MARY SIDNEY, CO1TNTESS OF PEMBROKE.
Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. By Frances Berkeley Young. (David Nutt. 7s. Gd. net.)—Mary, Countess of Pembroke, has had the misfortune to suffer from too much reflected glory.. She stands before the world as the sister of Sidney, the friend of Spenser, the patroness of Drayton and Rogers ; but few have cared to know her for herself. And yet she is a delightful figure, this lady of the Renaissance, with her ready hospitality and gentle charity ; and she was gifted with a very real sense of poetry. Take, for example, the first few lines of her translation of the "Triumph of Death " :— " That gallant Ladle, glorionslie bright, The statelie pillar once of worthinesse And now a little dust, a naked spright, Turn'd from hir warres a joyful conqueressc }fir warres, where she bad foyl'd the mightie foe,
Whose wylie stratagems the world distresse."
This, surely, is work worthy to stand beside her brother's poetry and that of the later Elizabethan writers. A great deal of hard work and honest research has gone to the making of Miss Young's book, mad, though the life of the Countess is of necessity somewhat fragmentary and incomplete, she has nevertheless succeeded; chiefly by means of private letters, in giving a delightful riezount of the great house of Wilton and of the "peerless lalie " who ruled therein.
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