contemporaries. His unselfish chivalrous nature it is, bold at once and tender, his purity of life in the corrupt atmosphere of the Elizabethan court, above all, his heroic death, which make him still in a certain sense alive among us. Yet his was in fact an unadventurous life, wasted, not by his own fault, despite of strenuous endeavour; whilst by a kind of pathetic irony the fame which preserves his gracious memory has perversely failed to do justice to that true and passionate verse which in his own day placed him at the head of our poetry next in succession to Chaucer. Sidney, born 29th November 1554, at Penshurst, Kent, and named after Philip II., was son to Sir Henry, a man of high birth and noble character, married to Mary Dudley, daughter to the Duke of Northumberland (executed for treason 1553), and sister to that base and hypocritical Lord Leicester, of all Queen Elizabeth's favourites the most ill-chosen and baleful. Philip was sent first for education to Shrewsbury School (1564), thence (1568) to Christ Church, Oxford. He studied hard, as his writings show, and made his two best friends, Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, and Dyer; men likeminded with himself in a certain seriousness and manliness of character, such as was naturally formed by the atmosphere of that age-troubled, yet full of hope and energy. From 1572 to 1575 Sidney travelled in France, Germany, and Italy, completing his education after the fashion of those days, returning well versed in the best Italian literature, but unspoiled by foreign temptations. He was not a man to verify the proverb of that day, A devil incarnate is the Englishman Italianate. Few men or none were then more powerful in England than his uncle Leicester, and Sidney at once began to make his career at court, then the only portal to public life. His character was now fully formed as the model of a finished English gentleman; in Spenser's fine phrase he was the President of noblesse and of chivalry.' Yet as a statesman Sidney practically failed. At first a favourite of the ever-fickle queen, he accompanied her progresses; he was sent ambassador (1577) to Rudolph II., and then to William, Prince of Orange. There is a vague story that he was thought of as candidate for the uneasy Polish throne; he certainly longed to join Prince Casimir, then in arms in the Netherlands. But he was not yet (1578) fated to visit Zutphen.

Sidney's court position now became trying. Elizabeth displayed her too frequent ingratitude toward his father for his exertions as Lord Deputy in Ireland, and Philip wrote in his defence with much ability and courage. And in similar style he addressed the queen against her desired match with the miserable Duke of Anjou. Elizabeth hence frowned upon him; whilst, meanwhile, Leicester's own marriage with Lady Essex had removed him from court. Sidney also retired (1580) to his admirable sister Mary, now Lady Pembroke, at Wilton, where most, probably, of his Arcadia was written.

Of Sidney's life in 1581-82 we know little. He returned to court, like Spenser,

To lose good days, that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent :

tortured also with the hopeless love, which we shall notice further on. In 1583 he was knighted; he received from Elizabeth a paper-grant of 30,000,000 acres in certain parts of America not yet discovered;' and married Frances, daughter to Sir F. Walsingham. But although he may thus have thought to strengthen his position, Sidney was doomed to yet another disappointment. The arrangement which he had settled (1585) to accompany Drake on one of his buccaneer expeditions to America was defeated by Elizabeth's weakness or

caprice and Drake's jealous treachery. Indeed, when seen not through the haze of tradition, the distorting mists of partisanship, but in natural light, the popular heroes of that day often drop their halo. But this subject belongs to that un written section of our annals, the true history of the Elizabethan age.

It was poor amends that Sidney was ordered to accompany Leicester, chosen for her general by the queen's infatuation, to carry her half-hearted and untrustworthy support to the Netherlanders in their agony and struggle against Spain. Upon the miseries of Sidney's position in his partial charge of that thrice disgraceful expedition we need not dwell. For nearly a year he was detained in idleness; then, after one small brilliant exploit, he received upon October 2, 1586, his death-wound in a chivalrous conflict, rash as the English charge at Balaclava, under the walls of Zutphen; dying, as he had borne himself throughout life, like a hero and a Christian, on the 17th; and mourned by England with a unanimity and a depth of feeling never surpassed-perhaps never equalled.

