BOURNE'S LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.*
Mn. BOURNE'S Memoir of Sir Philip Sirkey goes far to show that it is more difficult than is commonly esteemed to produce a good bio- graphy. The subject was happily chosen. No one can fad to have a certain interest in the first gentleman of the Elizabethan times, were it only for his heroic death at Zutphen. Mr. Bourne has worked di- ligently at the principal sources of Sidney's history, has corrected several errors of former biographers, and has thrown light upon some obscure passages in his hero's life. His style, though a little loaded, is, on the whole, clear and readable. Nevertheless the book, taken altogether, is unsatisfactory. It is an attempt to give in full: the history of a man who died young, having achieved little, and whom Englishmen regretted chiefly for the promise of future greatness. Naturally the materials for such a work are scanty, and Mr. Bourne attempts to eke them out by a mass of irrelevant or unimportant ma- terial, by abstracts of old State papers, by long descriptions of pageants, or of Christmas presents to the Queen, and by interspersed accounts of Sidney's contemporaries. This in itself is a miscon- ception of the purpose of biography. We want to know the man, Sidney, as he worked, or thought to work, and do not care to have a Court Circular, or disquisitions borrowed from Hallam on early literature, woven up into the text of a rather uneventful career. For those who have not Boswell's personal knowledge of their heroes, the true type of biography, a picture in a few strokes, is to be found in Southey's "Life of Nelson." Of course there are other possible methods of life-writing, and it may be an object in some cases, perhaps in Sidney's, to produce an exhaustive statement of all the great and small in the man's history. But if Mr. Bourne has intended to do this he has failed. He has the Lues Boswelliana, and is per- petually endeavouring to trace a wise and heroic purpose in ordinary and even blamable acts. He sometimes omits matter which tends to Sidney's disparagement. These are very grave offences against his- torical truthfulness, and seem to indicate something more than mere want of insight. No one will dispute that Sir Philip Sidney, when his good and bad have been summed up, was a noble man, who, living in England's heroic age, was yet greater than others, and worthy of singular reverence. But Mr. Bourne writes throughout in the tone of glorification, which we commonly reserve for a special Church service, and does not perceive that history ought to be the reproduc- tion of actual life, not an elaborate epitaph in which the family praises its ancestor and itself. Our national fondness for seif-laudation may surely satisfy itself with newspaper articles.
Philip Sidney was the son of Sir Henry Sidney, a gentleman of good family, and distinguished in Ireland as the best viceroy of his times. Sir Henry had married the Earl of Leicester's sister, and David- son, sometime Secretary of State, and the instrument of Mary Stuart's execution, was connected with the two families by marriage to a cousin of Lord Leicester. As Philip Sidney himself—an alliance first
• et Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney. By H. R. Fox Bourne. Chapman and Hall. projected with Penelope Devereux, sister of Lord Essex, having been broken off—was married in 1583 to the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, he was started in life with excellent family connexions, and belonged naturally to the strong Protestant party which his uncle and father-in-law headed. Sidney was well prepared to use his advantages of birth. From Shrewsbury and Oxford he had gone forth on " the grand tour ;" had made the acquaintance of the Huguenot leaders in Paris, where he witnessed their ruin on SL Bartholomew's Day : had afterwards studied and learned to dislike Italian refine- ment in Venice, and had then visited Germany, and perhaps Poland. He came back to England an accomplished gentleman, and having the fortune to be the friend of Lord Essex as well as Leicester's kins- man, began life as a courtier under the happiest auspices. Accordingly, in 1577, being then only twenty-two years old, he was sent as special envoy to condole with the Emperor Red.olph on his father's death. Mr. .Bourne believes that "the haughty Emperor and his frigid courtiers, trained in all the hard coldness of Spanish formalities, were startled into unwonted show of interest at" Sidney's "bold words" denouncing Rome. What is more certain is, that the young envoy, having, in fact, no results to achieve, achieved none, except making the friendship of William the Silent, whom he visited in Flanders as he returned. During the next six years of his life his fortunes in England suffered a partial eclipse. The new alliance of his house with Lord Pembroke, who married his sister, was more than counter- balanced by the Queen's displeasure with his father, and, when that was removed, by his own quarrel with the worthless Earl of Oxford. Elizabeth was at that time meditating marriage with the Duke of Aleneon. Leicester and all his following of course opposed it; the wiser statesmen of the council disapproved, it, and only mere cour- tiers like Oxford, who hoped for increase of favour and were reckless of results, could be found to advocate it. Naturally, the leaders of the two parties bit their gloves at one another. Oxford tried to put a gross insult on Sidney, by ordering him to give up a
tennis-court, and Sidney resented it with so much spirit as to carry off the whole honour of the quarrel. When he wrote to the Queen soon afterwards, to argue with her against a French alliance, he was no doubt acting as reason and conscience dictated, but he was also playing his part as a politician and courtier, supporting his nnele, and aiming a blow at his enemy. i
