English of betters EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY SIDNEY J. A. SYMONDS UNIVERSITY OF ‘ILLINOIS LIBRARY Class Book 5 ^ Volume My 08-1 5M r Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. A charge is made on all overdue books. University of Illinois Library JUN 3G less SEP 0 6 199) L161 — H41 Mm of 2lrttn£ EDITED BY JOHN MOKLEY SIR PHILIP SIDNEY SIE PHILIP SIDNEY BY J. A. SYMONDS ILontion MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1906 All rights reserved ft Ss-&f< First Edition i 3 B 5 Reprinted 1889, 1902. 1906 u? rt 6 o a GO o 0— or OP PREFACE The chief documents upon which a life of Sir Philip Sidney must be grounded are, at present, his own works in prose and verse, Collins’ Sidney Papers (2 vols., 1745), Sir Henry Sidney’s Letter to Sir Francis Wal- singham ( Ulster Journal of Archaeology , Nos. 9-31), Languet’s Latin Letters (Edinburgh, 1776), . Pears’ Correspondence of Languet and Philip Sidney (London, 1845), Fulke Greville’s so-called Life of Sidney (1652), the anonymous “ Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney,” prefixed to old editions of the Arcadia , and a consider- able mass of memorial writings in prose and verse illustrative of his career. In addition to these sources, which may be called original, we possess a series of modern biographies, each of which deserves mention. These, in their chronological order, are : Dr. Zouch’s (1809), Mr. William Gray’s (1829), an anonymous Life and Times of Sir Philip Sidney (Boston, 1859), Mr. Fox Bourne’s (1862), and Mr. Julius Lloyd’s (later in 1862). With the American Life I am not acquainted ; but the two last require to be particularly noticed. Mr. Fox Bourne’s Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney combines a careful study of its main subject with an able review of the times. The author’s industrious researches in 108995 VI PREFACE State Papers and other MS. collections brought many new facts to light. This book is one upon which all later handlings of the subject will be based, and his deep indebtedness to which every subsequent biographer of Sidney must recognise. Mr. Lloyd’s Life of Sir Philip Sidney appearing in the same year as Mr. Fox Bourne’s, is slighter in substance. It has its own value as a critical and conscientious study of Sidney under several aspects ; and in one or two particulars it supple- ments or corrects the more considerable work of Mr. Bourne. For Sidney’s writings Professor Arber’s reprint of the Defence of Poesy , and Dr. Grosart’s edition of the poems in two volumes (The Fuller Worthies’ Library, 1873), will be found indispensable. In composing this sketch I have freely availed myself of all that has been published about Sidney. It has been my object to present the ascertained facts of his brief life, and my own opinions regarding his character and literary works, in as succinct a form as I found possible. Badenweiler, May 11 , 1886 . CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 page Lineage, Birth, and Boyhood 1 CHAPTER II Foreign Travel ........ 20 CHAPTER III Entrance into Court-Life and Embassy ... 34 CHAPTER IV The French Match and “The Arcadia” ... 64 y CHAPTER V Life at Court again, and Marriage .... 95 CHAPTER VI “Astrophel and Stella 115 CONTENTS CHAPTER VII “The Defence of Poesy” PAGE 155 CHAPTER VIII Last Years and Death . 171 INDEX 201 SIB PHILIP SIDNEY CHAPTER I LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD Shelley, in his memorial poem on the death of Keats, named Sir Philip Sidney among “ the inheritors of un- fulfilled renown. ” If this phrase he applicable to Chatterton and Keats, it is certainly, though in a less degree perhaps, true also of Sidney. His best friend and interpreter put on record that “ the youth, life, and fortune of this gentleman were, indeed, but sparks of extraordinary greatness in him, which, for want of clear vent, lay concealed, and, in a manner, smothered up.” The real difficulty of painting an adequate portrait of Sidney at the present time is that his renown trans- cends his actual achievement. Neither his poetry nor his prose, nor what is known about his action, quite ex- plains the singular celebrity which he enjoyed in his own life, and the fame which has attended his memory with almost undimmed lustre through three centuries. In an age remarkable for the great deeds of its heroes, no less than for the splendour of its literature, he won and retained a homage which was paid to none of his ® B 2 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. contemporaries. All classes concurred in worshipping that marvellous youth, who displayed the choicest gifts of chivalry and scholarship, of bravery and prudence, of creative and deliberative genius, in the consummate har- mony of a noble character. The English nation seemed instinctively to recognise in him the impersonation of its manifold ideals. He was beautiful, and of illustrious ancestry, — an accomplished courtier, complete in all the exercises of a cavalier. He was a student, possessed of the new learning which Italy had recently bequeathed to Europe. He was a poet and the “ warbler of poetic prose,” at a moment when the greater luminaries of the Elizabethan period had scarcely risen above the horizon. Yet his beauty did not betray