herdesses have long passed the age of nnocent tranquillity. Their land is a prey to dragons and wild beasts, and their hearts are gnawed by human passions. Sidney had, too, a sense of the need of variety in fiction. New characters are constantly entering to distort and postpone the natural dénouement of events. The work is merged in a succession of detached episodes and ceases to be an organic tale. Parts are much more valuable than the whole. Arguments of coarseness and refinement enjoy a bewildering contiguity. At one moment Platonic idealism sways the scene, and the spiritual significance of love and beauty overshadows their physical and material aspects. At the next moment we plunge into a turbid flood of abnormal passion. The exalted thought and aspiration of the Renaissance season Sidney's pages, but they do not exclude the grosser features of the movement. There are chapters which almost justify Milton's sour censure of the whole book as 'a vain and amatorious poem.' 1

1

1 The text of the Arcadia suffers from the author's casual methods of composition. Much of it survives in an unrevised shape. He seems to have himself prepared for press the first two books, and the opening section of the third-about a half of the whole. This portion of the romance was printed in 1590, and ended abruptly in the middle of a sentence. Subsequently there was discovered a very rough draft of portions of a long continuation, forming the conclusion of the third book, with the succeeding fourth and fifth books. This supplement survived in 'several loose sheets (being never after reviewed or so much as seen altogether by himself) without any certain disposition or perfect order.' With a second edition of the authentic text these unrevised sheets were printed in 1593. Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, supplied the recovered books with 'the best coherences that could be gathered out of those scattered papers,' but no attempt was made to fill an obvious hiatus in the middle of the third book at the point where the original edition ended and the rough draft opened. Nor did the editor or publisher venture to bring the unfinished romance to any conclusion. What close was designed for the story by the author was 'only known to his own spirit.' The editors of later editions, bolder than their predecessors, sought to remedy such defects. The gap in the third book was in 1621 filled by a 'little essay' from the pen of a well-known Scottish poet, Sir William

The verse.

The Arcadia is a prose tale and Milton only applied to it the title of poem fguratively. But one important characteristic of the Arcadia is its frequent introduction of inter.udes of verse which, although they appeal more directly to the historian of literature than to its æsthetic critic, must be closely examined by students of Sidney's work. Shepherds come upon the stage and sing songs for the delectation of the Arcadian King, and actors in the story at times express their emotions lyrically. Occasionally Sidney's verse in the Arcadia seeks to adapt to the English language classical metres, after the rules that the club of 'Areopagus' sought to impose on his pen. The sapphics and hexameters of the Arcadia are no less strained and grotesque than are earlier efforts in the like direction. They afford convincing proof of the hopeless pedantry of the literary principles to which Sidney for a time did homage, but which he afterwards recanted. Sidney's metrical dexterity is seen to advantage, however, in his endeavours to acclimatise contemporary forms of foreign verse. In his imitation of the sestina and terza rima of contemporary Italy he shows felicity and freedom of expression. He escapes from that servile adherence to rules of prosody which is ruinous to poetic invention. Sidney's affinity with the spirit of Italian poetry is seen to be greater than his affinity with the spirit of classical poetry.

No quite unqualified commendation can be bestowed on the

Alexander, Earl of Stirling. Finally, in 1628 a more adventurous spirit, Richard Beling, or Bellings, a young barrister of Lincoln's Inn, endeavoured to terminate the story in a wholly original sixth book. It is with these additions that subsequent re-issues of the Arcadia were invariably embellished. Other efforts were made to supplement Sidney's unfinished romance. One by Gervase Markham, an industrious literary hack, came out as early as 1607. Another, by 'a young gentlewoman,' Mrs. A. Weames, was published in 1651. The neglect of these fragmentary contributions by publishers of the full work, calls for no regret.

prose style of his romance. It lacks the directness which distinguishes the Apologie for Poetrie. It fails to give much support to Drayton's contention that Sidney rid

The prose

the English tongue of conceits and affectations. style. Sidney rid the English tongue of conceits and affectations. His metaphors are often far-fetched, and he overloads his page with weak and conventional epithets. The vice of diffuseness infects both matter and manner. But delightful oases of perspicuous narrative and description of persons and places are to be found, although the search may involve some labour. The unchecked luxuriance of Sidney's pen, and absence of well-wrought plan did injustice to the genuine insight into life and the descriptive power which belonged Want of to him. Signs, however, are discernible amid all coherence. the tangle that, with the exercise of due restraint, he might have attained mastery of fiction alike in style and subject

matter.

X

Reconcili

the Queen.

It was difficult for Sidney, whatever the attractions that the life of contemplation and literary labour had to offer him, complacently to surrender Court favour, and with it political office, altogether. He knew the ation with meaning of money difficulties; tailors and bootmakers often pressed him for payment. They were not easy to appease. The notion of seeking a livelihood from his pen was foreign to all his conceptions of life. From the Queen and her Ministers he could alone hope for remunerative employment. He therefore deemed it prudent to seek a reconciliation. Quarrels with Queen Elizabeth were rarely incurable. A solemn undertaking to abstain from further political argument which involved the Queen, opened to Sidney an easy road to peace.

Official

His uncle Leicester interested himself anew in his fortunes, and transferred to him a small administrative office which he himself had held, that of Steward to the Bishop promotion. of Winchester. He succeeded his father, too, as Member of Parliament for Kent. In Parliament he joined with eagerness in the deliberations of a Committee which recommended strenuous measures against Catholics and slanderers of the Queen. But in the House of Commons he made little mark. The slow methods of the assembly's procedure, and its absorption in details which lacked large significance, oppressed Sidney's spirit. He was ill-adapted to an arena where success came more readily to tactful reticence and apathy than to exuberant eloquence and

enthusiasm.

In 1583 he was knighted, and assumed his world-famous designation of Sir Philip Sidney. But it is one of history's little ironies that it was Knightnot for any personal hood. merit that he received the title of honour. English people like titles, although it be the exception, and not the rule, for them to reward notable personal merit. In Sir Philip's case it happened that a friend whom he had met abroad, Prince John Casimir, brother of the Elector Palatine, had been nominated by Queen Elizabeth to the dignity of a Knight of the Garter. Unable to attend the investiture himself the prince had requested his friend Sidney to act as his proxy. Such a position could only be filled by one who was himself of the standing of a knight-bachelor, the lowest of all the orders of knighthood. Consequently in compliment to the foreign prince, the Queen conferred knighthood on the prince's representative. It was a happy accident by which Sidney was enrolled among English knights. It was not designed as a recognition of his worth; it conferred no

special honour on him; but it renewed the dignity of an ancient order of chivalry, and it lends a picturesque colour to the closing scene of his career.

For a year Sidney's course of life ran somewhat more smoothly. Once again he sought scope for political ambitions. He obtained more remunerative official em- Jointployment. He was offered a post in the military the administration of the country. He was appointed Joint-Master of the Ordnance with another uncle, the Earl

of Warwick, Leicester's elder brother.

Master of

Ordnance.

The need of a regular income was the more pressing be

cause Sidney was about to enter the married state.

His old

Marriage.

friend, the Queen's Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham who, when English ambassador, was his host at Paris in the year of the St. Bartholomew's Massacre, chose him for his son-in-law, for the husband of his daughter Frances, a girl of only fourteen. Sidney was twenty-nine years old, more than twice her age, and there seems good reason to regard the union as a marriage de convenance. The astute Secretary of State, who had always cherished an affectionate interest in Sidney, thought that the young man might yet fill with credit high political office, and his kinship with Leicester gave him hope of a rich inheritance. The arrangement was not, however, concluded without difficulty. Sidney's father declared that 'his present biting necessity' rendered monetary aid from him out of the question. Leicester was not immediately helpful, and other obstacles to the early solemnisation of the nuptial ceremony presented themselves. The Queen was never ready to assent quickly to her courtiers' marriages. For two months she withheld her assent. Then she suddenly yielded, and showed no trace of resentment. The marriage took place in the autumn of 1583. It was the