The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
rarely wit, courage, breeding, and other additional accomplishments of
conversation, have met in so high a degree in any single person.[i03]
Sir Henry Sidney, his father, was a man of excellent natural wit,
large heart, sweet conversation; and such a governor as sought not to
make an end of the state in himself, but to plant his own ends in the
prosperity of his country. Witness his sound establishments, both in
Wales and Ireland, where his memory is worthily grateful unto this
day.
On the other side, his mother, as she was a woman, by descent, of
great nobility (the Lady Mary, eldest daughter of John Dudley,
Duke of Northumberland), so was she by nature of a large ingenious
spirit.[i04] He was born at Penshurst, in the county of Kent, on the
29th day of November, in the year 1554, and had his Christian name
given him by his {xxviii} father, from King Philip, then lately
married to Queen Mary. While he was very young, he was sent to
Christ Church College in Oxford to be improved in all sorts of
learning; where continuing till he was about seventeen years of age
under the tuition of Dr Tho. Thornton, canon of that house, he was,
in June 1572, sent to travel; for on the 24th of August following,
when the massacre fell out at Paris, he was then there, and at that
time, as I conceive, he, with other Englishmen, did fly to the house
of the ambassador from the Queen of England.[i05] Thence he went
through Lorraine, and by Strasburg and Heidelburg to Frankfort, in
September or October following, where he settles, is entertained agent
for the Duke of Saxony, and an underhand minister for his own king.
Lodged he was in Wechel’s house, the printer of Frankfort.[i06] Here
he was accompanied by the famous Hubert Languet; and in the next
spring, 1573, Languet removed to Vienna, where our author met him
again, and stayed with him till September, when he went into Hungary
and those parts. Thence he journeyed into Italy, where he continued
all the winter following, and most of the summer, 1574, and then he
returned into Germany with Languet; and the next spring he returned
by Frankfort, Heidelburg, and Antwerp, home into England, about May
1575.
In the year 1576 he was sent by the Queen to Rodolph, the Emperor,
to condole the death of Maximilian, and also to other princes of
Germany; at which time he caused this inscription to be written under
his arms, which he then hung up in all places where he lodged:--
“Illustrissimi et generosissimi viri
Philipi Sidnaei, Angli,
Pro-regis Hiberniae filii, Comitum Warwici
Et Leicestriae Nepotis, serenissimi
Reginae Angliae ad Caesarem legati.”
The next year, 1577, in his return, he saw that gallant Prince Don
John de Austria, Viceroy of the low countries for the King of Spain,
and William, Prince of Orange; by the former of which, though at
first he was lightly esteemed {xxix} upon the account of his youth,
yet, after some discourse, he found himself so stricken with him that
the beholders wondered to see what tribute that brave and high-minded
prince paid to his worth, giving more honour and respect to him, in
his private capacity, than to the ambassadors of mighty princes.
In the year 1579 he, though neither magistrate nor counsellor, did
show himself, for several weighty reasons, opposite to the Queen’s
matching with the Duke of Anjou, which he very pithily expressed by a
due address of his humble reasons to her, as may be fully seen in a
book called “Cabala” (Part III., p. 201). The said address was written
at the desire of some great personage--his Uncle Robert, I suppose,
Earl of Leicester, upon which a great quarrel happened between him and
Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford. This, as I conceive, might occasion his
retirement from Court next summer, 1580, wherein, perhaps, he wrote
that pleasant romance called “Arcadia.”[i07]
In 1581 the treaty of marriage was renewed, and our author, Sidney,
with Fulke Greville,[i08] were two of the tilters at the
entertainment of the French Ambassador; and at the departure of the
Duke of Anjou from England, in February of the same year, he attended
him to Antwerp.[i09]
On the 8th of January 1582 he, with Perigrine Bertie, received the
honour of knighthood from the Queen, and in the beginning of 1585 he
designed an expedition with Sir Francis Drake into America, but
being hindered by the Queen (in whose opinion he was so highly prized
that she thought the Court deficient without him) he was, in October
following, made Governor of Flushing--about that time delivered to the
Queen for one of the cautionary towns--and General of the Horse. In
both which places of great trust his carriage testified to the world
his wisdom and valour, with addition of honour to his country by them;
and especially the more, when in July 1586 he surprised Axil, and
preserved the lives and honour of the English army at the enterprise
of Gravelin: so that whereas (through the fame of his high {xxx}
deserts) he was then, or rather before, in election for the Crown of
Poland, the Queen of England refused to further his advancement, not
out of emulation, but out of fear to lose the jewel of her times. What
can be said more? He was a statesman, soldier, and scholar--a complete
master of matter and language, as his immortal pen shows. His pen and
his sword have rendered him famous enough: he died by the one, and by
the other he will ever live as having been hitherto highly extolled
for it by the pens of princes. This is the happiness of art, that
although the sword doth achieve the honour, yet the arts do record it,
and no pen hath made it better known than his own in that book called
“Arcadia.” Certain it is, he was a noble and matchless gentleman, and
it may be justly said, without hyperbole or fiction, as it was of
Cato Uticensis, that “he seemed to be born to that only which he
went about.” His written works are these:--
The Countess of Pembroke’s “Arcadia,”[i10] which being the most
celebrated romance that was ever written, was consecrated to his
noble, virtuous, and learned sister Mary, the wife of Henry, Earl
of Pembroke, who, having lived to a very fair age, died in her house
in Aldersgate Street, in London, the 25th of September 1621, whereupon
her body was buried in the cathedral church of Salisbury, among the
graves of the Pembrochian family. This “Arcadia,” though then, and
since, it was, and is, taken into the hands of all ingenious men, and
said by one living at, or near, the time when first published, to be
“a book most famous for rich conceits and splendour of courtly
expressions.” This work was first printed in the year 1613 in quarto;
it hath been translated into French, Dutch, and other languages in
1624.