him into levity or wanton- ness ; his noble blood bred in him neither pride nor presumption. Courtly habits failed to corrupt his rectitude of conduct, or to impair the candour of his utterance. The erudition of the Kenaissance left his Protestant simplicity and Christian faith untouched. Literary success made him neither jealous nor conceited ; and as the patron and friend of poets, he was even more eminent than as a writer. These varied qualities were so finely blent in his amiable nature that, when Wotton called him “ the very essence of congruity,” he hit upon the happiest phrase for describing Sidney’s charm. The man, in fact, was greater than his words and actions. His whole life was “ a true poem, a composition, and pattern of the best and honourablest things;” and the fascination which he exerted over all who came in con- tact with him — a fascination which extended to those who only knew him by report — must now, in part at least, be taken upon trust. We cannot hope to present such a LINEAGE BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 3 picture of him as shall wholly justify his fame. Person- alities so unique as Sidney’s exhale a perfume which evanesces when the lamp of life burns out. This the English nation felt when they put on public mourning for his death. They felt that they had lost in Sidney, not only one of their most hopeful gentlemen and bravest soldiers, but something rare and beautiful in human life, which could not be recaptured, — which could not even be transmitted, save by hearsay, to a future age. The living Euphues of that era (so conscious of its aspirations as yet but partially attained, so apt to idealise its darlings) had perished — just when all men’s eyes were turned with certainty of expectation on the coming splendours of his maturity. “The president of noble- ness and chivalry ” was dead. “ That most heroic spirit, the heaven’s pride, the glory of our days,” had passed away like young Marcellus. Words failed the survivors to express their sense of the world’s loss. This they could not utter, because there was something indescrib- able, incalculable, in the influence his personality had exercised. We, then, who have to deal with meagre re- cords and scanty written remains, must well weigh the sometimes almost incoherent passion which emerges in the threnodies poured out upon his grave. In the grief of Spenser and of Camden, of Fuller and of Jonson, of Constable and Nash, of the Countess of Pembroke and Fulke Greville, as in a glass darkly, we perceive what magic spell it was that drew the men of his own time to love and adore Sidney. The truth is that Sidney, as we now can know him from his deeds and words, is not an eminently engaging or profoundly interesting personage. But, in the mirror of contemporary minds, he shines 4 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. with a pure lustre, which the students of his brief biography must always feel to be surrounding him. Society, in the sixteenth century, bestowed much in- genuity upon the invention of appropriate mottoes and significant emblems. When, therefore, we read that Sir Philip Sidney inscribed his shield with these words Fix ea nostra voco (“ These things I hardly call our own ”), we may take it for a sign that he attached no undue value to noble birth ; and, indeed, he makes one of the most respectable persons in his Arcadia exclaim : “ I am no herald to enquire of men’s pedigrees ; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues.” This might justify his bio- graphers in silence regarding his ancestry, were it not that his connections, both on the father’s and the mother’s side, were all-important in determining the tenor of his life. The first Sidney of whom we hear anything came into England with Henry II., and held the office of Chamber- lain to that king. His descendant, Nicholas Sidney, married a daughter of Sir William Brandon and aunt of Charles, Duke of Suffolk. Their son, Sir William Sidney, played an important part during the reign of Henry VIII. ; he served in the French wars, and commanded the right wing of the English army at Flodden. To him was given the manor of Penshurst in Kent, which has re- mained in the possession of the Sidneys and their present representatives. On his death in 1554 he left one son and four daughters. The eldest of these daughters was ancestress of Lord Bolingbroke. From the marriage of the second to Sir James Harrington descended, by female alliances, the great house of Montagu and the families of North and Noel. Through the marriage of I LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 5 the third with Sir William Fitz- William, Lord Byron laid claim to a drop of Sidney blood. The fourth, who was the wife of Thomas Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, dying childless, founded Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge. With the only son, Sir Henry Sidney (b. 1529-89), we shall have much to do in the present biography. It is enough now to mention that Henry VIII. chose him for bedfellow and companion to his only son. “ I was, by that most famous king,” he writes, “put to his sweet son, Prince Edward, my most dear master, prince, and sovereign ; my near kinswoman being his only nurse, my father being his