capable of producing, when foreign admixtures had not destroyed its simplicity, or politeness debased its honour. The very stiffness it then possessed had a noble original; it was the natural consequence of that state of society, when the degrees of order and subordination were universally observed and understood, when the social relations were not broken down by the encroaching power of innovation, and when each was as ready to pay as to exact his tribute of observance and respect. No lax discipline in morals had then interwoven itself with the manners of the great, nor was the court, as in the reign of Charles the Second, converted into a painted sepulchre, where the spirit, the gayety, and the gilding without, could ill disguise the darkness and rottenness within: it was not, as in that court, a great national reservoir of iniquity, where all the degrees of order, and all the barriers of principle, were levelled and overthrown. The most accomplished members of the court of Queen Elizabeth were not less distinguished for the strictness of their moral principles, than for their polish and address as courtiers. Of such a stamp was Sir Philip Sidney, and, such as he was, every Englishman has reason to be proud of him. He exalted his country in the eyes of other nations, and the country he honoured will not be ungrateful. England will ever place him amongst the noblest of her sons, and the light of chivalry, which was his guide and beacon, will ever lend its radiance to illuminate his tomb-stone, and consecrate his memory. touch The productions of such a man, were they even inferior to the expectation his renown had excited, deserve surely a better reception than the rigid severity of criticism. He, whose whole end in writing was to make his readers wiser and better men, surely has a right to other treatment from that world on which his comet-like radiance was thrown. If there was nothing else to excite our lenity, yet should his untimely fate dispose us to regard, with favour, productions which can hardly be called other than juvenile, and certainly not the fruits of maturity. There is something very ing in the premature departure of promising excellence-in the cutting short of the bright course of talent, before it has reached its goal and consummation-in the striking, with the lightning of heaven, the uprising shoot of genius, while yet it has only produced the blossoms of paradise, blighted and destroyed before they are ripened into fruit. There is something very melancholy in the thoughts, how many bright ideas and noble creations, how many glowing images and emanations of fancy, have been lost for ever to the world, by the early death of those to whom a longer life would have brought everlasting renown. When we consider what they might have been, had a longer duration been allowed them, to what a blaze of splendour that flame, whose increase we were observing, might at length have shot out, had it not been for ever you extinguished by death, it is impossible not to feel affection and commiseration for victims so soon led to the slaughter. Such was the fate of Sir Philip Sidney; and the pity which it excites should surely prevent us from treating his works, as they have been treated, with sneering insolence and cold-blooded vituperation. Let us remember that he died at the age of thirty-two; and, if the lives of Milton and Dryden had not been prolonged beyond that period, where would have been their renown, or where the poetical renown of their country? But the works of Sir Philip Sidney stand in no need of indulgence from considerations of compassion. With a mind, glowing with images of heroism, and filled with the brightest creations and the fairest visions of human and more than human excellence; with a heart which embraced, in its wide circuit of benevolence, the universal good of his species; with an intellect, whose comprehensiveness of observation seemed to claim all arts and sciences, as within the compass of its power and the precincts of its dominion; with a fancy which, delicately beautiful and pensively sweet, overspread the emanations of his genius with an envelope not less delightfully tinted than the covering of the yet unopened rose-bud, and which breathed over all his productions an exquisite finish and relief; he possessed all the essential qualities, from whose operation the everlasting monuments of the mind are fabricated. Unfortunately for the world, the variety of his power and the diversity of his employments prevented him from bestowing on literature the whole energy of his mind, and thus such of his compositions as remain were rather the sports of his leisure, than the full-wrought and elaborate performances of his study. He has, however, left enough to the world, to demonstrate that the name of Sir Philip Sidney has an indisputable right to a place amongst those of our country men, who have been most distinguished for virtue or memorable for genius; and that, amongst the contemporaries of Shakspeare, no one has so closely approached his peculiar excellencies, or so nearly resembled him in some of his superlative endowments, as the author of the Arcadia. Without launching out into an hyperbolical exuberance of praise, we may safely affirm, that in the art of attracting interest and exciting compassion, in the art of ruling over and awaking the best sympathies of our nature, and of chaining the feelings of his readers to the fate and the fortunes of the personifications of his fancy-in the power of clothing and adorning every subject he treated upon, with the fairest flowers and sweetest graces of poetry, and of giving the charm of his inimitable diction to descriptions fresh from nature, and sentiments marked with the dignified and noble character of his mind-in the power of delighting and enchanting his readers, as with some strange and unearthly melody, which, once heard, is never forgotten, and whose remembered notes still continue to entrance the senses as long as their perceptions are alive-he is inferior to no writer in his own age, or in any which has gone before or succeeded it. His great defect was the want of judgment, which led him sometimes to adopt the forced conceits and quaintness of his contemporaries, and often induced him to desert, in the imitation of others, his own neverfailing and unequalled fountain of invention and thought. From this defect, his poetry is perhaps the least valuable part of his works, and is often little more than a jingle of words, or a collection of strange and ill-assorted ideas-where the magnificent and the ridiculous, the ingenious and the mean, are mingled in one mass of incongruity together. He was not, indeed, qualified to shine in the cold and languid tameness of amatory poetry-his power lay in the representation of all that is most lovely in nature, or the resulting harmony of her productions; in the delineations of those of his species, whose high aspirations seem to point out a loftier and less terene original, and whose pure flame of affection appears rather to have been kindled at the sacrifice of the altar, than at the grosser fires of love. In short, his forte lay in the description of beings, like himself, romantically generous and enthusiastically constant; of whom he gives us pictures, which must always please as long as high-mindedness is attractive;-pictures, gratifying because they are exalted, and interesting because they are true. But to proceed from his person to his works.