defends the usefulness of poetry: it furnishes speaking pictures of virtue more perfect than even history can show; to make vice attractive is the abuse and not the use of poetry. To those that accuse poets of lying, he ingeniously answers that they affirm nothing as true, and therefore cannot lie.

an

His criticisms of existing English poetry show a fine taste. He objects to outrageous infraction of the unities (see p. 209); to violent mixture of serious and comic-"your mongrel tragicomedy;"-and to making ridicule of human weakness, of " extreme show of doltishness," or of "strangers because they speak not English as we do." He objects also to Lyly's surfeit of similitudes, accusing him of "rifling up all Herbarists, all stories of Beasts, Fowls, and Fishes," which, he says, is "an absurd surfeit to the ears," "rather overswaying the memory than any whit informing the judgment."

ELEMENTS OF STYLE.

Vocabulary. - "It is marvellous," says Mr William Stigant, author of an essay on Sidney in the Cambridge Essays' for 1858, "with what a delicate tact he had divined the capacity of the English language for prose composition, and how few obsolete words he has made use of, writing in advance of the great Elizabethan epoch. He reads indeed more modern than any author of that century." Sidney escapes free from Thomas Wilson's censure; his terms are neither French, nor Italianate, nor inkhorn words of Latin origin. The idiom, too, is purely English: he differs but seldom from modern idiom, and then from using English idioms that have become obsolete, not from any affectation of foreign syntax.

As a master of the living English of his time, he must rank among the highest. Even to modern readers his diction is rich and varied; the fitting word is chosen with an apparent ease that implies a great power over the language.

Sentences. Nathan Drake's criticisms of Sidney's style as "nerveless and incompact," can apply only to the sentences. The component clauses are framed with great versatility, sometimes with a rich long-drawn melody, sometimes with pointed neatness, sometimes with proverbial conciseness. In putting the clauses together, he is certainly careless. He does not, like Jeremy Taylor, pour them out breathlessly without any syntax whatever, but he rambles on without much regard to unity, or to the symmetrical distribution of his matter. In our various quotations, the reader will see his ordinary sentences; the following is a specimen of his worst form :

"The country Arcadia among all the provinces of Greece, hath ever been had in singular reputation; partly for the sweetness of the air, and other natural benefits, but principally for the well-tempered minds of the people, who (finding that the shining title of glory, so much affected by other nations, doth indeed help little to the happiness of life) are the only people, which, as by their justice and providence give neither cause nor hope to their neighbours to annoy; so are they not stirred with false praise to trouble others' quiet, thinking it a small reward for the wasting of their own lives in ravening, that their posterity should long after say, they had done so."

Paragraphs. Our author's paragraph arrangement is very irreg ular, though not worse than the average of his time. Sometimes, when he ought to begin a new paragraph, he does not even begin a new sentence. The following passage is an example of his want of strict method:

Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight; of this have been three several kinds. The chief, both in antiquity and excellency, were they that did imitate the inconceivable excellencies of God. Such were, David in his Psalms; Solomon in his Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs; Moses and Deborah in their hymns, and the writer of Job; which, beside other, the learned Emanuel Tremilius and Franciscus Junius do entitle the poetical part of the Scripture. Against these none will speak that hath the Holy Ghost in due holy

reverence.

"In this kind, though in a wrong divinity, were Orpheus, Amphion, Homer in his hymns, and many other, both Greeks and Romans; and this Poesy must be used, by whosoever will follow S. James his counsel, in singing Psalms when they are merry; and I know is used with the fruit of comfort by some, when in sorrowful pangs of their death-bringing sins, they find the consolation of the never-leaving goodness.

"The second kind is of them that deal with matters philosophical; either moral, as, &c. : which who mislike, the fault is in their judgments quite out of taste, and not in the sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge. But because this second sort is wrapped within the fold of the proposed subject, and takes not the course of his own invention, whether they be properly Poets or no, let Grammarians dispute: and go to the third, indeed right Poets, of whom," &c.

