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SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP. 



SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP. 



600 



SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP, was born November 29, 1554, at Pens- 

 hurst in Kent. He was the son of Sir Henry Sidney, the favourite of 

 Edward VI., by whom Sir Henry was knighted and sent as ambassador 

 to France. This gentleman is described by Sir R. Naunton, in his 

 ' Fragmenta Regalia,' as ' a man of great parts,' and certainly the 

 favour which he enjoyed in the reign of Mary, and which was con- 

 tinued to him by Elizabeth, who made him lord-deputy of Ireland and 

 president of Wales, is strong evidence of the truth of this assertion. 

 Abuudant testimony to his wise government of Ireland is borne by 

 Spenser and Sir John Davies, in their treatises on the state of that 

 country. Sir Philip's mother was Mary, eldest daughter of John, Duke 

 of Northumberland, and sister to Robert Dudley, the favourite of 

 Queen Elizabeth. 



Young Sidney was in 1 564 placed at school at Shrewsbury. While 

 there his father addressed a letter to him in the year 1566, full of 

 sterling advice. This letter was published in 1591, by one Griffiths, a 

 person formerly in Sir Henry's household. At this time Sidney was 

 only twelve years old, but even at that early age his biographer and 

 companion Lord Brooke states that he was distinguished for in- 

 telligence and for a gravity beyond his years. 



In 15G9 he was entered at Christchurcb, Oxford, and is reported 

 to have held a public disputation with Carew, the author of the 

 ' Survey of Cornwall.' During his residence at Oxford, negociations 

 between his father and .Sir William Cecil, as to a marriage between 

 Sidney and Anne Cecil, were entered into, but from some unexplained 

 cause never were matured. From Oxford he passed to Cambridge, a 

 practice not unusual in those days, and he left that university with a 

 high reputation for scholarship and general information. 



In 1572 Sidney proceeded on his travels. Paris was his first halting- 

 place ; but on the occasion of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew he was 

 obliged to shelter himself at the house of Sir Francis Walsingham, 

 the English ambassador, to whom he had been introduced by his 

 uncle, the Earl of Leicester. After quitting that city, he visited 

 Belgium, Germany, Hungary, and Italy. At Frankfurt he first became 

 acquainted with Hubert Languet, who addressed a volume of letters to 

 him. He arrived at Vienna in 1573, where he appears to have devoted 

 considerable time to perfecting himself in horsemanship and other 

 exercises peculiar to those times. At Venice he became acquainted 

 with Edward Wotton, brother of Sir Henry Wotton, who is the E. W. 

 referred to in the first lines of the ' Defence of Poesie.' He is stated 

 also to have enjoyed the friendship of Tasso, but this statement cannot 

 be verified. He returned to England in May 1575. 



On his return home Sidney at once became a courtier, and a very 

 successful one. This is ascribed by Sir Robert Nauuton to the 

 influence of his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. Naunton says he came 

 " famed aforehaud by a noble report of his accomplishments, which, 

 together with the state of his person, framed by a natural propension 

 to arms, he soon attracted the good opinion of all men, and was So 

 highly prized in the good opinion of the queen, that she thought the 

 court deficient without him." Connected with this success, is his first 

 literary attempt, a masque, entitled the ' Lady of May,' which was 

 performed before queen Elizabeth at Wanstead House in Essex. 



Sidney rose in favour In 1576 he was appointed ambassador to the 

 court of Vienna on a message of coudolation, the manuscript ' in- 

 structions ' of which are still extant in the Harleian Collection. Part 

 of his mission was to condole with the two Counts Palatine, and in 

 the execution of this duty he obtained the strong regard and friendship 

 of Prince Cusiinir. He returned home in 1577. 



About this time great excitement prevailed throughout England, 

 owing to a negociation for the marriage of the queen with Henry, 

 T luke of Anjou. The queen appearing at one time to lean somewhat 

 Favourably to this project, Sidney addressed to her the celebrated 

 ' Remonstrance.' The very boldness of this famous letter seemed to 

 preserve the author from any of the usual consequences of interference 

 with the will of princes, for we find him in as high favour as ever ; 

 while inferior people who took the same views suffered mutilation and 

 imprisonment. Soon afterwards a quarrel at tennis between the Earl 

 of Oxford and Sidney, in which the latter behaved with great spirit, 

 occasioned his retirement from court. Wilton, the seat of his brother- 

 in-law the Earl of Pembroke, was his retreat, and during this retire- 

 ment the ' Arcadia* was written. He never completed it, nor was it 

 even printed in his lifetime. After his death, his sister collected the 

 manuscript, and a continuation of it was written by Gervase Markham. 

 It was published in 1590, under the title of the ' Countess of Pem- 

 broke's Arcadia.' The ' Arcadia ' was universally read and admired 

 at the time of its publication, and gave perhaps a greater impulse to 

 the national taste for the romantic style of fiction thau any single work 

 before or after it. It is now, like most of its class, almost forgotten. 

