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THE

Retrospective Review.

VOL. II. PART I.

ART. I. The Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia. A pastorale Romance. By Sir Philip Sidney. The eighth edition. London, 1633; folio; pp. 482.

THE name of Sir Philip Sidney is associated with many pleasing and delightful recollections. We remember him as one of the greatest ornaments of the most glorious reign in our annals-as one of the chief favourites of that great queen whom we are taught from childhood to regard with respect and admiration. We remember him as the darling son of chivalry-as the inheritor of the noble and knightly qualities of Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristrem, of their courage without their ferocity, of their generosity without its concomitant rudeness-as the chain or connecting link which was interposed between the chivalric pageantry which had gone before, and the scarcely settled refinement which succeeded-as the compound of all that was high-spirited and romantic, of all that was gallant and brave. We remember him as one who communicated to the court of Elizabeth that tincture of romance, which gives it to our view, when seen through the dusky distances of antiquity, a mellow and chastened richness, not unlike the variegated and brilliant colouring with which the rays of the departing sun are embued by the painted windows through which they penetrate, as they

"Illume with mellow light the brown-brow'd aisle."

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