"O joy too high for my low stile to show!...
For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine,
Of her high heart giv'n me the monarchie:
I, I, O I, may say that she is mine."[178]
This lasted some time and when love faded away, at least in Stella's fickle heart, "Astrophel" wrote the real dirge of his passion.
Sidney had nevertheless continued his active life all this while, sometimes at court and sometimes on the continent, recognized as a statesman by statesmen, as a poet by poets, as a perfect knight by all experts in knightly accomplishments. Spenser dedicated in 1579 his "Shepheardes Calender" to "the most noble and vertuous gentleman, most worthy of all titles, both of learning and chevalrie, M. Philip Sidney"[179]; and William the Silent, Prince of Orange, once said to Fulke Greville that "Her Majesty had one of the ripest and greatest counsellors of estate in Sir Philip Sidney that at this day lived in Europe." The remaining years of his short life were well filled; he had been ambassador to the German Emperor in 1577; he had taken part at home, though unasked, in the negotiations concerning the Queen's marriage, and he lost favour for a while on account of the extraordinary freedom with which he had written to Elizabeth against the French match. He retired from court at that moment and went to live in the country; while staying with his sister at Wilton in the midst of congenial surroundings, he wrote most of his "Arcadia" (1580). He was a member of Parliament in 1581 and 1584, and married in 1583 the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. He all but accompanied Drake to America, where he had received from the Queen a large grant of lands; he became at last Governor of Flushing in the Netherlands. He died in that country at thirty-one years of age, in 1586, of a wound received at Zutphen; a premature death that gave the finishing touch to men's sympathy and love for him; all England wept for him.[180] Even now, it is difficult to think unmoved of his well-filled career ending on the eve of the great triumphs of his country, to call to our memory this brave man who died with his face to the enemy without knowing that victory would be declared for his side, without having known Shakespeare, without having seen the defeat of the Armada.
As for his Stella she survived him only too long. A few years after Sidney's death she deserted her husband by whom she had had seven children, and became the mistress of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, afterwards Earl of Devonshire, to whom she gave three sons and two daughters. Lord Rich, a man full of prudence it seems, waited for the death of the Earl of Essex, his wife's brother, to divorce her. She then married her lover in 1605. But till her death, which happened in 1608 she was mostly remembered as having been Sidney's friend, and books were dedicated to her because she had been Astrophel's "Stella." Thus Yong's translation of the "Diana" of Montemayor, a pastoral from which Sidney had taken many hints, is dedicated to her.[181] Thus again Florio asks her conjointly with Sidney's daughter[182] to patronize the second book of Montaigne's Essays, addressing Penelope, in the extraordinary style that belonged to him: "I meane you (truely richest Ladie Rich) in riches of fortune not deficient, but of body incomparably richer, of minde most rich: who yet, like Cornelia, were you out-vied, or by rich shewes envited to shew your richest jewelles, would stay till your sweet images (your deere-sweete children) came from schoole." And then, addressing the ladies together, both the daughter and the mistress of the departed hero: "I know not this nor any I have seen, or can conceive, in this or other language, can in aught be compared to that perfect-imperfect Arcadia, which all our world yet weepes with you, that your all praise-exceeding father (his praise-succeeding countesse) your worthy friend (praise-worthiest lady) lived not to mend or end it."[183] Once Astrophel had sung of Stella, and now Lady Rich was praised by the pedant Rombus.
II.
Sidney's works well accord with his life; in these few years he had time to take in with a clear and kindly glance all those beauties of ancient or modern times, of distant countries or of his own which set the hearts of his contemporaries beating, and he is therefore perhaps, on account of his catholicity, the most worthy of Shakespeare's immediate precursors. The brilliance of the Spaniards enchants him, and he translates fragments of Montemayor[184]; the Kenilworth fêtes amuse him and he writes a masque, "The Lady of May,"[185] to be used at like festivities. A true Christian he translates the Psalms of David; a tender and passionate heart, he rhymes the sonnets of Astrophel to Stella; enamoured of chivalry and great exploits, he writes, with fluent pen, his "Arcadia," where he imitates the style made fashionable in Europe by Montemayor in his "Diana"; a lover of belles lettres, he defends the poet's art in an argument charming from its youthfulness, vibrating with enthusiasm, which holds in English literature the place filled in French by Fénelon's "Lettre à l'Académie."[186] This work is very important with regard to the subject that now occupies us, not only because Sidney gives in it his opinion on works of fiction in general; but because here we have at last a specimen of flexible, spirited, fluent prose, without excessive ornament of style, or learned impedimenta, a specimen of that prose which is exactly suited to novels and that no one—Roger Ascham perhaps excepted—had until then used in England.
