The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

by Philip Sidney

Clinias purposing indeed to tell him the truth of all; saving what did touch himself, or Cecropia, first dipping his hand in the blood of his wound: “Now by this blood,” said he, “which is more dear to me than all the rest that is in my body, since it is spent for your safety: this tongue, perchance unfortunate, but never false, shall not now begin to lie unto my prince, of me most beloved.” Then stretching out his hand, and making vehement countenances the ushers to his speeches, in such manner of terms recounted this accident. “Yesterday,” said he, “being your birthday, in the goodly green two miles hence before the city of Enispus, to do honour to the day, where four or five thousand people, of all conditions, as I think, gathered together, spending all the day in dancing and other exercises, and when night came under tents and bows making great cheer, and meaning to observe a wassailing watch all that night for your sake. Bacchus, the learned say, was begot with thunder: I think, that made him ever since so full of stir and debate. Bacchus, indeed it was which sounded the first trumpet to this rude alarm. For that barbarous opinion being generally among them, to think with vice to do honour, and with activity in beastliness to show abundance of love, made most of them seek to show the depth of their affection in the depth of their draught. But being once well chafed with wine, having spent all the night, and some piece of the morning in such revelling, and emboldened by your absented manner of living, there was no matter their ears had ever heard of that grew not to be a subject of their winey conference. I speak it by proof: for I take witness of the gods, who never leave perjuries unpunished, that I often cried out against their impudency, and, when that would not serve, stopped mine ears because I would not be partaker of their blasphemies, till with buffets they forced me to have mine ears and eyes defiled. Public affairs were mingled with private grudges: neither was any man thought of wit, that did not pretend some cause of mislike. Railing was counted the fruit of freedom, and saying nothing had his uttermost praise in ignorance. At the length, your sacred person, alas! why did I live to hear it? alas! how do I breathe to utter it? But your commandment doth not only enjoin obedience, but give me force; your sacred person I say, fell to be their table-talk: a proud word swelling in their stomachs, and disdainful reproaches against so great a greatness, having put on the show of greatness in their little minds: till at length the very unbridled use of words having increased fire in their minds, which God wot thought their knowledge notable, because they had at all no knowledge to condemn their own want of knowledge, they descended, O never to be forgotten presumption, to a direct dislike of your living from among them. Whereupon it were tedious to remember their far-fetched constructions. But the sum was, you disdained them: and what were the pomps of your estate, if their arms maintained you not? who would call you a prince, if you had not a people, when certain of them of wretched estates, and worse minds, whose fortunes’ change could not impair, began to say that your government was to be looked into; how the great treasures you had levied among them had been spent; why none but great men and gentlemen could be admitted into counsel, that the commons, forsooth, were too plain-headed to say their opinions: but yet their blood and sweat must maintain all. Who could tell whether you were not betrayed in this place where you lived? nay whether you did live or no? therefore that it was time to come and see; and if you were here, to know if Arcadia were grown loathsome in your sight, why you did not rid yourself of the trouble? there would not want those that would take so fair a cumber in good part. Since the country was theirs, and the government an adherent to the country, why should they not consider of the one as well as inhabit the other? ‘Nay rather,’ said they, ‘let us begin that, which all Arcadia will follow. Let us deliver our prince from danger of practices, and ourselves from want of a prince. Let us do that which all the rest think. Let it be said that we only are not astonished with vain titles which have their force but in our force.’ Lastly, to have said and heard so much was as dangerous as to have attempted: and to attempt they had the glorious name of liberty with them. Those words being spoken, like a furious storm, presently carried away their well inclined brains. What I, and some other of the honester sort could do was no more than if with a puff of breath, one should go about to make a sail go against a mighty wind, or, with one hand, stay the ruin of a mighty wall. So general grew this madness among them, there needed no drum, where each man cried, each spoke to other that spoke as fast to him, and the disagreeing sound of so many voices was the chief token of their unmeet agreement. Thus was their banquet turned to a battle, their winey mirths to bloody rages, and the happy prayers for your life to monstrous threatening of your estate; the solemnizing your birth-day, tended to have been the cause of your funeral. But as a drunken rage hath, besides his wickedness, that folly, that the more it seeks to hurt the less it considers how to be able to hurt: they never weighed how to arm themselves, but took up everything for a weapon that fury offered to their hands. Many swords, pikes, and bills there were; others took pitchforks and rakes, converting husbandry to soldiery: some caught hold of spits, things serviceable for life, to be the instruments of death. And there was some such one, who held the same pot wherein he drank your health, to use it, as he could, to your mischief. Thus armed, thus governed, forcing the unwilling, and heartening the willing, adding fury to fury, and increasing rage with running, they came headlong towards this lodge: no man, I dare say, resolved in his own heart what was the uttermost he would do when he came thither. But as mischief is of such nature, that it cannot stand but with strengthening one evil by another, and so multiply in itself, till it come to the highest and then fall with his own weight: so to their minds one passed the bounds of obedience, more and more wickedness opened itself, so that they, who first pretended to preserve you, then to reform you (I speak it in my conscience, and with a bleeding heart) now thought no safety for them, without murdering you. So as if the gods, who preserve you for the preservation of Arcadia, had not showed their miraculous power; and that they had not used for instruments, both your own valour, not fit to be spoken of by so mean a mouth as mine, and some, I must confess, honest minds, whom alas! why should I mention, since what we did, reached not to the hundredth part of our duty? our hands, I tremble to think of it, had destroyed all that, for which we have cause to rejoice that we are Arcadians.”

