Sir Philip Sidney assuredly was one of the most admirable of mankind, largely conspicuous in his life, and unparalleled in his death. But was this singular man exempt from the frailties of our common nature? If we rely on his biographer Zouch, we shall not discover any; if we trust to Lord Orford, we shall perceive little else. The truth is, that had Sidney lived, he might have grown up to that ideal greatness which the world adored in him; but he perished early, not without some of those errors of youth, which even in their rankness betrayed the generous soil whence they sprung. His fame was more mature than his life, which indeed was but the preparation for a splendid one. We are not surprised, that to such an accomplished knight the crown of Poland was offered, and that all England went into mourning for their hero. We discover his future greatness, if we may use the expression, in the noble termination of his early career, rather than in the race of glory which he actually ran. The life of Sidney would have been a finer subject for the panegyric of a Pliny, than for the biography of a Plutarch; his fame was sufficient for the one, while his actions were too few for the other.[9]
[1] “Annual Review,” iv. 547.
[2] Who does not recognise a well-known passage in Shakespeare, copied too by Coleridge and Byron, in these words of Sidney—“More sweet than a gentle south-west wind which comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer.” Such delightful diction, which can only spring out of deep poetic emotion, may be found in the poetic prose of Sidney.
| “Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour.”— Shaks. Twelfth Night, act 1, sc. i. “And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind, O’er willowy meads and shadow’d waters creeping, And Ceres’ golden fields.”— Coleridge’s First Advent of Love. “Breathing all gently o’er his cheek and mouth, As o’er a bed of violets the sweet south.”— Don Juan, canto 2, verse 168. |
[3] Sidney alludes to all that secret history of Leicester which Parsons the Jesuit pretends to disclose in his “Leicester’s Commonwealth.” This challenge was found among the Sidney papers, but probably was not issued.
[4] See “The Arcadia,” p. 267; eighth edition, 1633.
[5] See Coleridge’s “Table-Talk,” ii. 178.
[6] Richard Barnfielde’s “Affectionate Shepherd” forms such a collection of sonnets which were popular. The poet bewails his unsuccessful love for a beautiful youth, yet professing the chastest affection. Poets, like mocking-birds, repeat the notes of others, till the cant becomes idle, and the fashion of style obsolete.
[7] A lady who has become enamoured of the friend who is pleading for her lover, and suddenly makes the fatal avowal to that friend, thus expresses her emotion—“Grown bolder or madder, or bold with madness, I discovered my affection to him.” “He left nothing unassayed to disgrace himself, to grace his friend.”—p. 39.