 
 pare ourselves to find real feeling and substantial thought 
 expressed in them. It was not a mere rhetorical embroid- 
 ery of phrases which moved downright Ben Jonson to ask : 
 
 "Hath not great Sidney Stella set 
 Where never star shone brighter yet ?" 
 
 It was no flimsy string of pearled conceits which drew from 
 Richard Crashaw in his most exalted moment that allusion 
 
 to: 
 
 " Sydnaean showers 
 Of sweet discourse, whose powers 
 Can crown old Winter's head with flowers." 
 
 The elder poets, into whose ken Astrophel and Stella swam 
 like a thing of unimagined and unapprehended beauty, had 
 no doubt of its sincerity. The quaintness of its tropes, 
 and the condensation of its symbolism were proofs to them 
 of passion stirring the deep soul of a finely-gifted, highly- 
 educated man. They read it as we read In Memoriam, ac- 
 knowledging some obscure passages, recognising some awk- 
 wardness of incoherent utterance, but taking these on trust 
 as evidences of the poet's heart too charged with stuff for 
 ordinary methods of expression. What did Shakespeare 
 make Achilles say ? 
 
 " My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirred, 
 And I myself see not the bottom of it." 
 
 Charles Lamb puts this point well. " The images which 
 6
 
 114 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 lie before our feet (though by some accounted the only 
 natural) are least natural for the high Sydnaean love to ex- 
 press its fancies. They may serve for the love of Tibullus, 
 or the dear author of the Schoolmistress ; for passions that 
 weep and whine in elegies and pastoral ballads. I am sure 
 Milton (and Lamb might have added Shakespeare) never 
 loved at this rate." 
 
 The forms adopted by Sidney in his Astrophel and Stella 
 sonnets are various ; but none of them correspond exactly 
 to the Shakespearian type four separate quatrains clinched 
 with a final couplet. He adheres more closely to Italian 
 models, especially in his handling of the octave ; although 
 we find only two specimens (Nos. 29, 94) of the true Pe- 
 trarchan species in the treatment of the sextet. Sidney 
 preferred to close the stanza with a couplet. The best and 
 most characteristic of his compositions are built in this 
 way : two quatrains upon a pair of rhymes, arranged as a, 
 b t 6, a, a, b, b, a ; followed by a quatrain c, d, c, d, and a coup- 
 let e, e. The pauses frequently occur at the end of the 
 eighth line, and again at the end of the eleventh, so that 
 the closing couplet is not abruptly detached from the struct- 
 ure of the sextet. It will be observed from the quotations 
 which follow that this, which I indicate as the most dis- 
 tinctively Sidneyan type, is by no means invariable. To 
 analyse each of the many schemes under which his sonnets 
 can be arranged, would be unprofitable in a book which 
 does not pretend to deal technically with this form of stan- 
 za. Yet I may add that he often employs a type of the 
 sextet, which is commoner in French than in Italian or 
 English poetry, with this rhyming order : c, c, d, e, e, d. I 
 have counted twenty of this sort. 
 
 The first sonnet, which is composed in lines of twelve 
 syllables, sets forth the argument :
 
 vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 115 
 
 " Loving iu truth, and fain in verse my love to show, 
 
 That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain, 
 Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, 
 
 Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain ; 
 I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, 
 
 Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain, 
 Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow 
 
 Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain. 
 But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay; 
 
 Invention, nature's child, fled step-dame study's blows ; 
 Another's feet still seemed but stranger's in my way. 
 
 Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, 
 Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite 
 
 1 Fool,' said my Muse to me, ' look in thy heart and write !' " 
 
 This means that Sidney's love was sincere ; but that he 
 first sought expression for it in phrases studied from fa- 
 mous models. He wished to please his lady, and to move 
 her pity. His efforts proved ineffectual, until the Muse 
 came and said: "Look in thy heart and write." Like 
 Dante, Sidney then declared himself to be one : 
 
 " Che quando, 
 
 Amore spira, noto ; ed a quel modo 
 Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando." 
 
 Purg. 24. 62. 
 
 " Love only reading unto me this art." 
 
 Astrophel and Stella, sonnet 28. 
 
 The 3d, 6th, 15th, and 28th sonnets return to the same 
 point. He takes poets to task, who 
 
 ' With strange similes enrich each line, 
 Of herbs or beasts which Ind or Af ric hold." 
 
 (No. 3.) 
 
 He describes how 
 
 " Some one his song in Jove, and Jove's strange tales attires, 
 Bordered with bulls and swans, powdered with golden rain ;
 
 116 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Another, humbler wit, to shepherd's pipe retires, 
 Yet hiding royal blood full oft in rural vein." 
 
 (No. 6.) 
 
 He inveighs against 
 
 " You that do search for every purling spring 
 Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows ; 
 And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows 
 Near thereabouts, into your poesy wring ; 
 Ye that do dictionary's method bring 
 
 Into your rhymes, running in rattling rows ; 
 You that poor Petrarch's long deceased woes, 
 With new-born sighs, and denizened wits do sing." 
 
 (No. 15.) 
 
 He girds no less against 
 
 " You that with allegory's curious frame 
 
 Of other's children changelings use to make." 
 
 (No. 28.) 
 
 All these are on the wrong tack. Stella is sufficient source 
 of inspiration for him, for them, for every singer. This 
 theoretical position does not, however, prevent him from 
 falling into a very morass of conceits, of which we have an 
 early example in the 9th sonnet. Marino could scarcely 
 have executed variations more elaborate upon the single 
 theme : 
 
 " Queen Virtue's Court, which some call Stella's face." 
 
 I may here state that I mean to omit those passages in As 
 trophel and Stella which strike me as merely artificial. I 
 want, if possible, to introduce readers to what is perennially 
 and humanly valuable in the poetical record of Sir Philip 
 Sidney's romance. More than enough will remain of emo- 
 tion simply expressed, of deep thought pithily presented, to 
 fill a longer chapter than I can dedicate to his book of the 
 heart.
 
 VI.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." Ill 
 
 The 2d sonnet describes the growth of Sidney's passion. 
 Love, he says, neither smote him at first sight, nor aimed an 
 upward shaft to pierce his heart on the descent. 1 Long 
 familiarity made him appreciate Stella. Liking deepened 
 into love. Yet at the first he neglected to make his love 
 known. Now, too late, he finds himself hopelessly enslaved 
 when the love for a married woman can yield only torment. 
 
 " Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot, 
 
 Love gave the wound, which, while I breathe will bleed ; 
 
 But known worth did in mine of time proceed, 
 Till by degrees it had full conquest got. 
 I saw and liked ; I liked, but loved not ; 
 
 I loved, but straight did not what Love decreed : 
 
 At length to Love's decrees I forced agreed, 
 Yet with repining at so partial lot. 
 
 Now even that footstep of lost liberty 
 Is gone ; and now, like slave-born Muscovite, 
 
 I call it praise to suffer tyranny ; 
 And now employ the remnant of my wit 
 
 To make myself believe that all is well, 
 
 While with a feeling skill I paint my hell." 
 
 In the 4th and 5th sonnets two themes are suggested, 
 which, later on, receive fuller development. The first is the 
 contention between love and virtue ; the second is the Pla- 
 tonic conception of beauty as a visible image of virtue. 
 The latter of these motives is thus tersely set forth in son- 
 net 25 : 
 
 " The wisest scholar of the wight most wise 
 
 By Phoebus' doom, with sugared sentence says 
 
 1 This, at least, is how I suppose we ought to interpret the word 
 dribbed. In Elizabethan English this seems to have been technically 
 equivalent to what in archery is now called elevating as opposed to 
 shooting point blank.
 
 118 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 That virtue, if it once met with our eyes, 
 Strange flames of love it in our souls would raise." 
 
 Here, at the commencement of the series, Sidney rather 
 plays with the idea than dwells upon it: 
 
 " True, that true beauty virtue is indeed, 
 
 Whereof this beauty can be but a shade, 
 Which elements with mortal mixture breed. 
 
 True, that on earth we are but pilgrims made, 
 And should in soul up to our country move ; 
 True, and yet true that I must Stella love." (No. 6.) 
 
 In the 10th sonnet he opens a dispute with Keason, which 
 also is continued at intervals throughout the series : 
 
 " I rather wished thee climb the Muses' hill, 
 Or reach the fruit of Nature's choicest tree, 
 Or seek heaven's course or heaven's inside to see ; 
 Why should'st thou toil our thorny soil to till ? 
 
 Leave sense, and those which sense's objects be ; 
 v Deal thou with powers of thoughts, leave Love to Will." 
 
 (No. 10.) 
 
 The next explains how Cupid has taken possession of 
 Stella's person ; only the fool has neglected to creep into 
 her heart. The 12th expands this theme, and concludes 
 thus: 
 
 " Thou countest Stella thine, like those whose powers 
 
 Having got up a breach by fighting well, 
 Cry ' Victory ! this fair day all is ours P 
 
 no ; her heart is such a citadel, 
 So fortified with wit, stored with disdain, 
 That to win it is all the skill and pain." (No. 12.) 
 
 At this point, then, of Astrophel's love-diary, Stella still 
 held her heart inviolate, like an acropolis which falls not 
 with the falling of the outworks. In the 14th he replies
 
 n.J "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 119 
 
 to a friend who expostulates because he yields to the sinful 
 desire for a married woman : 
 
 " If that be sin which doth the manners frame, 
 
 Well stayed with truth hi word and faith of deed, 
 Ready of wit and fearing naught but shame ; 
 
 If that be sin which in fixed hearts doth breed 
 A loathing of all loose unchastity; 
 Then love is sin, and let me sinful be." (No. 14.) 
 
 The 16th has one fine line. At first Sidney had trifled 
 with love : 
 
 " But while I thus with this young lion played," 
 
 I fell, he says, a victim to Stella's eyes. The 1 8th bewails 
 his misemployed manhood, somewhat in Shakespeare's 
 vein: 
 
 " My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toys ; 
 
 My wit doth strive these passions to defend, 
 Which, for reward, spoil it with vain annoys." (No. 18.) 
 
 The 21st takes up the same theme, and combines it with 
 that of the 14th : 
 
 " Your words, my friend, right healthful caustics, blame 
 My young mind marred." 
 
 It is clear that Stella's love was beginning to weigh 
 heavily upon his soul. Friends observed an alteration in 
 him, and warned him against the indulgence of anything 
 so ruinous as this passion for a woman who belonged to 
 another. As yet their admonitions could be entertained 
 and playfully put by. Sidney did not feel himself irrevo- 
 cably engaged. He still trifled with love as a pleasant epi- 
 sode in life, a new and radiant experience. At this point 
 
 two well-composed sonnets occur, which show how he be- 
 35
 
 120 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 fiaved before the world's eyes with the burden of his nas- 
 cent love upon his heart : 
 
 " The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
 
 Bearing itself in my long-settled eyes, 
 
 Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 
 With idle pains and missing aim do guess. 
 Some, that know how my spring I did address, 
 
 Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies ; 
 
 Others, because the prince of service tries, 
 Think that I think state errors to redress. 
 But harder judges judge ambition's rage, 
 
 Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
 Holds my young brain captived in golden cage. 
 
 fools, or over-wise ! alas, the race 
 Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start 
 But only Stella's eyes and Stella's heart." (No. 23.) 
 
 " Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 
 
 Seem most alone in greatest company, 
 
 With dearth of words or answers quite awry 
 To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 
 They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies, 
 
 That poison foul of bubbling pride doth lie 
 
 So in my swelling breast, that only I 
 Fawn on myself and others do despise. 
 Yet pride, I think, doth not my soul possess, 
 
 Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
 But one worse fault, ambition, I confess, 
 
 That makes me oft my best friends overpass, 
 Unseen, unheard, while thought to highest place 
 Bends all his powers even unto Stella's grace." (No. 27.) 
 
 Now, too, begin the series of plays upon the name Rich, 
 and invectives against Stella's husband. It seems certain 
 that Lord Rich was not worthy of his wife. Sidney had 
 an unbounded contempt for him. He calls him "rich 
 fool " and " lout," and describes Stella's bondage to him as
 
 vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 121 
 
 "a foul yoke." Yet this disdain, however rightly felt, 
 ought not to have found vent in such sonnets as Nos. 24 
 and 78. The latter degenerates into absolute offensiveness, 
 when, after describing the faux jaloux under a transparent 
 allegory, he winds up with the question : 
 
 " Is it not evil that such a devil wants horns ?" 
 
 The first section of Astrophel and Stella closes with 
 sonnet 30. Thus far Sidney has been engaged with his 
 poetical exordium. Thus far his love has been an absorb- 
 ing pastime rather than the business of his life. The 31st 
 sonnet preludes, with splendid melancholy, to a new and 
 deeper phase of passion : 
 
 " With how sad steps, moon, thou climb'fft the skies ! 
 
 How silently, and with how wan a face ! 
 
 What, may it be that even in heavenly place 
 That busy archer his sharp arrows tries ? 
 Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes 
 
 Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; 
 
 I read it in thy looks ; thy languished grace 
 To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 
 Then, even of fellowship, moon, tell me, 
 
 Is constant love deemed there but want of wit? 
 Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 
 
 Do they above love to be loved, and yet 
 Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess ? 
 Do they call virtue there ungratefulness ?" 
 
 Sidney's thoughts, throughout these poems, were often 
 with the night ; far of tener than Petrarch's or than Shake- 
 speare's. In the course of our analysis, we shall cull many 
 a meditation belonging to the hours before the dawn, and 
 many a pregnant piece of midnight imagery. What can 
 be more quaintly accurate in its condensed metaphors than 
 the following personification of dreams ? 
 6* I
 
 122 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 " Morpheus, the lively son of deadly sleep, 
 Witness of life to them that living die, 
 A prophet oft, and oft an history, 
 A poet eke, as humours fly or creep." (No. 32.) 
 
 In the 33d sonnet we find the first hint that Stella 
 might have reciprocated Astrophel's love : 
 
 " I might, unhappy word, woe me, I might ! 
 
 And then would not, or could not, see my bliss : 
 Till now, wrapped in a most infernal night, 
 
 I find how heavenly day, wretch, I did miss. 
 Heart, rend thyself ; thou dost thyself but right ! 
 
 No lovely Paris made thy Helen his ; 
 No force, no fraud robbed thee of thy delight, 
 
 Nor fortune of thy fortune author is ! 
 But to myself myself did give the blow, 
 
 While too much wit, forsooth, so troubled me, 
 That I respects for both our sakes must show : 
 
 And yet could not, by rising morn foresee 
 How fair a day was near : punished eyes, 
 That I had been more foolish or more wise !" (No. 33.) 
 
 This sonnet has generally been taken to refer to Sidney's 
 indolence before the period of Stella's marriage ; in which 
 case it expands the line of No. 2 : 
 
 " I loved, but straight did not what Love decrees." 
 
