Intellectual

From other springs flowed his innermost ambitions. The spirit of the Renaissance imbued his intellectual being more consistently than it imbued More's. The natural ambitions. affinities of Sidney's mind were from first to last with great literature and art, not with the turmoil of war, or politics, or creeds. The Muse of poetry who scorns the hollow pomp of rank laid chief claim to his allegiance. But he was a curious and persistent inquirer into many fashions of beauty besides the poetic. One part of his energies was devoted to a prose romance, which he designed on a great scale; another part to prose criticism of a reasoned enlightenment that was unprecedented in England. To all manifestations of the new spirit of the age he was sensitive. But there were contrary influences, bred of his inherited environment, there were feudal and mediæval traditions, which disputed the sway over him of the new forces of culture. The development of his poetic and literary endowments was checked by rival political and military preoccupations. Even if death had spared him until his faculties were fully ripened, he seemed destined to distribute his activities over too wide a field for any of them to bear the richest fruit. He ranks with the heroes who have promised more than they have performed, with the pathetic sharers of unfulfilled renown.'

The central period of

II

Nineteen years after More's tragic death, and ten years before the birth of Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney came into the world. His short life of thirty-two years covers the central period in the history of the English Renaissance, which reached its first triumph in More's Utopia and its final glory in Shakespearean drama. Sidney died while Shakespeare was yet unknown to fame,

the Renaissance.

when the dramatist's fortunes were in the balance, before his literary work was begun.

strife.

Interests with which literature had little in common distracted the mental energies of the nation between the dates of More's execution and of Sidney's birth. The National religious reformation had been carried to a conclusion by coercive enactments, which outraged the consciences of too many subjects of the King to give immediate assurance of finality. The strong-willed monarch, Henry VIII., had died, amid signs that justified doubt of the permanence of the country's new religious polity. Disease soon laid its hands on the feeble constitution of the boy, who, succeeding to Henry's throne as Edward VI., upheld there. with youthful eagerness and extravagance the cause of the Reformation. Factions of ambitious noblemen robbed the Court of respect, and jeopardised the Government's power. The air rang with confused threats of rebellion. The succession to the throne was disputed on the boy-king's premature death. It was no time for the peaceful worship of the Muses. Political and religious strife oppressed the England of Sir Philip Sidney's infancy, and the circumstances of his birth set him in the forefront of the struggle.

Sidney was a native of Kent, born at Penshurst, in an old mansion of great beauty and historic interest which, dating from the fifteenth century, still stands. His Sidney's

father, Sir Henry Sidney, was a politician who birth. who had long been busily engaged in politics, mainly in the ungrateful task of governing Ireland. His mother was a daughter of the ambitious nobleman, the Duke of Northumberland, who endeavoured to place his daughter-in-law (of a nobler family than his own), Lady Jane Grey, upon the throne of England after the death of the boy-king Edward VI. The plot failed and Henry VIII.'s eldest daughter, Mary,

E

who shared More's enthusiasm for the papacy and his horror of Protestantism, became Queen in accordance with law. The failure of the Duke's ambitious schemes led to his death on the scaffold. Queen Mary's accession preceded Sidney's birth by a few months, and the tragedy of his grandfather's execution darkened his entry into life.

The two critical events-the failure of the Duke of Northumberland's scheme of usurpation, and Queen Mary's revival of a Catholic sovereignty—were vividly recalled at His baptism. Philip's baptism. His godmother was his grandmother, the widowed Duchess of Northumberland. His godfather was the new Catholic Queen's lately married husband, Philip of Spain, the sour fanatic, who shortly afterwards became King Philip 11. It was an inauspicious conjunction of sponsors. Both were identified with doomed forces of reaction. The ancient régime of Spain, which King Philip represented, was already on its downward grade. The widowed Duchess was the survivor of a lawless and selfish political faction, which had defied political justice and the general welfare. Shadows fell across the child's baptismal font. A cloud of melancholy burdened the minds of those . who tended him in infancy, and his childish thoughts soon took a serious hue.

accession.

But before his childhood ended the gloom that hung about his country and his family's prospects was lightened. The superstitious Queen Mary, having restored to her Queen Elizabeth's country its old religion, died prematurely, and her work was quickly undone by her sister and successor, Queen Elizabeth. Fortune at length smiled again on the English throne, and the new sovereign won by her resolute temper, her self-possession and her patriotism, her people's regard and love. Slowly but surely the paths of peace were secured. The spirit of the nation was relieved

of the griefs of religious and civil conflict. The Muses flourished in England as never before.

Sidney's
Earl of

uncle, the

Leicester.

On Sidney's domestic circle, too, a new era of hope dawned. His mother's brother, the ill-fated Duke of Northumberland's younger son, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, became Queen Elizabeth's favoured courtier, and, by a strange turn of fortune's wheel, wielded, despite his father's disgrace and death, immense political influence. Throughout Sidney's adult life his uncle, Leicester, who, although unprincipled and self-indulgent, had affection for his kindred, was the most powerful figure in English public life. Such advantages as come of a near kinsman's great place in the political world lay at Sidney's disposal in boyhood and early manhood.

III

The boy was at first brought up at Penshurst, but was soon taken further west, to Ludlow Castle. At the time his father, in the interval of two terms of gov- At Shrewsernment in Ireland, was President of the princi- bury school. pality of Wales, which was then separately governed by a high officer of state. Ludlow Castle, then a noble palace, now a magnificent ruin, was his official residence. Owing to his father's residence in the western side of England, the boy Philip was sent to school at Shrewsbury, which was just coming into fame as a leading public school.

On the same day there entered Shrewsbury school another boy of good family, who also attained great reputation in literature and politics, Fulke Greville, afterwards Fulke Lord Brooke. Greville was a poet at heart, al- Greville. though involved and mystical in utterance. He was Sidney's lifelong friend, and subsequently his biographer.

Greville

died forty-two years after his friend, but the memory of their association sank so deep in his mind and heart that, despite all the other honours which he won in mature life, he had it inscribed on his tomb that he was Friend to Sir Philip Sidney.'

Sidney's serious youth.

Sidney was a serious and thoughtful boy. Of his youth his companion, Greville, wrote: I will report no other wonder than this, that, though I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man, with such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years; his talk ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind, so that even his teachers found something in him to observe and learn above that which they had usually read or taught. Which eminence by nature and industry made his worthy father style Sir Philip in my hearing, though I unseen, lumen familiæ suæ (light of his household).' Gravity of demeanour characterised Sidney at all periods of his life.,

At Oxford.

From childhood Sidney was a lover of learning. At eleven years old he could write letters in French and Latin; and his father gave him while a lad advice on the moral conduct of life which seemed to fit one of far maturer years. The precocious spirit of the Renaissance made men of boys, and youths went to the University in the sixteenth century at a far earlier age than now. At fourteen Philip left Shrewsbury school for the University of Oxford-for the great foundation of Christ Church, to which at an earlier epoch More had wended his way. At Oxford Sidney eagerly absorbed much classical learning, and gathered many new friends. His tutor was fascinated by his studious ardour, and he, too, like Sidney's friend Greville, left directions for the fact that Sidney had been