verse.

Her father said that he would have been proud of Philip Sidney for a son-in-law. And if so why had the match not taken place? If Sidney had been really devoted to the lady he could have married her. He did not marry her because he did not wish to do so, and in his own day no reasonable being ever supposed that he paid suit to her, except in the way of Philip Sidney was an old friend of her father's, and he gave her the place of honour in his sonnet-writing, wherein she was to be Stella ("the Star'), he Astrophel ("the Lover of the Star"); and certainly, as all the court knew, and as the forms of such ingenious love-poetry implied, so far as love in the material sense was concerned, with as much distance between them as if she had shone upon him from above the clouds. Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella" sonnets were being written at the time when he was about to marry Fanny Walsingham; and in those earnest Elizabethan days, at the fitfully strict court of Elizabeth, since the character of such poetical love-passions was then understood, they brought upon Sidney's credit not a breath of censure. As for Lady Rich, she gave herself to Sir Christopher Blount, who became Lord Mountjoy in 1600, and after divorce from her husband she married him. But that was a real passion, and what each felt in it was not told for the amusement of the public. MORLEY, HENRY, 1873, First Sketch of English Literature, pp. 421, 422.

Now if you don't like these love-songs, you either have never been in love, or you don't know good writing from bad, (and likely enough both the negatives, I'm sorry to say, in modern England).-RUSKIN, JOHN, 1873, Fors Clavigera, Letter, xxxv.

"Stella" has "for all time" taken her place in the heaven of Literature beside not merely the Geraldine of Surrey earlier, or the Mary of Robert Burns later, but with the Laura of Petrarch, and Beatrice of Dante, and Rosalind and Elizabeth of Spenser, and Celia of Carew, and Castara of Habington, and Leonora of Milton, and Sacharissa of Waller.-GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 1877, ed. Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, Memorial-Introduction, vol. I, p. lxi.

As a series of sonnets the "Astrophel and Stella" poems are second only to Shakespeare's; as a series of love-poems

they are perhaps unsurpassed. Other writers are sweeter, more sonorous; no other love-poet of the time is so real. The poems to Stella are steeped throughout in a certain keen and pungent individuality which leaves a haunting impression behind it. They represent, not a mere isolated mood, whether half-real like Daniel's passion for Delia, or wholly artificial like the mood of Thomas Watson's "Passions," but a whole passage in a genuine life. . . . Not that "Astrophel and Stella" is without its make-believes. It has its "conceits," its pieces of pure word-play, in the common Elizabethan manner. No writer in the full tide of literary fashion like Sidney could afford to neglect these. But it would be scarcely fanciful to say that even in the most clearly marked of what one may call his conceited sonnets, the true Sidneian note to a reader who has learnt to catch it is almost always discernible, a note of youth and eagerness easily felt but hard to be described.-WARD, MARY A., 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. 1, p. 344.

The lover of Penelope Rich certainly Idid not find his "heart's desires" in wedlock. He chose to find his high ideal of

a

woman in his married sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and gave his romantic imagination free scope in writing her Arcadia." When he had been two years married, and just before he became a father, he was burning to visit the ends of the earth with Drake. Then he passed over to the Continent, and perished, the high-souled victim of his own rash enterprise-Argalus, but without a Parthenia. Dame Frances Sidney, strangely enough, married again, Robert, second Earl of Essex, the brother in arms and affection of her late husband. Their son Robert was the famous general of the Parliament, first nusband of the aristocratic adulteress and inurderess, Frances Howard.-HALL, HUBERT, 1886, Society in the Elizabethan Age, p. 91.

It is of the smallest possible importance or interest to a rational man to discover what was the occasion of Sidney's writing these charming poems-the important point is their charm. And in this respect (giving heed to his date and his opportunities of imitation) I should put Sidney third to Shakespere and Spenser.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 101.