With that the fellow did wring his hands, and wrung out tears, so, that Basilius, who was not the sharpest piercer into masked minds, took a good liking to him; and so much the more as he had tickled him with praise in the hearing of his mistress. And therefore pitying his wound, willed him to get him home and look well into it, and make the best search he could to know if there were any further depth in this matter, for which he should be well rewarded. But before he went away, certain of the shepherds being come, for that day was appointed for their pastorals, he sent one of them to Philanax, and another to other principal noblemen, and cities thereabouts, to make thorough inquiry of this uproar, and withal to place such garrisons in all the towns and villages near unto him, that he might thereafter keep his solitary lodge in more security, upon the making of a fire, or ringing of a bell, having them in readiness for him.

This Clinias, having his ear one way when his eye was another, had perceived, and therefore hastened away with mind to tell Cecropia that she was to take some speedy resolution, or else it were danger those examinations would both discover and ruin her; and so went his way, leaving that little company with embracements, and praising of Zelmane’s excellent proceeding, to show, that no decking sets forth anything so much as affection. For as, while she stood at the discretion of those indiscreet rebels, every angry countenance any of them made seemed a knife laid upon their own throats; so unspeakable was now their joy that they saw, besides her safety and their own, the same wrought, and safely wrought by her means, in whom they had placed all their delights. What examples Greece could ever allege of wit and fortitude, were set in rank of trifles, being compared to this action.

But as they were in the midst of those unfeigned ceremonies, a cittern ill-played on, accompanied with a hoarse voice, who seemed to sing maugre the Muses, and to be merry in spite of fortune, made them look the way of the ill-noised song. The song was this

A hateful cure with hate to heal:

A bloody help with blood to save:

A foolish thing with fools to deal.

Let him be bob’d, that bobs will have,

But who by means of wisdom high

Hath sav’d his charge? it is even I.

Let others deck their pride with scars,

And of their wounds make brave lame shows:

First let them die, then pass the stars,

When rotten fame will tell their blows:

But eye from blade, and ear from eye;

Who hath sav’d all? it is even I.

They had soon found it was Dametas, who came with no less lifted up countenance than if he had passed over the bellies of all his enemies: so wise a point he thought he had performed in using the natural strength of the cave. But never was it his doing to come so soon thence till the coast were more assuredly clear: for it was a rule with him, that after a great storm there ever fell a few drops before it be fully finished. But Pamela, who had now experienced how much care doth solicit a lover’s heart, used this occasion of going to her parents and sister, indeed as well for that cause, as being unquiet, till her eye might be assured how her shepherd had gone through the danger.

But Basilius with the sight of Pamela, of whom almost his head, otherwise occupied, had left the wanted remembrance, was suddenly stricken into a devout kind of admiration, remembering the oracle, which according to the fawning humour of false hope, he interpreted now his own to his own best, and with the willing blindness of affection, because his mind ran wholly upon Zelmane, he thought the gods in their oracles did principally mind her.

But as he was thinking deeply of the matter, one of the shepherds told him that Philanax was already come with an hundred horse in his company. For having by chance rode not far off the little desert, he had heard of this uproar, and so was come upon the spur, gathering a company of gentlemen, as fast as he could, to the succour of his master; Basilius was glad of it; but not willing to have him nor any other of the noblemen, see his mistress, he himself went out of the lodge: and so giving order unto him of placing garrisons, and examining those matters; and Philanax with humble earnestness beginning to entreat him to leave off this solitary course, which already had been so dangerous unto him, “Well,” said Basilius, “it may be ere long I will condescend unto your desire. In the meantime, take you the best order you can to keep me safe in my solitariness. But,” said he, “do you remember, how earnestly you wrote unto me that I should not be moved by that oracle’s authority, which brought me to this resolution?” “Full well, Sir,” answered Philanax, “for though it pleased you not as then to let me know what the oracle’s words were, yet all oracles hold in, in my conceit, one degree of reputation, it sufficed me to know it was but an oracle which led you from your own course.” “Well,” said Basilius, “I will now tell you the words, which before I thought not good to do, because when all the events fall out, as some already have done, I may charge you with your incredulity.” So he repeated in this sort.

Thy elder care shall from thy careful face

By princely mean be stolen, and yet not lost:

Thy younger shall with nature’s bliss embrace

An uncouth love, which nature hateth most;

Both they themselves unto such two shall wed,

Who at thy bear, as at a bar, shall plead;

Why thee, a living man, they had made dead.

In thine own seat a foreign state shall sit;

And ere that all those blows at thy head do hit,

Thou, with thy wife adultery shall commit.

“For you, forsooth,” said he, “when I told you that some supernatural cause sent me strange visions, which being confirmed with presagious chances, I had gone to Delphos, and there received this answer, you replied unto me that the only supernatural causes were the humours of my body, which bred such melancholy dreams, and that both they framed a mind full of conceits, apt to make presages of things, which in themselves were merely chanceable: and withal, as I say, you remember what you wrote me touching the authority of the oracle: but now I have some notable trial of the truth thereof, which hereafter I will more largely communicate unto you. Only now, know that the thing I most feared is already performed; I mean, that a foreign state should possess my throne. For that hath been done by Zelmane, but not as I feared, to my ruin, but to my preservation.” But when he had once named Zelmane, that name was as good as a pulley, to make the clock of his praises run on in such sort that Philanax found was more exquisite than the only admiration of virtue breedeth: which his faithful heart inwardly repining at, made him shrink away as soon as he could to go about the other matters of importance which Basilius had enjoined unto him.