436 



SIHNKY 



contemporaries. His unselfish chivalrous nature it 

 i>, bold at once and tender, his purity of life in the 

 corrupt atmosphere of the Klizaliotlian court. nUivi- 

 all, his heroic death, which make him -till in a 

 certain sense alive among us. Yet his was in fact 

 an unadventurous life, wasted, not by his own 

 fault, despite of strenuous endeavour; whilst hy u 

 kind of pathetic irony the fame which preserves his 

 gracious memory has perversely failed to do justice 

 to that true ami passionate verse which in his own 

 day placed him at the head of our poetry next in 

 succession to Chaucer. Sidney, born 29th Novem- 

 ber 1554, at Penshurst, Kent, and named after 

 Philip II., was son to Sir Henry, a man of high 

 birth iiml noble character, married to Mary Dudley, 

 daughter to the Duke of Northumberland (executed 

 for treason 1553), and sister to that base and hypo- 

 critical Lord Leicester, of all Queen Elizabeth's 

 favourites the most ill-chosen and baleful. Philip 

 was sent first for education to Shrewsbury School 

 (1564), thence (1568) to Christ Church, Oxford. 

 He studied hard, as his writings show, and made 

 his two best friends, Greville, afterwards Lord 

 Brooke, and Dyer ; men likeminded with himself 

 in a certain seriousness and manliness of character, 

 such as was naturally formed by the atmosphere 

 of that age troubled, vet full of hope and energy. 



From 1572 to 1575 Sidney travelled in France, 

 Germany, and Italy, completing his education after 

 the fashion of those days, returning well versed in 

 the best Italian literature, but unspoiled by foreign 

 temptations. He was not a man to verify the pro- 

 verb of that day, ' A devil incarnate is the English- 

 man Italianate.' Few men or none were then more 

 powerful in England than his uncle Leicester, and 

 Sidney at once began to make his career at court, 

 then the only portal to public life. His character 

 was now fully formed as the model of a finished 

 English gentleman ; in Spenser's fine phrase he was 

 the 'President of noblesse and of chivalry.' Yet 

 as a statesman Sidney practically failed. At first a 

 favourite of the ever-fickle queen, he accompanied 

 her progresses; he was sent ambassador (1577) to 

 Rudolph II., and then to William, Prince of Orange. 

 There is a vague story that he was thought of as 

 candidate for tin- uneasy Polish throne ; he certainly 

 longed to join Prince Casimir, then in arms in the 

 Netherlands. But he was not yet ( 1578 ) fated to 

 visit Zutphen. 



Sidneys court position now became trying. 

 Elizabeth displayed her too frequent ingratitude 

 toward his father for his exertions as Lord Deputy 

 in Ireland, and Philip wrote in his defence with 

 much ability and courage. And in similar style 

 he addressed the iiuecn against her desired match 

 with the miserable Duke of Anjou. Elizalieth 

 hence frowned upon him ; whilst, meanwhile, 

 Leicester's own marriage with Lady Essex had 

 removed him from court. Sidney also retired (I5so) 

 to his admirable sister Mary, now Lady Pembroke, 

 at Wilton, where most, probably, of his Arcadia 

 was written. 



Of Sidney's life in 1581-82 we know little. He 

 returned to court, like Spenser, 



To lone good days, that might be better spent : 

 To wute long nlgbt* In pensive discontent : 



tortured also with the hopeless love, which we shall 

 notice further on. In l.">s:t he was knighted ; he 

 received from Kli/ahct h a paper-grant of 30,000,000 

 acres in 'certain parts of America not yet dis- 

 covered ;' and married Frances, daughter to Sir F. 

