102 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. WERE I another Baillet, solely occupied in collecting the "jugemens des scavans" - the decisions of the learned the name of Sir Philip Sidney would bring forth an awful crash of criticism, rarely equalled in dissonance and confusion. He who first ventured to pronounce a final condemnation on "The Arcadia" of Sir Philip Sidney as a "tedious, lamentable, pedantic, pastoral romance," was Horace Walpole; a decision suited to the heartlessness which wounded the personal qualities of an heroic man, the pride of a proud age. Have modern critics too often caught the watchword when given out by an imposing character? The irregular Hazlitt honestly confides to us, in an agony`of despair, that "Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot acquire a taste," tormented by a conviction that a taste should be acquired. The peculiar style of this critic is at once sparkling and vehement, antithetical and metaphysical. The volcano of his criticism heaves; the short, irruptive periods clash with quick repercussion: the lava flows over his pages, till it leaves us in the sudden darkness of a hypercriticism on "the celebrated description of the Arcadia."" Gifford, once the Coryphæus of modern criticism, whose native shrewdness admirably fitted him for a partisan, both in politics and in literature, did not deem Walpole's depreciation of Sidney "to be without a certain degree of justice; the plan is poor, the incidents trite, the style pedantic." But our prudential critic harbors himself in some security by confessing some nervous and elegant passages.' to At our northern Athens, the native coldness has touched the leaves of "The Arcadia" like a frost in spring. The agreeable researcher into the history of fiction confesses the graceful beauty of the language, but considers the whole as "extremely tiresome." Another critic states a more alarming paroxysm of criticism, that of being "lulled to sleep over the interminableArcadia."" What innocent lover of books does not imagine that "The Arcadia" of Sidney is a volume deserted by every reader, and only to be classed among the folio romances of the Scuderies, or the unmeaning pastorals whose scenes are placed in the golden age? But such is not the fact. "Nobody, it is said, reads 'The Arcadia; we have known very many persons who read it, men, women, and children, and never knew one who read it without deep interest and admiration," exclaims an animated critic, probably the poet Southey.* More recent votaries have approached the altar of this creation of romance. It may be well to remind the reader that, although this volume, in the revolutions of times and tastes, has had the fate to be depreciated by modern critics, it has passed through fourteen editions, suffered translations in every European language, and is not yet sunk among the refuse of the bibliopolists. "The Arcadia" was long, and it may still remain, the haunt of the poetical tribe. SIDNEY was one of those writers whom Shakespeare not only studied but imitated in his scenes, copied his language, and transferrred his ideast. Shirley, Beaumont, and Fletcher, and our early dramatists turned to "The Arcadia" as their text-book. Sidney enchanted two later brothers in Waller and Cowley; and the dispassionate Sir William Temple. * Annual Review, iv. 547. 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 southwest wind which comes creeping over flowery fields was so struck by "The Arcadia," that he found "the true spirit of the vein of ancient poetry in Sidney." The world of fashion in Sidney's age culled their phrases out of "The Arcadia," which served them as a complete "Academy of Compliments." The reader who concludes that "The Arcadia" of Sidney is a pedantic pastoral, has received a very erroneous conception of the work. It was unfortunate for Sidney that he borrowed the title of "The Arcadia" from Sannazaro, which has caused his work to be classed among pastoral romances, which it nowise resembles ; the pastoral part stands wholly separated from the romance itself, and is only found in an interlude of shepherds at the close of each book; dancing brawls, or reciting verses, they are not agents in the fiction. The censure of pedantry ought to have been restricted to the attempt of applying the Roman prosody to English versification, the momentary folly of the day, and to some other fancies of putting verse to the torture. "The Arcadia" was not one of those spurious fictions invented at random, where an author has little personal concern in the narrative he forms. When we forget the singularity of the fable, and the masquerade dresses of the actors, we pronounce them to be real personages, and that the dramatic style dis 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, Stealing and giving odor." Shaks. Twelfth-Night, act 1, sc. i. "And sweeter than the gentle southwest 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. tinctly conveys to us incidents which, however veiled, had occurred to the poet's own observation, as we perceive that the scenes which he has painted with such precision must have been localities. The characters are minutely analyzed, and so correctly preserved, that their interior emotions are painted forth in their gestures as well as revealed in their language. The author was himself the tender lover whose amorous griefs he touched with such delicacy, and the undoubted child of chivalry he drew; and in these finer passions he seems only to have multiplied himself. The manners of the court of Elizabeth were still chivalric; and Sidney was trained in the discipline of those generous spirits whom he has nobly described as men of "high-erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." Hume has censured these "affectations, conceits, and fopperies," as well became the philosopher of the Canongate: but there was a reality in this shadow of chivalry. Amadis de Gaul himself never surpassed the chivalrous achievements of the Earl of Essex; his life, indeed, would form the finest of romances, could it be written. He challenged the governor of Corunna to single combat for the honor of the nation, and proposed to encounter Villars, governor of Rouen, on foot or on horseback. And thus run his challenge: "I will maintain the justice of the cause of Henry the Fourth of France, against the league; and that I am a better man than thou, and that my mistress is more beautiful than thine." This was the very language and the deed of one of the Paladins. It was this spirit, fantastic as it may appear to us, which stirred Sidney, when Parsons the Jesuit, or some one who lay concealed in a dark corner of the court, sent forth anonymously the famous state-libel of "Leicester's Commonwealth." To the unknown libeller who had reflected on the origin of the Dudleys, that "the Duke of Northumberland was not born a gentleman," Sir Philip Sidney, in the loftiest tone of chivalry, designed to send a cartel of defiance. Touched to the quick in any blur in the Stemmata Dudleiana, which, it is said, occupied the poet Spenser when under the princely roof of Leicester, Sidney exclaims, "I am a Dudley in blood, that duke's daughter's son; my chief honor is to be a Dudley, and truly am glad to have cause to set forth the nobility of that blood; none but this fellow of invincible shamelessness could ever have called so palpable a matter in question." He closed with the intention of printing at London a challenge which he designed all Europe to witness. "Because that thou the writer hereof doth most falsely lay want of gentry to my dead ancestors, I say that thou therein liest in thy throat, which I will be ready to justify upon thee in any place of Europe where thou wilt assign me a free place of coming, as within three months after the publishing thereof I may understand thy mind. And this which I write, I would send to thine own hands if I knew thee; but I trust it cannot be intended that he should be ignorant of this printed in London, who knows the very whisperings of the privy-chamber."* We, who are otherwise accustomed to anonymous libels, may be apt to conclude that there was something fantastical in sending forth a challenge through all Europe, -we, who are content with the obscure rencontre of a morning, and with the lucky chance of an exchange of shots. The narrative of "The Arcadia" is peculiar ; but if the reader's fortitude can yield up his own fancy to the feudal poet, he will find the tales diversified. Sidney had traced the vestiges of feudal warfare in Germany, in Italy, and in France; those wars of petty states where the walled city was oftener carried by * 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. |