By 1579 Sidney, who through a Cambridge scholar, Gabriel Harvey, had become acquainted with Edmund Spenser, a year or more his senior, had formed with him and some others a little literary society, which aimed at rejecting rhyme and writing English poetry in classical metres. Of that folly Sidney soon repented; but a few letters between Spenser and Harvey upon the subject, happily preserved, are noteworthy as the sole contemporary notice of Sidney's own work in literature, which we may place between 1578 and 1582. Widely celebrated as that work was during Sidney's lifetime, yet nothing of it was published till after his death. He 'purposed no monuments of books. . . . His end was not writing, even while he wrote,' said his friend Greville. Like his immediate predecessors Wyatt, Surrey, Sackville, he was statesman or courtier first, author only in leisure hours. His writings must have been partially made known by MS. circulation; yet we may suspect that Sidney's own brilliant character, his connections, which placed him in the very foremost rank of high life, his generous patronage of men of letters, with the report of those to whom his writings were communicated, united to give him his pre-eminent contemporary reputation. This was, however, amply supported when the Arcadia (written for his sister, Lady Pembroke, probably 1578-80, but never fin ished) appeared, imperfectly in 1590, completely in 1598. This book, for perhaps about a century, retained a vast popularity, though now almost unread, and indeed unreadable. It is a pastoral romance, founded primarily upon the Arcadia (1504) of the Neapolitan Sannazzaro, being, like that, an intricate love-story, intermixed with poems and written in melodious but elaborate prose, and not free from the artificial conceits,' the Euphuism, familiar in Europe to that age. But the Portuguese Montemayor's Diana (1542), the old Greek romance Theagenes and Chariclea, with, doubtless, other traditional legends, had also their share in Sidney's story; whilst its many incidents, disguisals, and intricacies supplied material for later writers. But the main value of the book perhaps lay in this, that here Englishmen found their earliest model for sweet, continuous, rhythmical prose-for the prose of art. Before the Arcadia we have fine single passages; no such consistent whole. The verse portions are rarely happy; they must have been among Sidney's earliest attempts; but in truth his genius required that high heat of personal passion which inspires Astrophel to fuse his ore into gold; although that ore (to pursue the figure) is always weighty with Sidney's seriousness, his elevated thought, his chivalry of nature.

As of

SIDNEY

exceptional merit may be noticed the dialogue between Nico and Dorus, and an Epithalamium of stately dignity, which may have been suggestive to Spenser. In Arcadia Sidney tried numerous metres, English, Italian, classical; the latter, inevitably, with small success.

To about 1580 may be assigned Sidney's Apology for Poetry (afterwards named Defence of Poesy), in reply to an abusive Puritan pamphlet, and to a general disesteem then felt in England for that art; published 1591. In this tract, written in clear, manly English, and still well worthy of readers, Sidney defines poetry, after Aristotle, as Ideal Imitation, and for her claims her ancient place as the highest mode of literature, teaching mankind the most important truths through the medium of that pleasure which is the formal end of all fine art. In mediæval fashion, many authorities are quoted, and Sidney displays his wide range of reading. Lastly, he criticises severely and justly the crowd of contemporary versifiers-not peculiar to that age !-to whose want of power, bad taste, and trivial style he partly ascribes the then existing low estimate of poetry. And here he names the best English poets known to him: Chaucer, Sackville, Surrey, and Spenser's just (anonymously) published Calen. der. Besides these, I do not remember to have seen but few (to speak boldly) printed, that have poetical sinews in them.' English drama, it will be remembered, was then in its cradle.

Sidney, like Shelley, was so great a poet that he had just right to come forward in defence of poetry. But for himself it was love, not instruction, that moved him :

Come, let me write: And to what end? To ease
A burthen'd heart;

and again, to his Love,

Only in you my song begins and endeth. For the origin of Astrophel and Stella (published 1591), however, we must go back to an episode in Sidney's life. In 1575, aged twenty, he met Penelope Devereux, daughter to Lord Essex, then a child of twelve. Some intimacy followed, and Essex, on his deathbed (1576), expressed a hope that the two might in due time marry. In Sidney's nature, however, was some want of youthfulness; his heart did not respond, and it was only in 1581, when Penelope was engaged and wedded (apparently without love on her part) to Lord Rich, that Sidney awoke too late to find Quid sit Amor to find also that she might have loved him. It is hence a sad drama, a miniature tragedy in lyrics, that is revealed in this long series; as Nash, the editor, said, 'The argument, cruel chastity; the prologue hope, the epilogue despair.'