 It may, however, have been written upon the occasion of 
 some favourable chance which he neglected to seize; and 
 the master phrase of the whole composition, " respects for 
 both our sakes," rather points to this interpretation. We 
 do not know enough of the obstacles to Sidney's match 
 with Penelope Devereux to be quite sure whether such " re- 
 spects" existed while she was at liberty. 
 
 There is nothing now left for him but to vent his regrets
 
 Yi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 123 
 
 and vain longings in words. But what are empty words, 
 what consolation can they bring ? 
 
 " And, ab, what hope that hope should once see day, 
 Where Cupid is sworn page to chastity ?" (No. 35.) 
 
 Each day Stella makes new inroads upon the fortress of 
 
 his soul. 
 
 " Through my long-battered eyes 
 Whole armies of thy beauties entered in : 
 And there long since, love, thy lieutenant lies." (No. 36.) 
 
 Stella can weep over tales of unhappy lovers she has never 
 known. Perhaps if she could think his case a fable, she 
 might learn to pity him : 
 
 " Then think, my dear, that you in me do read 
 Of lover's rum some thrice-sad tragedy. 
 I am not I ; pity the tale of me !" (No. 45.) 
 
 He entreats her not- to shun his presence or withdraw the 
 heaven's light of her eyes : 
 
 " Soul's joy, bend not those morning stars from me, 
 Where virtue is made strong by beauty's might !" 
 
 Nay, let her gaze upon him, though that splendour should 
 wither up his life : 
 
 " A kind of grace it is to kill with speed." (No. 48.) 
 
 (He prays to her, as to a deity raised high above the stress 
 and tempest of his vigilant desires : 
 
 " Alas, if from the height of virtue's throne 
 
 Thou canst vouchsafe the influence of a thought 
 Upon a wretch that long thy grace hath sought, 
 Weigh then how I by thee am overthrown 1" (No. 40.) 
 
 It is here, too, that the pathetic outcry, " my mind, now 
 of the basest," now (that is) of the lowest and most hum-
 
 124 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 bled, is forced from him. Then, returning to the theme 
 of Stella's unconquerable virtue, he calls her eyes 
 
 "The schools where Venus hath learned chastity." (No. 42.) 
 
 From the midst of this group shine forth, like stars, two 
 sonnets of pure but of very different lustre : 
 
 " Come, sleep ! sleep, the certain knot of peace, 
 
 The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, 
 The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
 
 Th' indifferent judge between the high and low ! 
 With shield of proof shield me from out the press 
 
 Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 
 make in me those civil wars to cease ; 
 
 I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 
 Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, 
 
 A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light, 
 A rosy garland and a weary head ; 
 
 And if these things, as being thine in right, 
 Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
 Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see." (No. 89.) 
 
 " Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance 
 
 Guided so well that I obtained the prize, 
 
 Both by the judgment of the English eyes 
 And of some sent from that sweet enemy France ; 
 Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance, 
 
 Town-folks my strength ; a daintier judge applies 
 
 His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise ; 
 Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
 Others, because of both sides I do take 
 
 My blood from them who did excel in this, 
 Think nature me a man-at-arms did make. 
 
 How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
 Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
 Sent forth the beams which made so fair my r&c^f* 
 
 (No. 41.)
 
 VI.) "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 125 
 
 Sometimes he feels convinced that this passion will be his 
 ruin, and strives, but strives in vain as yet, against it : 
 
 " Virtue, awake ! Beauty but beauty is ; 
 
 I may, I must, I can, I will, I do 
 Leave following that which it is gain to miss. 
 
 Let her go ! Soft, but here she comes ! Go to, 
 Unkind, I love you not ! me, that eye 
 Doth make my heart to give my tongue the lie !" 
 
 (No. 47.) 
 
 Sometimes he draws strength from the same passion; at 
 another time the sight of Stella well-nigh unnerves his 
 trained bridle-hand, and suspends his lance in rest. This 
 from the tilting-ground is worth preserving : 
 
 " In martial sports I had my cunning tried, 
 
 And yet to break more staves did me address, 
 While with the people's shouts, I must confess, 
 
 Youth, luck, and praise even filled my veins with pride ; 
 
 When Cupid, having me, his slave, descried 
 In Mars's livery prancing in the press, 
 ' What now, Sir Fool !' said he : I would no less : 
 
 ' Look here, I say !' I looked, and Stella spied, 
 
 Who hard by made a window send forth light. 
 My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes ; 
 
 One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight, 
 Nor trumpet's sound I heard nor friendly cries : 
 
 My foe came on, and beat the air for me, 
 
 Till that her blush taught me my shame to see." 
 
 (No. 53.) 
 
 The quaint author of the Life and Death of Sir Philip 
 Sidney, prefixed to the Arcadia, relates how : " many no- 
 bles of the female sex, venturing as far as modesty would 
 permit, to signify their affections unto him ; Sir Philip 
 will not read the characters of their love, though obvious 
 to every eye." This passage finds illustration in the next 
 sonnet :
 
 126 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 " Because I breathe hot love to every one, 
 Nor do not use set colours for to wear, 
 Nor nourish special locks of vowed hair, 
 
 Nor give each speech a full point of a groan ; 
 
 The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan 
 Of them which in their lips love's standard bear, 
 ' What he !' say they of me : ' now I dare swear 
 
 He cannot love ; no, no, let him alone !' 
 
 And think so still, so Stella know my mind ! 
 Profess indeed I do not Cupid's art : 
 
 But you, fair maids, at length this true shall find, 
 That his right badge is but worn in the heart : 
 
 Dumb swans, not chattering pies, do lovers prove ; 
 
 They love indeed who quake to say they love." 
 
 (No. 54.) 
 
 Up to this point Stella has been Sidney's saint, the 
 adored object, remote as a star from his heart's sphere. 
 Now at last she confesses that she loves him. But her 
 love is of pure and sisterly temper ; and she mingles its 
 avowal with noble counsels, little to his inclination. 
 
 " Late tired with woe, even ready for to pine 
 
 With rage of love, I called my love unkind ; 
 She in whose eyes love, though unfelt, doth shine, 
 
 Sweet said that I true love in her should find. 
 I joyed ; but straight thus watered was my wine : 
 
 That love she did, but loved a love not blind ; 
 Which would not let me, whom she loved, decline 
 
 From nobler course, fit for my birth and mind ; 
 And therefore by her love's authority 
 Willed me these tempests of vain love to fly, 
 
 And anchor fast myself on virtue's shore. 
 Alas, if this the only metal be 
 Of love new-coined to help my beggary, 
 
 Dear, love me not, that you may love me more !" 
 
 (No. 62.) 
 
 His heated senses rebel against her admonitions :
 
 vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 127 
 
 " No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 
 
 give my passions leave to run their race ; 
 
 Let fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 
 Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry ; 
 Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 
 
 Let me no steps but of lost labour trace ; 
 
 Let all the earth with scorn recount my case; 
 But do not will me from my love to fly !" (No. 64.) 
 
 Then he seeks relief in trifles. Playing upon his own 
 coat of arms (" or, a pheon azure "), he tells Love how he 
 nursed him in his bosom, and how they both must surely 
 be of the same lineage : 
 
 " For when, naked boy, thou couldst no harbour find 
 
 In this old world, grown now so too-too wise, 
 I lodged thee in my heart, and being blind 
 
 By nature born, I gave to thee mine eyes . . . 
 Yet let this thought thy tigrish courage pass, 
 That I perhaps am somewhat kin to thee ; 
 Since in thine arms, if learned fame truth hath spread, 
 Thou bear'st the arrow, I the arrow head." 
 
 No. 65.) 
 
 Stella continues to repress his ardour : 
 
 " I cannot brag of word, much less of deed . . . 
 Desire still on stilts of fear doth go." (No. 66.) 
 
 Yet once she blushed when their eyes met ; and her blush 
 " guilty seemed of love." Therefore he expostulates with 
 her upon her cruelty : 
 
 " Stella, the only planet of my light, 
 
 Light of my life, and life of my desire, 
 
 Chief good whereto my hope doth only aspire, 
 World of my wealth, and heaven of my delight ; 
 Why dost thou spend the treasures of thy sprite, 
 
 With voice more fit to wed Amphion's lyre, 
 
 Seeking to quench in me the noble fire 
 Fed by thy worth and kindled by thy sight ?" (No. 68.)
 
 128 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Suddenly, to close this contention, we find him at the 
 height of his felicity. Stella has relented, yielding him 
 the kingdom of her heart, but adding the condition that 
 he must love, as she does, virtuously : 
 
 " joy too high for my low style to show ! 
 
 bliss fit for a nobler state than me ! 
 
 Envy, put out thine eyes, lest thou do see 
 What oceans of delight in me do flow ! 
 My friend, that oft saw through all masks my woe, 
 
 Come, come, and let me pour myself on thee : 
 
 Gone is the winter of my misery ; 
 My spring appears ; see what here doth grow ! 
 For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine, 
 
 Of her high heart given me the monarchy ; 
 I, I, I, may say that she is mine ! 
 
 And though she give but thus conditionally, 
 This realm of bliss, while virtuous course I take, 
 No kings be crowned but they some covenants make." 
 
 (No. 69.) 
 
 Now, the stanzas which have so long eased his sadness, 
 shall be turned to joy : 
 
 " Sonnets be not bound prentice to annoy ; 
 
 Trebles sing high, so well as basses deep ; 
 Grief but Love's winter-livery is ; the boy 
 Hath cheeks to smile, so well as eyes to weep." 
 
 And yet, with the same breath, he says : 
 
 " Wise silence is best music unto bliss." (No. YO.) 
 
 In the next sonnet he shows that Stella's virtuous condi- 
 tions do not satisfy. True it is that whoso looks upon 
 her face, 
 
 " There shall he find all vices' overthrow, 
 Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty 
 Of reason. .... 
 
 But, ah, desire still cries : Give me some food !" (No. 71.)
 
 n.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 129 
 
 Farewell then to desire : 
 
 " Desire, though thou my old companion art, 
 And oft so clings to my pure love that I 
 One from the other scarcely can descry, 
 
 While each doth blow the fire of my heart ; 
 
 Now from thy fellowship I needs must part." (No. *72.) 
 
 It is characteristic of the fluctuations both of feeling and 
 circumstance, so minutely followed in Astrophel's love- 
 diary, that, just at this moment, when he has resolved to 
 part with desire, he breaks out into this jubilant song upon 
 the stolen kiss : 
 
 " Have I caught my heavenly jewel, 
 Teaching sleep most fair to be ! 
 Now will I teach her that she, 
 When she wakes, is too-too cruel. 
 
 " Since sweet sleep her eyes hath charmed, 
 The two only darts of Love, 
 Now will I with that boy prove 
 Some play while he is disarmed. 
 
 " Her tongue, waking, still ref useth, 
 Giving frankly niggard no : 
 Now will I attempt to know 
 What no her tongue, sleeping, useth. 
 
 " See the hand that, waking, guardeth, 
 Sleeping, grants a free resort : 
 Now will I invade the fort ; 
 Cowards Love with loss rewardeth. 
 
 " But, fool, think of the danger 
 Of her high and just disdain 1 
 Now will I, alas, refrain : 
 Love fears nothing else but anger.
 
 ISO SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 " Yet those lips, so sweetly swelling, 
 Do invite a stealing kiss : 
 Now will I but venture this ; 
 Who will read, must first learn spelling. 
 
 " Oh, sweet kiss ! but ah, she's waking; 
 Lowering beauty chastens me : 
 Now will I for fear hence flee ; 
 Fool, more fool, for no mere taking !" 
 
 Several pages are occupied with meditations on this lucky 
 kiss. The poet's thoughts turn to alternate ecstasy and 
 wantonness. 
 
 " I never drank of Aganippe's well, 
 
 Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, 
 And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 
 Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit ! 
 
 " How falls it then that with so smooth an ease 
 
 My thoughts I speak ; and what I speak doth flow 
 In verse, and that my verse test wits doth please ?" 
 
 The answer of course is : 
 
 "Thy lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss." (No. 74.) 
 
 In this mood we find him praising Edward IV., who risked 
 his kingdom for Lady Elizabeth Grey. 
 
 " Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
 
 Edward, named fourth, as first in praise I name ; 
 Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain, 
 
 Although less gifts imp feathers oft on fame : 
 Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
 
 His sire's revenge, joined with a kingdom's gain ; 
 And gamed by Mars, could yet mad Mars so tame 
 
 That balance weighed what sword did late obtain :
 
 vi.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 131 
 
 Nor that he made the flower-de-luce so 'fraid, 
 Though strongly hedged of bloody lions' paws, 
 
 That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid; 
 Not this, not that, nor any such small cause ; 
 
 But only for this worthy knight durst prove 
 
 To lose his crown rather than fail his love." (No. 75.) 
 
 A sonnet on the open road, in a vein of conceits worthy of 
 Philostratus, closes the group inspired by Stella's kiss : 
 
 " High way, since you my chief Parnassus be, 
 And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, 
 Tempers her words to trampling horse's feet 
 
 More oft than to a chamber-melody : 
 
 Now blessed you bear onward blessed me 
 To her, where I my heart, safe-left shall meet, 
 My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
 
 With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 
 
 Be you still fair, honoured by public heed ; 
 By no encroachment wronged, nor time forgot ; 
 
 Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed ; 
 And that you know I envy you no lot 
 
 Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss 
 
 Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss." (No. 84.) 
 
 And now a change comes over the spirit of Sidney's 
 dream. It is introduced, as the episode of the stolen kiss 
 was, by a song. We do not know on what occasion he 
 may have found himself alone with Stella at night, when 
 her husband's jealousy was sleeping, the house closed, and 
 her mother in bed. But the lyric refers, I think, clearly 
 to some real incident perhaps at Leicester House : 
 
 " Only joy, now here you are 
 Fit to hear and ease my care, 
 Let my whispering voice obtain 
 Sweet reward for sharpest pain ; 
 Take me to thee and thee to me : 
 ' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !'
 
