Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by

TICKNOR AND FIELDS,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY

HO HOUGHTON AND COMPANY

FROM THE AUTHOR.

HE only noted memoirs of Sir PHILIP SIDNEY

TH

are those written by Fulke Greville and by Dr. Zouch. The former, although the work of a contemporary, and a personal friend, is painfully meagre; the latter, though sufficiently voluminous, is incomplete; and both, being out of print, are be yond the reach of ordinary readers. The lives prefixed by Gray to Sidney's Sonnets, and by Pears to the Correspondence of Languet; the sketches contained in Lodge's "Portraits of Illuftrious Personages," in Lloyd's "Statesmen and Favorites," in the "British Bibliographer," "The Biographia Britannica," and several papers on the same theme in the English Reviews, are interesting and valuable, but neceffarily deficient in fulness and continuity. I have here endeavored to collect the scattered souvenirs of Sidney's life; to verify every recorded fact, and to exclude every fiction, however plaufible, which, while gilding the story with false attractions, would 'mar the higher beauty that belongs to truth.

If this little volume, which is the fruit of leisure hours, and of an earnest admiration of its subject, fhall afford information or intereft to its readers, I fhall willingly endure the criticisms to which it is liable; conscious that, while abler pens might give a greater charm to the annals of the illustrious Sidney, I have at least aimed to present them with clearness and fimplicity, and without pretence.

S. M. D.

Ост. 1858.