AN APOLOGY FOR POETRIE

The stormie Winter (deere Chyldren of the Muses) which hath so long held backe the glorious Sunshine of diuine Poesie, is heere by the sacred pen-breathing words of diuine Sir Philip Sidney, not onely chased from our fame-inuiting Clyme, but vtterly for euer banisht eternitie: then graciously regreet the perpetuall spring of euer-growing inuention, and like kinde Babes, either enabled by wit or power, help to support me poore Midwife, whose daring aduenture, hath deliuered from Obliuions wombe, this euer-to-be admired wits miracle. Those great ones, who in themselues haue interr'd this blessed innocent, wil with Aejeulapius condemne. me as a detractor from their Deities: those who Prophet-like haue but heard presage of his coming, wil (if they wil doe wel) not onely defend, but praise mee, as the first publique bewrayer of Poesies. Messias. Those who neither haue seene, thereby to interre, nor heard, by which they might be inflamed with desire to see, let them (of duty) plead to be my Champions, sith both theyr sight and hearing, by mine incurring blame is seasoned. Excellent Poesie, (so created by this Apologie,) be thou my Defendresse; and if any wound mee, let thy beautie (my soules Adamant) recure mee: if anie commend mine endeuored hardiment, to them commend thy most diuinest fury as a winged incouragement; so shalt thou have deuoted to thee, and to them obliged.-OLNEY, HENRY, 1595, Publisher to the Reader, An Apology for Poetrie, ed. Arber, p. 16.

I have been blamed for not mentioning sir Philip's "Defence of Poetry," which some think his best work. I had indeed forgot it when I wrote this article; a proof that I at least did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired. This was all my criticism. pretended to say, that I could not conceive how a man, who in some respects written dully and weakly, and who, at most, was far inferior to our best authors, had obtained such immense reputation. Let his merits and his fame be weighed together, and then let it be determined whether the world has overvalued, or I undervalued, sir Philip Sidney.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1759, A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland, ed. Park, 2d ed., vol. II, p. 232, note.

Sir Philip Sidney is said to have miscarried in his essays; but his miscarriage was no more than that of failing in an attempt to introduce a new fashion. The failure was not owing to any defect or imperfection in the scheme, but to the want of taste, to the irresolution and ignorance of the public.-GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1773, Essays, xviii.

The "Defense of Poesy" has already been reckoned among the polite writings of the Elizabethan age, to which class it rather belongs than to that of criticism; for Sidney rarely comes to any literary censure, and is still farther removed from any profound philosophy. His sense is good, but not ingenious, and the declamatory tone weakens its effect.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Literary History of Europe, pt. ii, ch. vii, par. 35.

The book on which Sidney's reputation as an English classic writer rests.-COLLIER, WILLIAM FRANCIS, 1861, History of English Literature, p. 117.

It is not only an earnest and persuasive argument, but was, in style and diction, the best secular prose yet written in England, and indeed the earliest specimen of real critical talent in the literature.MARSH, GEORGE P., 1862, The Origin and History of the English Language, etc., p. 547.

Is worthy of a writer who had a poet's phantasy and a critic's delicacy of discrimination.-PORTER, NOAH, 1870, Books and Reading, p. 293.

The elegant and too-little known treatise. 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 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. STAPFER, PAUL, 1880, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity, tr. Carey, p. 41.

Sidney's flawless "Defense of Poesie." -STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE, 1892, The Nature and Elements of Poetry, p. 23.

From its historical position Sidney's "Defense of Poesy" is an important work in the development of English criticism. It is one of those inquiries into the nature of poetry that have appealed to philosophical curiosity from classical times down to our own, and that are interesting and suggestive, even if not of the most valuable order. Sidney's work is especially noteworthy as a landmark in the evolution of English prose, and as an indication of the classical spirit of the circle to which he belonged. For he writes more as a student than as an alert contemporary of the men of 1580; he was scholastically blind to the signs of the times. Fortunately Marlowe and Shakspere did not take the essay as a literary guide. Yet for a professed classicist, Sidney is not narrow, as his love for English ballads indicates, and his pure and ideal spirit is shown in the serious ethical conception of poetry that marks his entire work. MCLAUGHLIN, EDWARD T., 1893, Literary Criticism for Students, p. 1.

The monument of the noblest phase of perhaps the noblest movement of English thought. Filled with a longing for perfection, but a perfection beyond the thought of any but a poet, Sidney gives us the poetry rather than the art or the theory of criticism.-WYLIE, LAURA JOHNSON, 1894, Evolution of English Criticism, p. 12.

His "Defence of Poesy" is a veritable epitome of the literary criticism of the Italian Renaissance; and so thoroughly is it imbued with this spirit, that no other work, Italian, French, or English, can be said to give so complete and so noble at conception of the temper and the principles of Renaissance criticism.-SPINGARN, JOEL ELIAS, 1899, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, p. 268.

GENERAL

Our English Petrarch.-HARRINGTON, SIR JOHN, 1591, Translation of Ariosto, Notes on Book xvi, p. 126.