 132 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 " Night hath closed all in her cloak, 
 Twinkling stars love- thoughts provoke ; 
 Danger hence, good care doth keep ; 
 Jealousy himself doth sleep : 
 Take me to thee and thee to me : 
 ' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 
 
 " Better place no wit can find 
 Cupid's knot to loose or bind ; 
 These sweet flowers, our fine bed, too 
 Us in their best language woo : 
 Take me to thee and thee to me : 
 ' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be I' 
 
 " This small light the moon bestows, 
 Serves thy beams but to disclose ; 
 So to raise my hap more high, 
 Fear not else ; none can us spy : 
 Take me to thee and thee to me : 
 1 No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 
 
 " That you heard was but a mouse ; 
 Dumb sleep holdeth all the house ; 
 Yet asleep, methinks they say, 
 Young fools, take time while you may: 
 Take me to thee and thee to me : 
 ' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 
 
 " Niggard time threats, if we miss 
 This large offer of our bliss, 
 Long stay ere he grant the same : 
 Sweet then, while each thing doth frame, 
 Take me to thee and thee to me : 
 ' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' 
 
 " Your fair mother is a-bed, 
 Candles out and curtains spread ; 
 She thinks you do letters write : 
 / Write, but first let me endite :
 
 TL] ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 188 
 
 Take me to thee and thee to me : 
 ' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be I* 
 
 " Sweet, alas ! why strive you thus ? 
 Concord better fitteth us ; 
 Leave to Mars the strife of hands ; 
 Your power in your beauty stands : 
 Take me to thee and thee to me : 
 ' No, no, no, no, my dear, let be 1' 
 
 " Woe to me ! and do you swear 
 Me to hate ? but I forbear : 
 Cursed be my destinies all, 
 
 That brought me so high to fall ! 
 Soon with my death I'll please thee : 
 " No, no, no, no, my dear, let be !' " 
 
 It will be noticed that to all his pleadings, passionate or 
 playful, and (it must be admitted) of very questionable 
 morality, she returns a steadfast No ! This accounts for 
 the altered tone of the next sonnet. In the 85th he had 
 indulged golden, triumphant visions, and had bade his 
 heart be moderate in the fruition of its bliss. Now he 
 exclaims : 
 
 "Alas ! whence came this change of looks ? If I 
 Have changed desert, let mine own conscience be 
 A still-felt plague to self -condemning me ; 
 Let woe gripe on my heart, shame load mine eye !" 
 
 (No. 86.) 
 
 He has pressed his suit too far, and Stella begins to 
 draw back from their common danger. Five songs fol- 
 low in quick succession, one of which prepares us for the 
 denouement of the love-drama : 
 
 " In a grove most rich of shade, 
 Where birds wanton music made,
 
 134 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 May, then young, his pied weeds showing, 
 New-perfumed with flowers fresh growing : 
 
 " Astrophel with Stella sweet 
 Did for mutual comfort meet ; 
 Both within themselves oppressed, 
 But each in the other blessed. 
 
 " Him great harms had taught much care, 
 Her fair neck a foul yoke bare ; 
 But her sight his cares did banish, 
 In his sight her yoke did vanish. 
 
 " Wept they had, alas, the while ; 
 But now tears themselves did smile, 
 While their eyes, by Love directed. 
 Interchangeably reflected." 
 
 For a time the lovers sat thus in silence, sighing and 
 gazing, until Love himself broke out into a passionate 
 apostrophe from the lips of Astrophel : 
 
 " Grant, grant ! but speech, alas, 
 Fails me, fearing on to pass : 
 Grant, me ! what am I saying ? 
 But no fault there is in praying. 
 
 " Grant, dear, on knees I pray 
 (Knees on ground he then did stay) 
 That not I, but since I love you, 
 Time and place for me may move you. 
 
 " Never season was more fit ; 
 Never room more apt for it ; 
 Smiling air allows my reason ; 
 These birds sing, ' Now use the season. 1 
 
 " This small wind, which so sweet is, 
 See how it the leaves doth kiss ;
 
 VI. j "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 135 
 
 Each tree in his best attiring, 
 Sense of love to love inspiring. 
 
 " Love makes earth the water drink, 
 Love to earth makes water sink ; 
 And if dumb things be so witty, 
 Shall a heavenly grace want pity ?" 
 
 To this and to yet more urgent wooing Stella replies in 
 stanzas which are sweetly dignified, breathing the love she 
 felt, but dutifully repressed. 
 
 " Astrophel, said she, my love, 
 Cease in these effects to prove ; 
 Now be still, yet still believe me, 
 Thy grief more than death would grieve me, 
 
 " If that any thought in me 
 Can taste comfort but of thee, 
 Let me, fed with hellish anguish, 
 Joyless, hopeless, endless languish. 
 
 " If those eyes you praised be 
 Half so dear as you to me, 
 Let me home return stark blinded 
 Of those eyes, and blinder minded ; 
 
 "If to secret of my heart 
 I do any wish impart 
 Where thou art not foremost placed, 
 Be both wish and I defaced. 
 
 " If more may be said, I say 
 All my bliss in thee I lay ; 
 If thou love, my love, content thee, 
 For all love, all faith is meant thee. 
 
 " Trust me, while I thee deny, 
 
 In myself the smart I try ; 
 36
 
 136 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHIP. 
 
 Tyrant honour doth thus use thee, 
 Stella's self might not refuse thee. 
 
 " Therefore, dear, this no more move, 
 Lest, though I not leave thy love, 
 Which too deep in me is framed, 
 I should blush when thou art named 
 
 "Therewithal away she went, 
 Leaving him to [so ?] passion rent 
 With what she had done and spoken, 
 That therewith my song is broken." 
 
 The next song records Astrophel's hard necessity of part- 
 ing from Stella. But why 
 
 " Why, alas, doth she thus swear 
 That she loveth me so dearly ?" 
 
 The group of sonnets which these lyrics introduce lead 
 up to the final rupture, not indeed of heart and will, but 
 of imposed necessity, which separates the lovers. Stella 
 throughout plays a part which compels our admiration, 
 and Astrophel brings himself at length to obedience. The 
 situation has become unbearable to her. She loves, and, 
 what is more, she has confessed her love. But, at any 
 price, for her own sake, for his sake, for honour, for duty, 
 for love itself, she must free them both from the enchant- 
 ment which is closing round them. Therefore the path 
 which hitherto has been ascending through fair meadows 
 to the height of rapture, now descends upon the other side. 
 It is for Sidney a long road of sighs and tears, rebellions 
 and heart-aches, a veritable via dolorosa, ending, however, 
 in conquest over self and tranquillity of conscience. For, 
 as he sang in happier momenta :
 
 n.] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 137 
 
 " For who indeed infelt affection bears, 
 
 So captives to his saint both soul and sense, 
 That, wholly hers, all selfness he forbears ; 
 Then his desires he learns, his life's course thence." 
 
 (No. 61.) 
 
 In the hour of their parting Stella betrays her own emo- 
 tion: 
 
 " Alas, I found that she with me did smart ; 
 I saw that teara did ha her eyes appear." (No. 87.) 
 
 After this follow five pieces written in absence : 
 
 " Tush, absence ! while thy mists eclipse that light, 
 My orphan sense fiies to the inward sight, 
 Where memory sets forth the beams of love." (No. 88.) 
 
 " Each day seems long, and longs for long-stayed night ; 
 
 The night, as tedious, woos the approach of day : 
 
 Tired with the dusty toils of busy day, 
 Languished with horrors of the silent night, 
 Suffering the evils both of day and night, 
 
 While no night is more dark than is my day, 
 Nor no day hath less quiet than my night." (No. 89.) 
 
 He gazes on other beauties ; ainber-coloured hair, milk- 
 white hands, rosy cheeks, lips sweeter and redder than the 
 rose. 
 
 " They please, I do confess, they please mine eyes ; 
 
 But why ? because of you they models be, 
 Models, such be wood-globes of glistering skies." 
 
 (Fo. 91.) 
 
 A friend speaks to him of Stella : 
 
 " You say, forsooth, you left her well of late ; 
 
 God, think you that satisfies my care ? 
 
 1 would know whether she did sit or walk ; 
 
 How clothed, how waited on ; sighed she, or smiled ; 
 Whereof, with whom, how often did she talk ; 
 
 With what pastimes Time's journey she beguiled ; 
 7 K<
 
 138 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAI>. 
 
 If her lips deigned to sweeten my poor name. 
 Say all ; and all well said, still say the same." 
 
 (No. 92.) 
 
 Interpolated in this group is a more than usually fluent 
 sonnet, in which Sidney disclaims all right to call himself 
 a poet : 
 
 " Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame, 
 
 Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee ; 
 
 Thine eyes my pride, thy lips my history : 
 If thou praise not, all other praise is shame. 
 Nor so ambitious am I as to frame 
 
 A nest for my young praise in laurel-tree ; 
 
 In truth I swear I wish not there should be 
 Graved in my epitaph a poet's name. 
 Nor, if I would, could I just title make 
 
 That any laud thereof to me should grow, 
 Without my plumes from other wings I take ; 
 
 For nothing from my wit or will doth flow, 
 Since all my words thy beauty doth endite, 
 
 And love doth hold my hand and makes me write." 
 
 (No. 90.) 
 
 The sonnets in absence are closed by a song, which, as 
 usual, introduces a new motive. It begins " O dear life," 
 and indulges a far too audacious retrospect over the past 
 happiness of a lover. If, as seems possible from an allu- 
 sion in No. 84, he was indiscreet enough to communicate 
 his poems to friends, this lyric may have roused the jeal- 
 ousy of Stella's husband and exposed her to hard treat- 
 ment or reproaches. At any rate, something he had said 
 or done caused her pain, and he breaks out into incoherent 
 self-revilings : 
 
 " fate, fault, curse, child of my bliss ! . . . 
 Through me, wretch me, even Stella vexed is ... 
 I have (live I, and know this ?) harmed thee . . . 
 I cry thy sighs, my dear, thy tears I bleed." (No. 93.)
 
 n.J "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 139 
 
 Should any one doubt the sincerity of accent here, let 
 him peruse the next seven sonnets, which are written in se- 
 quence upon the same theme. 
 
 " Grief, find the words ; for thou hast made my brain 
 So dark with misty vapours which arise 
 From out thy heavy mould, that inbent eyes 
 Can scarce discern the shape of mine own pain." (No. 94.) 
 
 " Yet sighs, dear sighs, indeed true friends you are, 
 That do not leave your left friend at the worst ; 
 But, as you with my breast I oft have nursed, 
 So, grateful now, you wait upon my care. 
 
 " Nay, Sorrow comes with such main rage that he 
 Kills his own children, tears, finding that they 
 By Love were made apt to consort with me : 
 Only, true sighs, you do not go away." (No. 95.) 
 
 The night is heavier, more irksome to him ; and yet he 
 finds in it the parallel of his own case : 
 
 " Poor Night in love with Phoebus' light, 
 And endlessly despairing of his grace." (No. 97.) 
 
 The bed becomes a place of torment : 
 
 " While the black horrors of the silent night 
 Paint woe's black face so lively to my sight, 
 That tedious leisure marks each wrinkled line." (No. 98.) 
 
 Only at dawn can he find ease in slumber. The sonnet, 
 in which this motive is developed, illustrates Sidney's meth- 
 od of veiling definite and simple thoughts in abstruse and 
 yet exact phrases. We feel impelled to say that there is 
 something Shakespearean in the style. But we must re- 
 member that Shakespeare's sonnets were at this time locked 
 up within his brain, as the flower is in the bud.
 
 140 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 " When far-spent night persuades each mortal eye 
 To whom nor art nor nature granteth light, 
 To lay his then mark- wanting shafts of sight 
 
 Closed with their quivers in sleep's armoury ; 
 
 With windows ope then most my mind doth lie 
 Viewing the shape of darkness, and delight 
 Takes in that sad hue, which with the inward night 
 
 Of his mazed powers keeps perfect harmony : 
 
 But when birds charm, and that sweet air which is 
 Morn's messenger with rose-enamelled skies 
 
 Calls each wight to salute the flower of bliss ; 
 In tomb of lids then buried are mine eyes, 
 
 Forced by their lord who is ashamed to find 
 
 Such light in sense with such a darkened mind." (No. 99.) 
 
 Two sonnets upon Stella's illness (to which I should be in- 
 clined to add the four upon this topic printed in Constable's 
 Diana) may be omitted. But I cannot refrain from quot- 
 ing the last song. It is in the form of a dialogue at night 
 beneath Stella's window. Though apparently together at 
 the Court, he had received express commands from her to 
 abstain from her society ; the reason of which can perhaps 
 be found in No. 104. This sonnet shows that "envious 
 wits " were commenting upon their intimacy ; and Sidney 
 had compromised her by wearing stars upon his armour. 
 Anyhow he is now reduced to roaming the streets in dark- 
 ness, hoping to obtain a glimpse of his beloved. 
 
 " ' Who is it that this dark night 
 Underneath my window plaineth ?' 
 It is one who from thy sight 
 Being, ah, exiled disdameth 
 Every other vulgar light. 
 
 " ' Why, alas, and are you he ? 
 
 Be not yet those fancies changed ?' 
 Dear, when you find change in me,
 
 7L] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 141 
 
 Though from me you be estranged, 
 Let my change to ruin be. 
 
 " ' Well, in absence this will die ; 
 Leave to see, and leave to wonder.' 
 Absence sure will help, if I 
 Can learn how myself to sunder 
 From what in my heart doth lie. 
 
 " ' But time will these thoughts remove ; 
 Time doth work what no man knoweth.' 
 Time doth as the subject prove ; 
 With time still the affection groweth 
 In the faithful turtle-dove. 
 
 " ' What if ye new beauties see ; 
 Will not they stir new affection ?' 
 I will think they pictures be ; 
 Image-like of saints' perfection, 
 Poorly counterfeiting thee. 
 
 ** ' But your reason's purest light 
 
 Bids you leave such minds to nourish.' 
 Dear, do reason no such spite ! 
 Never doth thy beauty flourish 
 More than in my reason's sight. 
 
 " ' But the wrongs Love bears will make 
 Love at length leave undertaking.' 
 No ! the more fools it doth shake, 
 In a ground of so firm making 
 Deeper still they drive the stake. 
 
 " ' Peace, I think that some give ear ; 
 Come no more lest I get anger !' 
 Bliss, I will my bliss forbear, 
 Fearing, sweet, you to endanger ; 
 But my soul shall harbour there.
 
 142 . SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. (CHAP. 
 
 " ' Well, begone ; begone, I say ; 
 
 Lest that Argus' eyes perceive you !' 
 unjust is fortune's sway, 
 Which can make me thus to leave you ; 
 And from louts to run away !" 
 
 A characteristic but rather enigmatical sonnet follows 
 this lyric. It is another night scene. Sidney, watching 
 from his window, just misses the sight of Stella as her car- 
 riage hurries by : 
 
 " Cursed be the page from whom the bad torch fell ; 
 Cursed be the night which did your strife resist ; 
 Cursed be the coachman that did drive so fast." (No. 105.) 
 
 Then Astrophel and Stella closes abruptly, with those 
 disconnected sonnets, in one of which the word " despair " 
 occurring justifies Nash's definition of " the epilogue, De- 
 spair n : 
 
 " But soon as thought of thee breeds my delight, 
 And my young soul flutters to thee his nest, 
 Most rude Despair, my daily unbidden guest, 
 Clips straight my wings, straight wraps me in his night." 
 
 (No. 108.) 
 