chamberlain, my mother his governess, my aunt in such place as among meaner personages is called a dry nurse ; for, from the time he left sucking, she continually lay in bed with him, so long as he remained in women’s government. As the prince grew in years and discretion so grew I in favour and liking of him.” A portion of Hollingshed’s Chronicle, contributed by Edward Molineux, long time Sir Henry Sidney’s secretary, confirms this statement. “This right famous, renowned, worthy, virtuous, and heroical knight, by father and mother very nobly de- scended, was from his infancy bred and brought up in the prince’s court and in nearness to his person, used familiarly even as a companion.” Nothing but Edward VI.’s untimely death prevented Sir Henry Sidney from rising to high dignity and power in the realm. It was in his arms that the king expired in 1553 at Greenwich. One year before this event Sir Henry had married the Lady Mary Dudley, daughter of Edmund, Viscount De l’lsle and Duke of Northumberland. The Dudleys were themselves of noble extraction, though one of their 6 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. ancestors had perished ignobly on the scaffold. Edmund Dudley, grandson of John Lord Dudley, K.G., joined with Sir Richard Empson in those extortions which dis- graced the last years of Henry VII. s reign, and both were executed in the second year of his successor. His son, Sir John Dudley, was afterwards relieved of the attainder, and restored to those honours which he claimed from his mother. His mother, Elizabeth Grey, was heiress of a very ancient house, whose baronies and titles had passed by an almost unexampled series of female successions. The first founder of the family of De ITsle appears in history during the reign of King John. The last baron of the male blood died in the reign of Richard II., leaving an heiress, who was married to Thomas Lord Berkeley. Their daughter and sole heiress married Richard, Earl of Warwick, and also left an only heiress, who married J ohn Talbot, the great Earl of Shrewsbury. Her eldest son, John Talbot, Baron De ITsle, created Viscount De ITsle, left an only daughter, Elizabeth, who was wedded to Sir Edward Grey, created Baron and Viscount De ITsle. It was the daughter and heiress of this marriage who gave birth to the ambitious and un- fortunate Duke of Northumberland. From these dry facts it will be seen that the descendants of Edmund Dudley were not only heirs and representatives of the ancient barony of De ITsle, but that they also inherited the blood and arms of the illustrious houses of Berkeley, Beauchamp, Talbot, and Grey. When we further remember to what an eminence the Duke of North- umberland climbed, and how his son, the Earl of Leices- ter, succeeded in restoring the shattered fortunes of the family after that great prince’s fall, we can understand I LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 7 why Sir Henry Sidney used the following language to his brother-in-law upon the occasion of Mary Sidney’s betrothal to the Earl of Pembroke : — “ I find to my exceeding great comfort the likelihood of a marriage between my Lord of Pembroke and my daughter, which great honour to me, my mean lineage and kin, I attribute to my match in your noble house.” Philip Sidney, too, when he was called to defend his uncle Leicester against certain libels, expressed his j)ride in the connection. “ I am a Dudley in blood ; that Duke’s daughter’s son ; and do acknowledge, though in all truth I may justly affirm that I am by my father’s side of ancient and always well- esteemed and well-matched gentry, — yet I do acknow- ledge, I say, that my chief est honour is to be a Dudley.” Philip was born at Penshurst on the 29th of Novem- ber 1554. At that epoch their alliance with the Dudleys seemed more likely to bring ruin on the Sidneys than new honours. It certainly made their home a house of mourning. Lady Mary Sidney had recently lost her father and her brother Guilford on the scaffold. Another of her brothers, John, Earl of Warwick, after his release from the Tower, took refuge at Penshurst, and died there about a month before his nephew’s birth. 1 Sir Henry’s loyalty and prudence at this critical time saved the fortunes of his family. He retired to his country seat, taking no part in the Duke of Northumberland’s ambitious schemes ; and though he was coldly greeted at Mary’s Court, the queen confirmed him in the tenure of his offices and honours by a deed of 8th November 1 Duke of Northumberland, d. 22d August 1553 ; Lord Guilford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey, 12th February 1554 ; John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, 21st October 1554. 8 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. 1554. She also freed his wife from participation in the attainder of her kinsfolk. Their eldest son was christ- ened Philip in compliment to Mary’s Spanish consort. It appears that Sir Henry Sidney subsequently gained his sovereign’s confidence; for in this reign he was appointed Vice-Treasurer and Controller of the royal revenues in Ireland. Of Philip’s birthplace Ben Jonson has bequeathed to us a description, animated with more of romantic enthusiasm than was common to his muse. “ Thou art not, Pensliurst, built to envious show Of touch 1 or marble, nor canst boast a row Of polished pillars or a roof of gold : Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told ; Or stair, or courts ; but stand’st an ancient pile ; And these, grudged at, are reverenced the while. Thou joy’st in better marks, of soil, of air, Of wood, of water ; therein art thou fair. Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport : Thy mount, to which thy dryads do resort, Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made, Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut shade ; That taller tree, which of a nut was set, At his great birth, where all the muses met ; There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names Of many a Sylvan taken with his dames; And there the ruddy satyrs oft provoke The lighter fauns to reach thy lady’s oak.” The tree here commemorated by Jonson as having been planted at Sir Philip Sidney’s birth, was cut down in 1768, not, however, before it had received additional 1 Touch is a superlative sort of marble, the classic basanites. The reference to a lantern in the next line but one might pass for a prophecy of Walpole’s too famous lantern at Houghton. 1 LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 9 fame from Edmund Waller. His Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea Sidney ; and the poet was paying her court at Penshurst when he wrote these lines : “ Go, boy, and carve this passion on the bark Of yonder tree, which stands the sacred mark Of noble Sidney’s birth.” Jonson expatiates long over the rural charms of Pens- hurst, which delighted him on many a summer’s holiday. He celebrates the pastures by the river, the feeding- grounds of cattle, the well-stocked game preserves, the fish-ponds, and the deer-park, which supplied that hospitable board with all good things in season. “ The painted partridge lies in every field, And for thy mess is willing to be killed ; And if the high-swol’n Medway fail thy dish Thou hast the ponds that pay thee tribute fish, Fat aged carps that run into thy net, And pikes, now w T eary their own kind to eat, As loth the second draught or cast to stay, Officiously at first themselves betray.” Next he turns to the gardens : — “ Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours ; The early cherry, with the later plum, Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come ; The blushing apricot and woolly peach, Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.” The trellised walls remind him of the ancient habita- tion, which, though homely, is venerable, rearing itself among the humbler dwellings of the peasants, with patriarchal rather than despotic dignity. 10 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. “ And though thy walls he of the country stone, They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan; There’s none that dwell about them wish them down, But all come in, the farmer and the clown, And no one empty-handed to salute Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, Some nuts, some apples ; some that think they make The better cheeses, bring them ; or else send By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear An emblem of themselves in plum or pear.” This poem, composed in the days when Philip’s brother, Sir Robert Sidney, was master of Penshurst, presents so charming a picture of the old-world home in which Philip was born, and where he passed his boy- hood, that I have been fain to linger over it. Sir Henry Sidney was sent to Ireland in 1556 as Vice-Treasurer and General Governor of the royal re- venues in that kingdom. He distinguished himself, soon after his arrival, by repelling an invasion of the Scots in Ulster, and killing James MacConnel, one of their leaders, with his own hand. Next year he was nominated Lord J ustice of Ireland ; and, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, he obtained the confirmation of his offices. In 1558 the queen nominated him Lord Presi- dent of Wales, which dignity he held during the rest of his life. It does not exactly appear when he first took the rank of Lord Deputy of Ireland, a title corresponding to that of Lord Lieutenant. But throughout the first seven years of Elizabeth’s reign he discharged functions there which were equivalent to the supreme command. In 1564 he received the honour of the Garter, being in- I LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 11 /jGY y&tt+M stalled in the same election with King Charles IX. of France. On this occasion he was styled “The thrice valiant Knight, Deputy of the Eealm of Ireland, and President of the Council of Wales.” Next year he was again despatched to Ireland with the full title and authority of Lord Deputy. The administration of Wales obliged Sir Henry Sidney to reside frequently at Ludlow Castle, and this was the reason which determined him to send Philip to school at Shrewsbury. Being the emporium of English commerce with North Wales and Ire- land, and the centre of a thriving wool-trade, Shrews- bury had then become a city of importance. The burgesses established there a public school, which flourished under the able direction of Thomas Ashton. From a passage in Ben Jonson’s prose works it is clear that the advantages of public school education were well appreciated at that time in England. Writing to a nobleman, who asked him how he might best train up his sons, he says : “I wish them sent to the best school, and a public. They are in more danger in your own family among ill servants than amongst a thousand boys, however immodest. To breed them at home is to breed them in a shade, whereas in a school they have the light and heat of the sun. They are used and accustomed to things and men. When they come forth into the commonwealth, they find nothing new or to seek. They have made their friendships and aids, some to last till their age.” One such friend, whose loving help was given to Sidney till death parted them, entered Shrews- bury school together with him on the 19th of November 1574. This was Fulke Greville, a distant relative, and />, i S ^ ^ erf j&cr*-**'*-' 12 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. a boy of exactly the same age. To the sincere attach- ment which sprang up between them, and strengthened with their growing age, we owe our most valuable inform- ation regarding Philip’s character and opinions. Fulke Greville survived his friend, became Lord Brooke, and when he died in 1628 the words “Friend to Philip Sidney ” were inscribed upon his tomb. From the short biography of his friend, prefixed to a collection of his own works, which was dedicated to Sidney’s memory, we obtain a glimpse of the boy while yet at school : — “ Of his youth I will report no other wonder blit this, that though I lived with him, and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man ; with such staid- ness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity as carried grace and reverence above greater years. His talk ever of know- ledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind. So as even his teachers found something to observe and learn above that which they had usually read or taught. Which eminence, by nature and industry, made his worthy father style Sir Philip in my hearing (though I unseen) Lumen families suce .” According to our present notions, we do not consider it altogether well if a boy between the ages of ten and fifteen wins praise for exceptional gravity. Yet Fulke Greville does not call Philip bookish ; and we have abundant evidence that, while he was early heedful of nourishing his mind, he showed no less eagerness to train his body in such exercises as might be serviceable to a gentleman, and useful to a soldier. Nevertheless, his friend’s ad- miring eulogy of the lad’s deportment indicates what, to the end, remained somewhat chilling in his nature — a certain stiffness, want of impulse — want, perhaps, of salu- I LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 13 tary humour. He could not take the world lightly — could not act, except in rare moments of anger, without reflection. Such a character is admirable ; and youths at our public schools, who remain overgrown boys in their games until they verge on twenty, might well take a leaf from Sidney’s book. But we cannot refrain from thinking that just a touch of recklessness would have made him more attractive. We must, however, remember that he was no child of the nineteenth century. He belonged to the age of Burleigh and of Bacon, and the circumstances of his birth forced on him precocity in prudence. Being the heir of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley, he could not but be early conscious of the serious difficulties which perplexed his parents. Had he not been also conscious of a calling to high things, he would have derogated from his illus- trious lineage. His gravity, then, befitted his blood and position in that still feudal epoch, his father’s eminent but insecure station, and the tragic fate of his maternal relatives. A letter written by Sir Henry Sidney to his son, while still at school in Shrewsbury, may here be cited. It helps to show why Philip, even as a boy, was earnest. Sympathetic to his parents, bearing them sin- cere love, and owing them filial obedience, he doubtless read with veneration, and observed with loyalty, the words of wisdom — wiser than those with which Polonius took farewell of Laertes — dictated for him by the up- right and valiant man whom he called father. Long as it is, I shall give it in full ; for nothing could better bring before our eyes the ideal of conduct which then ruled English gentlefolk : — 14 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. “ I have received two letters from you, one written in Latin, the other in French; which I take in good part, and wish you to exercise that practice of learning often ; for that will stand you in most stead in that profession of life that you are horn to live in. And since this is my first letter that ever I did write to you, I will not that it be all empty of some advices, which my natural care for you provoketh me to wish you to follow, as documents to you in this your tender age. Let your first action be the lifting up of your mind to Almighty God by hearty prayer; and feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer, with continual medita- tion and thinking of Him to whom you pray and of the matter for which you pray. And use this as an ordinary act, and at an ordinary hour, whereby the time itself shall put you in remembrance to do that