attractive than theirs. He is the representative of that union of courtly and literary accomplishment which, while not peculiar to England in Elizabeth's time, is still a special note of her reign. It shines in Raleigh

and in many a lesser man, but in Sidney alone does it seem to attain its ideal perfection. To support such a character on the intellectual side, the person must give some proof of intellectual accomplishment, and we find

Sidney's writings far transcending the merely necessary standard, no mere literary exercises, but standing in a more intimate relation to the writer than can be asserted of most of the work of that time. They are the productions of a man of most distinct vocation, who might, or might not, have performed greater things, but did enough to make himself in letters, as in arms, the

LIFE OF SIDNEY

37 most distinguished representative of a class that lives for us in the drama of the age; but which, so ideally fascinating is it, we might, but for Sidney and men like him, suspect of having existed mainly in the imaginations of the poets. Sidney again, though somewhat younger than both Raleigh and Hooker, has the advantage of coming first in order of time among the great Elizabethan authors, of prefiguring both by example and precept many things yet in the future, and thus being endowed with something of the character of a hierophant.

The cavalier in Sidney was hereditary, the poet was the gift of the gods. His parentage was illustrious; his father, Sir Henry Sidney, afterwards three times

Lord Deputy of Ireland, was one of the first statesmen and soldiers of his time; his mother was the daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who for a few days made himself all but king; and his Christian name came from the King of Spain, his godfather. He was born at the family seat, Penshurst, on November 30, 1554. The accident of his father's holding the office of Lord President of the Welsh Marches caused him to be partly educated at Shrewsbury Grammar School, where he received letters of advice from his parent, most admirable in themselves, but which would seem fit for a much older person. Yet they do not seem to have been in advance of Sidney's precocity. Like Bacon, so dissimilar in most other respects, he was distinguished in boyhood by a sweet sedateness. "Though," writes his biographer Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, his schoolfellow at Shrewsbury and friend throughout his life, "though I lived

with him and knew him from a child, 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." After spending three years at Oxford, Sidney, like Bacon, went to Paris and lived at the English Embassy, but not like Bacon in a diplomatic capacity. He was greatly caressed by the French court, Charles IX. actually making him a gentleman of his bedchamber, but all that he saw confirmed his attachment to Protestantism, which could not but be increased

by the atrocious massacre of St. Bartholomew, of which he was himself an appalled witness. Hastening from the scene of carnage, he made his way to Germany, where he became acquainted with the eminent Protestant divine, Languet, whose correspondence with him is full of interest. He spent a long time in Italy, chiefly at Venice; visited Austria, Hungary, and Poland; and, notwithstanding his youth, is said to have received and declined an offer of the elective crown of the latter country. Much of his time was spent in study, much in amateur diplomacy or writing letters on Continental affairs to Burghley or his uncle Leicester. He returned to England in June 1575For some years, except for service with his father in Ireland and a mission to Germany in which he endeavoured to bring about a league among Protestant princes, Sidney

At

remained at court, one of its chief ornaments, and the patron of men of every kind of desert, among whom Spenser is especially to be named. the beginning of 1580 his loyal and patriotic opposition to Elizabeth's preposterous idea (if her encouragement of it was anything more than a pretence) of marrying the Duke of Anjou, caused him to be banished from court for a time. He retired to Wilton, and wrote the Arcadia for, perhaps in some measure with, his sister, the subject of the famous epitaph disputed between Ben Jonson and William Browne. Hence its title, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. It was first published in 1590. The poetry in this famous romance is made to order, and inserted in compliance with prescription, but the practice

SIDNEY'S WRITINGS AND DEATH

39

it conferred probably helped Sidney when, the next year, true poetry was drawn from him by the marriage of Lady Penelope Devereux, to whom he had regarded himself as in some sense betrothed, to Lord Rich. Sidney's feeling does not seem to have been previously very ardent; one cannot help suspecting that he could have dropped the lady without much agitation, but to be dropped by her was quite another matter. Piqued into passion, he forgot for a time the strictness of principle which had previously guided him, and composed the sonnets of Astrophel to Stella (first published in 1591), the best of which are truly impassioned, and may be compared with a remarkable sonnet-cycle of our own time, The Love Sonnets of Proteus. Lady Rich's subsequent history says little for her morality, but she had no mind to compromise herself, and in 1583 Sidney contracted a happy marriage with the daughter of Secretary Walsingham. In the same year, though there is no good evidence of the date, he may have written his Defence or Apology of Poetry

View of Wilton House in Wiltshire, where Sidney wrote the "Arcadia" (published 1598), composed in the spirit of a knight errant who seeks to liberate a captive princess. As Sidney admits, poetry had not yet attained that degree of splendour in England which would have rendered defence unnecessary. In the following year he became intimate with Giordano Bruno, a man of many failings, but the one man in Europe who had discerned the stupendous intellectual consequences of the Copernican theory. Sidney, who had studied astronomy in Italy, must have been deeply interested, and his sympathy with the Italian refugee may have contributed to the more ardent part he began to take in matters of State. He vehemently urged an attack on Spain, but, when an expedition to the Low Countries was determined upon, accepted a command under his uncle Leicester. It is needless to repeat the story of his heroic fate at Zutphen, just as he was giving the highest proofs of capacity as statesman and soldier. A wound, due to his own romantic but mistaken spirit of chivalry, resulted in his death on October 17, 1586. The mournful pageant of his funeral procession in the following February remained unrivalled by any similar public display until the funeral of Nelson. "It was accounted a sin for months afterwards for any gentleman of quality to wear gay apparel in London." In Sidney, indeed, Elizabethan literature had lost its morning star; and arts, arms, and politics their Admirable Crichton.

Sidney's
"Arcadia"

In the Arcadia Sidney shows what he might have done for literature had not his time (most justifiably in his case, his rank in the State considered) been so largely claimed by Courts and camps. In his one brief interval of disgrace and withdrawal from court the activity of his mind, stimulated by his sister's companionship and, perhaps, aided by her pen, sufficed to produce this folio volume, the English counterpart of the pastorals of Sannazaro and Montemayor. As such, it necessarily occupies a commanding position in English literature, and although a most faulty performance, its very faults are

the paradoxical condition of its merits. Its great fault of being far too long was no fault in that age of leisure, and signifies little in an age when, if ever so much abbreviated, it still would not be read. On the contrary, this diffuseness is a gain to modern readers, who, feeling themselves dispensed from the obligation of mastering so intricate a plot and contending with so superhuman a discursiveness, simply wander through it like wayfarers through a forest, intent solely upon gathering flowers. These abound, though a large proportion must be classed with flowers of speech in the less favourable sense, and Sidney fatigues like Matho1 by the effort after perpetual glitter. This has been attributed to the influence of Lyly, but with all his affectation his style falls far short of euphuism, and the attempt to dignify familiar and especially pastoral subjects by high-flown speech is as old as the Greek romancers, and is very conspicuous in Boccaccio. Sidney offends rather by the constancy of this endeavour than by positive extravagance of diction; a less continuous and obtrusive deflection from ordinary speech would have been even acceptable, as reminding us that we are and are meant to be denizens of an ideal world. The following, one of many beautiful descriptions, evinces how well Sidney could depict what he had himself seen and known. He was a consummate horseman, the Defence of Poetry begins with the celebration of his Italian riding-master. No doubt he had often "witched the world with noble horsemanship," as Dorus witches Pamela :

1 Omnia vis belle Matho dicere; dic aliquando

Vel bene; dic neutrum; dic aliquando male.