been written by Leicester, as the simple and direct style of his letters shows. The style is that of Francis Bacon, figurative, overloaded with ideas and reading, and, at that early date, somewhat involved. But the letter happens also to contain a striking and characteristic metaphor, which appears also (after the habit of Bacon, who makes use again and again of certain phrases and expressions) in his Observations on a Libel, 1592-93, and in his Discourse in Praise of his Sovereign, which Spedding thinks was composed about 1592.

The Sidney Letter to the Queen:

But in so rare a government, where neighbours fyres gives us light to see our owne quietnes, where nothing wants, that trew adminestracion of justice brings forth..

Observations on a Libel:

...

considering that the fires of dissension and oppression in some parts of Christendom may serve us for lights to show us our happiness.-Spedding, Life and Letters, i. 163 (spelling modernised).

Discourse in Praise of the Queen:

and that the fyres of trobles abrode have bene ordayned to be as lights and tapers to make her vertew and magnanimitie more apparant. Spedding, Life and Letters, i. 132, and "Northumberland MS." subsequently discovered.

The "Most feared and beloved, most sweete and gratious soveraigne" of the opening address of the Sidney "Letter" is, in my opinion, the "dearest dread" of Spenser see address to the Queen at the beginning of the Faerie Queene and elsewhere in the poem.

Philip Sidney was a man who thirsted for action and suffered from depression at the lack of opportunities for men of his class at that period in England. There is no evidence in his correspondence that he had any literary ambitions or desire to use such attainments forany other purpose than the service of the State. Moreover, there is no mention in his correspondence of any of the writings attributed to him, or of his supposed friend Spenser, and

even the dedication to him by Spenser of the Shepheards Calender claims no personal knowledge. Those writings, or some of them, were in private circulation when Sidney died, but his will is silent about them. He bequeaths "all my Books" to "my dear friends Mr. Edward Dyer and Mr. Fulke Grevile," and to the Countess of Pembroke "my best Jewell beset with Diamonds." On his deathbed, however, he expressed a wish that the Arcadia should be burned, which is a very curious fact. A modern writer (Mr. Percy Addleshaw) observes that it is "hard to read, and not very pleasant coming from the hand of so pious a man. In fact some of it is muddy enough." There are grounds for this criticism, and they may account for Sidney's action. But in that case his action would have been the same whether he had written the book himself or been persuaded (as I believe he was) to lend the protection of his name to it in the cause of letters.1

That Sidney was not, either by inclination or practice, a writer seems to me evident from the style of his letters. I quote, for example, the following, being a translation from a Latin letter to Languet written in 1578:

And the use of the pen, as you may perceive, has plainly

1 The advantage in those days of a great name for a book is amusingly shown in Sir John Harington's remarks (1591) about the writer of the anonymous Arte of English Poesie, in the preface to his translation of Orlando Furioso: "nor to dispute how high and supernatural the name of a Maker [poet] is, so christned in English by that unknowne Godfather that this last yeare saue one [1589] set forth a book called the Art of English Poetrie "; and he then proceeds to speak with admiration of Sidney's Apologie, where the same views, only at less length, are expressed about the poet as a "maker " in almost the same language.

Another interesting example of this occurs in an essay of literary criticism entitled Hypercritica, published in 1618 (?), where the writer, Edmund Bolton, says that "the Tractate which goeth under the name of the Earl of Essex his Apology was thought by some to be Mr. Anthony Bacon's: but as it bears that E. name, so do I also think that it was the Earl's own, as also his Advices for Travel to Roger Earl of Rutland; then which nothing almost can be more honourably uttered, nor more to the Writer's Praise, so far as belong to a noble English Oratour."

The latter piece (at least the important Letter I.) is now generally admitted to be by Francis Bacon: see Spedding, Life, ii. 6, and p. 191 below. The same writer quotes Sir Henry Savile as saying, "our Historians being of the Dregs of the common People . . . have stained and defiled it with most fusty Foolerys."

fallen from me; and my mind itself, if it was ever active in anything, is now beginning, by reason of my indolent ease, imperceptibly to lose its strength, and to relax without any reluctance. For to what purpose should our thoughts be directed to various kinds of knowledge, unless room be afforded for putting it into practice, which in a corrupt age we cannot hope for.

The following letter to Lord Burghley is a fair example of Sidney's style, which, in his earlier days at any rate, always shows evidence of the difficulty he found in expressing himself on paper:

Right honorable, my singular good Lord-I have from my childhood been much bownd to your Lordship, which as the Meanes of my Fortune keeps me from Hability to requite, so gives it me daily Caws to make the Bond greater, by seeking and using your Favor towards me.

