CHAPTER II.

CLASSICAL PRECEPTS ENFORCED BY SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

HAVING noticed in the preceding chapter the classical examples given by Elizabethan writers that Shakespeare may have seen, we must now consider the rules and precepts he is likely to have heard.

In the middle of the sixteenth century, Whetstone, in his dedication to "Promos and Cassandra," from which play Shakespeare derived the story of his "Measure for Measure," complains of the neglect of the unities, saying:

"The Englishman in this quality is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his work on impossibilities; then in three hours runs he through the world; marries, gets children, makes children men, men to conquer kingdoms, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven and fetcheth devils from Hell."

There are many famous passages in the prologues of that great disciple of the ancients, Ben Jonson, in which he attacks the barbarisms of the stage, and makes his profession of purely classical doctrines. In the prologue to "Every Man in his Humour," he laughs at the poets who in one and the same play

"Make a child, now swaddled, to proceed

Man, and then shoot up in one beard, and weed,
Past three score years: or with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot-and-half-foot words,

Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars
And in the tiring-house bring wounds, to scars.
He rather prays, you will be pleased to see

One such to-day, as other plays should be.
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas;

Nor creaking throne comes down, the boys to please;
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afear'd

The gentlewomen."

But a series of detached quotations, which could be lengthened out indefinitely, would soon become wearisome; the complete analysis of a single work presents far greater attractions, and none could better suit the purpose than the elegant and too-little known treatise of Sir Philip Sidney, entitled " An Apologie for Poetrie."

It not unfrequently happens in the history of literature, that in consequence of a few partial and mutilated quotations, an author acquires a reputation quite other than he deserves. Such, for instance, is the case in France with Joachim du Bellay, who is set down as a rash and confused writer,* because all French manuals of literature, in speaking of his "Defence and Illustration of the French Language," confine themselves to quoting the last page, in which he exhorts French poets, in a somewhat fantastic and emphatic style, to storm and pillage ancient Greece and Rome, and they are not careful to note that this conclusion oversteps the general import of the book, and would give an erroneous notion of it if taken as the true summary of its doctrines. Much the same thing has befallen Sir Philip Sidney. The only pages of his "Apologie for Poetrie" generally quoted, are those in which he laughs at the playwrights of his time for violating the unities of time and place. The drawback to this isolated quotation is that it gives the perfectly false notion of Sir

* Mr. Pater, in his exquisite study of Joachim du Bellay (“Studies of the History of the Renaissance"), has made it impossible for such a reproach to be cast upon English readers.

Philip Sidney that he was a narrow-minded pedant, whereas, in reality, there was nowhere to be found a more liberal and delicately cultured mind than his. His criticism was founded upon the noblest philosophy of art, and amongst the numerous treatises on poetry, which form an entire and very curious branch of literature in the sixteenth century, that of Sir Philip Sidney is in every respect the most remarkable. In addition to the learning of a Scaliger, and the enthusiasm of a Ronsard, he possessed a quality that both these men were lacking in, which, for want of a better word, I must call an atticism, or, more strictly speaking, an urbanity, taking care to retain the especial meaning of a graceful and witty raillery, which is contained in the Latin word but not to the same degree in the Greek.

Ronsard was just a little lumbering in his ardent flights, and Scaliger was a born pedant, but Sidney was the polished man of the world, and by an exception tolerably rare amongst the scholars of his day, he appears to have been as familiar with Greek literature as with that of Rome; but with him all this weight of learning was wholly graceful and full of a living interest, for Sidney was a true humanist. And, indeed, speaking generally, there is nothing perhaps more exquisite in literature than the writings of an occasional and spontaneous character, of men gifted with knowledge and talent by whom literature is not followed as a trade.

Sir Philip Sidney, born in 1554, was pre-eminently an accomplished courtier and a man of brilliant deeds: courtier, ambassador, poet, romancist and soldier," he stands forth as the very flower of knighthood, and, as his contemporary, Sir Robert Naunton, says of him, "was a noble and matchlesse gentleman."

"He grew up fast in goodnesse and in grace,

And doubly fair wox both in mynd and face.

Which daily more and more he did augment,
With gentle usuage and demeanure myld:
That all men's hearts with secret ravishment
He stole away, and weetingly beguyld."

It does not appear that he published any of his works during his short and brilliant career, which came to an end in 1586, when he was mortally wounded at the battle of Zutphen: but he was the enthusiastic votary of every kind of culture, and had received an education deeply imbued with the humanistic spirit of the Renaissance.

One of his school-fellows, Fulke Greville, testifies of him that even as a child he had a gravity beyond his years, combined with a rare sweetness and charm. He travelled over Europe, and was in Paris during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. At Frankfort he made the acquaintance of the learned Hubert Languet, with whom he kept up a correspondence in Latin, and on his return to the court of Elizabeth, was sent by her, at the age of twenty-two, as ambassador to the Emperor Rudolf II. In 1580, when a temporary disgrace with Elizabeth led him to withdraw for a while from the court and from the cares of public life, he wrote his famous pastoral, the "Arcadia." The following year he wrote his "Defence of Poetry," which remained unpublished till fourteen years afterwards, when, in 1595, it appeared under the title of "An Apologie for Poetrie,' written by the right noble, virtuous, and learned Sir Philip Sidney, Knight. Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo." The "Defence," or "Apology of Poetry," was written as an answer to the libel against poetry and the drama by Stephen Gosson, who had actually had the infatuation to dedicate his works to Sidney. A strange choice, truly, of a patron! "Such follie is it," writes Spenser, on this subject, "not to regarde aforehande the inclination and qualitie of him to whom we dedicate oure bookes." Sir

Philip Sidney had a chance of being elected King of Poland, only Elizabeth would not hear of "the jewel of her times" accepting the crown. He was appointed to the Governorship of Flushing, and during the war with Flanders he was wounded at the battle of Zutphen, and died at the age of thirty-two. In the anecdote which everybody knows, a noble action is recorded of him. As he lay mortally wounded and parched with thirst he called for water, but when they brought it to him, Sidney, seeing a soldier carried along, even more grievously wounded than himself, and who cast longing looks at the water, handed it to him, saying, "Thy necessity is yet greater than mine."

The "Apology for Poetry" is written in a style not unlike that of Montaigne, full of imagery and quaint conceits, more exuberant than correct, and more daring than accurate; but though to the colder and more severe and timid taste of modern times, it may not seem free from a certain affectation, its delicate fancies and oldworld aroma give it a peculiar charm.

"To all them," says Sidney, "that professing learning inveigh against Poetry, may justly be objected, that they go very near to ungratefulness, to seek to deface that, which in the noblest nations and languages that are known, hath been the very first light-giver to ignorance, and first Nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges."

Here, inspired by Horace, he proceeds to quote on the part of Greece, Musæus, Homer, Hesiod, Linus, Amphion, and Orpheus, whose lyre charmed both beasts and stones, that is to say, " stony and beastly people;" on the part of ancient Italy, Ennius, and Livius Andronicus; for modern Italy, Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch; and for England, Gower and Chaucer. He reminds his readers that the earliest philosophers were poets, and that Thales, Empedocles, Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Phocylides, threw their cosmogonies, or their systems of morals, into verse.