-His Defence of Poesy, which may, at some future time, form a subject for our Review, has received an universal tribute of admiration, and would be sufficient of itself, were there no other fruits of his genius extant, to give him a very high place amongst the authors of our country. It is, perhaps, the most beautifully written prose composition of the Elizabethan age, impregnated with the very soul and spirit of poetry, and abounding with the richest adornments of fancy. It is, in truth, merum sal, "the sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge," a production the most felicitous of its kind that ever came " from Nature's mintage stampt in ecstacy." There is nothing equal to it in the whole circle of critical exposition, nothing which is at once so judicious, yet so poetical; so inimitable, yet so easy. What has been said of the criticisms of Longinus may, with much more justice, be applied to this composition, that it is itself a living exemplification of the highest excellence of the art it treats of. To those who can read it without feelings of delight and admiration, we can only apply the malediction against the contemners of poesie, with which Sir Philip Sidney concludes it. His Arcadia, the present subject of our remarks, if not so uniformly pleasing and satisfactory, is, after all, the great foundation on which his fame must rest, and to which his right to a place amongst the great masters of the human mind must depend for its allowance. Like all other works of genius, it is irregularly and unequally written, diversified by occasional risings and falls, ascents to grandeur and sinkings to littleness: yet, from beginning to end, there is perceptible an air of gentle pensiveness, and of melancholy yet not gloomy moralization, which diffuses over all his work a seductive charm, and is always fascinating, from the train of mind which it brings along with it.-The Arcadia is a mixture of what has been called the heroic and the pastoral romance it is interspersed with interludes and episodes, which, it must be acknowledged, rather encumber than aid the effect of the work itself: the main story is worked out with much skill; though interwoven, it is lucid and perspicuous; and, though intricate, it is far from being perplexed. From a chasm which occurs in the third book, the progress of the story is not perfectly deduced to the end this defect has been supplied by two different continuators: it, probably, arose from the difficulty the author experienced of filling up the vacancy to his satisfaction. This romance was written only for the amusement of his sister, Mary, the Countess of Pembroke, and never intended by the author for the public view; it is even said, that one of his last requests, on his death-bed, was, that it should never be published. Be this as it may, no one who has read the work will be inclined to treat with severity the violators of his injunction: and those who can praise the preservers of the Eneid may readily excuse the non-compliance with Sir Philip Sidney's demand. Were the fastidious nicety and scrupulous exactness of authors, in this respect, to be allowed, the richest treasures of the mind would, like the ring of the tyrant, be prodigally and lavishly cast away, and more would be lost in the pursuit of perfection, than perfection itself could compensate for. : [Here the reviewer gives a sketch of the story, aided by numerous quotations.] Such is the outline of this interesting story: to continue and supply which, many attempts were made by different authors during the period when its celebrity continued, and brought with it the usual concomitant of familiar acquaintance, the desire of imitation. Amongst these, Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Sterling, may be mentioned, who has attempted to supply the defect existing in the third book, as an imitator not unworthy of Sidney. This performance, as well as the other continuations, is a proof, from the exactness with which the style of Sidney is copied, how great a portion of attention had been paid to its model, and what labour and care were exerted to rival the excellencies of its original. All these attempts, indeed, are, as good imitations, deserving of praise; and, perhaps, that of Johnstoun is the best, but, like all other imitations, they want the spirit of originality; and, however closely they resemble their precursor in its outward accompani ments, have little of its peculiar and inward character. The modernization of the Arcadia, by Mrs. Stanley, has little to recommend it. With most meritorious industry she has managed, with its occasional quaintness and conceits, to remove all the charms of diction and freshness of expression, which the work itself possessed, and to convert the felicitousness and force of its language into prettiness and insipidity. ། The character of Sir Philip Sidney, as a writer, is thus given by his friend, Lord Brook, with more, perhaps, in it of justice, than such characters generally possess. His end was not writing even when he wrote, nor his knowledge moulded for tables or schools but both his wit and understanding beat upon his heart, to make himself and others not in words or opinion, but in life and action, good and great." Sir Philip Sidney appears to have been possessed of a quick and lively sensibility, of a noble and generous heart, whose emotions, unrestrained by fear and unobstructed by dissimulation, gushed forth, with a spirit of joyous gladness, from their sacred fountain of feeling. To think loftily and to act magnanimously, to speak eloquently and to write poetically, appear in him, prerogatives not derived, but inherent: as if, of all that was elevated or extraordinary in man, he was the sole and rightful proprietary. His most heroic actions were done without any apparent consciousness of their greatness: his most exquisite productions were finished without any apparent effort or labour, and yet are such as no effort or labour can mend. Like the sudden and delightful breathings of an Eolian harp, his overflowings of thought seem to burst forth unstimulated and unexcited, deriving none of their melody from the promptings of a musician's finger, and having in them nothing of earthly aid or human operation. His power does not seem so much to lie in the intellect as in the heart: not so much in the conflicting strife of intellectual prowess, or in the gigantic grasp of mental mightiness, as in the deep-drawn sighings of the soul-as in officiating as the high priest of its sanctuary-as in exhaling from thence its clouds of imprisoned myrrh and frankincense to heaven. The current of his emotions flows on in unperturbed and imperturbable serenity, undisturbed by troublous eddy or agitated ferment, catching and reflecting all the beauties which expanded nature presents, and receiving splendour and brightness from the silvery gleams which his fancy sheds upon it in its course. Around it are all the luxuriant delights of earth, above it is all the varied grandeur of heaven, and the voice of sadly pleasing and melancholy inspiration is heard along its shores. He appears, indeed, to have followed the counsel which he reports his muse to have given him—" Looke in thy heart and write ;" and never was that writing unworthy of his character, when he gave |