 Stella's prudent withdrawal of herself from Sidney's 
 company begins to work with salutary effect upon his pas- 
 sion. As that cools or fades for want of nourishment, so 
 the impulse to write declines ; and the poet's sincerity is 
 nowhere better shown than in the sudden and ragged end- 
 ing of his work. I doubt whether the two sonnets on De- 
 sire and Love, which Dr. Grosart has transferred from the 
 Miscellaneous Poems and printed here as Nos. 109 and 110, 
 were really meant to form part of Astrophel and Stella. 
 They strike me as retrospective, composed in a mood of 
 stern and somewhat bitter meditation on the past, and prob-
 
 Tt] "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA." 148 
 
 ably after some considerable interval; yet the Latin epi- 
 graph attached to the second has the force of an envoy. 
 Moreover, they undoubtedly represent the attitude of mind 
 in which Sidney bade farewell to unhallowed love, and 
 which enabled him loyally to plight his troth to Frances 
 Walsingham. Therefore it will not be inappropriate to 
 close the analysis of his love poetry upon this note. No 
 one, reading them, will fail to be struck with their resem- 
 blance to Shakespeare's superb sonnets upon Lust and 
 Death (" The expense of spirit " and " Poor soul, thou cen- 
 tre "), which are perhaps the two most completely power- 
 ful sonnets in our literature : 
 
 " Thou blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare, 
 
 Fond fancy's scum, and dregs of scattered thought ; 
 Band of all evils ; cradle of causeless care ; 
 
 Thou web of will whose end is never wrought ! 
 Desire, desire ! I have too dearly bought 
 
 With price of mangled mind thy worthless ware j 
 Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought, 
 
 Who shouldst my mind to higher things prepare. 
 But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought ; 
 
 In vain thou mad'st me to vain things aspire ; 
 
 In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire : 
 For virtue hath this better lesson taught 
 
 Within myself to seek my only hire, 
 
 Desiring naught but how to kill desire. 
 
 " Leave me, Love, which reachest but to dust ; 
 
 And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things ; 
 Grow rich in that which never taketh rust ; 
 
 Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings. 
 Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might 
 
 To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be, 
 Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the 
 
 That doth but shine and give us sight to see.
 
 144 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. n. 
 
 take fast hold ; let that light be thy guide 
 In this small course which birth draws out to death; 
 
 And think how evil becometh him to slide, 
 Who seeketh heaven and comes of heavenly breath. 
 
 Then farewell, world ! thy uttermost I see : 
 
 Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me !"
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 
 
 FULKE GREVILLE, touching upon the Arcadia, says that 
 Sidney " purposed no monuments of books to the world." 
 " If his purpose had been to leave his memory in books, I 
 am confident, in the right use of logic, philosophy, history, 
 and poesy, nay even in the most ingenious of mechanical 
 arts he would have showed such tracts of a searching and 
 judicious spirit as the professors of every faculty would 
 have striven no less for him than the seven cities did to 
 have Homer of their sept. But the truth is : his end was 
 not writing, even while he wrote ; nor his knowledge mould- 
 ed for tables or schools ; but both his wit and understand- 
 ing bent upon his heart, to make himself and others, not 
 in words or opinion, but in life and action, good and great." 
 " His end was not writing, even while he wrote." This 
 is certain ; the whole tenor of Sidney's career proves his 
 determination to subordinate self -culture of every kind to 
 the ruling purpose of useful public action. It will also be 
 remembered that none of his compositions were printed 
 during his lifetime or with his sanction. Yet he had re- 
 ceived gifts from nature which placed him, as a critic, high 
 above the average of his contemporaries. He was no mean 
 poet when he sang as love dictated. He had acquired and 
 assimilated various stores of knowledge. He possessed an 
 7*
 
 146 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 exquisite and original taste, a notable faculty for the mar- 
 shalling of arguments, and a persuasive eloquence in expo- 
 sition. These qualities inevitably found their exercise in 
 writing; and of all Sidney's writings the one with which 
 we have to deal now is the ripest. 
 
 Judging by the style alone, I should be inclined to 
 place The Defence of Poesy among his later works. But 
 we have no certain grounds for fixing the year of its compo- 
 sition. Probably the commonly accepted date of 1581 is 
 the right one. In the year 1579 Stephen Gosson dedicated 
 to Sidney, without asking his permission, an invective 
 against " poets, pipers, players, and their excusers," which 
 he called The School of Abuse. Spenser observes that Gos- 
 son " was for his labour scorned ; if at least it lie in the 
 goodness of that nature to scorn. Such folly is it not to 
 regard aforehand the nature and quality of him to whom 
 we dedicate our books." It is possible therefore that The 
 School of Abuse and other treatises emanating from Puri- 
 tan hostility to culture, suggested this Apology. Sidney 
 rated poetry highest among the functions of the human 
 intellect. His name had been used to give authority and 
 currency to a clever attack upon poets. He felt the weight 
 of argument to be on his side, and was conscious of his 
 ability to conduct the cause. With what serenity of spirit, 
 sweetness of temper, humour, and easy strength of style 
 at one time soaring to enthusiasm, at another playing with 
 his subject, he performed the task, can only be appreci- 
 ated by a close perusal of the essay. It is indeed the 
 model for such kinds of composition a work which com- 
 bines the quaintness and the blitheness of Elizabethan lit- 
 erature with the urbanity and reserve of a later period. 
 
 Sidney begins by numbering himself among "the paper- 
 blurrers," " who, I know not by what mischance, in these
 
 TIL] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 147 
 
 my not old years and idlest times, having slipped into the 
 title of a poet, am provoked to say something unto you in 
 the defence of that my unelected vocation." Hence it is 
 his duty " to make a pitiful defence of poor poetry, which 
 from almost the highest estimation of learning, is fallen to 
 be the laughing-stock of children." Underlying Sidney's 
 main argument we find the proposition that to attack poe- 
 try is the same as attacking culture in general; therefore, 
 at the outset, he appeals to all professors of learning : will 
 they inveigh against the mother of arts and sciences, the 
 " first nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled them 
 to feed afterwards of tougher knowledge ?" Musasus, Ho- 
 mer, and Hesiod lead the solemn pomp of the Greek writ- 
 ers. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in Italy, Gower and 
 Chaucer in England came before prose - authors. The 
 earliest philosophers, Empedocles and Parmenides, Solon 
 and Tyrtseus, committed their metaphysical speculations, 
 their gnomic wisdom, their martial exhortation, to verse. 
 And even Plato, if rightly considered, was a poet : " in the 
 body of his work, though the inside and strength were 
 philosophy, the skin as it were, and beauty, depended most 
 of poetry." Herodotus called his books by the names of 
 the Muses : " both he and all the rest that followed him, 
 either stole or usurped of poetry their passionate describ- 
 ing of passions, the many particularities of battles which 
 no man could affirm." They also put imaginary speeches 
 into the mouths of kings and captains. The very names 
 which the Greeks and Romans, "the authors of most of 
 our sciences," gave to poets, show the estimation in which 
 they held them. The Romans called the poet vates, or 
 prophet ; the Greeks Trou/r^c, or maker, a word, by the way, 
 which coincides with English custom. What can be high- 
 er in the scale of human understanding than this faculty of
 
 148 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 making ? Sidney enlarges upon its significance, following 
 a line of thought which Tasso summed up in one memora- 
 ble sentence : " There is no Creator but God and the Poet." 
 
 He now advances a definition, which is substantially the 
 same as Aristotle's : " Poesy is an art of imitation ; that is 
 to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth : to 
 speak metaphorically, a speaking picture ; with this end to 
 teach and delight." Of poets there have been three gen- 
 eral kinds : first, " they that did imitate the inconceivable 
 excellences of God ;" secondly, " they that deal with matter 
 philosophical, either moral or natural or astronomical or 
 historical ;" thirdly, " right poets . . . which most proper- 
 ly do imitate, to teach and delight ; and to imitate, borrow 
 nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be ; but range only, 
 reined with learned discretion, into the divine consideration 
 of what may be and should be." The preference given to 
 the third kind of poets may be thus explained : The first 
 group are limited to setting forth fixed theological con- 
 ceptions ; the second have their material supplied them by 
 the sciences ; but the third are the makers and creators of 
 ideals for warning and example. 
 
 Poets may also be classified according to the several 
 species of verse. But this implies a formal and misleading 
 limitation. Sidney,- like Milton and like Shelley, will not 
 have poetry confined to metre : " apparelled verse being 
 but an ornament, and no cause to poetry ; since there have 
 been many most excellent poets that have never versified, 
 and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to 
 the name of poets." Xenophon's " Cyropsedia," the 
 " Theagenes and Chariclea " of Heliodorus, are cited as true 
 poems ; " and yet both these wrote in prose." " It is not 
 rhyming and versing that maketh a poet ; but it is that 
 feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with
 
 TO.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 149 
 
 that delightful teaching, which must be the right describ- 
 ing note to know a poet by." Truly " the senate of poets 
 have chosen verse as their fittest raiment ;" but this they 
 did, because they meant, " as in matter they passed all in 
 all, so in manner to go beyond them." " Speech, next to 
 reason, is the greatest gift bestowed upon mortality ;" and 
 verse " which most doth polish that blessing of speech," is, 
 therefore, the highest investiture of poetic thought. 
 
 Having thus defined his conception of poetry, Sidney 
 inquires into the purpose of all learning. " This purify- 
 ing of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of judg- 
 ment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call 
 learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to 
 what immediate end soever it be directed; the final end 
 is to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our de- 
 generate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be 
 capable of." All the branches of learning subserve the 
 royal or architectonic science, " which stands, as I think, 
 in the knowledge of a man's self in the ethic and politic 
 consideration, with the end of well-doing, and not of well- 
 knowing only." If then virtuous action be the ultimate 
 object of all our intellectual endeavours, can it be shown 
 that the poet contributes above all others to this exalted 
 aim ? Sidney thinks it can. 
 
 Omitting divines and jurists, for obvious reasons, he 
 finds that the poet's only competitors are philosophers and 
 historians. It therefore now behoves him to prove that 
 poetry contributes more to the formation of character for 
 virtuous action that either philosophy or history. The 
 argument is skilfully conducted, and developed with nice 
 art ; but it amounts in short to this, that while philosophy 
 is too abstract and history is too concrete, poetry takes 
 the just path between these extremes, and combines their
 
 150 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 methods in a harmony of more persuasive force than either. 
 " Now doth the peerless poet perform both ; for whatso- 
 ever the philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a per- 
 fect picture of it, by some one whom he presupposeth it 
 was done, so as he coupleth the general notion with the 
 particular example." "Anger, the Stoics said, was a short 
 madness; but let Sophocles bring you Ajax on a stage, 
 killing or whipping sheep and oxen, thinking them the 
 army of Greeks, with their chieftains Agamemnon and 
 Menelaus; and tell me if you have not a more familiar 
 insight into anger than finding in the schoolmen his genius 
 and difference ?" Even Christ used parables and fables for 
 the firmer inculcation of his divine precepts. If philoso- 
 phy is too much occupied with, the universal, history is 
 too much bound to the particular. It dares not go be- 
 yond what was, may not travel into what might or should 
 be. Moreover, " history being captived to the truth of a 
 foolish world, is many times a terror from well-doing, and 
 an encouragment to unbridled wickedness." It cannot 
 avoid revealing virtue overwhelmed with calamity and vice 
 in prosperous condition. Poetry labours not under the 
 same restrictions. Her ideals, delightfully presented, en- 
 tering the soul with the enchanting strains of music, " set 
 the mind forward to that which deserves to be called and 
 accounted good." In fine : " as virtue is the most excel- 
 lent resting-place for all worldly learning to make his end 
 of, so poetry, being the most familiar to teach it, and most 
 princely to move towards it, in the most excellent work is 
 the most excellent workman." 
 
 Sidney next passes the various species of poems in re- 
 view : the pastoral ; " the lamenting elegiac ;" " the bitter 
 but wholesome iambic ;" the satiric ; the comic, " whom 
 naughty play-makers and stage-keepers have justly made
 
 vii.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 161 
 
 odious ;" " the high and excellent tragedy, that openeth 
 the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are 
 covered with tissue that raaketh kings fear to be tyrants, 
 and tyrants to manifest their tyrannical humours that 
 with stirring the effects of admiration and commiseration, 
 teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon how 
 weak foundations gilded roofs are builded;" the lyric, 
 " who with his tuned lyre and well-accorded voice giveth 
 praise, the reward of virtue, to virtuous acts who giveth 
 moral precepts and natural problems who sometimes 
 raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in sing- 
 ing the lauds of the immortal God ;" the epic or heroic, 
 " whose very name, I think, should daunt all backbiters . . . 
 which is not only a kind, but the best and most accom- 
 plished kind of poetry." He calls upon the detractors of 
 poesy to bring their complaints against these several sorts, 
 and to indicate in each of them its errors. What they 
 may allege in disparagement, he meets with chosen argu- 
 ments, among which we can select his apology for the 
 lyric. " Certainly, I must confess my own barbarousness : 
 I never heard the old song of ' Percy and Douglas ' that I 
 found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; 
 and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no 
 rougher voice than rude style ; which being so evil-appar- 
 elled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what 
 would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of 
 Pindar ?" 
 
 Having reached this point, partly on the way of argu- 
 ment, partly on the path of appeal and persuasion, Sidney 
 halts to sum his whole position up in one condensed para- 
 graph : 
 
 " Since, then, poetry is of all human learnings the most ancient 
 and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have 
 37
 
 162 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 taken their beginnings ; since it is so universal that no learned na- 
 tion doth despise it, nor barbarous nation is without it ; since both 
 Roman and Greek gave such divine names unto it, the one of prophe- 
 sying, the other of making, and that indeed that name of making is fit 
 for him, considering, that where all other arts retain themselves with- 
 in their subject, and receive, as it were, their being from it, the poet 
 only, only bringeth his own stuff, and doth not learn a conceit out of 
 a matter, but maketh matter for a conceit ; since neither his descrip- 
 tion nor end containeth any evil, the thing described cannot be evil ; 
 since his effects be so good as to teach goodness, and delight the 
 learners of it ; since therein (namely in moral doctrine, the chief of 
 all knowledges) he doth not only far pass the historian, but, for in- 
 structing, is well nigh comparable to the philosopher ; for moving, 
 leaveth him behind him ; since the Holy Scripture (wherein there is 
 no uncleanness) hath whole parts in it poetical, and that even our 
 Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it ; since all his kinds 
 are not only in their united forms, but in their severed dissections 
 fully commendable ; I think, and think I think rightly, the laurel 
 crown appointed for triumphant captains, doth worthily, of all other 
 learnings, honour the poet's triumph." 
 
 Objections remain to be combated in detail. Sidney 
 chooses one first, which offers no great difficulty. The 
 detractors of poetry gird at " rhyming and versing." He 
 has already laid it down that " one may be a poet without 
 versing, and a versifier without poetry." But he has also 
 shown why metrical language should be regarded as the 
 choicest and most polished mode of speech. Verse, too, 
 fits itself to music more properly than prose, and far exceeds 
 it " in the knitting up of the memory." Nor is rhyme to 
 be neglected, especially in modern metres ; seeing that it 
 strikes a music to the ear. But the enemy advances heav- 
 ier battalions. Against poetry he alleges (1) that there 
 are studies upon which a man may spend his time more 
 profitably; (2) that it is the mother of lies; (3) that it is 
 the nurse of abuse, corrupting the fancy, enfeebling manli'
 
 m] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 163 
 
 ness, and instilling pestilent desires into the soul ; (4) that 
 Plato banished poets from his commonwealth. 
 
