him rich. His privateers took wealth from Spain. The Queen favoured him, knighted him in 1585. She gave him also forfeited lands in Ireland, and he was again near Spenser when he went to visit them. Spenser, an English civil servant in Ireland, received about the same time his grant of a castle with some three thousand acres forfeited by the Earl of Desmond at Kilcolman, and sang of Raleigh when he visited him there as "the Shepherd of the Ocean." It was Raleigh who brought Spenser to court when, in 1590, the first three books of the "Faerie Queene" were published. Raleigh had then written his lost poem "Of the His time, his history is blended with its chronicles. energy, disdainful in its strength, made enemies. Under Elizabeth, Raleigh served England and himself as well, being a shepherd of the ocean, chiefly occu pied on that broad plain in fleecing the flocks of Spain. The cause of God was to be helped and his own pocket filled by raids upon the great upholder of civil and religious despotism; he seemed to have discovered among other things the way to serve both God and Mammon. It was after the death of Elizbeth that Raleigh's ruin came. In this Elizabethan time he joined thought with deed, and was only the more strenuous in action because as a poet he could feel and dare. These verses are his : Philip Sidney was born in 1554, at Penshurst Castle, in Kent. The castle had been granted to Philip's grandfather, Sir William Sidney, by King Edward VI., and was inherited by Sir William's only son, Henry Sidney, Philip's father. Sir Henry married Lady Mary Dudley, sister to the Robert Dudley who in 1564 became Earl of Leicester. In the time of Philip Sidney's boyhood his father lived at Ludlow Castle as Lord President of Wales; Philip was, therefore, bred in Shropshire, and became one of the first pupils in the famous school at Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury School was opened in 1562, and its first head-master entered during his seven years of office 875 scholars; Philip Sidney and his friend Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, being among them. When Sidney had passed from Shrewsbury to Christchurch, Oxford, his father served the Queen as representative of her authority in Ireland as well as in Wales. Sidney left Oxford at seventeen, without a degree, was for a while at court, then went to Paris in the suite of an ambassador, and was there in 1572, at the time of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He travelled from Paris to Frankfort, Vienna, Venice, Padua, came home through Germany to England, was employed in embassies, and earned high trust. When he was but a young man of four-and-twenty, William of Orange thought so much of his ability and earnestness as to send word to Queen Elizabeth that she had in him one of the ripest and greatest statesmen that he knew of in all Europe, and that if her Majesty would but try the young man, the Prince would stake his own credit upon the issue of his friend's employment about any business, either with the allies or enemies of England. So Sidney was spoken of in the year 1579, when Edmund Spenser came to London and became his friend. Veteran reformers out of England looked upon young Sidney as the man who joined to high family influence a breadth and force of mind that marked him as their English statesman of the future. old Huguenot who was busy for his cause, Hubert Languet, loved and watched over Sidney with a fluttering and almost motherly solicitude. His father being a politician much too honest to be rich, Philip's chief wealth was of the mind, and he sought fellowship with men of genius, who delighted in his friendship. He was a poet and a friend of poets, but poet only as many others were, while seeking, as soldier and statesmen, active place among the great builders of England. An Philip Sidney had offended Queen Elizabeth by freedom of counsel, when he withdrew for a time from court, and was staying at Wilton, in 1580, with his sister, who had married the Earl of Pembroke. That was the year of Spenser's going to Ireland with Lord Grey. Sidney began in those idle months to write, for his sister's amusement, the long romance called " Arcadia," setting little store by it himself. He also joined his sister in versifying the Psalms of David, and it was probably in 1581 that he wrote "The Defence of Poesy," in answer to a general attack on poets, in a censure of the stage entitled "The School of Abuse," that had been unfitly dedicated to Sidney in 1579 by Stephen Gosson. In that piece of prose criticism Sidney's language was clear, vigorous, and simple. In the "Arcadia," which is a long work in prose intermixed with verse, while his higher strain of thought made itself felt, he played much with the literary fashions of his time. There was a taste for strained ingenuity of thought and speech that had received its name of Euphuism from a book called "Euphues," just written (Part I. in 1579, Part II. in 1580) by John Lyly. Sidney also amused himself, and so did Spenser, Dyer, Greville and others, with exercises in what 1 Both Gosson's "School of Abuse" and Sidney's "Defence of Poesy" are given by Mr. Arber, in his "English Reprints," with full mtroductory details, each for sixpence. But if eyes faile then when I most doe need them, Yet dying and dead, doe we sing her honour; If the spheares senselesse doe yet hold a musique, Are then humane mindes priuiledg'd so meanly, 10 20 In Philip Sidney was born in 1554, at Penshurst Castle, in Kent. The castle had been granted to Philip's grandfather, Sir William Sidney, by King Edward VI., and was inherited by Sir William's only son, Henry Sidney, Philip's father. Sir Henry married Lady Mary Dudley, sister to the Robert Dudley who in 1564 became Earl of Leicester. the time of Philip Sidney's boyhood his father lived at Ludlow Castle as Lord President of Wales; Philip was, therefore, bred in Shropshire, and became one of the first pupils in the famous school at Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury School was opened in 1562, and its first head-master entered during his seven years of office 875 scholars; Philip Sidney and his friend Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, being among them. |