In a letter, written about this time to his brother Robert, upon his travels, he assures him with fraternal cordiality of his readiness to supply him with money; exhorts him to exercise his greatest expense, when he is in Italy, upon worthy men, not upon his domestic establishment; to look to his diet, to hold up his heart in courage and virtue, and to cultivate the friendship of Mr. (afterward Sir Henry) Savile, and Mr. Alexander Nevyle, two young persons of high birth and great expectancies: and after advising him to treasure up in a common-place book whatever is worthy of his notice in the course of his reading, "be it witty words of which Tacitus is full, sentences of which Livy, or similitudes whereof Plutarch," he proceeds; "My dear brother, take delight in the mathematical. Mr. Savile is excellent in them.-Arithmetic and geometry I would wish you well seen in, so as both in matter of number, and measure, you might have a feeling and active judgement. He concludes with recommending him "to keep and increase his music," and to "let no day pass without an hour or two in playing at weapons. The rest," he adds, "study and confer diligently, and so shall you come home to my comfort and credit."

to bring discredit upon that publication-the biographers both of Milton and Sidney, with reference as well to the pettiness of the object contemplated, as to the integrity of the characters supposed to be concerned, indignantly disbelieve. "This calumny however (says the former) was revived by the infamous Lauder, admitted by Lauder's friend and co-adjutor Dr. Johnson, and only faintly and timidly denied by the last compiler of Milton's Life, Mr. Todd." (Life of Milton, Ed. 2d. pp. 329, 330.)

* These exhortations were not ineffectual. Mr. Robert

In 1579, Don Antonio, one of the seven pretenders to the throne of Portugal, which had become vacant by the demise of Henry V., invited Mr. Sidney to his assistance; adding, " Though many more should join me, if I did not see you in the company, I should say, 'My numbers are not complete."" But the Queen discountenancing his claims, the application was unsuccessful: and the kingdom in dispute fell a prize to Philip II. of Spain, remaining in subjection to that power till 1640, when John Duke of Braganza was elected King by the Portuguese.

At this time, he represented his native county inparliament. In 1581, he was one of the four* who, upon the arrival of the Duke of Anjou in England with a renewed proffer of his hand, challenged all comers at the tourney held at Westminster. In the

Sidney engaged the affection and attention of Languet, was placed by him at Strasburg under able preceptors in the house of Sturmius, the Cicero of Germany and the friend of Ascham; and, after displaying much talent and prudence in different negotiations, was, for his gallant behaviour at Zutphen, knighted by the Earl of Leicester in 1586. On the accession of James I. he was created Baron Sidney of Penshurst, two years afterward Viscount L'Isle, and in 1618 Earl of Leicester. Of his truly paternal care of his children Ben Jonson says, in his 'Forest,'

"They are and have been taught religion: there
Their gentler spirits have suck'd innocence.
Each morn and even they are taught to pray
With the whole household; and may every day
Read, in their virtuous parents' noble parts,
The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts."

His brethren in arms were, the Earl of Arundel, Lord Windsor, and Mr. Fulke Greville. The Queen's suspicious and unpardonable fluctuation, which alarmed her ministry and finally jilted her lover, is well detailed by Dr. Zouch.

February following he with Lords Leicester, Hunsdon, Howard, and others of the nobility, Sir Walter Ralegh, &c. by the Queen's command, attended the rejected Prince to Antwerp (" she loth to let him go, and he as loth to depart") where he assumed the sovereignty over the States, amidst the acclamations of his new subjects.

In the same year, likewise, died Languet, who having accompanied Prince Casimir on his visit to England, principally in order to gratify himself with a sight of that plant which he had so carefully. nurtured, asserted in one of his letters to the Elector of Saxony, in terms confirmed by all subsequent experience, that "the English were by far the happiest nation in Christendom."*

