The gentlest shepherdess that lived that day,
And most resembling in shape and spirit
Her brother dear.
He dedicates to her also his “Ruines of Time,” in which he praises her brother.
Abraham Fraunce extols her, and produces “The Countess of Pembroke’s Ivychurch, 1591,” and “The Countess of Pembroke’s Emmanuel.”
The poet Daniel became tutor to her sons, and to her he dedicated his “Delia,” a collection of sonnets (1592), and his tragedy of “Cleopatra” as companion to her “Mark Antony.”
Thomas Nash says of her, in prefatory lines to the 1591 edition of Sidney’s “Astrophel”: “The artes do adore her as a second Minerva, and our poets extol her as patroness of their inventions.” Osborne says of her:
She was that sister of Sir Philip Sidney’s to whom he addressed his “Arcadia,” and of whom he had no advantage but what he received from the partial benevolence of Fortune in making him a man.
Meres compares her to Octavia, Augustus’ sister and Virgil’s patroness; and describes her as being not only liberal to poets but a most delicate poet, worthy of the complimentary lines which Antipholus Sidonius addressed to Sappho.
Thomas Churchyard writes: