should be attacked in all her citadels; the Low Countries should be over-run; raids should be made on Spanish ports; her rich trade with South America should be persistently intercepted and ultimately crushed. The atti tude of the Queen. Such a design, as soon as his mind had formulated it, absorbed all Sidney's being. But it met with faint encouragement in the quarter whence authority to carry it into execution could alone come. The Queen was averse to a direct challenge of Spain. She was not fond of spending money. She deprecated the cost of open war. But Sidney and his friends were resolute. They would not let the question sleep. The nation ranged itself on their side. At length, yielding to popular clamour, the Queen agreed, under conditions which indemnified her for loss of money, to send strictly limited help to the Protestant States of the Low Country. She would assist them in a qualified way to repel the assault of Spain. She would lend them money and would send an army, the cost of which they were to defray. With a policy so meagre in conception and so poor in spirit Sidney had small sympathy. But it was all that it was possible to hope for, and with it he had to rest content. At any rate, wherever and however the blow was to be struck against Spain, he was resolved to lend a hand. That resolve cost him his life. The command of the English force for the Low Countries was bestowed on Sidney's uncle Leicester; and the Queen reluctantly yielded to persuasion and conferred Governor on Sidney a subordinate post in the expedition. of Flushing. He was appointed Governor of Flushing, one of the cities which the Queen occupied by way of security for the expense which she was incurring. In the middle of November, 1585, Sidney left Gravesend to take up his command. It was to be his first and last experience of battle. The campaign was from the outset a doubtful success. The Queen refused to provide adequate supplies. Leicester proved an indolent commander. Harmonious coDifficulties of the operation with their Dutch allies was not easy for campaign. the English. Sidney soon perceived how desperate the situation was. He wrote hastily to his father-in-law Walsingham, who shared in a guarded way his political enthusiasm, urging him to impress the Queen with the need of a larger equipment. He had not the tact to improve the situation by any counsel or action of his own on the spot. He persuaded his uncle to make him Colonel of a native Dutch regiment of horse, an appointment which deeply offended a rival Dutch candidate. The Queen, to Sidney's chagrin, judged the rival's grievance to be just. Sidney showed infinite daring when opportunity offered, but good judgment was wanting. There was wisdom in his uncle's warning against his facing risks in active service. Direction was given him to keep to his post in Flushing. The attack At length Leicester, yielding to the entreaties of his colleagues and his nephew, decided to abandon Fabian tactics and to come to close quarters with the enemy. on Zutphen The great fortress of Zutphen, which was in Spanish hands, was to be attacked. As soon as the news reached Sidney, he joined Leicester's army of assault as a knighterrant; his own regiment was far away at Deventer. He presented himself in Leicester's camp upon his own initiative. On the 21st September, 1586, the English army learned that a troop of Spaniards, convoying provisions to Zutphen, was to reach the town at daybreak next morning. Five hundred horsemen of the English army were ordered to intercept the approaching force. Without waiting for orders, Sidney determined to join in the encounter. He left his tent very early in the morning of the 22nd, and The fatal wound. meeting a friend who had omitted to put on leg-armour, he rashly disdained the advantage of better equipment, and quixotically lightened his own protective garb. Fog hung about the country. The little English force soon found itself by mistake under the walls of the town, and threatened alike in front and at the rear. A force of three thousand Spanish horsemen almost encircled them. They were between two fires-between the Spanish army within the town and the Spanish army which was seeking to enter it. The Englishmen twice charged the reinforcements approaching Zutphen, but were forced to retreat under the town walls. At the second charge Sidney's horse was killed under him. Remounting another, he foolhardily thrust his way through the enemy's ranks. Then, perceiving his isolation, he turned back to rejoin his friends, and was struck as he retreated by a bullet on the left thigh a little above the knee. He managed to keep his saddle until he reached the camp, a mile and a half distant. What followed is one of the classical anecdotes of history, and was thus put on record by Sidney's friend Greville: Being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for drink, which was presently brought him; but as he was putting the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor soldier carried along, who had eaten his last at the same feast, ghastly casting up his eyes at the bottle, which Sir Philip perceiving, took it from his head before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man, with these words, "Thy necessity is greater than mine." And when he had pledged this poor soldier he was presently carried (by barge) to Arnheim.' Sidney's wife hurried from England to his bedside at Arnheim, and after twenty-six days' suffering he died. In his last hours he asked that the Arcadia, which Sidney's had hitherto only circulated in manuscript, might be burnt, but found in literary study and composition solace death. in his final sufferings. The States General-the Dutch Government-begged the honour of according the hero burial within their own dominions, but the request was refused, and some months later he was buried in great state in that old St. Paul's Cathedral-the church of the nation-which was burnt down in the great fire of 1666. National mourning. Rarely has a man been more sympathetically mourned. Months afterwards Londoners refused to wear gay apparel. The Queen, though she shrewdly complained that Sidney invited death by his rashness, was overwhelmed with grief. Students of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities published ample collections of elegies in honour of one who served with equal zeal Mars and Apollo. Fully two hundred poems were written in his memory at the time. Of these by far the finest is Spenser's pathetic lament 'Astrophel, a Pastoral Elegy,' where the personal fascination of his character receives especially touching recognition:'He grew up fast in goodness and in grace, And doubly fair wox both in mind and face, Found aught in him, that she could say was ill.' XII Sidney's career was, to employ his own words, 'meetly furnished of beautiful parts.' It displayed many things Sidney's tasting of a noble birth and worthy of a noble career. mind.' Yet his achievements, whether in life or literature, barely justify the passionate eulogy which they won from contemporaries. In none of his endeavours did he win a supreme triumph. His friend, Gabriel Harvey, after eulogising his ripe judgment in many callings, somewhat conventionally declared that his sovereign profession was arms.' There is small ground for the statement. Sidney's fame owes more to the fascination of his chivalric personality and quick intelligence, and to the pathos of his early death, than to his greatness in any profession, whether in war or politics or poetry. In practical life his purpose was transparently honest. He showed a boy-like impatience of the temporising habit of contemporary statesmanship, but there was a lack of balance in his constitution which gave small assurance of ability to control men or to mould the course of events. trophe at Zutphen tempts one to exclaim: ""Twas not a life, 'Twas but a piece of childhood thrown away.' The catas work. To literature he exhibited an eager and an ardent devotion. The true spirit of poetry touched his being, but he rarely abandoned himself to its finest frenzies. His It was on experiments in forms of literary art, literary which foreign masters had taught him, that he expended most of his energy. Only in detached lyrics, which may be attributed to his latest years, did he free himself from the restraints of study and authority. Only once and again as in his great dirge beginning: 'Ring out your bells! Let mourning shows be spread, For love is dead,' did he wing his flight fearlessly in the purest air of the poetic firmament. Elsewhere his learning tends to obscure his innate faculty. Despite his poetic enthusiasm and passionate idealism, there is scarcely a sonnet in the famous sequence inscribed by Astrophel to Stella which does not illustrate an 'alacrity in sinking.' H |