These 108 sonnets and 11 songs (to which a few separately published in 1598 may be added), after, or rather with, Shakespeare's sonnets, have long seemed to us to offer the most complete and powerful picture, in this form, of passionate love, in our language. And they have a straightforward truth of expression which unveils the poet's own character beyond Shakespeare's: they truly speak everywhere heart to heart. Sidney's Canzoniere has hence escaped those elaborate futile attempts to give it an impersonal or symbolical character which have wearied mankind in the case of Shakespeare. Yet, as Dante's love for Beatrice, Petrarch's for Laura, have been doubted, so has it been with Astrophel's for Stella. But readers who do not bring only brains to reading Sidney's little Liber Amoris will assuredly set aside every such ingenious sophist and sceptic at once and for ever: He has not loved!

Considering the charm that Sidney's name still exerts, the close relation of his poetry to the romance of his life, and the high place in our

literature merited by its great qualities, that as poet he should have met hitherto so imperfect a recognition is little to the credit of popular taste. That high place has been amply vindicated in the admirable essay by the most exquisite of poetical critics, Charles Lamb. But that Sidney's fame falls far below his deserts is due in part to that inequality of his workmanship which he shares with other supreme writers of sonnet-sequences; with Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth. Nor did life allow him to acquire their finished art. His end was not writing, even while he wrote.' Fanciful conceits, obscurity from the depth and wealth of thought, are not unfrequent; at times the style is prosaic, bare, unmelodious. But overfancifulness was the defect of that age: obscurity is common to his great rivals, when moving in the sonnet's narrow bounds. It is the defect of high thinking and intensity of passion. Space, however, does not allow us to offer even a few specimens in proof; and, after all, the poet is always his own best interpreter.

Sidney's Poetry and Apology have been carefully edited, the first by the Rev. A. B. Grosart (3 vols. 1877), the second by Mr Arber (1868) and Mr Shuckburgh (1891); the last complete Arcadia was printed so long since as 1725. Dr H. Oskar Sommer published in 1891 a photographic fac-simile of the original quarto edition of 1590. Fulke Greville's Life (1652) was re-edited by Sir Egerton Brydges (2 vols. 1816). Modern Lives are by Dr Zouch (1808), H. R. Fox Bourne (1862; also a smaller book in Heroes of the Nations,' 1891), and J. A. Symonds in English Men of Letters' (1886). An elaborate life by Dr Ewald Flügel was announced in 1891 by the Clarendon Press as in preparation. See also the Sydney Papers edited by Arthur Collins (1746), and the Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney with Hubert Languet, edited by Steuart A. Pears (1845). See also the article ZUTPHEN.

Sidon (Heb. Zidon), anciently a city of Phœnicia, situated on the east coast of the Mediterranean, half-way between Tyre and Beyrout. It soon rose, both by its exceptional position and the enterprising character of its inhabitants, to the first position among the cities of Phoenicia (q.v.), so that the whole country is sometimes designated by the name of Sidon, the Great,' the Metropolis.' The extensive commerce of Sidon is well known from ancient authorities. Its colonies extended over the coast of Asia Minor, the adjacent islands, Thrace and Euboea, and even some parts of Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, northern Africa, in fact, nearly the whole of the ancient world. The Sidonian manufactures of glass and linen, purple dye and perfumes, were sources of vast wealth. At length it surrendered to Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. But under Assyrian, Chaldean, and Persian domination it retained a kind of independence for its internal affairs, and under the Persians reached its highest prosperity. An unsuccessful revolt against Artaxerxes Ochus ended in its temporary ruin (351 B.C.). Speedily rebuilt and repeopled, it opened its gates to Alexander the Great (333 B.C.), and from that time forth it fell successively into the hands of Syrian, Greek, and Roman rulers. Through the middle ages little is heard of it, except that it was taken by the Crusaders. The present town of Saida has 10,000 inhabitants, of whom 7000 are Mohammedans. In the neighbourhood are numerous rock-cut burial-places of the ancient Phoenicians, in which have been found the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, king of Assyria, and others. The town was stormed by the allies under Napier in 1840.

Sidonius Apollinaris, a 5th-century churchman and author, descended from a noble Gaulish family, who held high civil offices at Rome and in 472 became bishop of Clermont. Born about 430, he died in 483. His letters (nine books) are