which you are accustomed to do in that time. Apply your study to such hours as your discreet master doth assign you, earnestly ; and the time I know he will so limit as shall be both sufficient for your learning and safe for your health. And mark the sense and the matter of that you read, as well as the words. So shall you both enrich your tongue with words and your wit with matter ; and judgment will grow as years groweth in you. Be humble and obedient to your master, for unless you frame yourself to obey others, yea, and feel in yourself what obedience is, you shall never be able to teach others how to obey you. Be courteous of gesture and affable to all men, with diversity of reverence according to the dignity of the person: there is nothing that winneth so much with so little cost. Use moderate diet, so as after your meal you may find your wit fresher and not duller, and your body more lively and not more heavy. Seldom drink wine, and yet sometimes do, lest being enforced to drink upon the sudden you should find yourself inflamed. Use exercise of body, yet such as is without peril of your joints or bones; it will increase your force and enlarge your breath. Delight to be cleanly, as well in all parts of your body as in your garments : it shall make you grateful in each company, and otherwise loathsome. Give yourself to be merry, for you degenerate from your father if you find not yourself most able in wit and body and to do anything when you be most merry ; but let your I LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 15 mirth be ever void of all scurrility and biting words to any man, for a wound given by a word is oftentimes harder to be cured than that which is given with the sword. Be you rather a hearer and bearer away of other men’s talk than a beginner and procurer of speech ; otherwise you shall be counted to delight to hear yourself speak. If you hear a wise sentence or an apt phrase commit it to your memory with respect of the circumstance when you shall speak it. Let never oath be heard to come out of your mouth nor word of ribaldry ; detest it in others ; so shall custom make to yourself a law against it in yourself. Be modest in each assembly ; and rather be rebuked of light fellows for maiden- like shamefastness than of your sad friends for pert boldness. Think upon every word that you will speak before you utter it, and remember how nature hath ramparted up, as it were, the tongue with teeth, lips, yea, and hair without the lips, and all betokening reins or bridles for the loose use of that member. Above all things, tell no untruth; no, not in trifles : the custom of it is naughty. And let it not satisfy you that, for a time, the hearers take it for truth ; for after it will be known as it is, to your shame ; for there cannot be a greater reproach to a gentleman than to be accounted a liar. Study and endeavour yourself to be virtuously occupied, so shall you make such a habit of well-doing in you that you shall not know how to do evil, though you would. Remem- ber, my son, the noble blood you are descended of, by your mother’s side ; and think that only by virtuous life and good action you may be an ornament to that illustrious family, and otherwise, through vice and sloth you shall be counted lakes generis , one of the greatest curses that can happen to man. Well, my little Philip, this is enough for me, and too much, I fear, for you. But if I shall find that this light meal of digestion nourisheth anything in the weak stomach of your capacity, I will, as I find the same grow stronger, feed it with tougher food. — Your loving father, so long as you live in the fear of God, H. Sidney.” To this epistle Lady Mary Sidney added a postscript, which, if it is less correct in style and weighty with 1G SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. wise counsel, interests us by its warm and motherly affection. “ Your noble and careful father hath taken pains (with his own hand) to give you in this his letter so wise, so learned, and most requisite precepts for you to follow with a diligent and humble thankful mind, as I will not withdraw your eyes from beholding and reverent honouring the same, — no, not so long time as to read any letter from me ; and therefore at this time I will write no other letter than this: and hereby I first bless you with my desire to God to plant in you His grace, and secondarily warn you to have always before the eyes of your mind those excellent counsels of my lord, your dear father, and that you fail not continually once in four or five days to read them over. And for a final leave-taking for this time, see that you show yourself a loving obedient scholar to your good master, and that my lord and I may hear that you profit so in your learning as thereby you may increase our loving care of you, and deserve at his hands the continuance of his great joys, to have him often witness with his own hand the hope he hath in your well-doing. “ Farewell, my little Philip, and once again the Lord bless you. — Your loving mother, Mary Sidney.” In those days boys did not wait till they were grown men before they went to college. Sidney left Shrews- bury in 1568, and began residence at Christ Church. He was still in his fourteenth year. There he stayed until some