character of his mind. It was this ardent, sunny, unselfish disposition which was so beautiful in all his family relations. His father, Sir Henry Sidney, himself one of the noblest characters in history, says of him, in a letter to his second son, Robert Sidney: "Follow the advice of your most loving brother, who in loving you is comparable with me, or exceedeth me. Imitate his virtues, exercises, studies, and actions. He is a rare ornament of his age; the very formula that all welldisposed young gentlemen of our court do form also their manners and life by. In truth, I speak it without flattery of him, or myself, he hath the most virtues that I ever found in any man." What a proud testimony from a father to a son! But the same admirable affection constantly displayed itself towards his brother and sister. His letters to his brother Robert are full of the most delightfully gay, yet loving and wise spirit. Writing to him while on his travels, he declared,—what he invariably proved by his conduct,-"There is nothing I spend so pleaseth me as that which is for you. If ever I have ability, you will find it; if not, yet shall not any brother living be better beloved than you of me." His tender attachment to his sister, the celebrated Countess of Pembroke, is known to all the world. It was to Wilton that he betook himself during his temporary absence from court, on account of his difference with the insolent Earl of Oxford, to write his Arcadia. It was to her that he dedicated it, and more than dedicated it, calling it "Pembroke's Arcadia." It was to her that he sent it, sheet by sheet, when he was not present with her to read it to her; living in her approbation of it, and seeking no other fame from it, for it was not published till after his death. Such were the noble and endearing qualities that made Sir Philip Sidney the idol of his times in foreign countries as much as in his own; that induced Poland to offer him its crown; that covered his hearse with the laments of all the learned and poetical amongst his cotemporaries-three volumes of such funereal tributes in various languages being published on the occasion of his death; the two great English universities striving which should outdo the other in the number and intensity of its "melodious tears." The evidences of Sir Philip Sidney's genius which have come down to us are to be found in his Arcadia; his Astrophel and Stella; his Defence of Poesy; his Sonnets and Songs: and there have not been wanting those who assert that they do not bear out by their merit the enthusiastic encomiums of his cotemporaries. Lord Orford has pronounced the Arcadia "a tedious, lamentable, pedantic, pastoral romance;" and Hume, Tytler, and others, have echoed the opinion. How many are there of our own age who are prepared by actual perusal to sanction or disallow of this dictum? How many have read that poem of which every one speaks as a matter of knowledge-Spenser's Faery Queen? How many, even, have waded through Paradise Lost? Every poetical spirit which has qualified itself to give an answer, must declare that the literary relics of Sir Philip Sidney,-writings thrown off rapidly in the midst of many pursuits and many distracting attentions, and before death at the early age of thirty-two,— must pronounce them well worthy of his fame. His poetry and prose too have all the marks of stiffness, and affected point of that period; but every page of his composition abounds with sober and with brilliant thoughts. His sonnets are delightful testimonies to the inward beauty and' tenderness of the man. Many readers have been made familiar with the fine opening of one of his sonnets, by Wordsworth introducing it as the opening of one of his : With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the sky, and every real lover of poetry, if he opens the volume of Sir Philip Sidney, will find much that will equally delight him, and generate within him trains of high and sober thought. But, in my opinion, it is the Arcadia which must stand as the best image of his "inner man." Whoever reads it, should read it with reference to the spirit of the age, and turn relentlessly over all the pastoral episodes, and he will then find a volume full of stirring interest, striking invention, and that living tone of high, pure, heroic spirit, which scorned everything base; which is, in truth, the grand characteristic of Sidney;-a spirit which stands up by the low and cunning knowingness of our own day, like one of the statues of Greece by the wigged and sworded objects of modern sculpture. Such passages as the Prayer of Pamela are amongst the noblest specimens of impassioned eloquence in the language. Charles I. shewed how deeply that passage had touched him by adopting it as his own petition to the Supreme Being as he went to the scaffold; and the closing portion of it shall close these passing remarks on Sir Philip Sidney's writings, as very expressive of his nature.—“Let calamity bee the exercise, but not the overthrow of my virtue. Let the power of my enemies prevail, but prevail not to my destruction. Let my greatness bee their prey; let my pain bee the sweetness of their revenge; let them, if so it seem good unto thee, vex me with more and more punishment: but, O Lord, let never their wickedness have such a hand, but that I may carry a pure mind in a pure body!" The death of Sir Philip Sidney, from a wound received on the field of Zutphen, has become celebrated by the circumstance continually referred to as an example of the most heroic magnanimity-giving up the water for which he had earnestly implored to a dying soldier near-saying, "he has more need of it than I." But the whole of his behaviour from that time to the hour of his death, twenty-five days afterwards, was equally characteristic,-being spent amongst his friends in the exercise of the most exemplary patience and sweetness of temper, and in the discussion of such solemn topics as the near view of eternity naturally brings before the spirit of the dying Christian. Algernon Sidney is as fine a character, though seen under another and a sterner aspect. He was born to more troublous times and a less courtly scene. He had evidently formed himself upon a model of Roman virtue. He was a pure republican, placing public virtue before him as his guide, from which neither interest nor ambition were ever able to make him swerve; and that such was his life as well as his creed, has been nobly avowed by a great writer of very opposite political profession. Great men have been amongst us; hands that penned And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none; The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington, Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend. These moralists could act and comprehend; They knew how genuine glory is put on; Taught us how rightfully a nation shone In splendour; what strength was that would not bend WORDSWORTH. We see in his portraits the firm and melancholy look of a man who had grown up for political martyrdom, and the times afforded him but too much opportunity to arrive at it. The words of one of his letters to his father, Lord Leicester,* are more demonstrative of his character than the most laboured exposition of it by any other man can be.-"I walk in the light God hath given me: if it be dimme or uncertaine I must beare the penalty of my errors. I hope to do it with patience, and that noe burthen should be very grievous to me except sinne and shame! God keepe me from these evils, and in all things else dispose of me according to his pleasure." They were singular coincidences, that these two great men of one * Blencowe's Sidney Papers. |