Liberal Sidney, famous for the love He bare to learning and to chivalry. -PEELE, GEORGE, 1593, The Honour of the Garter, Ad Maecenatem Prologus.

he could pipe, and daunce, and caroll sweet,

Emongst the shepheards in their shearing feast;

As Somers larke that with her song doth greet

The dawning day forth comming from the East.

And layes of love he also could compose: Thrise happie she, whom he to praise did chose!

-SPENSER, EDMUND, 1595, Astrophel, Works, ed. Collier, vol. v, p. 69.

Oh, for some excellent pen-man to deplore their state: but he which would lively, naturally, or indeed poetically, delyneate or enumerate these occurrents, shall either lead you thereunto by a poeticall spirit, as could well, if well he might, the dead-living, life-giving Sydney, Prince of Poesie. -SMITHES, SIR THOMAS, 1605, Voiage and Entertainment in Rushia.

That poets are far rarer births than kings, Your noblest father proved; like whom, before,

Or then, or since, about our Muses' springs, Came not that soul exhausted so their store. -JONSON, BEN., 1616, To Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, Epigrams, lxxix.

The King said Sir P. Sidney was no poet. -DRUMMOND, WILLIAM, 1619, Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations, ed. Laing, p. 26. The noble Sidney . .

That hero for numbers, and for prose, That thoroughly pac'd our language, as to show

The plenteous English hand in hand might go With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce Our tongue from Lilly's writing then in use. DRAYTON, MICHAEL, c. 1627, Poets and Poesy.

The true spirit or vein of ancient poetry in this kind seems to shine most in Sir Philip Sidney, whom I esteem both the greatest poet and the noblest genius of any that have left writings behind them, and published in ours or any other modern language; a person born capable not only of forming the greatest ideas, but of leaving the noblest examples, if the length

of his life had been equal to the excellence of his wit and virtues.-TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM, 1628-98, Of Poetry, Works, vol. III, p. 412.

Love's foe profess'd! why dost thou falsely feign

Thyself a Sidney? from which noble strain
He sprung, that could so far exalt the name
Of Love, and warm a nation with his flame;
That all we can of love or high desire
Seems but the smoke of amorous Sidney's fire.
-WALLER, EDMUND, c 1636, At Penshurst.
Philip and Alexander both in one;

Heir to the Muses, the Son of Mars in Truth, Learning, Valour, Wisdome, all in virtuous youth,

His praise is much, this shall suffice my pen, That Sidney dy'd 'mong most renown'd of

prototype that he was probably smitten with the love of antithesis and conceit, and the other fashionable absurdities in which our best writers of sonnets then abounded.-GRAY, WILLIAM, 1829, Life of Sidney, Boston ed., p. 36.

Penshurst, when I first saw it (in 1791), was the holiest ground I had ever visited. Forty years have not abated my love and veneration for Sydney. I do not remember any character more nearly without reproach. His prose is full of poetry; and there are very fine passages among his poems, distinguishing them from his metres, in which there is scarcely even a redeeming line, thought, or expression.SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1830, Letter to Sir Egerton Brydges, Brydge's Autobiography, vol. II, p. 267.

The truth is, that the life of Sidney is more poetical than his works; the whole. tenor of his conduct is romance brought into action; and we insensibly transfer the admiration we feel for his warm humanity and his nobleness of soul, to works, which, except as they are tinged with the poetry of his character, possess little literary value.-HIPPISLEY, J. H., 1837, Chapters on Early English Literature, p. 250.

The silver speech

Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,

Horace, Book ii, Epistle 1, v. 98.

Had Sir Philip paid an exclusive attention to the poetical art, there is every reason to suppose that he would have occupied a master's place in this department; as it is, his poetry, though too often vitiated by an intermixture of antithesis. and false wit, and by an attempt to introduce the classic metres, is still rich with frequent proofs of vigour, elegance, and harmony.-DRAKE, NATHAN, 1817, Shakspeare and His Times, vol. 1, p. 652.

Though we cannot admit for a moment that the poetry of Sidney is debased by the vile alloy of licentiousness and pruriency, we are not blind to many other vices with which it may most justly be charged. Our author was styled, by Raleigh, the English Petrarch; and without doubt he derived many of his faults as well as excellencies from the bard of Arezzo, whom he frequently imitated both in his manner and in his exaggerated turn of expression. It was from this foreign

The knights to tilt,-wert thou to hear! -BROWNING, ROBERT, 1840, Sordello, bk. i, v. 68-71.

