THE

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS

OF

Sir Philip Sidaci, kint.

WITH A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR AND

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES

BY WILLIAM GRAY, Esq.

OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, AND THE INNER TEMPLE.

“ Live ever, sweet book! he who wrote thee was the secretary
of eloquence, the breath of the Muses, and the honey-bee of the dain-
riest flowers of wit and art."

GABRIEL HARVEY.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY T. 0. H. P. BURNHAM,

AT THE ANTIQUARIAN BOOKSTORE,

143 Washington Streer.

MDCCCLX.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

N presenting Sir Philip Sidney's Miscellaneous Works to the world, it will be unnecessary to trouble the reader with

many prefatory remarks.

It is enough for us to state that all our Author's published writings, with the exception of the Arcadia and the Psalms, have been collected from various quarters and embodied in this volume; and that several of his MS. letters now make their appearance for the first time, from the originals preserved in the British Museum.

We have assiduously compared the text of the different editions of Sidney's productions, and have in innumerable instances been able to correct the gross inaccuracies of preceding copies. On this head we would particularly

direct our censure against the reprint of the
Defence of Poesy superintended by Dr. Joseph
Warton, which, though it abounds in the most
grotesque and inexcusable blunders, seems to
have been implicitly followed in a more recent
publication.
We have not presumed to introduce into
our volume any portion of the Version of the
Psalms, which is commonly attributed to the
united labours of Sir P. Sidney and the Coun-
tess of Pembroke; since it is impossible to
decide, with any degree of certainty, what part
of this paraphrase belongs to Sir Philip, and
what to his accomplished sister: and besides, a
beautiful edition of these interesting compo-
sitions was published only a few years ago, by
Mr. Weller Singer, in his “Select Early English
Poets.”
For a reason which we have stated at p. 326,
we have printed the sixteen letters, placed at
the end of this volume, without making the
slightest alteration in their orthography; but in
all the other writings of our Author, we have
taken the liberty of adapting the spelling to the
standard now in use: and, though we may en-

counter some little blame on this account from the rigid lovers of antiquity, we are persuaded that we have rendered a service to the general reader. The orthography of the fathers of our literature was invariably most whimsical and uncertain. Sir John Fenn has mentioned an instance in the Paston Letters, where the same word is spelt three different ways within the short space of two lines; and many other examples of similar caprice might be produced, were it necessary. “ Every writer,” says Dr. Henry, contented himself with putting together any combination of letters that occurred to him at the time, which he imagined would suggest the word he intended to his readers, without ever reflecting what letters others used, on former occasions, for that purpose.”

It is perhaps superfluous to add more, but we cannot resist making a short quotation from Dr. Johnson's Preface to his Dictionary, where he says,

“ If the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and