PROSE WRITERS.

HE prose writers of this age rank chiefly in the departments of theology, philosophy, and historical and antiquarian information. There was, as yet, hardly any vestige of prose employed with taste in fiction, or even in observations upon manners; though it must be observed, that in Elizabeth's reign appeared the once popular romance of Arcadia, by Sir Philip Sidney; and there lived under the two succeeding monarchs several acute and humorous describers of human character.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY was born, in 1554, at Penshurst, in Kent; and during his studies at Shrewsbury, Ox

This production was never finished, and, not having been intended for the press, appeared only after the author's death. His next work was a tract, entitled The Defence of Poesy, where he has repelled the ohjections brought by the Puritans of his age against the poetic art, the professors of which they contemptuously denominated caterpillars of the common. wealth.' This production, though written with the partiality of a poet, has been deservedly admired for the beauty of its style and general soundness of its reasoning. In 1584, the character of his uncle, the celebrated Earl of Leicester, having been attacked in a publication called Leicester's Commonwealth, Sidney wrote a reply, in which, although the heaviest accusations were passed over in silence, he did not scruple to address his opponent in such terms as the following:- But to thee I say, 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 hereof I may understand thy mind.' This performance seems to have proved unsatisfactory to Leicester and his friends, as it was not printed till near the middle of the eighteenth century. Desirous of active employment, Sidney next contemplated an expedition, with Sir Francis Drake, against the Spanish settlements in America; but this intention was frustrated by a peremptory mandate from the queen. In 1585, it is said, he was named one of the candidates for the crown of Poland, at that time vacant; on which occasion Elizabeth again threw obstacles in the way, being afraid to lose the jewel of her times.' He was not, however, long permitted to remain unemployed; for, in the same year, Elizabeth having determined to send military assistance to the Protestant inhabitants of the Netherlands, then groaning beneath the oppressive measures of the Spaniards, he was appointed governor of Flushing, one of the towns ceded to the English in return for this aid. Soon afterwards, the Earl of Leicester, with an army of six thousand men, went over to the Netherlands, where he was joined by Sir Philip, as general of the horse. The conduct of the earl in this war was highly imprudent, and such as to call forth repeated expressions of dissatisfaction from his nephew Philip. The military exploits of the latter were highly honourable to him; in particular, he succeeded in taking the town of Axel in 1586. His career, however, was destined to be short; for having, in September of the same year, accidentally encountered a detachment of the Spanish army at Zutphen, he received a wound, which in a few weeks proved mortal. As he was carried from the field, a well-known incident occurred, by which the generosity of his nature was strongly displayed. Being overcome with thirst from excessive bleeding and fatigue, he called for water, which was accordingly brought to him. At the moment he was lifting it to his mouth, a poor soldier was carried by, desperately wounded, who fixed his eyes eagerly on the cup. Sidney, observing this, instantly delivered the beverage to him, saying, 'Thy necessity is yet greater ford, and Cambridge, displayed remarkable acuteness than mine.' His death, which took place on the of intellect and craving for knowledge. After spending 19th of October 1586, at the early age of thirty-two, . three years on the continent, he returned to England was deeply and extensively lamented, both at home in 1575, and became one of the brightest ornaments of and abroad. His bravery and chivalrous magnathe court of Elizabeth, in whose favour he stood very nimity-his grace and polish of manner-the purity high. In the year 1580, his mind having been of his morals-his learning and refinement of taste ruffled in a quarrel with the Earl of Oxford, he retired-had procured for him love and esteem wherever in search of tranquillity to the seat of his brotherin-law, the Earl of Pembroke, at Wilton, and there occasionally employed himself in composing the work above-mentioned, a heroic romance, to which, as it was written chiefly for his sister's amusement, he gave the title of The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.

Sidney.

he was known. By the direction of Elizabeth, his remains were conveyed to London, and honoured with a public funeral in the cathedral of St Paul's.

Of the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney we have spoken in a former page. It is almost exclusively as a prose writer that he deserves to be prominently men.

'Mr Molyneux-Few words are best. My letters to my father have come to the eyes of some. Neither can I condemn any but you for it. If it be so, you have played the very knave with me; and so I will make you know, if I have good proof of it. But that for so much as is past. For that is to come, I assure you before God, that if ever I know you do so much as read any letter I write to my father, without his commandment, or my consent, I will thrust my dagger into you. And trust to it, for I speak it in earnest. In the mean time, farewell.'

Of the following extracts, three are from Sidney's Arcadia,' and the fourth from his 'Defence of Poesy.'