The Queen, at my Lord of Warwicks Request, hath bene moved to joine me in his Office of Ordinance, and, as I learne, her Majesty yeeldes gratious heering unto it. My Suit is, yowr Lordship will favour and furdre it; which I truly affirme unto your Lordship, I much more desyre, for the being busied in a Thing of some serviceable Experience, then for any other Commodity; which I think is but small that can arise of it. (27th January 1582.)

The best examples, however, are in the extracts given by Mr. Fox Bourne from Sidney's dispatches as Governor of Flushing in 1585–86, when, like his father before him, he was proving the trials, under Elizabeth's government, of having to make bricks without straw. They reveal him in his true character as a man of action, but there is no more evidence in them of a formed literary style than there is in the dispatches of Sir Henry Sidney. In character and counsel Sidney was evidently a man who created a great impression. But I maintain that, except under the impulse of action, he wrote with difficulty and disinclination, and could not have written the works which appeared in his name (some years after his death), such as the Arcadia, of which it has been said by the writer mentioned above, quite truly, that "the author's pen must have travelled with miraculous rapidity."

Sidney appears to have been a man of noble presence,

good address, and of a higher general culture than most Englishmen of his rank at that time. He was also a man of serious temperament, and regarded as a convinced and faithful champion of the reformed religion. In his position as probable heir to the powerful Earl of Leicester, and in high regard with the Queen, he was looked up to by a large portion of the nation as a coming leader, at a time when the future of England, both in Church and State, was most critical, in view of the uncertainty as to the succession. The sense of national loss at his untimely death was, in my opinion, due mainly to these considerations.1 Sidney was evidently more remarkable for good sense than for originality. His correspondence with Languet shows this. When it began he was a youth of about nineteen, and great genius (for the author of the Astrophel and Stella sonnets had no less) at that age is not disposed to sit at the feet of any one; rather is it given to self-assertion. Yet Fulke Greville refers to this episode of Sidney's life as "this harmony of a humble hearer to an excellent teacher." The principal tribute to Sidney's character as a man of letters, namely, Spenser's Astrophel, is suspect, for reasons to be explained later,2 among them being the fact that the poem is dedicated to his widow, Frances Walsingham, then the wife of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and sister-in-law, therefore, of Penelope Rich, the supposed object of Sidney's devotion.

There is one letter which, in part, presents an exception, namely, the often-quoted one to his brother, Robert Sidney, written in October 1580 from Leicester House, advising him as to his studies on the Continent, which reflects a similar train of ideas to those expressed at greater length in the Apologie for Poetrie. The passage,

however, which begins "For the method of writing

1 Cf. the following tributes to Sidney's character :

"He is so wise, virtuous and godly" (Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex).

"His heart and tongue went one way."

"Above all he made the religion he professed the firm basis of his life" (Fulke Greville).

2 See Chapter XIII.

Historie," is quite unlike the opening portion of the letter, the writer passing suddenly from small personal detail, and breaking off as abruptly towards the end of the letter into the style of the beginning: "This I write to yow in greate Hast, of Method without Method . . . my Time exceedingly short, will suffer me to write no more leisurely; Stephen can tell yow who stands with me while I am writing." Farther on there is an exhortation to practise music and horsemanship, and "have a care of your Dyet, and consequently of your Complexion with advice as to play at weapons. "Lord how I haue babled, once againe farewell deerest Brother." And among these directions he interpolates, "I would by the way your Worship would learne a better Hand, you write worse then I, and I write evell enough." This part of the letter seems to me to be the real Sidney, and I think the reflections about the "historiographer" and the "poet" have been adopted by him, without a very clear idea of the point of them, from another source. They appear again, in similar language, in Spenser's introductory letter to the Faerie Queene.

There is one more supposed letter by Sidney, which is to be found in a book published in 1633 entitled "Profitable Instructions for Travellers, by Robert Earl of Essex, Sir Philip Sidney and Secretary Davison." The letter attributed to Essex in that book is now admitted to be by Bacon, and, from the style and the train of thought, I am certain that he was also the author of the Sidney (though not of the Davison) letter. The following is an extract:

And for Italy-for the men you shall have there, although indeed some be excellently learned, yet are they all given to counterfeit learning, as a man shall learn among them more false grounds of things than in any place else that I know; for from a tapster upwards they are all discoursers. In fine, certain matters and qualities, as horsemanship, weapons, painting and such, are better there than in other countries; but for other matters, as well, if not better, you shall have them in nearer places.

But if you shall say, how shall I get excellent men to take