time in 1571, when he quitted Oxford without having taken a degree. In this omission there was nothing singular. His quality rendered bachelorship or mastership of arts indifferent to him; and academical habits were then far freer than in our times. That he studied diligently is, however, certain. The unknown writer named Philophilippus, who prefixed a short essay on “The Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney” to the Arcadia , speaks thus in his quaint language of the years r LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 17 spent at Oxford : “ Here an excellent stock met with the choicest grafts ; nor could his tutors pour in so fast as he was ready to receive / 5 The Dean of Christ Church, Dr. Thomas Thornton, had it afterwards engraved upon his own tomb at Ledbury that he had been the preceptor of “ Philip Sidney, that most noble Knight . 55 We possess few particulars which throw any light upon Sidney’s academical career. There is some reason, however, to believe that liberal learning at this period flourished less upon the banks of the Isis than at Cambridge and in our public schools. Bruno, in his account of a visit to Oxford ten years later, introduces us to a set of pompous pedants, steeped in mediaeval scholasticism and heavy with the indolence of fat fellowships. Here, however, Sidney made the second great friendship of his youth. It was with Edward Dyer, a man of quality and parts, who claims distinction as an English poet principally by one faultless line : “ My mind to me a kingdom is . 55 Sir Edward Dyer and Sir Fulke Greville lived in bonds of closest affection with Sir Philip Sidney through his life, and walked together as pall-bearers at his funeral. That was an age in which friendship easily assumed the accents of passionate love. I may use this occasion to quote verses which Sidney wrote at a later period regarding his two comrades. He had recently returned from Wilton to the Court, and found there both Greville and Dyer. “ My two and I be met, A blessed happy trinity, As three most jointly set In firmest bond of unity. Join hearts and hands, so let it be ; Make but one mind in bodies three. C 18 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. “ Welcome my two to me, The number best beloved ; Within the heart you be In friendship unremoved. Join hearts and hands, so let it be ; Make but one mind in bodies three.” And again, when tired of the Court, and sighing for the country, he offers up a prayer to Pan, according to the pastoral fashion of the age, in which his two heart’s brothers are remembered : — “ Only for my two loves 5 sake, In whose love I pleasure take ; Only two do me delight With their ever-pleasing sight; Of all men to thee retaining Grant me with those two remaining.” As poetry these pieces are scarcely worth citation. But they agreeably illustrate their author’s capacity for friendship. It was also from Oxford that Sidney sent the first letter still extant in his writing. This is a somewhat laboured Latin epistle to his uncle Leicester. Elizabeth’s favourite had taken his nephew under special protection. It was indeed commonly accepted for certain that, failing legitimate issue, the Earl intended to make Philip his heir. This expectation helps us to understand the singular respect paid him through these years of early manhood. Sir Henry Sidney was far from being a rich man. His duties in Ireland and Wales removed him from the circle of the Court, and his bluntness of speech made him unacceptable to the queen. Philip therefore owed more of his prestige to his uncle than to his father. I LINEAGE, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD 19 At this time Leicester appears to have been negotiating a marriage contract between the lad at Christ Church and Anne Cecil, daughter of Lord Burleigh. Articles had been drawn up. But the matter fell through ; the powerful Secretary of State judging that he could make a better match for his girl than with the son of a needy knight, whose expectations of succeeding to Leicester’s estate were problematical. Politely but plainly he ex- tricated himself from the engagement, and bestowed Anne upon Edward de Yere, the dissolute and brutal Earl of Oxford. This passage in the life of Sidney is insignificant. That the boy of sixteen could have entertained any strong feeling for his projected bride will hardly admit of belief. One of his biographers, however, notices that about the time when the matter terminated in Anne’s betrothal to the Earl of Oxford, Philip fell into bad health. Leicester had to obtain permisson for him to eat flesh in Lent from no less a personage than Doctor Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury. CHAPTEE II FOREIGN TRAVEL It is not the business of Sir Philip Sidney’s biographer to discuss Elizabeth’s Irish policy at length. Yet his father’s position as governor of the island renders some allusion to those affairs indispensable. Sir Henry Sidney was a brave and eminently honest man, the sturdy servant of his sovereign, active in the discharge of his duties, and untainted by corrupt practice. But he cannot be said to have displayed the sagacity of genius in his dealings with the Irish. He carried out instructions like a blunt proconsul — extirpating O’Neil’s