 These four points are taken seriatim, and severally an- 
 swered. The first is set aside, as involving a begging of 
 the question at issue. To the second Sidney replies " par- 
 adoxically, but truly I think truly, that of all writers under 
 the sun the poet is the least liar ; and though he would, as 
 a poet, can scarcely be a liar." It is possible to err, and 
 to affirm falsehood, in all the other departments of knowl- 
 edge ; but " for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and there- 
 fore nothing lieth." His sphere is not the region of 
 ascertained fact, or of logical propositions, but of imag- 
 ination and invention. He labours not " to tell you what 
 is, or is not, but what should, or should not be." None is 
 so foolish as to mistake the poet's world for literal fact. 
 " What child is there, that cometh to a play, and seeing 
 Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth be- 
 lieve that it is Thebes ?" The third point is more weighty. 
 Are poets blamable, in that they " abuse men's wit, train- 
 ing it to a wanton sinfulness and lustful love ?" Folk say 
 " the comedies rather teach than reprehend amorous con- 
 ceits ; they say the lyric is larded with passionate sonnets ; 
 the elegiac weeps the want of his mistress ; and that even 
 to the heroical Cupid hath ambitiously climbed." Here 
 Sidney turns to Love, and, as though himself acknowledg- 
 ing that deity, invokes him to defend his own cause. Yet 
 let us "grant love of beauty to be a beastly fault," let us 
 "grant that lovely name of love to deserve all hateful re- 
 proaches," what have the adversaries gained ? Surely they 
 have not proved " that poetry abuseth man's wit, but that 
 man's wit abuseth poetry." " But what ! shall the abuse 
 of a thing make the right odious ?" Does not law, does 
 
 not physic, injure man every day by the abuse of ignorant 
 L
 
 154 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 practisers ? " Doth not God's Word abused breed heresy, 
 and His name abused become blasphemy?" Yet these 
 people contend that before poetry came to infect the Eng- 
 lish, " our nation had set their heart's delight upon action 
 and not imagination, rather doing things worthy to be 
 written than writing things fit to be done." But when 
 was there that time when the Albion nation was without 
 poetry ? Of a truth, this argument is levelled against all 
 learning and all culture. It is an attack, worthy of Goths 
 or Vandals, upon the stronghold of the intellect. As such, 
 we might dismiss it. Let us, however, remember that 
 " poetry is the companion of camps : I dare undertake, Or- 
 lando Furioso or honest King Arthur will never displease 
 a soldier ; but the quiddity of ens and prima materia will 
 hardly agree with a corselet." Alexander on his Indian 
 campaigns left the living Aristotle behind him, but slept 
 with the dead Homer in his 'tent; condemned Callisthenes 
 to death, but yearned for a poet to commemorate his deeds. 
 Lastly, they advance Plato's verdict against poets. Plato, 
 says Sidney, " I have ever esteemed most worthy of rever- 
 ence ; and with good reason, since of all philosophers he 
 is the most poetical." Having delivered this sly thrust, he 
 proceeds : " first, truly, a man might maliciously object that 
 Plato, being a philosopher, was a natural enemy of poets." 
 Next let us look into his writings. Has any poet author- 
 ised filthiness more abominable than one can find in the 
 " Phaedrus " and the " Symposium ?" " Again, a man 
 might ask out of what commonwealth Plato doth banish 
 them." It is in sooth one where the community of wom- 
 en is permitted ; and " little should poetical sonnets be hurt- 
 ful, when a man might have what woman he listed." Af- 
 ter thus trifling with the subject, Sidney points out that 
 Plato was not offended with poetry, but with the abuse of
 
 VIL] " THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 166 
 
 it. He objected to the crude theology and the monstrous 
 ethics of the myth-makers. " So as Plato, banishing the 
 abuse not the thing, not banishing it, but giving due hon- 
 our to it, shall be our patron and not our adversary." 
 Once again he pauses, to recapitulate : 
 
 " Since the excellencies of poesy may be so easily and so justly 
 confirmed, and the low creeping objections so soon trodden down ; it 
 not being an art of lies, but of true doctrine ; not of effeminateness, 
 but of notable stirring of courage ; not of abusing man's wit, but of 
 strengthening man's wit ; not banished, but honoured by Plato ; let 
 us rather plant more laurels for to ingarland the poets' heads (which 
 honour of being laureate, as besides them only triumphant captains 
 were, is a sufficient authority to show the price they ought to be 
 held in) than suffer the ill-favoured breath of such wrong speakers 
 once to blow upon the clear springs of poesy." 
 
 Then he turns to England. Why is it that England, " the 
 mother of excellent minds, should be grown so hard a 
 stepmother to poets ?" 
 
 "Sweet poesy, that hath anciently had kings, emperors, senators, 
 great captains, such as, besides a thousand others, David, Adrian, 
 Sophocles, Germanicus, not only to favour poets, but to be poets : 
 and of our nearer times, can present for her patrons, a Robert, King 
 of Sicily ; the great King Francis of France ; King James of Scot- 
 land; such cardinals as Bembus and Bibiena; such famous preach- 
 ers and teachers as Beza and Melancthon ; so learned philosophers 
 as Fracastorius and Scaliger; so great orators as Pontanus and 
 Muretus ; so piercing wits as George Buchanan ; so grave counsellors 
 as, besides many, but before all, that Hospital of France ; than whom, 
 I think, that realm never brought forth a more accomplished judg- 
 ment more firmly builded upon virtue ; I say, these, with numbers of 
 others, not only to read others' poesies, but to poetise for others' 
 reading : that poesy, thus embraced in all other places, should only 
 find, hi our time, a hard welcome in England, I think the very earth 
 laments it, and therefore decks our soil with fewer laurels than it 
 was accustomed."
 
 166 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 The true cause is that in England so many incapable folk 
 write verses. With the exception of the Mirror of Magis- 
 trates, Lord Surrey's Lyrics, and The Shepherd's Calendar, 
 " I do not remember to have seen but few (to speak bold- 
 ly) printed, that have poetical sinews in them." At this 
 point he introduces a lengthy digression upon the stage, 
 which, were we writing a history of the English drama, 
 ought to be quoted in full. It is interesting because it 
 proves how the theatre occupied Sidney's thoughts ; and 
 yet he had not perceived that from the humble plays 
 of the people an unrivalled flower of modern art was about 
 to emerge. The Defence of Poesy was written before 
 Marlowe created the romantic drama; before Shakespeare 
 arrived in London. It was written in all probability be- 
 fore its author could have attended the representation of 
 Greene's and Peele's best plays. Gorboduc, which he 
 praises moderately and censures with discrimination, seem- 
 ed to him the finest product of dramatic art in England, 
 because it approached the model of Seneca and the Italian 
 tragedians. For the popular stage, with its chaos of tragic 
 and comic elements, its undigested farrago of romantic in- 
 cidents and involved plots, he entertained the scorn of a 
 highly-educated scholar and a refined gentleman. Yet no 
 one, let us be sure, would have welcomed Othello and The 
 Merchant of Venice, Volpone and A Woman Killed with 
 Kindness, more enthusiastically than Sidney, had his life 
 been protracted through the natural span of mortality. 
 
 Having uttered his opinion frankly on the drama, he at- 
 tacks the " courtesan-like painted affectation " of the Eng- 
 lish at his time. Far-fetched words, alliteration, euphuistic 
 similes from stones and beasts and plants, fall under his hon- 
 est censure. He mentions no man. But he is clearly aim- 
 ing at the school of Lyly and the pedants ; for he pertinent-
 
 vn.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 157 
 
 ly observes : " I have found in divers small-learned courtiers 
 a more sound style than in some professors of learning." 
 Language should be used, not to trick out thoughts with 
 irrelevant ornaments or to smother them in conceits, but to 
 make them as clear and natural as words can do. It is a 
 sin against our mother speech to employ these meretricious 
 arts; for whoso will look dispassionately into the matter, 
 shall convince himself that English, both in its freedom 
 from inflections and its flexibility of accent, is aptest of all 
 modern tongues to be the vehicle of simple and of beauti- 
 ful utterance. 
 
 The peroration to The Defence of Poesy is an argument 
 addressed to the personal ambition of the reader. It some- 
 what falls below the best parts of the essay in style, and 
 makes no special claim on our attention. From the forego- 
 ing analysis it will be seen that Sidney attempted to cover 
 a wide field, combining a philosophy of art with a practical 
 review of English literature. Much as the Italians had re- 
 cently written upon the theory of poetry, I do not remem- 
 ber any treatise which can be said to have supplied the 
 material or suggested the method of this apology. England, 
 of course, at that time was destitute of all but the most 
 meagre textbooks on the subject. Great interest therefore 
 attaches to Sidney's discourse as the original outcome of 
 his studies, meditations, literary experience, and converse 
 with men of parts. Though we may not be prepared to 
 accept each of his propositions, though some will demur to 
 his conception of the artist's moral aim, and others to his 
 inclusion of prose fiction in the definition of poetry, while 
 all will agree in condemning his mistaken dramatic theory, 
 none can dispute the ripeness, mellowness, harmony, and 
 felicity of mental gifts displayed in work at once so concise 
 and so compendious. It is indeed a pity that English lit-
 
 168 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 erature then furnished but slender material for criticism. 
 When we remember that, among the poems of the English 
 Renaissance, only Surrey's Lyrics, Gorboduc, the Mirror 
 of Magistrates, and The Shepherd's Calendar could be 
 praised with candour (and I think Sidney was right in this 
 judgment), we shall be better able to estimate his own high 
 position, and our mental senses will be dazzled by the achieve- 
 ments of the last three centuries. Exactly three centuries 
 have elapsed since Sidney fell at Zutphen ; and who shall 
 count the poets of our race, stars differing indeed in glory, 
 but stars that stream across the heavens of song from him 
 to us in one continuous galaxy ? 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney was not only eminent as pleader, crit- 
 ic, and poet. He also ranked as the patron and protector 
 of men of letters. " He was of a very munificent spirit," 
 says Aubrey, " and liberal to all lovers of learning, and to 
 those that pretended to any acquaintance with Parnassus; 
 insomuch that he was cloyed and surfeited with the poet- 
 asters of those days." This sentence is confirmed by the 
 memorial verses written on his death, and by the many 
 books which were inscribed with his name. A list of these 
 may be read in Dr. Zouch's Life. It is enough for our 
 purpose to enumerate the more distinguished. To Sidney, 
 Spenser dedicated the first fruits of his genius, and Hak- 
 luyt the first collection of his epoch-making Voyages. 
 Henri Etienne, who was proud to call himself the friend of 
 Sidney, placed his 1576 edition of the Greek Testament 
 and his 1581 edition of Herodian under the protection of 
 his name. Lord Brooke, long after his friend's death, ded- 
 icated his collected works to Sidney's memory. 
 
 Of all these tributes to his love of learning the most in- 
 teresting in my opinion is that of Giordano Bruno. This 
 Titan of impassioned speculation passed two years in Lon-
 
 vn.] "THE DEFENCE OF POESY." 169 
 
 don between 1583 and 1585. Here he composed, and 
 here he printed, his most important works in the Italian 
 tongue. Two of these he presented, with pompous com- 
 mendatory epistles, to Sir Philip Sidney. They were his 
 treatise upon Ethics, styled Lo Spaccio delta Bestia Trion- 
 fante, and his discourse upon the philosophic enthusiasm, 
 entitled Oli Eroici Furori. That Bruno belonged to Sid- 
 ney's circle, is evident from the graphic account he gives 
 of a supper at Fulke Greville's house, in the dialogue called 
 La Cena delle Ceneri. His appreciation of " the most il- 
 lustrious and excellent knight's " character transpires in the 
 following phrase from one of his dedications : " the natural 
 bias of your spirit, which is truly heroical." Those who 
 know what the word eroica implied for Bruno, not only of 
 personal courage, but of sustained and burning spiritual pas- 
 sion,will appreciate this eulogy by one of the most penetrat- 
 ing and candid, as he was the most unfortunate of truth's 
 martyrs. Had the proportions of my work justified such 
 a digression, I would eagerly have collected from Bruno's 
 Italian discourses those paragraphs which cast a vivid light 
 upon literary and social life in England. But these belong 
 rather to Bruno's than to Sidney's biography.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 
 
 AFTER Sidney's marriage there remained but little more 
 than three years of life to him. The story of this period 
 may he briefly told. Two matters of grave import occupied 
 his mind. These were : first, the menacing attitude of 
 Spain and the advance of the Counter-Reformation ; sec- 
 ondly, a project of American Colonisation. The suspicious 
 death of the Duke of Anjou, followed by the murder of 
 the Prince of Orange in 1584, rendered Elizabeth's interfer- 
 ence in the Low Countries almost imperative. Philip II., 
 assisted by the powers of Catholicism, and served in secret 
 by the formidable Company of Jesus, threatened Europe with 
 the extinction of religious and political liberties. It was 
 known that, sooner or later, he must strike a deadly blow 
 at England. The Armada loomed already in the distance. 
 But how was he to be attacked? Sidney thought that 
 Elizabeth would do well to put herself at the head of a 
 Protestant alliance against what Fulke Greville aptly styled 
 the " masked triplicity between Spain, Rome, and the Jes- 
 uitical faction of France." He also strongly recommended 
 an increase of the British navy and a policy of protecting 
 the Huguenots in their French seaports. But he judged 
 the Netherlands an ill-chosen field for fighting the main, 
 duel out with Spain. There, Philip was firmly seated in
 
 CHAP. Tin.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 161 
 
 well-furnished cities, where he could mass troops and muni- 
 tions of war at pleasure. To maintain an opposition on 
 the side of Holland was of course necessary. But the re- 
 ally vulnerable point in the huge Spanish empire seemed 
 to him to be its ill-defended territory in the West Indies. 
 Let then the Protestant League, if possible, be placed upon 
 a firmer basis. Let war in the Low Countries be prosecut- 
 ed without remission. But, at the same time, let the Eng- 
 lish use their strongest weapon, attack by sea. Descents 
 might be made from time to time upon the Spanish ports, 
 as Drake had already harried Vera Cruz, and was afterwards 
 to fall on Cadiz. Buccaneering and filibustering expedi- 
 tions against the Spanish fleets which brought back treas- 
 ure across the Indian main, were not to be contemned. 
 But he believed that the most efficient course would be to 
 plant a colony upon the American continent, which should 
 at the same time be a source of strength to England and a 
 hostile outpost for incursions into the Spanish settlements. 
 Fulke Greville has devoted a large portion of his Life to the 
 analysis of Sidney's opinions on these subjects. He sums 
 them up as follows : " Upon these and the like assumptions 
 he resolved there were but two ways left to frustrate this 
 ambitious monarch's designs. The one, that which divert- 
 ed Hannibal, and by setting fire on his own house made 
 him draw in his spirits to comfort his heart; the other, 
 that of Jason, by fetching away his golden fleece and not 
 suffering any one man quietly to enjoy that which every 
 man so much affected." 
 
