O yes, O yes, has any lost

A heart which many a sigh hath cost?
Is any cozened of a tear,

Which, as a pearl, Disdain does wear?
Here stands the thief; let her but come
Hither, and lay on him her doom.

Is any one undone by fire,

And turned to ashes by desire ?

Did ever any lady weep,

Being cheated of her golden sleep

Stolen by sick thoughts? The pirate's found,

And in her tears he shall be drowned.

Read his indictment, let him hear

What he's to trust to. Boy, give ear.

SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.

1554-1586.

STELLA.

THE Stella of Sydney's sonnets, was the Lady Penelope Devereux, daughter of Walter Devereux, the first Earl of Essex. They were acquainted in their childhood, and in 1575, when Sydney returned from his travels on the Continent, a match was proposed between them; but for some reason or other it was eventually broken off, and she was married to Robert, Lord Rich. Shortly afterwards Sydney married Frances, the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. Neither Stella, nor Astrophel (the name by which Sydney designated himself in his sonnets), were happy in their new relation. Lord Rich was a notorious profligate and brute, while Lady Sydney, who is said to have been very handsome, never acquired anything beyond her husband's respect. From the first the course of true love never ran smooth with Sydney; for when he was a youth at the University of Oxford, his uncle, Lord Leicester, planned an alliance between him and Anne Cecil, the daughter of Lord Burleigh; but the wily old Treasurer married her to Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, to whom we indirectly owe the " ARCADIA." The occasion was this: Sir Philip was one day at tennis, when my Lord Oxford abruptly entered the court, and ordered him to depart, calling him at the same time a puppy. Sydney, in the words of his biographer, Fulke Grevile, Lord Brooke, 'gave my lord a lie impossible (as he averred) to be retorted; in respect all the world knows puppies are gotten by dogs, and children by men." The next day he challenged his lordship. The Council heard of it, and laboured in vain to reconcile them. At last it came to the ears of the Queen, who undertook to lay before Sydney, "the difference in degree between earls and gentlemen; the respect inferiors owed to their superiors;” etc., etc. He listened to her Majesty's arguments, says Lord Brooke, “with such reverence as became him," and adroitly rebutted them one by one. The upshot of the matter was, that, rather than bate his pride, he retired to Wilton, the abode of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, where he planned and composed the "ARCADIA.” Lord Oxford, by the way, was the first to introduce embroidered gloves and perfumes into England from Italy. A ludicrous reason for his Italian journey, may be found in D'Israeli's

This led him

"CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE." But there was another reason not so creditable to him. His friend the Duke of Norfolk, being condemned on account of Mary Queen of Scots, my Lord Oxford solicited his father-in-law, Lord Burleigh, to save the Duke's life; but not succeeding, he swore to be revenged on him by ruining his daughter. He forsook her bed, and studied how he might squander his immense estate. to Italy, where he resided for seven years in more than ducal state. So much for Edward Vere, Lord Oxford, the husband of Sydney's first love, Anne Cecil. To return to his second, Stella. She was married in 1583, or thereabouts, and from that time till the death of Sydney in 1586, she was the theme of his sonnets and songs. We have every reason to think that he loved her, but no reason to think that she loved him. She was doubtless flattered by his poetical worship-as what lady would not have been? she coquetted with him, perhaps, giving him an interview now and then, a flower, or ribbon, or some such amorous trifle; but love him she did not. Her heart belonged to Charles Blount, Lord Montjoy, afterwards Duke of Devonshire, to whom she is said to have engaged herself before her unhappy marriage with Lord Rich. A guilty intercourse was kept up between them for several years, and only made public by her flying from the house of her husband to that of her lover, and carrying with her her five children, whom she declared to be the issue of the latter. She was divorced from Lord Rich in 1605, and united to the Duke of Devonshire by his chaplain, Laud, who fell under the censure of the Church for marrying them, and ever after kept a fast on the anniversary of their marriage. The moral sense of the English nation, which has always set itself against divorce of any kind, was shocked, and a great outcry was raised against them, but they were soon beyond its reach. The Duke died in a few months, some said of a burning fever and putrefaction of the lungs, others of the "grief of unsuccessful love." He left Stella fifteen hundred pounds a year, and most of his moveables, and provided for some of her children, giving a daughter six thousand pounds in money, and her eldest son, who afterwards became Lord Warwick, three or four thousand pounds a year. Stella survived him but a little while, living and dying in miserable obscurity. Sydney's widow, by the way, had previously married Stella's brother, Robert Devereux, the famous Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, with whose execution all the readers of English history are familiar.

Sydney's sonnets were first published in 1591, five years after his death. In 1593 they were annexed to the "ARCADIA," in all the subsequent editions of which they

appear.

In truth, O Love, with what a boyish kind
Thou dost proceed, in thy most serious ways,
That when the heaven to thee his best displays,

Yet of that best, thou leav'st the best behind!
For, like a child, that some fair book doth find,

With gilded leaves, or coloured vellum plays,
Or, at the most, on some fine picture stays,

But never heeds the fruit of writer's mind:

So when thou saw'st in Nature's cabinet,
Stella, thou straight looked'st babies in her eyes,
In her cheeks' pit, thou did'st thy pitfold set,
And in her breast, bo-peep, or couching, lies,

Playing, and shining in each outward part:
But, fool! seek'st not to get into her heart.

You that do search for every purling spring,
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows,
And every flower, not sweet, perhaps, which grows
Near thereabouts, into your poesy wring;
You that do dictionary's method bring

Into your rhymes, running in rattling rows;
You that poor Petrarch's long-deceased woes

With new-born sighs, and denizened wit do sing: You take wrong ways; those far-fetched helps be such, As do bewray a want of inward touch.

And sure, at length, stolen goods do come to light; But if (both for your love and skill) your name

You seek to nurse at fullest breasts of fame,

Stella behold, and then begin t' indite.

Because I oft, in dark abstracted guise,
Seem most alone in greatest company;
With dearth of words, or answers quite awry,

To them that would make speech of speech arise:
They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies,
That poison foul of bubbling pride doth lie
So in my swelling breast, that only I

Fawn on myself, and others do despise: Yet pride, I think, doth not my soul possess,

Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass: But one worse fault, ambition, I confess,

That makes me oft my best friends overpass, Unseen, unheard, while thought to highest place Bends all his power, even unto Stella's grace.

Come, Sleep, O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,

The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof, shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts, Despair at me doth throw:

O make in me those civil wars to cease;

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

Take thou of me, smooth pillows, sweetest bed:
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt, in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance, Guided so well, that I obtained the prize,

Both by the judgment of the English eyes,

And of some sent from that sweet enemy, France;
Horsemen, my skill in horsemanship advance;
Town-folks my strength; a daintier judge applies
His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance:
Others, because of both sides I do take

My blood from them who did excel in this,
Think Nature me a man of arms did make;

How far they shot awry! the true cause is,
Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race.

In martial sports I had my cunning tried, And yet to break more staves did me address, While, with the people's shouts, I must confess,

Youth, luck, and praise e'en filled my veins with pride;

When Cupid, having me, his slave, descried

In Mars' livery, prancing in the press: