SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.*
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY was but thirty-two when he died. His death did not take place in the moment of a great victory or in the leading of a forlorn-hope. He was wounded by a stray shot at a skirmish. Again, he had, to all appearance, achieved little in either politics, letters, or war. He was, it is true, a brilliant member of a brilliant Court, and took a more or less 'leading part in urging the Queen to take under her protec- tion the Protestants of the Continent ; but his influence in this respect cannot be called commanding. In letters, though he was known as an accomplished scholar and poet, 'his achievement had been little. The Arcadia, the work on which his subsequent fame in letters mainly rests, was not yet -given to the world; and his sonnets were hardly known beyond the circle of his private friends. In war he had even less to boast of, for the vixenish coquette of Whitehall had refused, till within six months of his death, to allow a courtier in whose good looks and fine nature she delighted, and whose chivalry and goodness of heart she could not but admire, to risk his life in active service. But if this was so, how was it that when Sidney died all England put on, not the mourning of -ceremony, but of real grief, and every class in the Kingdom lamented the death of a great Englishman ? When Sidney died, for the first time in our history was seen a spectacle which ever since has been characteristic of this country, —the nation mourning, not a King or a great noble, but one who, though not specially exalted in birth or station, was felt by all to be an English hero. What, then, made men look upon Sidney, in spite of the smallness of his actual achievement, as a national hero ? We believe it was the sense that in him were embodied, typified, and made visible the beat and the strongest aspirations of the age. If we anatomise the spirit of the Elizabethan times, we find that the things which most occupied men's minds were four. Foremost came the love of religious freedom, and the hatred of the spiritual and civil tyranny which then characterised the Catholic Powers of the Continent. Aggressive Protestantism was a part of the atmosphere which our Elizabethan fore- fathers breathed. Neat must be reckoned an intense and burning love of and longing for what, for want of a less objectionable word, we are compelled to call culture, and a love of adventure and of chivalrous exploits. So deep had sunk the love of letters, that at the end of Eliza- beth's reign, though London was but the size of a modern watering-place, three theatres daily enacting, not panto- mime, but dramas which are now pronounced beyond the comprehension of all but a highly cultivated minority, could not satisfy the popular demand. The love of chivalry and adventure, again, sent forth from the ports of Devon swarm after swarm of the new knights-errant of the foam. Lastly, the Elizabethan epoch was marked by an ardent and impassioned patriotism. But when Protestant feeling, poetry, chivalry, and patriotism were in the air, what wonder that Sir Philip Sidney became a popular hero ? Sidney, as a lad, was in Paris during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and had seen with his "natural eyes " the horrors of the Catholic re- action. Again, he was the friend of many of the leading Protestants on the Continent, and thus at the very outset of his career stood forth to the world as a champion of the Reformed religion. Sidney, too, as the leader of the Areopagus—the first literary club ever founded in England —and as the author of the Defence of Poesy, stood before his countrymen as an exponent of poetry and culture. Lastly, the part he took in encouraging the expeditions of Frobisher- and Drake, and the colonisation of America, • (L) Sir Philip Sidney: Type of English Chivalry in the Elizabethan A. By II. R. Fox Bourne. "Heroes of the Nations Series." London and New York : G. P. Putuanez Sons. 1891.—(5.) The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Written by Sir Philip Sidney, Knight. The Original Quarto Edition, 1590, in Photographic Fee-shale, with a Bibliographical Introduction. Edited by H. 08kami r Sommer, Ph.D. Loudon: Began. Paul, Trenoh, Tr5buer, and 00.. Lited.
and in preventing the marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of Anjou, made men regard him as a knight-errant and a patriot.
If we add to this that Sydney was handsome in person, skilled in horsemanship and all manly arts, and was known not only to be without a touch of personal baseness, but to be leading a pure and virtuous life, it becomes easy to under- stand his popularity. The quick instinct of the nation recog- nised him as the type of what they believed an Englishman ought to be, and honoured him accordingly. With so great and sure a promise, they did not want the proof of fruit.
Sidney was his countrymen's hero. They regarded him as possessing and being-
" The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's eye, tongue, sword, The expectancy and rose of the fair State, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observed of all observers ; " and when he died, they felt their ideal of what was noble in man had vanished from the earth.
Mr. Fox Bourne's memoir is in most respects an excellent one. It is careful and complete, and contains what is essential to any biography that is worthy of the name,—copious quota- tions from contemporary documents. In our opinion, he shows clearly that the one possible spot on Sidney's fair fame is no spot at all. Sidney's sonnets in the " Astrophel and Stella" series are unquestionably addressed to a married woman, Lady Rich ; and if they are to be interpreted literally, they certainly seem to show Sidney's guilt. But are they to be taken literally? We believe not, for this very sufficient reason.
Lord Rich hated his wife, ill-treated her, and was most anxious to get a divorce from her. Ultimately he did obtain a divorce, owing to his wife's infidelity with the Earl of Devonshire. But, given these facts, would he not have taken advantage of a guilty commerce between Lady Rich and Sidney to obtain what he wanted P He could not have been unaware of Sidney's connection with Lady Rich, for Sidney made no secret of his sonnets or his passion. We have no desire to whitewash Sidney in spite of the facts, but it seems to us more than probable that the sonnets were mere literary " inventions," and that Sidney took for his subject a lady for whom he had no doubt a liking, and who had won his sympathy by reason of the cruelties she suffered from her husband. Sidney, in his capacity of Knight, felt bound to succour a a lady in distress. But bound by the laws of civilisation, he was unable to slay the wicked giant. He could only bring her the aid of his poetic homage. A fantastic explanation, perhaps, but not one too extravagant for the age in which Sidney lived.
Before leaving Sidney's Life, we must quote a portion of the letter which he addressed to the Queen, and in which he urged her not to marry the Duke of Anjou :—
" In this letter he freely stated the objections he had all along felt to the proposed union with the Duke of Anjou. It was really a treatise, skilfully worded, and dealing in a masterly way with some of the chief aspects of the political situation then troubling all English Protestants. It was the Protestants, Sidney urged, who were the stoutest, if not the only, supporters of the Queen's Government. How their hearts will be galled, if not aliened, when they shall see you take for a husband a Frenchman and a Papist, in whom (howsoever fine wits may find farther dealings or painted excuses) the very common people well know this, that he is the son of a Jezebel of our age—that his brother made oblation of his sister's marriage, the easier to make massacres of our brethren in belief—that he himself, contrary to his promise and to all gratefulness, having his liberty and principal estate by the Huguenots' means, did sack La Charit6, and utterly spoil them with fire and sword ! ' The utter worthlessness and viciousness of the Duke of Anjou, Sidney plainly warned the Queen, 'give occasion to all true religious to abhor such a master and conse- quently to diminish much of the hopeful love they have long held to you.' On the other hand, the Catholics, being always and perforce disaffected, having already and repeatedly plotted re- bellions and devised treacheries, at this present want nothing so much as a head, who in effect needs not to receive their instruc- tions, since they may do mischief only with his countenance.' Often have l heard you,' Sidney wrote in another and especially interesting paragraph, with protestation, say no private pleasure nor self-affection could lead you to it'—that is, to a married life. If it be both unprofitable to your kingdom and unpleasant to you, it were a dear purchase of repentance. Nothing can it add unto you but the bliss of children, which I confess were a most unspeakable comfort, but yet no more appertaining to him than to any other to whom the height of all good haps were allotted, to be your husband. And therefore I may assuredly affirm that what good so ever can follow marriage is no more his than any- body's ; but the evils and dangers are peculiarly annexed to his person and condition.' " It is evident from this that Sidney at least was no "servile jure-divino Royalist." • Mr. Oskar Sonamer's reprint of that " vainand.asnatorions poem,"s.s „Milton called the. Arcadia, will.be welcome to_ all -scholars. It is hardly necessary to say of the editor of the splendid edition of the .liforte Daraur reviewed in these columnaa short time ago, that the work he has here asaigned himself is . done with , admirable tare and patience. What- ever subject Dr. Sommer touches, he • exhausts ; and his treatment of the bibliography of the Arcadia is no exception.
• As a whole, the Arcadia is dull reading for modern men, yet scattered here and there are really beautiful pieces of descrip- tion. When a stretch of the Wiltshire Downs or the pleasance' of -some old manor-house is relied on for his picture, Sir' Philip. Sidney's prose is specially happy. Again, every now and then the.page glistens with some-verbal jewel, such as we have italicised in the following quotation; The-passage is from the account of the journey made by-Musidorus in company with Str-ephoxt and Claius -- " the time that themorning slid strow roses and-violets in the heavenly, floor against the coming of the sun, the nightingales, striving one.with the other which could in most dainty variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow, made them put off their sleep, and rising from under a ,tree,-whieh that night had been their pavilieu,-they .went on their journey ; 'which by and bymelconied lllusidorua's eyes, wearied with the masted soil of Laconia, -with delightful prospects. "There were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees ; humble valleys whose base estate seemed comforted with the - refreshing of - silver -rivers ; meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers ; 'thickets which, being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to by the cheerful disposition of many mell-tuned birds ; each pasture stored 'with sheep feeding with sober -security, while the pretty lambs -with bleating oratory eraved the -dams' -comfort; here a . shepherd's boy piping es though. he should never be old ; there a ,young shepherdess knitting, and withal- singing, and 'it seemed that her(voice comforted her hands to -work, and -her hands kept time to her voice's music. As • for -the houses of the country; for many houses came under their -eye, they were all scattered, no two being one by the other, and yet not -so far off, as that it barred mutual succour ; a show, as it-were, of an aocompaniable solitariness and of a civil-wildness."
Such passages, as this still lift the. Arcadia "above oblivion's waters."
Previous page