 In the autumn of 1584 Sidney sat again in the House of 
 Commons, where he helped to forward the bill for Raleigh's 
 expedition to Virginia. This in fact was an important step 
 in the direction of his favourite scheme ; for his view of the 
 American colony was that it should be a real " plantation, 
 8
 
 162 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 not like an asylum for fugitives, a bellum piraticum for 
 banditti, or any such base ramas of people ; but as an em- 
 porium for the confluence of all nations that love or profess 
 any kind of virtue or commerce." Parliament next year 
 had to take strong measures against the Jesuits, who were 
 already fomenting secret conspiracies to dethrone or assas- 
 sinate the queen. The session ended in March, and in April 
 Raleigh started for the New World. Three months later 
 Sidney received a commission to share the Mastership of 
 the Ordnance with his uncle Warwick. He found that de- 
 partment of the public service in a lamentable plight, owing 
 to Elizabeth's parsimony ; and soon after his appointment, 
 he risked her displeasure by firmly pressing for a thorough 
 replenishment of the stores upon which England's efficiency 
 as a belligerent would depend. 
 
 It was probably in this year that Sidney took up his 
 pen to defend his uncle Leicester against the poisonous 
 libel, popularly known as Leicester's Commonwealth, and 
 generally ascribed to the Jesuit Parsons. We possess the 
 rough draft of his discourse, which proves convincingly 
 that he at least was persuaded of the earl's innocence. He 
 does not even deign to answer the charges of " dissimulation, 
 hypocrisy, adultery, falsehood, treachery, poison, rebellion, 
 treason, cowardice, atheism, and what not," except by a flat 
 denial, and a contemptuous interrogation : " what is it else 
 but such a bundle of railings, as if it came from the mouth 
 of some half drunk scold in a tavern 1" By far the larger 
 portion of the defence is occupied with an elaborate exhibi- 
 tion of the pedigree and honours of the House of Dudley, 
 in reply to the hint that Edmund, Leicester's grandfather, 
 was basely born. Sidney, as we have seen, set great store 
 on his own descent from the Dudleys, which he rated high- 
 er than his paternal ancestry; and this aspersion on their
 
 vni.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 168 
 
 origin inspired him with unmeasured anger. At the close 
 of the pamphlet he throws down the glove to his anony- 
 mous antagonist, and defies him to single combat. " And, 
 from the date of this writing, imprinted and published, I 
 will three months expect thine answer." Horace Walpole 
 was certainly not justified in calling this spirited, but ill- 
 balanced composition, " by far the best specimen of his 
 abilities." 
 
 June 1585 marked an era in the foreign policy of Eliza- 
 beth. She received a deputation from the Netherlands, 
 who offered her the sovereignty of the United Provinces if 
 she would undertake their cause. This offer she refused. 
 But the recent adhesion of the French Crown to what was 
 called the Holy League, rendered it necessary that she 
 should do something. Accordingly, she agreed to send 6000 
 men to the Low Countries, holding Flushing and Brill with 
 the Castle of Rammekins in pledge for the repayment of 
 the costs of this expedition. Sidney began now to be 
 spoken of as the most likely governor of Flushing. But 
 at this moment his thoughts were directed rather to the 
 New World than to action in Flanders. We have already 
 seen why he believed it best to attack Spain there. A let- 
 ter written to him by Ralph Lane from Virginia echoes 
 his own views upon this topic. The governor of the new 
 plantation strongly urged him to head a force against what 
 Greville called " that rich and desert West Indian mine." 
 Passing by the islands of St. John and Hispaniola, Lane 
 had observed their weakness. "How greatly a small force 
 would garboil him here, when two of his most richest and 
 strongest islands took such alarms of us, not only landing, 
 but dwelling upon them, with only a hundred and twenty 
 men, I refer it to your judgment." Sidney, moreover, had 
 grown to distrust Burleigh's government of England.
 
 164 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 " Nature," says Greville, " guiding his eyes first to his na- 
 tive country, he found greatness of worth and place coun- 
 terpoised there by the arts of power and favour. The 
 stirring spirits sent abroad as fuel, to keep the flame far 
 off ; and the effeminate made judges of dangers which they 
 fear, and honour which they understand not." He saw 
 " how the idle-censuring faction at home had won ground 
 of the active adventurers abroad ;" he perceived the queen's 
 " governors to sit at home in their soft chairs, playing fast 
 and loose with them that ventured their lives abroad." 
 All these considerations put together made him more than 
 lukewarm about the Netherlands campaign, and less than 
 eager to take office under so egotistical an administration. 
 It was his cherished scheme to join in some private en- 
 terprise, the object of which should be the enfeeblement 
 of Spain and the strengthening of England beyond the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 The thoughts which occupied his mind took definite 
 shape in the summer of 1585. "The next step which he 
 intended into the world was an expedition of his own pro- 
 jecting ; wherein he fashioned the whole body, with pur- 
 pose to become head of it himself. I mean the last 
 employment but one of Sir Francis Drake to the West 
 Indies." With these words Greville introduces a minute 
 account of Sidney's part in that famous adventure. He 
 worked hard at the project, stirring up the several passions 
 which might induce men of various sympathies to furnish 
 assistance by money or by personal participation. 
 
 "To martial men he opened wide the door of sea and land for 
 fame and conquest. To the nobly ambitious, the far stage of Ameri- 
 ca to win honour in. To the religious divines, besides a new apostol- 
 ical calling of the lost heathen to the Christian faith, a large field of 
 reducing poor Christians misled by the idolatry of Rome to their
 
 vin.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 165 
 
 mother primitive church. To the ingeniously industrious, variety of 
 natural riches for new mysteries and manufactures to work upon. 
 To the merchant, with a simple people a fertile and unexhausted 
 earth. To the fortune - bound, liberty. To the curious, a fruitful 
 work of innovation. Generally, the word gold was an attractive ada- 
 mant to make men venture that which they have in hope to grow rich 
 by that which they have not." 
 
 Moreover he " won thirty gentlemen of great blood and 
 state here in England, every man to sell one hundred 
 pounds land " for fitting out a fleet. While firmly resolved 
 to join the first detachment which should sail from Plym- 
 outh, he had to keep his plans dark ; for the queen would 
 not hear of his engaging in such ventures. It was accord- 
 ingly agreed between him and Sir Francis that the latter 
 should go alone to Plymouth, and that Sir Philip should 
 meet him there upon some plausible excuse. When they 
 had weighed anchor, Sidney was to share the chief com- 
 mand with Drake. Sir Francis in due course of time set 
 off ; and early in September he sent a message praying ur- 
 gently for his associate's presence. It so happened that 
 just at this time Don Antonio of Portugal was expected at 
 Plymouth, and Philip obtained leave to receive him there. 
 From this point I shall let Fulke Greville tell the story in 
 his own old-fashioned language : 
 
 " Yet I that had the honour, as of being bred with him from kis 
 youth, so now by his own choice of all England to be his loving and 
 beloved Achates in this journey, observing the countenance of this 
 gallant mariner more exactly than Sir Philip's leisure served him to 
 do, after we were laid in bed acquainted him with my observation of 
 the discountenance and depression which appeared in Sir Francis, as 
 if our coming were both beyond his expectation and desire. Never- 
 theless that ingenuous spirit of Sir Philip's, though apt to give me 
 credit, yet not apt to discredit others, made him suspend his own and 
 labour to change or qualify by judgment ; till within some few days
 
 166 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAT. 
 
 after, finding the ships neither ready according to promise, nor pos- 
 sibly to be made ready in many days, and withal observing some 
 sparks of false fire breaking out from his yoke-fellow daily, it pleased 
 him in the freedom of our friendship to return me my own stock 
 with interest. 
 
 " All this while Don Antonio landed not ; the fleet seemed to us, 
 like the weary passengers' inn, still to go farther from our desires ; 
 letters came from the Court to hasten it away ; but it may be the 
 leaden feet and nimble thoughts of Sir Francis wrought in the day, 
 and unwrought by night, while he watched an opportunity to discov- 
 er us without being discovered. 
 
 " For within a few days after, a post steals up to the Court, upon 
 whose arrival an alarm is presently taken : messengers sent away to 
 stay us, or if we refused, to stay the whole fleet. Notwithstanding 
 this first Mercury, his errand being partly advertised to Sir Philip be- 
 forehand, was intercepted upon the way ; his letters taken from him 
 by two resolute soldiers in mariners' apparel, brought instantly to 
 Sir Philip, opened and read. The next was a more imperial mandate, 
 carefully conveyed and delivered to himself by a peer of this realm ; 
 carrying with it in the one hand grace, the other thunder. The grace 
 was an offer of an instant employment under his uncle, then going 
 general into the Low Countries ; against which as though he would 
 gladly have demurred, yet the confluence of reason, transcendency of 
 power, fear of staying the whole fleet, made him instantly sacrifice 
 all these self-places to the duty of obedience." 
 
 In plain words, then, Sir Francis Drake, disliking the 
 prospect of an equal in command, played Sir Philip Sidney 
 false by sending private intelligence to Court. The queen 
 expressed her will so positively that Sidney had to yield. 
 At the same time it was settled that he should go into the 
 Netherlands, under his uncle Leicester, holding her Majes- 
 ty's commission as Governor of Flushing and Rammekins. 
 By this rapid change of events his destiny was fixed. 
 Drake set sail on the 14th of September. Two months 
 later, on the 16th of November, Sidney left England for 
 his post in the Low Countries. I ought here to add that
 
 nn.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 167 
 
 at some time during this busy summer his daughter Eliza- 
 beth, afterwards Countess of Rutland, was born. 
 
 Sidney's achievements in the Netherlands, except as 
 forming part of his short life, claim no particular atten- 
 tion. He was welcomed by Count Maurice of Nassau, the 
 eldest son of William, Prince of Orange; and gleanings 
 from letters of the time show that folk expected much 
 from his activity and probity. But he enjoyed narrow 
 scope for the employment of his abilities. Rammekins, the 
 fortress which commanded Flushing, was inadequately fur- 
 nished and badly garrisoned. The troops were insufficient, 
 and so ill-paid that mutinies were always imminent. In 
 one of his despatches, urgently demanding fresh supplies, 
 he says: "I am in a garrison as much able to command 
 Flushing as the Tower is to answer for London." The 
 Dutch government did not please him : he found " the peo- 
 ple far more careful than the government in all things 
 touching the public welfare." With the plain speech that 
 was habitual to him, he demanded more expenditure of 
 English money. This irritated the queen, and gave his 
 enemies at Court occasion to condemn him in his absence 
 as ambitious and proud. He began to show signs of im- 
 patience with Elizabeth. " If her Majesty were the fount- 
 ain, I would fear, considering what I daily find, that we 
 should wax dry." This bitter taunt he vented in a letter 
 to Sir Francis Walsingham. Meanwhile the Earl of Leices- 
 ter arrived upon the 10th of December, and made mat- 
 ters worse. He laid himself out for honours of all sorts, 
 accepting the title of Governor-General over the United 
 Provinces, and coquetting with some vague scheme of being 
 chosen for their sovereign. Imposing but impotent, Leicester 
 had no genius for military affairs. The winter of 1585-86 
 
 dragged through, with nothing memorable to relate. 
 38
 
 168 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 The following season, however, was marked by several 
 important incidents in Philip Sidney's private life. First, 
 Lady Sidney joined her husband at Flushing. Then on 
 the 5th of May Sir Henry Sidney died in the bishop's 
 palace at Worcester. His body was embalmed and sent 
 to Penshurst. His heart was buried at Ludlow ; his en- 
 trails in the precincts of Worcester Cathedral. So passed 
 from life Elizabeth's sturdy servant in Ireland and Wales ; 
 a man, as I conceive him, of somewhat limited capacity 
 and stubborn temper, but true as steel, and honest in the 
 discharge of very trying duties. Later in the same year, 
 upon the 9th of August, Lady Mary Sidney yielded up her 
 gentle spirit. Of her there is nothing to be written but 
 the purest panegyric. Born of the noblest blood, surviv- 
 ing ambitious relatives who reached at royalty and perished, 
 losing health and beauty in the service of an exacting 
 queen, suffering poverty at Court, supporting husband and 
 children through all trials with wise counsel and sweet 
 hopeful temper, she emerges with pale lustre from all the 
 actors of that time to represent the perfect wife and moth- 
 er in a lady of unpretending, but heroic, dignity. Sidney 
 would have been the poorer for the loss of these parents, 
 if his own life had been spared. As it was, he survived 
 his mother but two months. 
 
 In July he distinguished himself by the surprise and 
 capture of the little town of Axel. Leicester rewarded 
 him for this service with the commission of colonel. Eliza- 
 beth resented his promotion. She wished the colonelcy for 
 Count Hohenlohe, or Hollock, a brave but drunken soldier. 
 Walsingham wrote upon the occasion : " She layeth the 
 blame upon Sir Philip, as a thing by him ambitiously 
 sought. I see her Majesty very apt upon every light oc- 
 casion to find fault with him." Ambition, not of the
 
 mi.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 169 
 
 vaulting kind, which " overleaps itself," but of a steady, 
 persistent, intellectual stamp, was, indeed, I think, the lead- 
 ing quality in Sidney's nature. From the courtiers of the 
 period, the Leicesters, Oxfords, Ormonds, Hattons, and so 
 forth, this mark of character honourably distinguished him. 
 And, if he had but lived, Elizabeth, who judged her serv- 
 ants with some accuracy, might by judicious curbing and 
 parsimonious encouragement have tempered the fine steel 
 of his frailty into a blade of trenchant edge. There was 
 nothing ignoble, nothing frivolous in his ambition. It was 
 rather of such mettle as made the heroes of the common- 
 wealth : pure and un - self - seeking, but somewhat acrid. 
 And now he fretted himself too much because of evil- 
 doers; impatiently demanded men and munitions from Eng- 
 land; vented his bile in private letters against Leicester. 
 Sidney was justified by events. The campaign dragged 
 negligently on ; and the Commander of the Forces paid 
 more attention to banquets and diplomatic intrigues than 
 to the rough work of war. But the tone adopted by him 
 in his irritation was hardly prudent for so young and so 
 comparatively needy a gentleman. 
 
 Whatever he found to blame in Leicester's conduct of 
 affairs, Sidney did not keep aloof; but used every effort 
 to inspire his uncle with some of his own spirit. At the 
 end of August they were both engaged in reducing the lit- 
 tle fort of Doesburg on the Yssel, which had importance 
 as the key to Zutphen. It fell upon the 2d of September ; 
 and on the 13th Zutphen was invested Lewis William of 
 Nassau, Sir John Norris, and Sir Philip Sidney command- 
 ing the land-forces, and Leicester blockading the approach 
 by water. The Duke of Parma, acting for Spain, did all 
 he could to reinforce the garrison with men and provisions. 
 News came upon the 21st to Leicester that a considerable 
 c 8* M
 
 170 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 convoy was at Deventer waiting an opportunity to enter 
 the town. He resolved to cut off these supplies, and fixed 
 an early hour of the 22d, which was a Thursday, for this 
 operation. We have a letter, the last which Sidney penned 
 before his fatal wound, dated from the camp at Zutphen 
 upon the morning of the engagement. It recommends 
 Richard Smyth, " her Majesty's old servant," to Sir Francis 
 Walsingham, and is one among several writings of the kind 
 which show how mindful Sidney was of humble friends 
 and people in distress. The 22d of September opened 
 gloomily. So thick a mist covered the Flemish lowlands 
 that a man could not see farther than ten paces. Sidney, 
 leading a troop of two hundred horsemen, pushed his way 
 up to the walls of Zutphen. Chivalrous punctilio caused him 
 to be ill-defended, for meeting Sir William Pelham in light 
 armour, he threw off his cuisses, and thus exposed himself 
 to unnecessary danger. The autumn fog, which covered 
 every object, suddenly dispersed; and the English now 
 found themselves confronted by a thousand horsemen of 
 the enemy, and exposed to the guns of the town. They 
 charged, and Sidney's horse was killed under him. He 
 mounted another, and joined in the second charge. Rein- 
 forcements came up, and a third charge was made, during 
 which he received a wound in the left leg. The bullet, 
 which some supposed to have been poisoned, entered above 
 the knee, broke the bone, and lodged itself high up in the 
 thigh. His horse took fright, and carried him at a gallop 
 from the field. He kept his seat, however ; and when the 
 animal was brought to order, had himself carried to Leices- 
 ter's station. On the way occurred the incident so well- 
 known to every one who is acquainted with his name. 
 " Being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for drink, 
 which was presently brought him ; but as he was putting
 
 vni.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 171 
 
 the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor soldier carried along, 
 who had eaten his last at the same feast, ghastly casting 
 up his eyes at the bottle, which Sir Philip perceiving, took 
 it from his head before he drank, and delivered it to the 
 poor man, with these words, Thy necessity is yet greater 
 than mine. And when he had pledged this poor soldier, 
 he was presently carried to Arnheim." 
 
 At Arnheim he lay twenty -five days in the house of a 
 lady named Gruitthueisens. At first the surgeons who at- 
 tended him had good hopes of his recovery. Ten days 
 after the event Leicester wrote to Walsingham : " All the 
 worst days be passed, and he amends as well as possible in 
 this time." Friends were around him his wife, his broth- 
 ers Robert and Thomas, and the excellent minister, George 
 Gifford, whom he sent for on the 30th. The treatment of 
 the wound exposed him to long and painful operations, 
 which he bore with a sweet fortitude that moved the sur- 
 geons to admiration. With Gifford and other godly men 
 he held discourses upon religion and the future of the soul. 
 He told Gifford that " he had walked in a vague course ; 
 and these words he spake with great vehemence both of 
 speech and gesture, and doubled it to the intent that it 
 might be manifest how unfeignedly he meant to turn more 
 thoughts unto God than ever." It is said that he amused 
 some hours of tedious leisure by composing a poem on La 
 Cuisse Rompue, which was afterwards sung to soothe him. 
 He also contrived to write "a large epistle in very pure 
 and eloquent Latin" to his friend Belarius the divine. 
 Both of these are lost. 
 
 As time wore on it appeared that the cure was not ad- 
 vancing. After the sixteenth day, says Greville, " the very 
 shoulder-bones of this delicate patient were worn through 
 his skin." He suffered from sharp pangs which "stang
 
 172 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 him by fits," and felt internally that his case was desperate. 
 " One morning lifting up the clothes for change and ease 
 of his body, he smelt some extraordinary noisome savour 
 about him, differing from oils and salves, as he conceived." 
 This he judged, and judged rightly, to be the sign of " in- 
 ward mortification, and a welcome messenger of death." 
 Thereupon he called the ministers into his presence, " and 
 before them made such a confession of Christian faith as 
 no book but the heart can truly and feelingly deliver." 
 Death had its terrors for his soul ; but he withstood them 
 manfully, seeking peace and courage in the sacrifice of all 
 earthly affections. " There came to my mind," he said to 
 Gifford, " a vanity in which I delighted, whereof I had not 
 rid myself. I rid myself of it, and presently my joy and 
 comfort returned." Soon he was able to declare : " I would 
 not change my joy for the empire of the world." Yet, up 
 to the very last, he did not entirely despair of life. This 
 is proved by the very touching letter he wrote to John 
 Wier, a famous physician, and a friend of his. It runs 
 thus in Latin : " Mi Wiere, veni, veni. De vit periclitor 
 et te cupio. Nee vivus, nee mortuus, ero ingratus. Plura 
 non possum, sed obnixe oro ut festines. Vale. Tuus Ph. 
 Sidney." " My dear friend Wier, come, come. I am in 
 peril of my life, and long for you. Neither living nor dead 
 shall I be ungrateful. I cannot write more, but beg you 
 urgently to hurry. Farewell. Your Ph. Sidney." In this 
 way several days passed slowly on. He had made his will 
 upon the 30th of September. This he now revised, adding 
 a codicil in which he remembered many friends and serv- 
 ants. The document may be read in Collins' Sidney Pa- 
 pers. Much of it is occupied with provisions for the child, 
 with which his wife was pregnant at this time, and of 
 which she was afterwards delivered still-born. But the
 
 viu.] LAST TEARS AND DEATH. 173 
 
 thoughtful tenor of the whole justifies Greville in saying 
 that it " will ever remain for a witness to the world that 
 those sweet and large affections in him could no more be 
 contracted with the narrowness of pain, grief, or sickness, 
 than any sparkle of our immortality can be privately buried 
 in the shadow of death." 
 
 Reflecting upon the past he exclaimed : " All things in 
 my former life have been vain, vain, vain." In this mood 
 he bade one of his friends burn the Arcadia ; but we know 
 not whether he expressed the same wish about Astropkel 
 and Stella. On the morning of the 17th of October it 
 was clear that he had but a few hours to live. His brother, 
 Robert gave way to passionate grief in his presence, which 
 Philip gently stayed, taking farewell of him in these mem- 
 orable words : " Love my memory, cherish my friends ; 
 their faith to me may assure you they are honest. But 
 above all, govern your will and affections by the will and 
 word of your Creator ; in me beholding the end of this 
 world with all her vanities." Shortly afterwards he sank 
 into speechlessness, and the bystanders thought that what 
 he had greatly dreaded namely, death without conscious- 
 ness, would befall him. Yet when they prayed him for 
 some sign of his " inward joy and consolation in God," he 
 held his hand up and stretched it forward for a little while. 
 About two o'clock in the afternoon he again responded to 
 a similar appeal by setting his hands together in the atti- 
 tude of prayer upon his breast, and thus he expired. 
 
 Sidney's death sent a thrill through Europe. Leicester, 
 who truly loved him, wrote upon the 25th, in words of 
 passionate grief, to Walsingham. Elizabeth declared that 
 she had lost her mainstay in the struggle with Spain. 
 Duplessis Mornay bewailed his loss " not for England only, 
 but for all Christendom." Mendoza, the Spanish secre-
 
 1M SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 tary, said that though he could not but rejoice at the loss 
 to his master of such a foe, he yet lamented to see Chris- 
 tendom deprived of so great a light, and bewailed poor 
 widowed England. The Netherlanders begged to be al- 
 lowed to keep his body, and promised to erect a royal 
 monument to his memory, " yea, though the same should 
 cost half-a-ton of gold in the building." But this petition 
 was rejected ; and the corpse, after embalmment, was re- 
 moved to Flushing. There it lay eight days ; and on the 
 1st of November the English troops accompanied it with 
 military honours to the Black Prince, a vessel which had 
 belonged to Sidney. On the 5th it reached Tower Hill, 
 and on the 16th of February it was buried with pomp in 
 St. Paul's. This long delay between the landing in Lon- 
 don and the interment arose from certain legal complica- 
 tions, which rendered the discharge of Sidney's debts dif- 
 ficult. Walsingham told Leicester that he would have to 
 " pay for him about six thousand pounds, which I do assure 
 your Lordship hath brought me into a most desperate and 
 hard state, which I weigh nothing in respect of the loss of 
 the gentleman who was my chief worldly comfort." Lest 
 this should seem to reflect ill upon Sidney's character, it 
 must be added that he had furnished Walsingham with a 
 power of attorney to sell land, and had expressly consid- 
 ered all his creditors in his will. But his own death hap- 
 pened so close upon his father's, and the will was so im- 
 perfect touching the sale of land, that his wishes could not 
 be carried into effect. This, added Walsingham, " doth 
 greatly afflict me, that a gentleman that hath lived so un- 
 spotted in reputation, and had so great care to see all men 
 satisfied, should be so exposed to the outcry of his credit- 
 ors." When the obstacles had been surmounted the fu- 
 neral was splendid and public. And the whole nation went
 
 VIIL] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 1Y5 
 
 into mourning. " It was accounted a sin," says the author 
 of The Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney, " for any 
 gentleman of quality, for many months after, to appear at 
 Court or City in any light or gaudy apparel." 
 
 I have told the story of Sidney's last days briefly, using 
 the testimony of those who knew him best, or who were 
 present at his death-bed. Comment would be superfluous. 
 There is a singular beauty in the uncomplaining, thought- 
 ful, manly sweetness of the young hero cut off in his prime. 
 Numberless minute touches, of necessity omitted here, 
 confirm the opinion that Sidney possessed unique charm 
 and exercised a spell over those who came in contact with 
 him. All the letters and reports which deal with that long 
 agony breathe a heartfelt tenderness, which proves how 
 amiable and how admirable he was. The character must 
 have been well-nigh perfect which inspired persons so dif- 
 ferent as the Earl of Leicester, George Gifford, and Fulke 
 Greville with the same devoted love. We have not to deal 
 merely with the record of an edifying end, but with the 
 longing retrospect of men whose best qualities had been 
 drawn forth by sympathy with his incomparable good- 
 ness. 
 
 The limits of this book make it impossible to give an 
 adequate account of the multitudinous literary tributes to 
 Sidney's memory, which appeared soon after his, decease. 
 Oxford contributed Exequiae and Peplus; Cambridge shed 
 Lacrymae ; great wits and little, to the number it is said 
 of some two hundred, expressed their grief with more or 
 less felicity of phrase. For us the value of these elegiac 
 verses is not great. But it is of some importance to know 
 what men of weight and judgment said of him. His dear- 
 est and best friend has been so often quoted in these pages 
 that we are now familiar with Greville's life-long adora-
 
 176 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 tion. Yet I cannot omit the general character he gives of 
 Sidney : 
 
 " Indeed he was a true model of worth ; a man fit for conquest, 
 plantation, reformation, or what action soever is greatest and hardest 
 among men : withal, such a lover of mankind and goodness, that 
 whoever had any real parts in him, found comfort, participation, and 
 protection to the uttermost of his power : like Zephyrus, he giving 
 life where he blew. The universities abroad and at home accounted 
 him a general Mecaenas of learning ; dedicated their books to him ; 
 and communicated every invention or improvement of knowledge 
 with him. Soldiers honoured him, and were so honoured by him as 
 no man thought he marched under the true banner of Mars that had 
 not obtained Sir Philip Sidney's approbation. Men of affairs in most 
 parts of Christendom entertained correspondency with him. But 
 what speak I of these, with whom his own ways and ends did con- 
 cur ? Since, to descend, his heart and capacity were so large that 
 there was not a cunning painter, a skilful eugineer, an excellent mu- 
 sician, or any other artificer of extraordinary fame, that made not 
 himself known to this famous spirit, and found him his true friend 
 without hire, and the common rendezvous of worth in his time." 
 
 Thomas Nash may be selected as the representative of 
 literary men who honoured Sidney. 
 
 " Gentle Sir Philip Sidney !" he exclaiims ; " thou knewest what be- 
 longed to a scholar ; thou knewest what pains, what toil, what travail, 
 conduct to perfection ; well couldst thou give every virtue his encour- 
 agement, every art his due, every writer his desert, cause none more 
 virtuous, witty, or learned than thyself. But thou art dead hi thy 
 grave, and hast left too few successors of thy glory, too few to cher- 
 ish the sons of the Muses, or water those budding hopes with their 
 plenty, which thy bounty erst planted." 
 
 Lastly, we will lay the ponderous laurel-wreath, woven by 
 grave Camden, on his tomb : 
 
 " This is that Sidney, who, as Providence seems to have sent him 
 into the world to give the present age a specimen of the ancients, so 
 did it on a sudden recall him, and snatch him from us, as more wor-
 
 vin.1 LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 177 
 
 thy of heaven than earth ; thus where virtue comes to perfection, it 
 is gone in a trice, and the best things are never lasting. Rest then 
 in peace, Sidney, if I may be allowed this address ! We will not 
 celebrate your memory with tears bat admiration ; whatever we loved 
 in you, as the best of authors speaks of that best governor of Britain, 
 whatever we admired in you, still continues, and will continue in the 
 memories of men, the revolutions of ages, and the annals of time. 
 Many, as inglorious and ignoble, are buried in oblivion ; but Sidney 
 shall li ve to all posterity. For, as the Grecian poet has it, virtue's 
 beyond the reach of fate." 
 
 The note of tenderness, on which I have already dwelt, 
 sounds equally in these sentences of the needy man of 
 letters and the learned antiquarian. 
 
 It would be agreeable, if space permitted, to turn the 
 pages of famous poets who immortalised our hero; to 
 glean high thoughts from Constable's sonnets to Sir Philip 
 Sidney's soul; to dwell on Raleigh's well-weighed qua- 
 trains ; to gather pastoral honey from Spenser's Astrophel, 
 or graver meditations from his Ruins of Time. But these 
 are in the hands of every one ; and now, at the close of 
 his biography, I will rather let the voice of unpretending 
 affection be heard. Few but students, I suppose, are fa- 
 miliar with the name of Matthew Roydon, or know that 
 he was a writer of some distinction. Perhaps it was love 
 for Sidney which inspired him with the musical but un- 
 equal poem from which I select three stanzas : 
 
 " Within these woods of Arcady 
 
 He chief delight and pleasure took ; 
 And on the mountain Partheny, 
 Upon the crystal liquid brook, 
 The Muses met him every day, 
 That taught him sing, to write and say. 
 
 " When he descended down the mount, 
 His personage seemed most divine ;
 
 178 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 A thousand graces one might count 
 
 Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 
 To hear him speak, and sweetly smile, 
 You were in Paradise the while. 
 
