IV.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

1554-1586.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY was born in 1554 at Penshurst, in Kent, of a noble family. His father was Sir Henry Sidney, Queen Elizabeth's Lord-Deputy in Ireland. His mother was Mary Dudley, the sister of the Earl of Leicester. His sister was the Countess of Pembroke, the subject of Ben Jonson's celebrated epitaph. He was early sent to a school at Shrewsbury, and from thence was removed at the age of fifteen to Christ Church, Oxford. He appears also to have studied at Cambridge. At this time we are told of Sidney that he cultivated not one art, or one science, but the whole circle of arts and sciences. 'Such,' says Fuller, 'was his appetite for learning, that he could never be fed fast enough therewith, and so quick and strong his digestion that he soon turned it into wholesome nourishment, and throve healthfully thereon.'

In 1572 he obtained Queen Elizabeth's licence to travel, and went to Paris, where, in the month of August, he narrowly escaped death in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, by taking refuge in the house of Walsingham, the English Ambassador. From Paris Sidney travelled to Frankfort, where he formed the friendship of the eminent Hubert Languet. Sidney went thence to Vienna, where he devoted himself to the learning of horsemanship, of arms and other manly and martial exercises, and before he left it he excelled in tilt and tournament, in the use of all sorts of weapons, and in such exercises as befitted a noble cavalier. In 1574 we find him in Italy at Venice, but chiefly at Padua,

where he applied himself with his wonted diligence to the study of geometry and astronomy. After three years of travel Sidney returned to England, where he became the delight of the English Court. He was soon employed on a diplomatic mission to Vienna, and acquitted himself with ability and dignity of this embassage and of similar visits to other foreign courts. In 1580 he addressed a letter of great weight to Queen Elizabeth, dissuading her from the marriage with the Duke of Anjou, which was then under consideration, and did not thereby incur her royal displeasure, as was the case with some others. A quarrel with the Earl of Oxford in the same year, which he was forbidden to adjust by a duel, led Sidney to retire to Wilton, the seat of his brother-in-law, the Earl of Pembroke: while here he laid out the plan of his Arcadia, a romance of a heroic and pastoral character.

In the following year Sidney entered Parliament as knight of the shire for his native county of Kent, and in 1583 he married the only daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, and had the honour of knighthood conferred upon him by the Queen. Sidney's energetic spirit led him in 1585 to conceive, and he was with difficulty restrained from conducting conjointly with Sir Francis Drake an expedition to attack the Spanish settlements in South America.

The expedition was stopped by Queen Elizabeth, who having taken the Protestants of the Netherlands under her protection promised to despatch a military force to their succour, and to employ Sidney in this service. Sir Philip Sidney was nominated Governor of Flushing in the same year, and at once engaged in military operations against the Spaniards. In the following year he met his death-wound in a victorious encounter with them under the walls of Zutphen, and died Oct. 7, 1586, at the early age of thirty-two. He was buried in St. Paul's on the 16 Feb., 1587, amid general mourning—a just tribute to the courage and devotion of which his life gave noble example.

Sidney's principal compositions were circulated in MS. during his life, but do not appear to have been printed until after his death. His sonnets appeared in 1591, his Arcadia in 1593, and

the Defence of Poesy in 1595. Of these, that which obtained the largest share of favour in the age succeeding his death was the Arcadia, an eloquent romance of Castilian and Elizabethan chivalry thrown back into the time of the struggle of Sparta with her Helots. This work abounds in vivid descriptive and narrative passages, and though occasionally tainted with the pedantic euphuism of the sixteenth century, it is a store-house of poetic prose inferior to none which had preceded it in our literature. Sidney's Defence of Poesy has had a longer, though a more restricted, popularity. It is the great source from which later advocates of imaginative composition in England have drawn their arguments.

1. After a Wreck.

A LITTLE way off they saw the mast, whose proud height now lay along, like a widow having lost her mate of whom she held her honour: but upon the mast they saw a young man (at least if he were a man) bearing shew of about eighteen years of age, who sate (as on horseback) having nothing on him but his shirt, which, being wrought with blue silk and gold, had a kind of resemblance to the sea; on which the sun (then near his western home) did shoot some of his beams. His hair (which the young men of Greece used to wear very long) was stirred up and down with the wind, which seemed to have a sport to play with it, as the sea had to kiss his feet: himself full of admirable beauty, set forth by the strangeness both of his seat and gesture; for, holding his head up full of unmoved majesty, he held a sword aloft with his fair arm, which often he waved about his crown, as though he would threaten the world in that extremity.-Arcadia.

2. The Scenery of Arcadia.

THE third day after, in the time that the morning did strow 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 wrongcaused 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 Musidorus's eyes (wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia) with delightful prospects. There were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees; humble valleys, whose bare estate seemed comforted 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 oratory craved the dams' comfort: here a shepherd's boy piping as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice-music.-Arcadia.

3. Pamela and Philoclea.

THE elder is named Pamela, by many men not deemed inferior to her sister; for my part, when I marked them both, methought there was more sweetness in Philoclea, but more majesty in Pamela; methought love played in Philoclea's eyes and threatened in Pamela's; methought Philoclea's beauty only persuaded, but so persuaded as all hearts must yield; Pamela's beauty used violence, and such violence as

no heart could resist. And it seems that such proportion is between their minds; Philoclea so bashful, as though her excellencies had stolen into her before she was aware; so humble that she will put all pride out of countenance; in sum, such proceedings as will stir hope, but teach good manners. Pamela of high thoughts, who avoids not pride with not knowing her excellencies, but by making it one of her excellencies to be void of pride; her mother's wisdom, greatness, nobility, but (if I can guess aright) knit with a more constant temper.-Arcadia.

4. The Poet.

THE Greeks named him Tоητv; which name hath, as the most excellent, gone through other languages; it cometh of this word Totiv, which is to make; wherein, I know not whether by luck or wisdom, we Englishmen have met with. the Greeks in calling him Maker! which name, how high and incomparable a title it is, I had rather win honour by marking the scope of other sciences, than by any partial allegation. There is no art delivered unto mankind, that hath not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and by that he seeth set down what order nature hath taken therein. So doth the geometrician and arithmetician, in their diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician, in tunes, tell you, which by nature agree, which not. The natural philosopher thereon hath his name; and the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, or passions of man: and follow nature, saith he, therein, and thou shalt not err. The lawyer saith what men have determined. The historian, what men have done. The gram