* Doluerunt, says M. Du Plessis de Mornay (in the address prefixed to his Latin version of his Treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion') tanti viri obitum, qui noverant, omnes. Ego, quem unicè venerabar, parentis loco unicè deflevi.-Nôsse debent omnes, qui omnium utilitati, si quis unquam, consuluit ; debent præsertim posteri, quorum nemo studiosior vixit. Dicam quod sentio; et verò quod res est. Certavit in hoc viro cum pietate doctrina, cum conscientiâ scientia, cum naturâ ars, cum discipliná rerum usus. Nemini mundus meliùs cognitus. Ex mundi perlustratione unum didicerat mundi contemptum. Nemini etiam mores hominum magis pervii: in tam multiplici interim cognitione, tantam morum simplicitatem nemo non mirabatur. Ne pluribus -is fuit Languetus, quales plerique videri volunt; is vixit, quales optimi mori cupiunt; et porrò vitam optimè actam mors optima, mors placidissima, mors in Christo beatissima et beatissimæ vitæ proxima, laude et gloriâ coronavit. His death was bewailed by Erasmus, Buchanan, Melanchthon, Thuanus, Ger. Vossius, and Joach. Camerarius, the most distinguished ornaments of the sixteenth century. To him (in common with Beza, Du Plessis, and Hottoman) has been ascribed the celebrated anti-monarchical work Bruti (Stephani Junii) Vindicia contra tyran

About this time appeared his ingenious Tractate, entitled The Defence of Poesy;* evincing at once the erudition, the judgement, and the taste of it's author, in language the most unaffected and abounding with the happiest classical allusions. His

nos, &c.' When it was objected to him that, without assigning any of his leisure to mere amusement, he turned from the public business of his office to the pursuits of learning, he used to reply with Cicero, Me autem quid pudeat, qui tot annos ita vivo, Judices, ut ab nullius unquam me tempore aut commodum aut otium meum abstraxerit, aut voluptas avocârit, aut denique somnus retardárit? Quare quis tandem ne reprehendat, aut quis mihi jure succenseat, si quantum cæteris ad suas res obeundas, quantum ad festos dies ludorum celebrandos, quantum ad alias voluptates et ad ipsam requiem animi et corporis conceditur temporis; quantum alii tribuunt tempestivis conviviis, quantum denique alex, quantum pile-tantum mihi egomet ad hæc studia recolenda sumpsero. The commendations, which such a man bestowed upon Sidney's Letters, affirming that the longest always pleased him the most,' may well be opposed to the adverse criticism of Lord Orford, who appears not even to have known the existence of the Defence of Poesy'! (Epist. LXI.)

* See the Specimens subjoined to the Life. To this production allusion is made in the subjoined lines from the Cambridge Luctus upon the death of it's author:

Te Musa excoluit, finxit tibi pectora Virtus,
O decus, ô patriæ stella (Philippe) tuæ.
Quid Musis poteras, docuit DEFENSIO MUSE,
ARCADIE docuit fabrica texta nova.

Thee, Sidney, England's grace and guiding star,
Each Muse, each Virtue made her constant care.
Thy Muse's power let her DEFENCE express,
And new ARCADIA in it's storied dress.

F. W.

At this period was dedicated to him an English version of a Treatise De Re Militari,' the work of the Spaniard Luis Gutierres de la Vega, by Nicholas Litchfield.

precise statement of the laws of the drama, his just commendations of the transcendent worth of the Psalms, his panegyric upon lyric poetry and our bards of "the old time," and his successful repulse of the Puritans, those avowed enemies of all literature, who pronounced poets the caterpillars of the commonwealth,' deserve especial attention. For this labour, indeed, he was admirably qualified by his accurate perusal of the best Latin and Italian commentators on Aristotle's Poetic.

In 1582, upon the appointment of his uncle the Earl of Warwick to the Mastership of the Ordnance, with that nobleman's concurrence and (as he himself states, in his letter)" her Majesty yielding gracious hearing," he solicited the interest of Lord Burghley to be associated with him in that office. But the application proved fruitless.

A second treaty of wedlock between Sidney and Penelope, the daughter of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, which had been for some years negotiated, failing of success,* in 1583 he married Frances, the only surviving child of Sir Francis Walsingham, a young lady of great worth and beauty, to whom Jonson soon afterward addressed the following lines:

TO MRS. PHILIP SIDNEY.

'I must believe some miracles still be,

When Sidney's name I hear, or face I see:
For Cupid, who at first took vain delight
In mere out-forms, until he lost his sight,

This lady married Robert Lord Rich, subsequently (in 1618) created Earl of Warwick; a man said to have been extremely rough in his manners and conversation. Languet had often, it appears, pressed his friend to enter into the married state.