[A Tempest.]

tioned in a history of English Literature; and in judging of his merits, we ought to bear in mind the early age at which he was cut off. His 'Arcadia,' on which the chief portion of his fame undoubtedly rests, was so universally read and admired in the reigns of Elizabeth and her successor, that, in 1633, it had reached an eighth edition. Subsequently, however, it fell into comparative neglect, in which, during the last century, the contemptuous terms in which it was spoken of by Horace Walpole contributed not a little to keep it. By that writer it is characterised as 'a tedious, lamentable, pedantic, pastoral romance, which the patience of a young virgin in love cannot now wade through.' And the judgment more recently pronounced by Dr Drake,* and Mr Hazlitt, is almost equally unfavourable. On the other hand, Sidney has found a fervent admirer in There arose even with the sun a veil of dark clouds another modern writer, who highly extols the before his face, which shortly, like ink poured into 'Arcadia' in the second volume of the Retrospective water, had blacked over all the face of heaven, preReview. A middle course is steered by Dr Zouch, paring, as it were, a mournful stage for a tragedy who, in his memoirs of Sidney, published in 1808, to be played on. For, forthwith the winds began while he admits that changes in taste, manners, and to speak louder, and, as in a tumultuous kingdom, to opinions, have rendered the Arcadia' unsuitable to think themselves fittest instruments of commandmodern readers, maintains that there are passages in ment; and blowing whole storms of hail and rain this work exquisitely beautiful-useful observations upon them, they were sooner in danger than they on life and manners-a variety and accurate discri- could almost bethink themselves of change. For then mination of characters-fine sentiments, expressed in the traitorous sea began to swell in pride against the strong and adequate terms—animated descriptions, afflicted navy, under which, while the heaven favoured equal to any that occur in the ancient or modern them, it had lain so calmly; making mountains of poets-sage lessons of morality, and judicious reflec-itself, over which the tossed and tottering ship should tions on government and policy. A reader,' he con- climb, to be straight carried down again to a pit of tinues, who takes up the volume, may be compared hellish darkness, with such cruel blows against the to a traveller who has a long and dreary road to sides of the ship, that, which way soever it went, was pass. The objects that successively meet his eye still in his malice, that there was left neither power to may not in general be very pleasing, but occa- stay nor way to escape. And shortly had it so dissionally he is charmed with a more beautiful pro- severed the loving company, which the day before had spect-with the verdure of a rich valley-with a tarried together, that most of them never met again, meadow enamelled with flowers-with a murmur of but were swallowed up in his never-satisfied mouth. a rivulet-the swelling grove-the hanging rockthe splendid villa. These charming objects abundantly compensate for the joy less regions he has traversed. They fill him with delight, exhilarate his There were hills which garnished their proud drooping spirits and at the decline of day, he reposes heights with stately trees; humble valleys, whose base with complacency and satisfaction.' This represen- estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver tation we are inclined to regard as doing at least rivers; meadows, enamelled with all sorts of eyeample justice to the Arcadia, the former high popu-pleasing flowers; thickets, which being lined with larity of which is, doubtless, in some degree attributable to the personal fame of its author, and to the scarcity of works of fiction in the days of Elizabeth. But to whatever causes the admiration with which it was received may be ascribed, there can hardly, we think, be a question, that a work so extensively perused must have contributed not a little to fix the English tongue, and to form that vigorous and imaginative style which characterises the literature of the beginning and middle of the seventeenth century. Notwithstanding the occasional over-inflation and pedantry of his style, Sidney may justly be regarded as the best prose writer of his time. He was, in truth, what Cowper felicitously calls him, a 'warbler of poetic prose.'

In his personal character, Sidney, like most men of high sensibility and poetical feeling, showed a disposition to melancholy and solitude. His chief fault seems to have been impetuosity of temper, an illustration of which has already been quoted from his reply to 'Leicester's Commonwealth.' The same trait appears in the following letter (containing what proved to be a groundless accusation), which he wrote in 1578 to the secretary of his father, then lord deputy of Ireland.

* Essays Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, &c., ii. 9. † Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 263,

[Description of Arcadia.]

most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to, by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep, feeding with sober security; while the pretty lambs, with bleating oratory, craved the dam's comfort; here a shepherd's boy piping, as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal singing; and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice-music.

[A Stag Hunt.]

Then went they together abroad, the good Kalander well he loved the sport of hunting when he was a entertaining them with pleasant discoursing-how disdained all chamber-delights, that the sun (how young man, how much in the comparison thereof he great a journey soever he had to make) could never prevent him with earliness, nor the moon, with her sober countenance, dissuade him from watching till midnight for the deers feeding. O, said he, you will breath with exercise, and in heart with joyfulness; never live to my age, without you keep yourself in too much thinking doth consume the spirits; and oft it falls out, that, while one thinks too much of his doing, he leaves to do the effect of his thinking. Then spared he not to remember, how much Arcadia was changed since his youth; activity and good fellowship being nothing in the price it was then held in ; but, according to the nature of the old-growing world.

tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner; and pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; some things, by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste; which, if one should begin to tell them the nature of the aloes or rhubarbarum they should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears than their mouth. So is it in men (most of whom are childish in the best things, till they be cradled in their graves). Glad they will be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, Æneas; and hearing them, must needs hear the right description of wisdom, valour, and justice; which, if they had been barely (that is to say, philosophically) set out, they would swear they be brought to school again.

