the English hexameter, and for a while every one would be halting on Roman feet; but the ridicule of Joseph Hall, in one of his satires, and the reasoning of Daniel in his Defence of Rhyme, against Campion, presently reduced us to our old Gothic."* Even Spenser was seriously affected by the prevailing mania for dactyles and spondees after the manner of the ancients. "I am of late," he says in one of his letters to Harvey, "more in love with my English versifying than with rhyming. By versifying he means here adapting English verse to Latin prosody; and he takes occasion, in the same epistle, to pass a high encomium on the unmelodious numbers of his friend.

The very passages in Sir Philip's volumes, accordingly, which we now reprobate most severely, were, perhaps, those which attracted the greatest amount of contemporary admiration; and this conjecture, indeed, is pretty clearly established by the fact, that we find Sir W. Temple, in an age far more scrupulous and advanced, declaring, without qualification, our author to be "the greatest poet and the noblest genius of any that have left writings behind them, or published in

which these two great men first became acquainted. He was a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and took a Doctor of Law's degree in 1585.

This absurd innovation was also humorously exposed by Nash in his Four Letters confuted, 1592. "The hexameter verse," he says, "I grant to be a gentleman of an ancient house, (so is many an English beggar,) yet this clime of ours he cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in; he goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon quagmires, up the hill in one syllable, and down the dale in another; retaining no part of that stately smooth gait, which he vaunts himself amongst the Greeks and Latins."

our's or any other language; a person born capable not only of forming the greatest idea, but leaving the noblest example, if the length of his life had been equal to the excellence of his wit and his virtues." Such was the calm decision of a man of genius when all the fleeting prejudices in Sidney's favour must have entirely passed away. To this we may add that the critics of his own time undertook to illustrate the whole art of rhetoric from his pages; and that from a perusal of them, both our elder and our modern poets have derived many of their happiest and their sweetest conceptions.

"The Arcadia," says Mr. Dunlop, "was much read and admired by Waller and Cowley, and has been obviously imitated in many instances by our early dramatists. The story of Plangus in the Arcadia is the origin of Shirley's Andromana, or Merchant's Wife. That part of the pastoral where Pyrocles agrees to command the Helots, seems to have suggested those scenes of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which Valentine leagues himself with the outlaws. An episode in the second book of the Arcadia, where a king of Paphlagonia, whose eyes had been put out by a bastard son, is described as led by his rightful heir, whom he had cruelly used for the sake of his wicked brother, has furnished Shakespeare with the underplot concerning Gloster and his two sons, in King Lear. There are in the romance the same description of a bitter storm, and the same request of the father that he might be led to the summit of a cliff, which occur in that pathetic tragedy.. The Arcadia was also, as we learn from Milton, the companion of the prison hours of Charles the First, whom that poet, in his Iconoclastes, reproaches with having stolen the prayer of Pamela, to insert in his

Ikon Basilikè. But whether the King actually fell into this inadvertence, or whether his antagonist procured the interpolation of the passage, that he might enjoy an opportunity of reviling his sovereign for impiety, and of taunting him with literary plagiarism, has been the subject of much controversy among the biographers of the English bard."

In 1581, the assistance of Mr. Sidney was warmly solicited by Don Antonio, Prior of Crato, who had laid claim, not long previously, to the contested crown of Portugal, and actually assumed the vacant title of King; but his application was disregarded, though couched in terms the most flattering, and our author preferred sitting in Parliament for his native county of Kent. His name appears at this period as a member of a committee to frame such laws as would secure the kingdom against the Pope and his adherents.

He was engaged, during the same year, in a splendid military spectacle, which was exhibited in compliment to the ambassadors of the Duke of Anjou, who had perseverance enough again to cross the Channel, that they might renew their royal master's earnest overtures of marriage. On this occasion the Earl of Arundel, Lord Windsor, Mr. Philip Sidney, and Mr. Fulke Greville, presented themselves as champions, and challenged all comers to the combat. The equipments of our hero, and his associates, have been minutely described in Stow's continuation of Old Hollinshed, and are well worthy of a perusal by all those who take delight in the antique splendour of the tournament, or whose fancy loves to dwell on the forgotten usages of chivalry.

The gaiety of the English court was soon after increased by a personal visit from the amatory French

grandee; but, though he was received by the Queen with the most gracious condescension, he experienced in the end a decisive refusal of his offers, which, perhaps, proceeded considerably more from the advisers of Elizabeth, than from her own heart. There can certainly be no doubt that her vanity, at the least, would have derived its dearest gratification from a longer continuance of her princely suitor's assiduities; for her highness's characteristics appear to have been thoroughly understood, and summed up, by Thuanus, when he remarks, "ambiri, coli ob formam, et amoribus, etiam inclinata jam ætate, videri voluit." The reasons of state, however, were too manifold and too urgent to permit her coquetry the unlimited indulgence which it craved; and the Duke was attended on his return to the Netherlands, in the course of a few months, by the Earl of Leicester, Lord Hunsdon, Mr. Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, and a numerous and illustrious train of nobles and gentlemen, who accompanied him the length of Antwerp, by the special command of, her majesty.

It is supposed, that for a season immediately following the stirring events which we have just been recording, Sir Philip Sidney devoted himself to a life of contemplative retirement. Part of the fruits of his meditation was his much celebrated Defence of Poesy, one of the noblest tributes ever offered to the allurements of the Muse. It belongs, in fact, to the small number of those happy creations which he alone could either have produced or devised, who has been touched and purified with the sacred fire of true genius. Originally designed as an answer to certain diatribes of the Puritansa sect which was then springing rapidly into notice, and beginning to signalize itself by an austere

and fierce aversion to all the elegant recreations of society and of mind-it remains an imperishable monument of the digested learning of its author, and of the engaging facility with which he could turn his talents to account. It has been aptly described, in his own words, as the "sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge;" as the outpouring and register of those "high-erected thoughts" which are solely to be found seated in their purity "in a heart of courtesy." At the same time it contains few of those mannerisms, and studied affectations of his day, with which, it must be confessed, his larger work is often deformed. This is, on the contrary, a plain and practical treatise, seeking above all things to carry conviction by its illustrations and its arguments, and making fancy and ornament entirely subservient to the cause of persuasion and of truth. Yet the imaginative genius of the author frequently bursts forth in all its splendour, and strews his didactic path with a galaxy of the most brilliant conceptions. He seems here to follow religiously the memorable advice with which his muse favoured him on another occasion "look in thy heart and write."

Viewing this production in a different light, it acquires an additional interest. It was, as it were, the flourish of trumpets, or the richly varied overture "in linked beauties long drawn out," which preceded the appearance of Shakespeare, and his fellow bards, on the dramatic scene.* It smoothed down the asperities of feel

Though the first edition of the Defence did not issue from the press till 1595, there is every reason to suppose, as Mr. Collier has remarked, that the Arcadia, and all Sir Philip's other productions, were handed about in manuscript long before their formal publication; since we find in Puttenham's Art of Poetry, which was