 Walsinghani. Kut although he may thus have 

 thought to strengthen his position, Sidney was 

 doomed to yet another disappointment. The 

 arrangement which he had settled (1585) to accom- 

 pany Drake on one of his buccaneer expeditions to 

 America was defeated by Elizabeth's weakness or 



caprice and Drake's jealous treachery. Indeed, 

 when seen not through the haze of tradition, the 

 distorting mists of partisanship, but in natural 

 light, the popular heroes of that day often drop 

 their halo. But this subject lielongs to that un- 

 written section of our annals, the true history of 

 tlie Kli/;iU>than age. 



It was poor amends that Sidney was ordered to 

 accompany Leicester, chosen for her general by the 

 queen s infatuation, to carry her half-hearted and 

 untrustworthy support to the Netherlander^ in 

 their agony and straggle against Spain. Upon 

 the miseries of Sidney's position in his partial 

 charge of that thrice disgraceful expedition we 

 need not dwell. For nearly a year he was detained 

 in idleness ; then, after one small brilliant exploit, 

 he received upon Octolier 2, 1586, his death-wound 

 in a chivalrous conflict, rash as the English charge 

 at Balaclava, under the walls of Zutphen ; dying, 

 as he had liorne himself throughout life, like a 

 hero and a Christian, on the 17th; and mourned 

 by England with a unanimity and a depth of feel- 

 ing never surpassed perhaps never equalled. 



By 1579 Sidney, who through a Cambridge 

 scholar, Gabriel Harvey, had liecome acquainted 

 with Edmund Spenser, a year or more his senior, 

 had formed with liim and some others a little liter- 

 ary society, which aimed at rejecting rhyme and 

 writing English poetry in classical metres. Of that 

 folly Sidney soon re]>ented ; but a few letters be- 

 tween S|>enserand Harvey upon the subject, happily 

 preserved, are noteworthy as the sole contemporary 

 notice of Sidney's own work in literature, which 

 we may place between 1578 and 15s2. Widely cele- 

 brated as that work was during Sidney's lifetime, 

 yet nothing of it was published till after his death. 

 He 'purposed no monuments of In inks. . . . His 

 end was not writing, even while be wrote,' said 

 his friend Greville. Like his immediate predeces- 

 sors Wyatt, Surrey, Sackville, lie was statesman 

 or courtier first, author only in leisure hours. His 

 writings must have Ix-en partially made known by 

 MS. circulation ; yet we may suspect that Sidney 8 

 own brilliant character, his connections, which 

 placed him in the very foremost rank of high life, 

 his generous patronage of men of letters, with the 

 report of those to whom his writings were com- 

 municated, united to give him his pre-eminent con- 

 temporary reputation. This was, however, aniply 

 supported when the Arcadia (written for his sister, 

 Lady Pembroke, probably 1578-80, but never fin- 

 ished) appeared, imperfectly in 1590, completely in 

 1598. This book, for perhaps about a century, re- 

 tained a vast popularity . though now almost unread, 

 and indeed unreadable. It is a pastoral romance, 

 founded primarily upon the Arcadia (1504) of the 

 Neapolitan Sannazzaro, being, like that, an intricate 

 love-story, intermixed with poems and written in 

 melodious but elaborate prose, and not free from 

 the artificial ' conceits," tlie Kuplmism, familiar in 

 Europe to that age. But the PortngnflM Monte- 

 mayor's Diana (1542), the old Creek romance 

 Theagenes and Charirlca, with, doubtless, other 

 traditional legends, had also their share in Sidney's 

 story; whilst its many incidents, disguisals, and 

 intricacies supplied material for later writers. But 

 the main value of the book perhaps lay in this, 

 that here Englishmen found their earliest model 

 for sweet, continuous, rhythmical prose for the 

 prose of art. Before the Arcadia we have fine 

 single passages ; no such consistent whole. The 

 verse portions are rarely happy ; they most have 

 been among Sidney's earliest attempte; but in 

 truth his genius required that high heat of personal 

 passion which inspires Astrophcl to fuse his ore 

 into gold ; although that ore (to pursue the figure) 

 is always weighty with Sidney s seriousness, bis 

 elevated thought, his chivalry of nature. As of 