Besides _Astrophel and Stella_,[i11] _A Remedy for Love_, _The Defence
of Poesy_,[i12] _Sonnets_, etc., Sir Philip also turned the _Psalms
of David_ into English verse, which are in manuscript in the library
of the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton, curiously bound in a crimson velvet
cover, left thereunto by his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke.[i13]
{xxxi}
The following dialogue, composed by our author, was spoken between two
shepherds in a pastoral entertainment before several gentlemen and
ladies at the seat of the noble family above mentioned.
_Will._ Dick, since we cannot dance, come, let a cheerful voice
Show that we do not grudge at all, when others do rejoice.
_Dick._ Ah, Will, though I grudge not, I count it feeble glee,
With sight made dim with daily tears, another’s sport to see.
Whoever lambkins saw (yet lambkins love to play)
To play when that their loved dams are stoll’n or gone astray?
If this in them be true, as true in men, think I,
A lustless song, forsooth, thinks he, that hath more lust to cry.
_Will._ A time there is for all, my mother often says,
When she, with skirts tuck’d very high, with girls at stoolball plays.
When thou hast mind to weep, seek out some smoky room:
Now let those lightsome sights we see, thy darkness overcome.
_Dick._ What joy the joyful sun gives unto bleared eyes,
That comfort in these sports you like, my mind his comfort tries.
_Will._ What! is thy bagpipe broke? or are thy lambs miswent?
Thy wallet or thy tar-box lost? or thy new raiment rent?
_Dick._ I would it were but thus, for thus it were too well.
_Will._ Thou seest my ears do itch at it; good Dick, thy sorrow tell.
_Dick._ Hear then, and learn to sigh; a mistress I do serve,
Whose wages make me beg the more, who feeds me till I starve,
Whose livery is such, as most I freeze apparelled most,
And look! so near unto my cure, that I must needs be lost.
_Will._ What? these are riddles sure; art thou then bound to her?
_Dick._ Bound as I neither power have, nor would have power to stir.
_Will._ Who bound thee?
_Dick._ Love, my lord.
_Will._ What witnesses thereto?
_Dick._ Faith in myself, and worth in her, which no proof can undo.
_Will._ What seal?
_Dick._ My heart deep graven.
_Will._ What made the band so fast?
_Dick._ Wonder, that by two so black eyes the glittering stars be past.
_Will._ What keepeth safe thy band?
_Dick._ Remembrance is the chest
Lock’d fast with knowing that she is of worldly things the best.
_Will._ Thou late of wages ’plainst: what wages mayst thou have?
_Dick._ Her heav’nly looks, which more and more do give me cause to
crave.
_Will._ If wages make you want, what food is that she gives?
_Dick._ Tear’s drink, sorrow’s meat, wherewith, not I, but in me my
death lives.
_Will._ What living get you then?
_Dick._ Disdain; but just disdain:
So have I cause myself to plain, but no cause to complain.
_Will._ What care takes she for thee?
{xxxii}
_Dick._ Her care is to prevent
My freedom with show of her beams, with virtue my content.
_Will._ God shield us from such dames. If so our downs be sped
The shepherds will grow lean, I trow, their sheep will be ill fed;
But, Dick, my counsel mark: run from the place of woe;
The arrow being shot from far doth give the smaller blow.
_Dick._ Good Will, I cannot lack the good advice, before
That foxes leave to steal, because they find they die therefore.
_Will._ Then, Dick, let us go hence, lest we great folks annoy;
For nothing can more tedious be, than ’plaint in time of joy.
_Dick._ Oh, hence! O cruel word! which even dogs do hate;
But hence, even hence, I must needs go--such is my dogged fate.
To return again to Sir Philip.
In the year 1586,[i14] when that unfortunate stand was made against
the Spaniards before Zutphen, the 22nd of September, while he was
getting upon the third horse, having had two slain under him before,
he was wounded with a musket shot out of the trenches, which broke the
bone of his thigh. The horse he rode upon was rather furiously
choleric than bravely proud, and so forced him to forsake the field,
but not his back, as the noblest and fittest bier to carry a martial
commander to his grave. In which sad progress, passing along by the
rest of the army, where his uncle,[i15] the general, was, and, being
thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for drink, which was
presently brought him; but, as he was putting the bottle to his mouth,
he saw a poor soldier carried along, who had eaten his last at the
same feast, ghastly casting up his eyes at the bottle, which Sir
Philip perceiving, took it from his head before he drank, and
delivered it to the poor man, with these words: “Thy necessity is yet
greater than mine.” And when he had pledged this poor soldier, he was
presently carried to Arnheim, where the principal surgeons of the camp