There is hardly a character in history upon which the imagination can dwell with more unalloyed delight. Not in romantic fiction was there ever created a more attractive incarnation of martial valour, poetic genius, and purity of heart. --MOTLEY, JOHN LOTHROP, 1860, History of the United Netherlands, vol. 1, p. 357.

In the world of letters, then, Sir Philip Sidney took, for his years, rank singularly high. But we must never forget that literature was his only amusement. He knew that he had statesmanly and martial powers, which he was eager to be using. He longed, with the wild earnestness of a caged bird, for room to take his part in the great battle of freedom which was going on around him. For such work he was best fitted, and it is for the glorious beginning made by him herein that we owe him largest honour. But, knowing this

we can only the more marvel that the songs with which he lightened his captivity were so eloquent, and that the truths which his youth enforced in idle moments came out of the depths of so mature a mind. BOURNE, H. R. Fox, 1862, A Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney, p. 419.

His prose, as prose, is not equal to his friend Raleigh's, being less condensed and stately. It is too full of fancy in thought and freak in rhetoric to find now-a-days more than a very limited number of readers; and a good deal of the verse that is set in it, is obscure and uninteresting, partly from some false notions of poetic composition which he and his friend Spenser entertained when young; but there is often an exquisite art in his other poems.--MACDONALD, GEORGE, 1868, England's Antiphon, p. 77. Sir Philip Sidney, born the year after him, with a keener critical instinct, and a taste earlier emancipated than his own, would have been, had he lived longer, perhaps even more directly influential in educating the taste and refining the vocabulary of his contemporaries and immediate successors. The better of his pastoral poems in the "Arcadia" are, in my judgment, more simple, natural, and, above all, more pathetic than those of Spenser, who sometimes strains the shepherd's pipe with a blast that would better suit the trumpet. Sidney had the good sense to feel that it was unsophisticated sentiment rather than rusticity of phrase that befitted such themes. He recognized the

distinction between simplicity and vulgarity, which Wordsworth was so long in finding out, and seems to have divined the fact that there is but one kind of English that is always appropriate and never obsolete, namely, the very best. With the single exception of Thomas Campion, his experiments in adapting classical metres to English verse are more successful than those of his contemporaries. Some of his elegiacs are not ungrateful to the ear, and it can hardly be doubted that Coleridge borrowed from his eclogue of Strephon and Klaius the pleasing movement of his own Catullian Hendecasyllabics.--LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1875-90, Spenser, Prose Works, Riverside ed., vol. iv, p. 276.

Sidney, the radiant "Hesper-Phosphor" of the time of Elizabeth, fades in the *Spenser.

brightness of that great morning, yet no radiance that follows is quite so clear and keen. He charmed by a sweet youthful gravity underlying a sweet youthful joyousness of nature. He belonged heartily to the Renaissance, introducing into our prose literature the chivalricpastoral romance, and engaging eagerly in the reform of versification and in the criticism of poetry.-DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1887, Transcripts and Studies, pp. 282,

283.

He

Subtle, delicate, refined, with a keen and curious wit, a rare faculty of verse, a singular capacity of expression, an active but not always a true sense of form, he wrote for the few, and (it may be) the few will always love him. But his intellectual life, intense though it were, was lived among shadows and abstractions. thought deeply, but he neither looked widely nor listened intently, and when all is said he remains no more than a brilliant amorist, too super-subtle for complete sincerity, whose fluency and sweetness have not improved with years.-HENLEY, WILLIAM ERNEST, 1890, Views and Reviews, p. 105.

Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, for notes a dove, Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines

where through thy soul from afar above Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire is the fount of love. Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys and fears, Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal with thy peerless peers,

Feeds the fame of they quenchless name with light that lightens the rayless years. -SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1894, Astrophel, ii.

The sharper lyrical cry, the strenuous utterance of brief but deep emotion, first comes from Sidney, as in the sonnet beginning:

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust. After this the way is open to all comers, and the full choir of song is heard in the land. CARPENTER, FREDERIC IVES, 1897, English Lyric Poetry, 1500-1700, Introduction, p. xliii.

Sidney is the most dramatic of sonneteers. In this capacity Shakespeare and he change places.-TOVEY, DUNCAN C., 1897, Reviews and Essays in English Literature, p. 178.