western country, and Sidney familiarised himself with them. But his literary horizon was not bounded either by the ancient literature of Greece or by the contemporary adaptations of classical literary energy. Feudalism had its literary exponents. Medieval France and Spain were rich in tales of chivalry and feudal adventure. The tedious narrative, for example, of Amadis of Gaul, which was mainly responsible for the mental perversion of Don Quixote, fired the Middle Ages with a genuine enthusiasm. That enthusiasm com municated itself to Sidney. The mingling of pastoral with chivalry and intrigue. To each of these sources- -the pastoral romances of the Renaissance of Italy and Spain, the Greek novel, and the mediæval tales of chivalry-Sidney's Arcadia is almost equally indebted. But his idiosyncrasy was not wholly submerged. Possibly Sidney originally thought to depict with philosophic calm in his retirement from the Court the life of shepherds and shepherdesses, and thereby illustrate the contrast between the simplicity of nature and the complex ambitions of princes and princesses. But the theme rang hollow to one who had studied closely life and literature, who sought above all things to be sincere. To credit rusticity which he knew to be coarse, ignorant, and sensual, with unalloyed innocence was little short of fraud. To confine himself solely to pastoral incident, however realistically treated, was to court tameness. On his pastoral ground-plan, therefore, he grafted chivalric warfare of a mediæval pattern, and intrigue in the late Greek spirit. Chivalric adventure is treated by Sidney for the most part with directness and intelligibility. At the outset of his Arcadia, two princely friends, Musidorus of Macedon and Pyrocles of Thessaly, who enjoy equal renown for military prowess, are separated in a shipwreck, and find asylum in different lands. Each is entertained by the king of the country which harbours him, and is set at the head of an army. The two forces meet in battle. Neither commander recognises in the other his old friend, until they meet to decide the final issues of the strife in a hand-to-hand combat. Peace follows the generals' recognition of one another. The two friends are free to embark together on a fantastic quest of love in Arcadia. Each seeks the hand of an Arcadian princess, and they willingly involve themselves in the domestic and dynastic struggles which distract the Arcadian court and country. The Sidney developed the design with bold incoherence. exigences of love compel his heroes to disguise themselves. Musidorus, the lover of the Arcadian Princess The complex Pamela, assumes the part of a shepherd, calling intrigue. himself Dorus; while Pyrocles, the lover of the Arcadian Princess Philoclea, in defiance of convention, metamorphoses himself into a woman; he arrays himself as an Amazon, and takes the feminine name of Zelmane. Out of this strange disguise is evolved a thread of story which winds itself intricately through nearly the whole of the romance. The Amazonian hero spreads unexpected havoc in the Arcadian court by attracting the affections of both the Princess's parents-of Basilius, the old king of Arcady, who believes him to be a woman; and of Synesia, the lascivious old queen, who perceives his true sex. The involutions and digressions of the plot are too numerous to permit full description. The extravagances grow more perplexing as the story develops. Arcadian realms exhibit in Sidney's pages few traditional features. The call of realism was in Sidney's ears the call of honesty, and his peasants divested themselves of ideal features for the ugly contours of fact. His shepherds and shep herdesses have long passed the age of innocent 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 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 figuratively. But one important characteristic of the Arcadia is its frequent introduction of interludes 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 subjectmatter. 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. |