Minor niceties, of course, we need not look for. It is, however, interesting to meet the following example of a set comparison, where the order of the balance is better kept than in some of the celebrated later efforts after the same plan. He is describing "the two daughters of King Basilius, so beyond measure excellent in all the gifts allotted to reasonable creatures, that we may think they were born to show that nature is no step-mother to that sex, how much soever some men (sharp-witted only in evil-speaking) have sought to disgrace them:"

"The elder is named Pamela; by many men not deemed inferior to her sister for my part, when I marked them both, methought there was (if at least such perfections may receive the name of more) more sweetness in

Philoclea, but more majesty in Pamela. Methought love played in Philoclea's eyes, and threatened in Pamela's: methought Philoclea's beauty only persuaded, but so persuaded as all hearts must yield. Pamela's beauty used violence, and such violence as no heart could resist. And it seems that such proportion is between their minds; Philoclea so bashful, as if her excellencies had stolen into her before she was aware; so humble that she will put all pride out of countenance; in sum, such proceeding as will stir hope, but teach hope good manners. Pamela of high thoughts, who avoids not pride with not knowing her excellencies, but by making that one of her excellencies to be void of pride; her mother's wisdom, greatness, nobility, but (if I guess aright) knit with a more constant temper."

Figures. Sidney is wholly free from what he condemns in Lyly -excess of similes and parallels. He makes comparatively few formal similitudes. Some of those that he does make are singularly apt. The saying that Chevy Chase "moved him like the sound of a trumpet," is as familiar as any of Shakspeare's. Another similitude borrowed or stolen from him is scarcely less famous. A combat between two of his heroes he describes as being like a battle between a Spanish galleon and an English man-of-war. The figure is well known as applied by Fuller to Ben Jonson and Shakspeare.

While comparatively free from gaudy and fantastic embellishments, one of the worst vices of the Elizabethan style, he is not a plain writer. His peculiar affectation consists in an excessive use of fanciful personifications and fanciful antitheses; fancies usually sweet and graceful, and palling only from overmuch repetition. We touched on this in the brief account of his character; we shall find abundant examples in the quotations that follow. When the subject-matter is beautiful and pleasing, these graceful fancies are an additional charm; when the subject is grave or lofty, they are inharmonious and out of place.

Perhaps the most pleasing use of his personifications is in the description of nature. He often expresses the time of the day euphemistically. For example: "About the time that the candles began to inherit the sun's office;" "seeing the day begin to disclose her comfortable beauties;" "as soon as the morning had took a full possession of the element;" and suchlike. In describing landscape, he follows no descriptive method; merely overlaying the various particulars of a scene with his "flowers of poetry," "sugared" epithets, and pleasing figurative conceits. Thus he describes how Musidorus and Clitophon came to "a pleasant valley, on either side of which high hills lifted up their beetle brows, as if they would overlook the pleasantness of the under prospect." And how "they laid them down hard by the murmuring music of certain waters, which spouted out of the side of the hills, and in the bottom of the valley made of many springs a pretty brook, like a commonwealth of many families.'

The following longer passage is really an example of his favourite figures, rather than an illustration of any descriptive

art:

"It was indeed a place of delight; for through the midst of it there ran a sweet brook, which did both hold the eye open with her azure streams, and yet seek to close the eye with the purling noise it made upon the pebble stones it ran over: the field itself being set in some places with roses, and in all the rest constantly preserving a flourishing green: the roses added such a ruddy show unto it, as though the field were bashful at his own beauty about it, as if it had been to enclose a theatre, grew such sort of trees, as either excellency of fruit, stateliness of growth, continual greenness, or poetical fancies, have made at any time famous. In most part of which there had been framed by art such pleasant arbours, that, one answering another, they became a gallery aloft from tree to tree almost round about, which below gave a perfect shadow; a pleasant refuge then from the choleric look of Phoebus."

QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Simplicity and Clearness.-Sidney's style, as we have said, is free alike from the "inkhorn" technical words of the learned pedant, and from the French and "Italianate" words of the travelled man of fashion. His meaning is also less cumbered and interrupted with superfluous quotations than was common at the time.