 Admired and read by Cowley and Waller, it was also the companion 

 of the prison hours of Charles I. Milton says that the prayer of 

 Pamela in the ' Ikon Basilike' is stolen from it. Horace Walpole and 

 Mr. Hazlitt have spoken in very deprecatory terms of it. Walpole was 

 probably incapable of appreciating its high tone of feeling and senti- 

 ment, and Hazlitt seems to have censured it from the spirit of paradox 

 in which he so often loved to indulge. It is a work little likely ever 

 again to find a wide circle of readers, but the literary student who 

 reads it with due allowance for the time and circumstances in which 

 it was written, as well as the comparative youth of the writer, and a 



desire to find out what is good in it, as well as to learn what there 

 was in it to impress so strongly the mind of the age, will not fail to 

 discover a breadth and force of thought, a rich beauty of imagination, 

 and an exquisite poetic feeling such as will convince him that 

 however tedious or even unreasonable it may appear to those who 

 turn to it as to an idle novel it is really a work of rare genius though 

 cast in an unfortunate mould. In 1581, the 'Defence of Poesie,' the 

 other great work of Sidney, and upon which his fa-iie as an author 

 now perhaps more decidedly rests, was composed, but did not appear 

 until 1595. Nothing more can be said upon the cause which it advo- 

 cates, and what is said is placed in such a point of view, and expressed 

 in so happy a manner, as to leave nothing to desire. The names of 

 Wither, Ben Jonson, and Warton are sufficient evidence of the high 

 favour with which it has been received. 



After sustaining a severe disappointment from the marriage of the 

 Lady Penelope Devereux, whom he celebrated under the names of 

 Philoclea in the 'Arcadia,' aud Stella in his poems, and to whom he 

 was most deeply attached, he married in 1583, Frances, only daughter 

 of his old friend Sir Francis Walsingham. Shortly after he stood 

 proxy for Prince Casimir at an installation of Kuigiits of the Garter at 

 Windsor, and received the honour of knighthood from the queen. In 

 the ensuing year he took up the defence of his uncle, the Earl of 

 Leicester, who had been attacked by Parsons, the Jesuit, in a tract 

 called ' Leicester's Commonwealth." Sidney's answer is entitled a 

 ' Discourse in Defence of the Earl of Leicester.' Early in the year 

 1585 he seems to have meditated joining Sir Francis Drake's second 

 expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies. The queen 

 however, taking fright " lest she should lose the jewel of her 

 dominions," peremptorily forbade his embarkation. Fuller and some 

 other writers assert that at this time also the crown of Poland was 

 offered to him and declined. 



The war between the Spaniards and the Hollanders was being 

 carried on at this time. In order to mark her sense of hia merits, the 

 queen, in- 1585, appointed him governor of Flushing. After some 

 considerable successes against the enemy, the troops uuder his com- 

 mand accidentally met and encountered a force of about 3000 men 

 who were marching to relieve Zutphen, a town of Guelderland. The 

 engagement took place on the 22nd of September 1586, almost under 

 the walls of the town. After having had a horse shot under him, and 

 in his third charge, Sidney received a wound from a musket-bullet in 

 the left thigh, a little above the knee. The anecdote related by his 

 friend and biographer Lord Brooke of his conduct on leaving the 

 battle-field illustrates his character. Lord Brooke's words are " In 

 which sad progress, passing along by the rest of the army, where his 

 uncle the general was, and being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he 

 called for some drink, which was presently brought him; but as he 

 was putting 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.' " The wound was mortal, 

 and after many days of severe sufferiug he died at Arnheim, in the 

 arms of Lady Sidney (who had accompanied him to Flushing) and of 

 his faithful secretary William Temple, on the 7th of October 1586, in 

 the thirty-third year of his age. 



The body of Sidney was conveyed to England, and interred in Old 

 St. Paul's Cathedral, on the 16th of February 1587, after lying many 

 days in state. A general mourning, the first, it is believed, of the 

 kind, was observed throughout the country. The funeral was attended 

 by seven deputies, one for each of the Seven United Provinces, and by 

 a great number of peers, his friends, and others. 



The universities published three volumes of Elegies on his death. 

 Spenser composed one on him under the title of ' Astrophel.' Con- 

 stable contributed sonnets. 



" Sir Philip Sidney was," says a writer in the 'Retrospective Review," 

 " a gentleman finished and complete, in whom mildness was associated 

 with courage, erudition mollified by refinement, and courtliness digni- 

 fied by truth. He is a specimen of what the English character was 

 capable of producing, when foreign admixtures had not destroyed its 

 simplicity or politeness debased its honour. Of such a stamp was Sir 

 Philip Sidney, and as such every Englishman has reason to be proud 

 of him." His character has been a favourite theme. Near his own 

 times, Nash, in his ' Pierce Penniless,' Lord Brooke, Camden, Ben 

 Jonson, Sir Robert Naunton, and John Aubrey have all contributed 

 to fill the ranks of his panegyrists. Sir Walter Raleigh called him the 

 "English Petrarch." The chivalry of his character, his learning, 

 generous patronage of talent, and his untimely fate combine to make 

 him an object of great interest. " He trod," says the author of the 

 ' Effigies Poeticae,' " from his cradle to his grave amid incense aud 

 flowers, and died in a dream of glory." 



Upon the whole, it may be said of Sidney's writings, that they 

 display great brilliancy of imagination, with a chasteness of sentiment 

 well calculated to refine the taste of the times. Their chief faults are 

 chargeable on the strained and artificial style, the excess of which in 

 all its absurdity may be found in that very curious work Lilly's 

 ' Euphues." Some of Sidney's Sonnets are among the most perfect in 

 the language. 



Sidney's widow married Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, who was 