The advice, however, beg unpalatable,- he fell out of favour for the time, and employed himself in literary correspondence with Spenser and Harvey, in writing English hexameters, a pastoral romance, and "a defence of poesy," and in making love to .Penelope, Lady. Rich, whom he had once hoped to marry. It was bad occupation for such a man, but the tone of Elizabeth's Court was thoroughly immoral, and great excuses may be made for a young man reduced for a time to inactivity, and a young woman sacrificed to
i
a worthless husband. After all, it s hard to say how far the whole passion was not of fancy bred, and did not of fancy die ; a lover who complains that he cannot love enough has either outlived his feelings, or never felt deeply. Nor did all this dalliance and sonneteering restrain Sidney from attempting to push his fortunes. He writes urgently to Hatton in a letter which Mr. Bourne has not noticed, praying him to get his accounts with the Queen passed, stating that he seeks only "to be delivered out of the cumber of debts ;" and offering apparently to share the results of his application with his patron. What his claims were we know not, but he may have expended money of his own in the Crown service, and he now wished to receive a rent of 100/. in impropriations. Elizabeth was not a good pay- mistress, but she seems to have hinted at giving him some share in the forfeiture of recusants. Sidney, to his high honour, held back ; "it goeth against my heart to prevent a king's mercy." Mr. Bourne inexplicably omits all mention of this generous conduct. Sidney's fortunes mended with his marriage. Sir F. Walsingham procured his appointment as joint Master of the Ordnance with his uncle, Lord 'Warwick, and letters patent to found a colony in America, and a small pension of 120/., are other facts of this time which indicate that Sidney's favour was growing. The Queen, however, was very prone to distrust him, and could scarcely be brought to allow that he should marry into Walsingham's family. Probably Sidney's ambi- tion was as well known to her as his ability. Bat the times required able men, for open war with Spain was becoming a certainty, and Sidney seems to have done good service by calling attention to the inefficient state of the Ordnance stores. As a private adventurer he contributed to fit out a privateering fleet against the rich Spanish colonies. At last, when the able, but unscrupulous, Earl of Leicester was sent to command the English army in the Netherlands (1585), Sidney obtained a commission under him as Governor of Flushing. His short year of soldier's work was an eventful one. He is said, on good authority, Mr. Bourne's silence notwithstanding, to have advised his uncle to assume the title of Governor-General with- out the Queen's license—a step which was little short of open rebellion, and which did much to discredit the English . leadership as interested. Later, we find him promoted over the head of a native officer, Count Hohenlo, the Queen again • disliking what was done, and giving way. It is clear that Sidney did not lose sight of his personal interests. He, however, proved himself a competent soldier, organized the army well, led his soldiers to the storm of Axel, and distinguished himself at the fatal skirmish of Zutphen, where five hundred English troopers Charged double their own number under the walls of the town. But their leader received a deadly wound in the thigh. He lingered a few days, anxious if it might be to live, but meeting death bravely, and like a Christian. The whole nation mourned for him, when he was carried to the grave. "It was accounted a sin," we are told, "for any gentleman of quality,
for many months after, to appear at Court or City in any light or gaudy apparel." i It s difficult at this distance of time to decide what it was that so profoundly impressed his contemporaries in Sidney's character, and made his loss come home to them as that of a dear friend. He had done nothing for England in comparison with many then living—with Drake or Frobisher; and two years brought a new race of heroes, the men of the Spanish Armada, before the public. His conduct in the last fatal battle, when he took off his armour that he might not fight at advantage, and led his men to action in a fog, seems to show that he was rather a soldier than a general. His political papers have little in them but the common-places of the time, and his un- wise contempt of the Irish, and the dangerous advice given to Lei- cester, do not argue any special statesmanlike ability. In society, he seems to have been a high-bred, reserved man, often absent, and rarely known to smile, certainly no courter of men's opinion. In literature, he is nothing more than one of "the mob of gentlemen who write with ease." Yet when these deductions are made, the outlines of a very fine character remain. In an age of ambitious treachery and self-seeking, Sidney was a staunch friend, never weary of asking for others, and never deserting those on whom fortune frowned. Spending money freely, and often embarrassed, perhaps by no fault of his own, he was honourably anxious through life to redeem his promises. The generosity that led him to refuse the tainted money from fines levied on recusants, and to give the un- tasted water in his moment of sorest need to a nameless comrade, stamped him as a knight of romance rather than an Elizabethan courtier. His culture was various, if it was not deep, and he loved learning for its own sake, as he loved enterprise and action. He was fortunate in his life and in his death. Compared with the assassin, Vere, the perjured Stapleton, and the scheming, untrustworthy Raleigh—each in his way the idol of a little clique—Sidney might well seem of superhuman stature and mould. In the beginning of a war against half Christendom, with the light of victory fresh on him, he fell by a chance wound, with his work and life incomplete. His country knew that it had wiser and abler men, but none who would venture more than Sidney, or bear his honours more purely, or defeat, if it came, more nobly.
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