 " A sweet attractive kind of grace ; 
 
 A full assurance given by looks ; 
 Continual comfort in a face ; 
 
 The lineaments of Gospel books : 
 I trow that countenance cannot lie, 
 Whose thoughts are legible in the eye." 
 
 Among Spenser's works, incorporated in his Astrophel, 
 occurs an elegy of languid but attractive sweetness, which 
 the great poet ascribes to the Countess of Pembroke, sister 
 by blood to Sidney, and sister of his soul. Internal evi- 
 dence might lead to the opinion that this " doleful lay of 
 Clorinda," as it is usually called, was not written by Lady 
 Pembroke, but was composed for her by the author of the 
 Faery Queen. Yet the style is certainly inferior to that 
 of Spenser at its best, and critics of mark incline to accept 
 it literally as her production. This shall serve me as an 
 excuse for borrowing some of its verses : 
 
 " What cruel hand of cursed foe unknown 
 
 Hath cropped the stalk which bore so fair a flower ? 
 
 Untimely cropped, before it well were grown, 
 And clean defaced in untimely hour ! 
 
 Great loss to all that ever him did see, 
 
 Great loss to all, but greatest loss to me J 
 
 " Break now your garlands, oh, ye shepherds' lasses, 
 Since the fair flower which them adorned is gone ; 
 
 The flower which them adorned is gone to ashes ; 
 Never again let lass put garland on ; 
 
 Instead of garland, wear sad cypress now, 
 
 And bitter elder broken from the bough."
 
 viii.] LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 179 
 
 The reiteration of phrases in these softly-falling stanzas 
 recalls the plaining of thrush or blackbird in the dewy si- 
 lence of May evenings. But at the close of her long des- 
 cant, Urania changes to thoughts of the heaven whose 
 light has been increased by the " fair and glittering rays " 
 of Astrophel. Then her inspiration takes a loftier flight. 
 Meditations are suggested which prelude to Lycidas and 
 Adonais. A parallel, indeed, both of diction and idea be- 
 tween this wilding flower of song and the magnificent 
 double-rose of Shelley's threnody on Keats can be traced 
 in the following four stanzas : 
 
 " But that immortal spirit, which was decked 
 
 With all the dowries of celestial grace, 
 By sovereign choice from the heavenly choirs select, 
 
 And lineally derived from angel's race, 
 Oh, what is now of it become, aread ! 
 Ah me, can so divine a thing be dead ? 
 
 " Ah no ! it is not dead, nor can it die, 
 
 But lives for aye in blissful paradise, 
 Where, like a new-born babe it soft doth lie, 
 
 In beds of lilies wrapped in tender wise, 
 And compassed all about with roses sweet 
 And dainty violets from head to feet. 
 
 " There lieth he in everlasting bliss, 
 
 Sweet spirit, never fearing more to die ; 
 Nor dreading harm from any foes of his, 
 
 Nor fearing savage beasts' more cruelty : 
 Whilst we here, wretches, wail his private lack, 
 And with vain vows do often call him back. 
 
 " But live thou there still, happy, happy spirit, 
 And give us leave thee here thus to lament, 
 Not thee that dost thy heaven's joy inherit, 
 But our own selves that here in dole are drent.
 
 180 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Thus do we weep and wail and wear our eyes, 
 Mourning in others our own miseries." 
 
 One couplet by a nameless playwright upon the death of 
 Sidney's aunt by marriage, the Lady Jane Grey, shall serve 
 to end this chapter : 
 
 " An innocent to die, what is it less 
 But to add angels to heaven's happiness !" 
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 WHEN we review the life of Sir Philip Sidney, it is certain 
 that one thought will survive all other thoughts about him 
 in our mind. This man, we shall say, was born to show 
 the world what goes to the making of an English gentle- 
 man. But he belonged to his age; and the age of Eliza- 
 beth differed in many essential qualities from the age of 
 Anne and from the age of Victoria. Sidney was the typi- 
 cal English gentleman of the modern era at the moment of 
 transition from the mediaeval period. He was the hero of 
 our Renaissance. His nature combined chivalry and piety, 
 courtly breeding and humane culture, statesmanship and 
 loyalty, in what Wotton so well called " the very essence 
 of congruity." Each of these elements may be found 
 singly and more strikingly developed in other characters of 
 his epoch. In him they were harmoniously mixed and 
 fused as by some spiritual chemistry. In him they shone 
 with a lustre peculiar to the " spacious times of great 
 Elizabeth," with a grace and purity distinctive of his unique 
 personality. To make this image charming this image, 
 not of king or prince or mighty noble, but of a perfect 
 gentleman the favour of illustrious lineage and the grave
 
 vm.] EPILOGUE. 181 
 
 beauty of his presence contributed in no small measure. 
 Tbere was sometbing Pboebean in his youthful dignity : 
 
 " When he descended down the mount, 
 His personage seemed most divine." 
 
 Men of weight and learning were reminded by him of 
 the golden antique past: "Providence seems to have sent 
 him into the world to give the present age a specimen of 
 the ancients." What the Athenians called KaXoKayadla, 
 that blending of physical and moral beauty and goodness 
 in one pervasive virtue, distinguished him from the crowd 
 of his countrymen, with whom goodness too often assumed 
 an outer form of harshness and beauty leaned to effemi- 
 nacy or insolence. He gave the present age a specimen of 
 the ancients by the plasticity of his whole nature, the ex- 
 act correspondence of spiritual and corporeal excellences, 
 which among Greeks would have marked him out for 
 sculpturesque idealisation. 
 
 It was to his advantage that he held no office of impor- 
 tance, commanded no great hereditary wealth, had done no 
 deeds that brought him envy, had reached no station which 
 committed him to rough collision with the world's brazen 
 interests. Death, and the noble manner of his death, set 
 seal to the charter of immortality which the expectation of 
 contemporaries had already drafted. He was withdrawn 
 from the contention of our earth, before time and opportu- 
 nity proved or compromised his high position. Glorious- 
 ly, he passed into the sphere of idealities ; and as an ideal, 
 he is for ever living and for ever admirable. Herein too 
 there was something Greek in his good fortune ; something 
 which assimilates him to the eternal youthfulness of Hel- 
 las, and to the adolescent heroes of mythology. 
 
 This should not divert our thoughts from the fact that
 
 182 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 Sidney was essentially an Elizabethan gentleman. His 
 chivalry belonged to a period when knightly exercises were 
 still in vogue, when bravery attired itself in pomp, when the 
 Mort d' Arthur retained its fascination for youths of noble 
 nurture. Those legends needed then no adaptations from 
 a Laureate's golden quill to make them popular. Yet they 
 were remote enough to touch the soul with poetry, of 
 which the earlier and cruder associations had by time been 
 mellowed. Knight-errantry expressed itself in careers like 
 that of Stukeley, in expeditions like those of Drake and 
 Raleigh. Lancelot's and Tristram's love had passed through 
 the crucible of the Italian poets. 
 
 Sidney's piety was that of the Reformation, now at 
 length accomplished and accepted in England after a se- 
 vere struggle. Unsapped by criticism, undimmed by cen- 
 turies of ease and toleration, the Anglican faith acquired 
 reality and earnestness from the gravity of the European 
 situation. Spain threatened to enslave the world. The 
 Catholic reaction was rolling spiritual darkness, like a cloud, 
 northward, over nations wavering as yet between the old 
 and the new creed. Four years before his birth Loyola 
 founded the Company of Jesus. During his lifetime this 
 Order invaded province after province, spreading like leav- 
 en through populations on the verge of revolt against 
 Rome. The Council of Trent began its sessions while he 
 was in his cradle. Its work was finished, the final rupture 
 of the Latin Church with Protestantism was accomplished, 
 twenty-three years before his death at Zutphen. He grew 
 to boyhood during Mary's reactionary reign. It is well to 
 bear these dates in mind ; they prove how exactly Sidney's 
 life corresponded with the first stage of renascent and bel- 
 ligerent Catholicism. The perils of the time, brought fear- 
 fully home to himself by Lis sojourn in Paris on the night
 
 viii.] EPILOGUE. 183 
 
 of St. Bartholomew, deepened religious convictions which 
 might otherwise have been but lightly held by him. Yet 
 he was no Puritan. Protestantism in England had as yet 
 hardly entered upon that phase of its development. It 
 was still possible to be sincerely godly (as the Earl of Es- 
 sex called him), without sacrificing the grace of life or the 
 urbanities of culture. 
 
 His education was in a true sense liberal. The new 
 learning of the Italian Renaissance had recently taken root 
 in England, and the methods of the humanists were being 
 applied with enthusiasm in our public schools. Ancient 
 literature, including the philosophers and historians of Ath- 
 ens, formed the staple of a young man's intellectual train- 
 ing. Yet no class at once so frivolous and pedantic, so 
 servile and so vicious, as the Italian humanists, monopolised 
 the art of teaching. Roger Ascham, the tutor of princes ; 
 Sir John Cheke, at Cambridge ; Camden, at Westminster ; 
 Thomas Ashton, at Shrewsbury, were men from whom 
 nothing but sound learning and good morals could be im- 
 bibed. England enjoyed the rare advantage of receiving 
 both Renaissance and Reformation at the same epoch. 
 The new learning came to our shores under the garb of 
 Erasmus rather than Filelfo. It was penetrated with sober 
 piety and enlightened philosophy instead of idle scepti- 
 cism and academical rhetoric. Thus the foundations of 
 Sidney's culture were broadly laid ; and he was enabled to 
 build a substantial superstructure on them. No better 
 companion of his early manhood could have been found 
 than Languet, who combined the refinements of southern 
 with the robust vigour of northern scholarship. The acqui- 
 sition of French, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish led him to 
 compare modern authors with the classics ; while his trav- 
 els through Europe brought him acquainted with various 
 
 39
 
 184 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. 
 
 manners and with the leading men of several parties. An 
 education so complete and many-sided polished Sidney's 
 excellent natural parts, until he shone the mirror of accom- 
 plished gentlehood. He never forgot that, in his case, 
 studies had to be pursued, not as an end in themselves, but 
 as the means of fitting him for a public career. Diligent 
 as he was in the pursuit of knowledge, he did not suffer 
 himself to become a bookworm. Athletic exercises re- 
 ceived as much of his attention as poetry or logic. Con- 
 verse with men seemed to him more important than com- 
 munion with authors in their printed works. In a word, he 
 realised the ideal of Castiglione's courtier, and personified 
 Plato's Euphues, in whom music was to balance gymnastic. 
 
 His breeding was that of a Court which had assumed 
 the polish, of Italy and France, and with that polish some 
 of their vices and affectations. Yet the Court of Elizabeth 
 was, in the main, free from such corruption as disgraced 
 that of the Valois, and from such crimes as shed a sinister 
 light upon the society of Florence or Ferrara. It was purer 
 and more manly than the Court of James I., and even that 
 remained superior to the immoralities and effeminacies of 
 southern capitals. The queen, with all her faults, main- 
 tained a high standard among her servants. They repre- 
 sented the aristocracy of a whole and puissant nation, 
 united by common patriotism and inspired by enthusiasm 
 for their sovereign. Conflicting religious sympathies and 
 discordant political theories might divide them ; but in the 
 hour of danger, they served their country alike, as was 
 shown on the great day of the Spanish Armada. 
 
 Loyalty, at that epoch, still retained the sense of person- 
 al duty. The medieval conviction that national well-being 
 depended on maintaining a hierarchy of classes, bound to- 
 gether by reciprocal obligations and ascending privileges,
 
 Tin.] EPILOGUE. 186 
 
 and presided over by a monarch who claimed the allegiance 
 of all, had not broken down in England. This loyalty, 
 like Protestant piety, was braced by the peculiar dangers 
 of the State, and by the special perils to which the life of 
 a virgin queen was now exposed. It had little in common 
 with decrepit affection for a dynasty, or with such homage 
 as nobles paid their prince in the Italian despotisms. It 
 was fed by the belief that the commonwealth demanded 
 monarchy for its support. The Stuarts had not yet 
 brought the name of loyalty into contempt; and at the 
 same time this virtue, losing its feudal rigidity, assumed 
 something of romantic grace and poetic sentiment. Eng- 
 land was personified by the lady on the throne. 
 
 In his statesmanship, Sidney displayed the independent 
 spirit of a well-born Englishman, controlled by loyalty as 
 we have just described it. He was equally removed from 
 servility to his sovereign, and from the underhand subtle- 
 ties of a would-be Machiavelli. In serving the queen he 
 sought to serve the State. His Epistle on the French 
 Match, and his Defence of Sir Henry Sidney's Irish Ad- 
 ministration, revealed a candour rare among Elizabeth's 
 courtiers. With regard to England's policy in Europe, he 
 declared for a bold, and possibly a too Quixotic interfer- 
 ence in foreign affairs. Surveying the struggle between 
 Catholicism and Protestantism, Spanish tyranny and na- 
 tional liberties, he apprehended the situation as one of ex- 
 treme gravity, and was by no means willing to temporise 
 or trifle with it. In his young-eyed enthusiasm, so differ- 
 ent from Burleigh's world-worn prudence, he desired that 
 Elizabeth should place herself at the head of an alliance of 
 the Reformed Powers. Mature experience of the home gov- 
 ernment, however, reduced these expectations ; and Sidney 
 threw himself upon a romantic but well-weighed scheme 
 9
 
 186 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. [CHAP. mi. 
 
 of colonisation. In each case he recommended a great 
 policy, defined in its object, and worthy of a powerful 
 race, to the only people whom he thought capable of car- 
 rying it out effectively. 
 
 This kindly blending of many qualities, all of them Eng- 
 lish, all of them characteristic of Elizabethan England, 
 made Sir Philip Sidney the ideal of his generation, and for 
 us the sweetest interpreter of its best aspirations. The 
 essence of congruity, determining his private and his public 
 conduct, in so many branches of active life, caused a loving 
 nation to hail him as their Euphues. That he was not de- 
 void of faults, faults of temper in his dealings with friends 
 and servants, graver faults perhaps in his love for Stella, 
 adds to the reality of his character. Shelley was hardly 
 justified in calling him " Sublimely mild, a spirit without 
 spot." During those last hours upon his death-bed at Arn- 
 heim, he felt that much in his past life had been but vani- 
 ty, that some things in it called for repentance. But the evil 
 inseparable from humanity was conquered long before the 
 end. Few spirits so blameless, few so thoroughly prepared 
 to enter upon new spheres of activity and discipline, have 
 left this earth. The multitudes who knew him personally, 
 those who might have been jealous of him, and those who 
 owed him gratitude, swelled one chorus in praise of his nat- 
 ural goodness, his intellectual strength and moral beauty. 
 We who study his biography, and dwell upon their testi- 
 mony to his charm, derive from Sidney the noblest lesson 
 bequeathed by Elizabethan to Victorian England. It is a 
 lesson which can never lose its value for Greater Britain 
 also, and for that confederated empire which shall, if fate 
 defeat not the high aspirations of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
 arise to be the grandest birth of future time. 
 
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