fatigue our younger readers, and we must, therefore, content ourselves with a few illustrative quotations : SOLITUDE. They are never alone who are accompanied with noble thoughts. VALUE OF HIGH AIMS. Who shoots at the midday sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure he is, he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush. VIRTUE AND LINEAGE. I am no herald to inquire of men's prejudices; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues. TRUE DESTINIES OF MAN. Wisdom and virtue are the only destinies appointed to man to follow. AN ARCADIAN LANDSCAPE. 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 too, by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep feeding in sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating oratory craved the dams' comfort; here a shepherd-boy, piping as 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-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 accompanionable solitariness, and of a civil wilderness. THE POET'S MISSION. Of all sciences the poet is monarch! For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes; that, full of that taste, you may long to pass further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness; but he cometh to you with words set with delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner; and pretending no more, doth intend the winning HIS ARCADIA." 35 of the mind from wickedness to virtue; even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things, by hiding them in such others as have a pleasant taste.— From the "Defence of Poesy." Sidney's next literary effort was his admirable "Defence of Poesy," which may still, by the man of taste, be read with almost unqualified delight. Its thoughts are noble and elevated, its philosophy is pure and earnest, its style polished and melodious.* In its generation it exercised an influence as considerable as it was wholesome; and from its inexhaustible treasury of fine ideas and apt images, later writers have not disdained to borrow freely. While thus dreaming in Arcady, and realizing the poetic life of the ideal minstrel—of the hero, as it were, of some tender and chivalrous romance-he executed, in conjunction with his sister, a version of the Psalms, which is not without merit on account of its rhythmical sweetness as well as its faithful rendering of the sublime original. The first forty-two Psalms were Sidney's portion, of which I subjoin a specimen :- "His prose," says * Sidney's style has been praised by most modern critics. Professor Craik, "is the most flowing and poetical that had yet been written in English; but its graces," he adds, "are rather those of artful elaboration than of a vivid natural expressiveness. The thought, in fact, is generally more poetical than the language; it is a spirit of poetry encased in a rhetorical form. Yet, notwithstanding the conceits into which it frequently runs-and which, after all, are mostly rather the frolics of a nimble wit, somewhat too solicitous of displaySidney's is a wonderful style, always flexible, harmonious, and luminous, and on fit occasions rising to great stateliness and splendour; while a breath of beauty and noble feeling lives in and exhales from the whole of his great work, like the fragrance from a garden of flowers."-G. L. Craik, "Compendious History of English Literature," i. 473, 474. "They soon shall be cut down like grass, Thou shalt have both good food and place.” Probably," says Mr. Lloyd, "the months which he spent at Wilton,* or at the Earl's neighbouring manor of Clarendon, were the happiest of Sidney's life. His love for his sister was mutual, and very deep and tender. In subsequent years he often returned to the pursuits which have here been described, and forgot in them the disappointments of which he had many in the world. Yet his nature was so evenly balanced between contemplation and action, that he could not bear to be long excluded from either. At Wilton he saw the armour of several gallant French knights, Montmorenci, Louis of Bourbon, Montpensier, and others, the spoils of the brilliant victory of St. Quentin, where the Earl's father had led the English contingent. Sidney looked with impatience on these trophies of martial valour, and longed to carry out into practice the ideal of Christian chivalry which his imagination had conceived."+ Having been returned to Parliament as knight of the shire for Kent, he tore himself away from the poetic fairyland in which his imagination so long had wandered, and returned to public life in January 1581. * The seat of the Earl of Pembroke, who had married Mary Sidney. SIDNEY IN THE NETHERLANDS. 37 CHAPTER V.-SIDNEY IN THE NETHERLANDS. stivities at Court-A Sonnet-Stella and Astrophel-Naval Enterprise of the Early Sea-kings-Departure for the Netherlands-Siege of Doesburg-Intercepting a Convoy-Sidney joins the Expedition-The fight at ZutphenSidney wounded-The dying Soldier-Death of Sir Philip Sidney—A Public Funeral. the sumptuous festivities, the tournaments and jousts, Eth which, in the summer of 1581, Elizabeth welcomed e ambassadors of her persevering suitor, the Duke of njou, you may be sure that the chivalrous Sidney- the wel of her times," as the Queen called him-shone onspicuous, "a bright, particular star." He not only gured in, but his quick and pregnant fancy invented, any of the most splendidly picturesque of the Court geants. In the most magnificent of the tourneys-a triumph" which lasted over two long summer dayse won the prize, and appropriately celebrated his sucess in one of the finest and most generally known of his >nnets: "Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance, Guided so well that I obtained the prize, Town folks my strength: a daintier judge applies Others, because of both sides I do take Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race." "Stella" was the Lady Penelope Devereux, now Lady Rich, to whose influence over Sidney we have already alluded, and whose beauty he has panegyrized in numerous sonnets, which, after his death, were collected and published under the title of "Astrophel and Stella." Eventually, he conquered his hopeless attachment, and, in 1583, wedded the fair daughter of Elizabeth's astute secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham. After Sidney's decease, this lady became the wife of the Earl of Essex; but retained so much reverence for the memory of her poet-husband as to accept from Edmund Spenser the ⚫dedication of his "Astrophel," an elegy in which the poet lovingly commemorated the graces of his patron's brief but brilliant life. Upon the unsuccessful issue of his matrimonial negotiations with Elizabeth, in February 1581, the Duke or Anjou returned to his government of the Netherlands, and Sidney formed one of the glittering cortège which escorted him to Antwerp. A pause of inaction then ensued, and our hero vainly sought to obtain employment in an official capacity. He seems, indeed, to have been appointed Captain of the Isle of Wight in 1583; but, otherwise, could procure no position suitable to his birth, services, and genius. He eagerly desired to share. in the adventurous expeditions which the Elizabethan sea-kings annually directed against the rich Spanish colonies of Mexico and Peru. His political sagacity could not fail to discern how weakening were these blows to the mother-country, which derived her strength and power from her American treasuries; while his romantic and chivalrous imagination was naturally fired by the strange stories and wild legends brought from the haunted shores of the Spanish main by English mariners. When |