LORD BURLEIGH.

still worse and worse. Then would he tell them stories of such gallants as he had known; and, with pleasant company, beguiled the time's haste, and shortened the way's length, till they came to the side of the wood, where the hounds were in couples, stay-even as the child is often brought to take most wholeing their coming, but with a whining accent craving liberty; many of them in colour and marks so resembling, that it showed they were of one kind. The huntsmen handsomely attired in their green liveries, as though they were children of summer, with staves in their hands to beat the guiltless earth, when the hounds were at a fault; and with horns about their necks, to sound an alarm upon a silly fugitive; the hounds were straight uncoupled, and ere long the stag thought it better to trust to the nimbleness of his feet than to the slender fortification of his lodging; but even his feet betrayed him; for, howsoever they went, they themselves uttered themselves to the scent of their enemies, who, one taking it of another, and sometimes believing the wind's advertisements, sometimes the view of (their faithful counsellors) the huntsmen, with open mouths, then denounced war, when the war was already begun. Their cry being composed of so well-sorted mouths, that any man would perceive therein some kind of proportion, but the skilful woodmen did find a music. Then delight and variety of opinion drew the horsemen sundry ways, yet cheering their hounds voice and horn, kept still, as it were, together. The wood seemed to conspire with them against his own citizens, dispersing their noise through all his quarters; and even the nymph Echo left to bewail the loss of Narcissus, and became a hunter. But the stag was in the end so hotly pursued, that, leaving his flight, he was driven to make courage of despair; and so turning his head, made the hounds, with change of speech, to testify that he was at a bay: as if from hot pursuit of their enemy, they were suddenly come to a parley.

[Praise of Poetry.]

Another of the favourites of Queen Elizabeth was WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURLEIGH, whɔ, for forty years, ably and faithfully served her in the capacity of secretary of state. He died in 1598, at the age of seventy-six. As a minister, this celebrated individual was distinguished for wariness, application, sagacity, calmness, and a degree of closewithness which sometimes degenerated into hypocrisy. Most of these qualities character'sed also what is, properly speaking, his sole literary production; namely, Precepts or Directions for the Well Ordering and Carriage of a Man's Life. These precepts were addressed to his son, Robert Cecil, afterwards Earl of Salisbury. Some of them are here subjoined.

The philosopher showeth you the way, he informeth you of the particularities, as well of the tediousness of the way, as of the pleasant lodging you shall have when your journey is ended, as of the many bye-turnings that may divert you from your way; but this is to no man, but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive studious painfulness; which constant desire whosoever hath in him, hath already passed half the hardness of the way, and therefore is beholden to the philosopher but for the other half. Nay, truly, learned men have learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much overmastered passion, as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each man hath in itself is as good as a philosopher's book; since in nature we know it is well to do well, and what is well and what is evil, although not in the words of art which philosophers bestow upon us; for out of natural conceit the philosophers drew it. But to be moved to do that which we know, or to be moved with desire to know, hoc opus hic labor est'-[' this is the grand difficulty.']

[Choice of a Wife.]

When it shall please God to bring thee to man's estate, use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all thy future good or evil. And it is an action of life, like unto a stratagem of war; wherein a man can err but once. If thy estate be good, match near home and at leisure; if weak, far off and quickly. Inquire diligently of her disposition, and how her parents have been inclined in their youth. Let her not be poor, how generous soever. For a man can buy nothing in the market with gentility. Nor choose a base and uncomely creature altogether for wealth; for it will cause contempt in others, and loathing in thee. Neither make choice of a dwarf, or a fool; for, by the one thou shalt beget a race of pigmies; the other will be thy continual disgrace, and it will yirke thee to hear her talk. For thou shalt find it, to thy great grief, that there is nothing more fulsome than a she-fool.

[Domestic Economy.]

And touching the guiding of thy house, let thy hospitality be moderate, and, according to the means of thy estate, rather plentiful than sparing, but not costly. For I never knew any man grow poor by keeping an orderly table. But some consume themselves through secret vices, and their hospitality bears the blame. But banish swinish drunkards out of thine house, which is a vice impairing health, consuming much, and makes no show. I never heard praise ascribed to the drunkard, but for the well-bearing of his drink; which is a better commendation for a brewer's horse or a drayman, than for either a gentleman or a serving-man. Beware thou spend not above three of four parts of thy revenues; nor above a third part of that in thy house. For the other two parts

Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first, give you a cluster of grapes; that, full of that taste, you may long to pass farther. He beginneth not with obscure definitions; which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness; but he cometh to you with words set in delight-will do no more than defray thy extraordinaries, which ful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well enchanting skill of music; and with a

1 Well-born.