rebellion, suppressing the Butlers’ war, maintaining English interests, and exercising impartial justice. The purity of his administration is beyond all doubt. In- stead of enriching himself by arts familiar to viceroys, he spent in each year of his office more than its emolu- ments were worth, and seriously compromised his private fortune. Instead of making friends at Court he contrived, by his straightforward dealing, to offend the brilliant and subtle Earl of Ormond. While Sir Henry was losing health, money, and the delights of life among the bogs and wastes of Ulster, Ormond remained attached to the queen’s person. His beauty and adroit flattery CHAP. II FOREIGN TRAVEL 21 enabled him to prejudice Elizabeth against her faithful henchman. Broken in health by a painful disease con- tracted in the hardship of successive campaigns, mad- dened by his sovereign’s recriminations, and disgusted by her parsimony, Sir Henry Sidney returned in 1571 to England. He was now a man of forty-three, with an impaired constitution and a diminished estate. His wife had lost her good looks in the small-pox, which she caught while nursing the queen through an attack of that malady. Of this noble lady, so patient in the many disasters of her troubled life, Fulke Greville writes : “She chose rather to hide herself from the curious eyes of a delicate time than come upon the stage of the world with any manner of disparagement ; this mischance of sickness having cast such a veil over her excellent beauty as the modesty of that sex doth many times upon their native and heroical spirits.” Neither Sir Henry Sidney nor Lady Mary uttered a word of reproach against their royal mistress. It was Elizabeth’s good fortune to be devotedly served by men and women whom she rewarded with ingratitude or niggardly recognition. And on this occasion she removed Sir Henry from his dignity of Lord Deputy, which she transferred to his brother-in-law, Sir William Fitz- William. As a kind of recompense she made him the barren offer of a peerage. The distinction was great, but the Sidneys were not in a position to accept it. A letter, addressed to Lady Mary by Lord Burleigh, explains the difficulty in which they stood. Her husband, she says, is “greatly dis- mayed with his hard choice, which is presently offered him ; as, either to be a baron, now called in the number of many far more able than himself to maintain it 22 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CHAP. withal, or else, in refusing it, to incur her Highness’s displeasure.” She points out that the title, without an accompanying grant of land, would be an intolerable burden. Elizabeth had clearly no intention of bestowing estates on the Sidney family ; and Lady Mary was forced to beg the secretary’s good offices for mitigating the royal anger in the event of Sir Henry’s refusal. Of the peerage we hear no more ; and it is probable that Elizabeth took the refusal kindly. She had paid the late Deputy for his long service and heavy losses by a com- pliment, his non-acceptation of which left her with a seat in the House of Lords at her disposal. After leaving Oxford, Philip passed some months at Ludlow with his father, who continued to be President of Wales. In the spring of 1572 the project of a French match was taken up at Court. Mr. Francis Walsingham, the resident ambassador at Paris, had already opened negotiations on the subject in the pre- vious autumn ; and the execution of the Duke of Norfolk for treasonable practice with Mary, Queen of Scots, now rendered Elizabeth’s marriage more than ever politically advisable. It was to be regretted that the queen should meditate union with the Duke of Alengon. He was the youngest member of the worthless family of Valois, a Papist, and a man green in years enough to be her son. Yet at this epoch it seemed not wholly im- possible that France might still side with the Protestant Powers. Catherine de’ Medici, the queen mother, had favoured the Huguenot party for some years ; and Charles IX. was scheming the marriage of his sister Margaret with Henry of Navarre. The interests, more- over, of the French Crown were decidedly opposed to II FOREIGN TRAVEL 23 those of Spain. The Earl of Lincoln was, therefore, nominated Ambassador Extraordinary to sound the matter of his queen’s contract with a prince of the French blood-royal. Sir Henry Sidney seized this oppor- tunity for sending Philip on the grand tour ; and Elizabeth granted licence to “ her trusty and well- beloved Philip Sidney, Esq., to go out of England into parts beyond the sea, with three servants and four horses, etc., to remain the space of two years imme- diately following his departure out of the realm, for the attaining the knowledge of foreign languages.” On the 26th of May the expedition left London, Philip carrying a letter from his uncle Leicester to Francis Walsingham. This excellent man, who was destined after some years to become his father-in-law, counted among the best and wisest of English statesmen. He was a man of Sir Henry Sidney’s, rather than of Leicester’s, stamp ; and it is recorded of him, to his honour, that, after a life spent in public service, he died so poor that his funeral had to be conducted at night. When Lincoln returned to England with advice in favour of Alen