Sir Philip 1554-1586 Sidney

Active Service and Death.

In July 1586 he made a success ful raid on Axel, near Flushing, and in September he joined the force of Sir John Norris, who was operating against Zutphen. On the 22nd he joined a small force sent out to intercept a convoy of provisions. During the fight that ensued he was struck in the thigh by a bullet. He succeeded in riding back to the camp. The often-told story that he refused a cup of water in favour of a dying soldier, with the words, "Thy need is greater than mine," is in keeping with his character. He owed his death to a quixotic impulse. Sir William Pelham happening to set out for the fight without greaves, Sidney also cast off his leg-armour, which would have defended him from the fatal wound. He died at Arnheim, on Oct. 17, 1586, and was buried at St. Paul's.

Sidney's death was a personal grief to people of all classes. Some two hundred elegies were produced in his honour. Of all these tributes the most famous is Astrophel, A Pastoral Elegie, added to Edmund Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Again (1595). Spenser wrote the opening poem; other contributors are Sidney's sister, the countess of Pembroke, Lodowick Bryskett and Matthew Roydon.

Writings.

Sidney's writings were not published during his lifetime. A Worke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Re ligion, translated from the French of Du Plessis Mornay, was completed and published by Arthur Golding in 1587.

The Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia written by Philippe Sidney (1590), in quarto, is the earliest edition of Sidney's famous romance. A folio edition, issued in 1593, is stated to have been revised and rearranged by the countess of Pembroke, for whose delectation the romance was written. She was charged to destroy the work sheet by sheet as it was sent to her. The circumstances of its composition partly explain the difference between its in tricate sentences, full of far-fetched conceits, repetition and antithesis, and the simple and dignified phrase of the Apologie for Poetrie. The style is a concession to the fashionable taste in literature which the countess may reasonably be supposed to have shared; but Sidney himself, although he was no friend to euphuism, was evidently indulging his own mood in this highly decorative prose.

Sonnets.

The series of sonnets to Stella were printed in 1591 as Sir P.S.: His Astrophel and Stella, by Thomas Newman, with an introductory epistle by T. Nash, and some sonnets by other writers. In 1598 the sonnets were reprinted in the folio edition of Sidney's works, entitled from its most considerable item The Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia, edited by Lady Pembroke, with considerable additions. The songs are placed in their proper po sition among the sonnets, instead of being grouped at the end, and two of the most personal poems (possibly suppressed out of con sideration for Lady Rich in the first instance), which afford the best key to the interpretation of the series, appear for the first time. Sidney's sonnets adhere more closely to French than to

Italian models. The octave is generally fairly regular on two rhymes, but the sestet usually terminates with a couplet. The Apologie for Poetrie was one of the "additions" to the countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1598), where it is entitled "The Defence of Poesie." It first appeared separately in (unique copy in the Rowfant Library, reprint 1904, Camb. Univ. Press). Sid ney takes the word "poetry" in the wide sense of any imaginative work, and deals with its various divisions. Apart from the sub ject matter, which is interesting enough, the book has a great value for the simple, direct and musical prose in which it is written. The Psalmes of David, the paraphrase in which he collaborated with his sister, remained in MS. until 1823, when it was edited by S. W. S:nger. A translation of part of the Divine Sepmaine of G. Salluste du Bartas is lost. There are two pastorals by Sidney in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody (1602).

Letters and Memorials of State . . . (1746) is the title of an invalu able collection of letters and documents relating to the Sidney family, transcribed from originals at Penshurst and elsewhere by Arthur Col lins. Fulke Greville's Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney (1652, ed. by Nowell Smith, 1907), is a panegyric dealing chiefly with his public policy. The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet was translated from the Latin and published with a memoir by Steuart A. Pears (1845). The best biography of Sidney is A Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney by H. R. Fox Bourne (1862). A revised life by the same author is included in the "Heroes of the Nations" series (i891). Critical appreciation is available in J. A. Symonds's Sir Philip Sidney (i886), in the "English Men of Letters" series; in J. J. A. Jusserand's English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare (189o) ; and in modern editions of Sidney's works, among which may be mentioned Mr. A. W. Pollard's edition (1888) of Astrophel and Stella, Professor Arber's reprint (1868) of An Apologie for Poetrie, and Mr. Sidney Lee's Eliza bethan Sonnets (1904) in the re-issue of Professor Arber's English Garner, where the sources of Sidney's sonnets are fully discussed. See also a collection of Sidneiana printed for the Roxburghe Club in 1837, a notice by Mrs. Humphry Ward in Ward's English Poets, i. 345 seq., and a dissertation by Dr. K. Brunhuber, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and ihre Nachlaufer (Nurnberg, 1903). A complete text of Sidney's prose and poetry, edited by Albert Feuillerat, is included in the Cam bridge English Classics (1914-23).