"I am no herald to enquire of men's pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues." And how the author loves comeliness! When When Musidorus has recovered from his wreck "the excellency of his matured beauty was a credible ambassador." All Philip's ideal of manhood is in this portrait of a young man. Surely also this most serious of young men had not the slightest intention, in his estimate of Musidorus, of describing a prig :-"Having found in him, besides his bodily gifts beyond the degree of admiration by daily discourses, which he (Kalander) delighted to have with him, a mind of most excellent composition, a piercing wit, quite void of ostentation, high-erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy, an eloquence as sweet in the uttering as slow to come to the uttering, a behaviour so noble as gave a majesty to adversity, and all in a man whose age could not be above one and twenty years, the good old man was even enamoured with a fatherly love towards him."

Is there not a reflection of the Languet-Philip friendship in this attraction between Kalander and Musidorus ? But one is tempted to quote without ceasing from the Arcadia, as one loses himself in its mazes, which are like the web of the tresses of Penelope, Stella, and Philoclea in one :

"Her hair fine threads of finest gold,

In curled knots man's thoughts to hold."

Here will we leave Mary Pembroke and Philip, at first together, working side by side at verse, romance, and at their joint translation of the Psalms. Never was there freer expression of his talent than in the Arcadia. For Mary, a woman crowned by marriage, he could write as full-blooded a romance as he desired,

and to his sister the lightest fragments of his inventions were precious. No self-consciousness marred his work on it, no fear of a censorious public nagged him. He could here and in his Apologie do what his muse bade him do in the sonnets-"look in his heart and write."

Tenderly Mary Pembroke gathered his leaflets. together as they reached her, or were laid in her hands after a morning's delicious study at Wilton'; faithfully she marshalled and stored them, and after Zutphen, when she was weaving her own exquisite wreath of mingled cypress and laurel, The Doleful Lay of Clarinda, in her brother's dear memory, she laboriously set herself to prepare the romance for publication, comparing her labours on it to the work of one who repairs a ruinous house.

Posterity may say what it chooses of the whole as presented in the various editions, ancient and modern. It cannot deny that Sidney's thoughts, delicate and "high erected," often drench weary minds like May dew, that he had most truly a soul "transparent as a fair casement." And those who are not sure of their opinion may turn first to Fulke Greville's estimate, alike of its shortcomings and beauties, and again to that loving tribute to his friend, in which he likens him to a god who pours out life and radiance in his winged voyage through the world:

"All confess that Arcadia of his to be in form or matter as inferior to that unbounded spirit as other men's wishes are raised above the writer's capacities. But the truth is, his end was not writing, while he wrote, but both his wit and understanding leant upon his heart,

On the Wilton estate was the small house or lodge of Ivychurch, where, it is opined, she withdrew for purposes of study.

to make himself and others, not in words and opinion, but in life and action, good and great."

"He was a man fit for conquest, plantation (colonisation), reformation, or whatever action is greatest and bravest among men, and withal such a lover of mankind. whatsoever had any real parts in him found comfort, participation and protection to the uttermost of his power; like Zephyrus, he giving life wherever he blew. Soldiers honoured him, and were so honoured by him that no man thought that he marched under the true banner of Mars that had not obtained Sir Philip Sidney's approbation."

As Zephyrus, the fragrant, spice-laden wind, the lover of the Earth, he seems to pervade, to my thinking, both the world of literature, and the green pastures where he battled through his love story and found at last “a truce from cares." And under the roses, lilies, and violets with which Zephyrus enriches the earth his sister buries him in her pure, scented verse. Death!" she cries,

"What has become of him whose flower here left
Is but the shadow of his likeness gone?

Ah! me, can so divine a thing be dead?
Ah, no! it is not dead, nor can it die,
But lives for aye in blissful paradise,
Where, like a new-born babe it soft doth lie
In bed of lilies, wrapped in tender wise,
And compassed all about with roses sweet
And dainty violets from head to feet."

"Oh !

CHAPTER VII

A SHEAF OF VERSES

HERE is no record of Penelope's feelings upon

THERE

the news of Zutphen. Yet she could not but hear full details. The whole of England for twenty-five days hung upon the despatches from Arnheim. The first hope of his recovery, like all the after bulletins, "was received," says Stowe, "not as private but as public news." And when peace brought Essex and Leicester home again, both brother and uncle would tell Penelope of her lover's end. Not till four years later did she probably see her own peculiar sonnets. But she must have listened to many verses on him before Spenser penned that gracious Elegy, packed with homage to her, and including the magnificent tribute:

"To her he vow'd the service of his days;
On her he spent the riches of his wit;
For her he made hymns of immortal praise;
Of only her he sung, he thought, he writ;
Her, and but her, of love he worthy deem'd,
For all the rest but little he esteem'd."

Naturally, Sidney's famous pseudonym for his love gave all the elegiac writers endless opportunities. One grows quite weary of the countless devices connected with stars.

From Spenser's Astrophel. . . . An Elegy:

"And many a nymph both of the wood and brook,

... brought him presents,

But he for none of them did care a whit.
For One alone he cared, for One he sighed,
His life's treasure, and his dear love's delight.
Stella the fair! the fairest star in sky:
As fair as Venus, or the fairest fair,
A fairer star saw never living eye,

Hot her sharp pointed beams through purest air;
Her he did love; her, he alone did honour;

His thoughts, his rhymes, his songs were all upon her.

Ne her with idle words alone he wooed,

And verses vain-yet verses are not vain;
But with brave deeds, to her sole service vowed

And bold achievements her did entertain.

For both in deeds and words he nurtured was.
Both wise and hardy-too hardy alas!"

The rest of the poem goes off into an absurd yet tenderly fantastic pastoral picture of his death. He is presented as a huntsman chasing big and terrible game in a far-off forest, slaying mightily, till one "cruel beast of most accursed brood" turns after him, and "with fell tooth" bites him in the thigh. He is found dying by shepherds and carried to his "lovéd lass"

who at the terrible sight disfigures herself to match his sorrowful condition. And when his spirit flits her soul follows, while the pitying, romantic gods transform both into a single flower, which at first is red, then turns to blue, when a constellation appears in the centre of it: "And in the midst thereof a star appears As fairly formed as any star in skies; Resembling Stella in her freshest years, Forth darting beams of beauty from her eyes: And all the day it standeth full of dew, Which is the tears that from her eyes did flow. That herb of some 'Starlight' is called by name; Of others Penthia,' though not so well: But thou, wherever thou dost find the same, From this day forth do call it Astrophel. And whensoever thou it up dost take, Do pluck it softly, for that shepherd's sake."