Perhaps it will be found, he writes at the beginning of his work, with the elegant gracefulness of a man who knows how to do everything that he does well, that I carry my apology to excess; but that is excusable: listen to what Pietro Pugliano, my master of horsemanship, at the Emperor's Court, said: "Hee sayde souldiours were the noblest estate of mankinde, and horsemen, the noblest of souldiours. Hee sayde, they were the maisters of warre, and ornaments of peace: speedy goers and strong abiders, triumphers both in camp and courts." For a prince no accomplishment is comparable to that of being a good horseman; "skill of government was but a Pedanteria in comparison: then would hee adde certaine prayses, by telling what a peerlesse beast a horse was. The onely serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of most beutie, faithfulnes, courage, and such more, that if I had not beene a peece of a logician before I came to him, I think he would have perswaded mee to have wished my selfe a horse. But thus much at least with his no fewe words hee drave into me, that selfe-love is better then any guilding to make that seeme gorgious, wherein our selves are parties. Wherein, if Pugliano his strong affection and weake arguments will not satisfie you, I wil give you a neerer example of my selfe, who (I knowe not by what mischance) in these my not old yeres and idelest times, having slipt into the title of a poet, am provoked to say somthing unto you in the defence of that my unelected vocation."
Set at ease by Pugliano's example, who seems to have had the same veneration for the horse as his countryman Vinci, Sidney enters on his defence and does not restrain himself from extolling poetry beyond any product of the human mind. Poetry is superior to history, to philosophy, to all forms of literature. Poets have, by the charm of their works, surpassed the beauties of nature and they have succeeded in making "the too much loved earth more lovely." He gives to poetry, in effect, an immense domain: everything that is poetic or even merely a work of the imagination is poetry for him: "there have beene many most excellent poets, that never versified, and now swarme many versifiers that neede never aunswere to the name of poets." For him, the romance of "Theagines and Cariclea" is a "poem"; Xenophon's "Cyrus" is "an absolute heroicall poem." To the great joy of their author he would certainly have seen an epic in Chateaubriand's "Martyrs." "It is not riming and versing that maketh a poet, no more then a long gowne maketh an advocate: who though he pleaded in armor should be an advocate and no soldiour." Even historians have sometimes to do the work of poets, that is imagining, inventing, "although theyr lippes sounde of things doone and veritie be written in theyr foreheads."
In spite of his fondness for the ancients, whose unities and messenger he greatly approves, and of his contempt for the modern drama, such as it was understood in those pre-Shakespearean times, he remains, at bottom, entirely English; he adores the old memorials of his native land, and does not know his Virgil better than his Chaucer, or even the popular songs hummed by the wayfarer along the high roads. Irish ballads, English ballads of Robin Hood, Scottish ballads of Douglas, are familiar to him, and some of them make him start as at the sound of a trumpet: "Certainly, I must confesse my own barbarousnes, I never heard the olde song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart mooved more then with a trumpet: and yet it is sung by some blind crouder, with no rougher voyce then rude stile; which being so evill apparelled in the dust and cobwebbes of that uncivill age, what would it worke, trymmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" He would have loved, like Molière, the song of the "roi Henri," and like La Fontaine, the story of Peau d'Ane. But his closest sympathies were reserved for poetical tales, for the adventures of Roland and King Arthur, which are a soldier's reading, and even for the exploits of Amadis of Gaul. "I dare undertake 'Orlando furioso' or honest King Arthur will never displease a souldier.... Truely, I have knowen men, that even with reading 'Amadis de Gaule,' which God knoweth wanteth much of a perfect poesie, have found their hearts mooved to the exercise of courtesie, liberalitie and especially courage." He imagines nothing more enchanting or more powerful than the charm of poetical prose stories, "any of which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner." Their attraction has something superior, divine; for, he adds with a depth of emotion that appears quite modern, "so is it in men, most of which are childish in the best things, till they bee cradlid in their graves."[187]
He closes with a witty and delightful ending, a kindly wish for the hardened enemies of poetry: "Yet this much curse I must send you, in the behalfe of all Poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour, for lacking skill of a sonnet: and when you die, your memory die from the earth, for want of an epitaph."