The order of topics in the Apology shows little sense of the value of good arrangement. There is a kind of rough method on the large scale. He first sets out the true nature and value of poetry, then answers objections, and concludes with a criticism of existing poetry. But within these divisions he jumps from one thing to another without restraint.

Precision in the use of words was little attended to till much later in the history of our language.

Strength.-The Arcadia' being a chivalrous romance, is an excellent field for a powerful style. In the imagination of thrilling adventures, reckless braving of danger, exploits of superhuman heroism, our author shows a keen enjoyment of vigorous action. Musidorus and Pyrocles perform the most wonderful achievements leading armies, quelling tumults, fighting single combats, passing from chains and imprisonment to victorious command, achievements well fitted to exercise the highest powers of vigorous narrative and description.

We have seen (p. 199) how this stirring and imposing activity is qualified and softened down. Partly there is a large admixture of gentler elements in the plot, the exploits being for the most part either done at the instigation of love, or recited to gratify the curiosity of fair hearers. But what we are concerned with here is not so much the subject-matter as the manner of presentation. As already noted incidentally, Sidney's style is deliberately the reverse

of exciting or elevating. Whether he is reciting grim deeds of battle, or describing the most terrific phenomena of nature, he tempers the account with soft and humorous fancies. He wrote the Arcadia' more to amuse himself and his sister than to set forth thrilling and heroic incidents in their appropriate language. The following are two examples of his treatment of exciting themes. The manner as a whole would not be tolerated in the present age, and even as a relic of antiquity will hardly be enjoyed if read as a serious effort. We must keep in mind that the youthful knight wrote for the entertainment of his sister and her lady friends; and that, with all his softness and courtesy, he took pleasure in occasionally shocking his gentle readers with somewhat grim humour :

"But by this time there had been a furious meeting of either side: where after the terrible salutation of warlike noise, the shaking of hands was with sharp weapons; some lances, according to the metal they met and skill of the guider, did stain themselves in blood; some flew up in pieces, as if they would threaten heaven because they failed on earth. But their office was quickly inherited, either by (the prince of weapons) the sword, or by some heavy mace, or biting axe; which hunting still the weakest chace, sought ever to light there where smallest resistance might worse prevent mischief. The clashing of armour, and crushing of staves, the justling of bodies, the resounding of blows, was the first part of that ill-agreeing musick, which was beautified with the grisliness of wounds, the rising of dust, the hideous falls and the groans of the dying. The very horses angry in their master's anger, with love and obedience, brought forth the effects of hate and resistance, and with minds of servitude did as if they affected glory. Some lay dead under their dead masters, whom unknightly wounds had unjustly punished for a faithful duty. Some lay upon their lords by like accident, and in death had the honour to be borne by them, whom in life they had borne. Some having lost their commanding burthens, ran scattered about the field, abashed with the madness of mankind. The earth itself (wont to be a burial of men) was now, as it were, buried with men: so was the face thereof hidden with dead bodies, to whom death had come masked in divers manners. In one place lay disinherited heads dispossessed of their natural seignories; in another, whole bodies to see to, but that their hearts wont to be bound all over so close, were now, with deadly violence, opened: in others, fouler deaths had uglily displayed their trailing guts. There lay arms, whose fingers yet moved, as if they would feel for him that made them feel; and legs which, contrary to common reason, by being discharged of their burthen, were grown heavier. But no sword payed so large a tribute of souls to the eternal kingdom as that of Amphialus; who, like a tiger from whom a company of wolves did seek to ravish a new-gotten prey, so he (remembering they came to take away Philoclea) did labour to make valour, strength, choler, and hatred to answer the proportion of his love, which was infinite."

"But by that the next morning began a little to make a gilded show of a good meaning, there arose even with the sun, a vail of dark clouds before his face, which shortly, like ink poured into water, had blacked over all the face of heaven; preparing as it were a mournful stage for a tragedy to be played For forthwith the winds began to speak louder, and as in a tumultuous kingdom, to think themselves fittest instruments of commandment; and

on.