time he cultivated the acquaintance of persons eminent for their knowledge of geography and maritime history. On his return from France in 1588, Sir Walter Raleigh appointed him one of the society of counsellors, assistants, and adventurers, to whom he assigned his patent for the prosecution of discoveries in America. He was in 1590 made rector of Wetheringsett, in Suffolk; was prebendary and archdeacon of Westminster, and chaplain of the Savoy; and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1582 and 1584 he had published two small collections of voyages to America; but these are included in a much larger work in three volumes, which he published in 1599, entitled The Principall Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, at any Time within the Compass of these 1500 Years. In the first volume are contained voyages to the north and north-east; the true state of Iceland; the defeat of the Spanish Armada; the expedition under the Earl of Essex to Cadiz, &c. In the second he relates voyages to the south and south-east; and in the third, expeditions to North America, the West Indies, and round the world. Narratives are given of nearly two hundred and twenty voyages, besides many relative documents, such as patents, instructions, and letters. To this collection all the subsequent compilers in this department have been largely indebted. In the preliminary essay on the history of navigation prefixed to Churchill's Collection of Voyages, of which John Locke was—on doubtful grounds-said to be the author (though he certainly helped in collecting the material), Hakluyt's collection is spoken of as 'valuable for the good there to be picked out but it might be wished the author had been less voluminous, delivering what was really authentic and useful, and not stuffing his work with so many stories taken upon trust, so many trading voyages that have nothing new in them, so many warlike exploits not at all pertinent to his undertaking, and such a multitude of articles, charters, privileges, letters, relations, and other things little to the purpose of travels and discoveries.' These documentary authentications would now be thought in nowise irrelevant or out of place in such a work. And when Froude called Hakluyt's Navigations 'the prose epic of the modern English nation,' he was probably rejoicing as much in these same warlike exploits the philosophical editor disapproved as in the more purely exploratory adventures. The poetry of this epic, it should be added, lies rather in the facts themselves than in any creative effort of Hakluyt's. For he keeps himself studiously in the background, and wrote little in his own name; though he could, and did, write admirably-witness his preface; and doubtless many of the narratives he professes to give in the writers' words owe much to his editorial pen, systematising and abridging in his own excellent

English. He issued a second edition in 15981600. A new edition (5 vols., 4to, 1809-12) containing a supplement of tales collected by Hakluyt was added. He translated French voyages to Florida, and, from the Portuguese, the travels of Ferdinand de Soto, in what was then called Virginia. His papers came into the hands of Purchas, and were used for the Pilgrims; and the Hakluyt Society was founded in 1846 for publishing the records of early voyages and travels. Like most English historical writers of the time, Hakluyt begins his Navigations with a few fables, in sharp contrast to the conscientiously realistic and authentic records of which all but the first two or three voyages consist. The first, unhappily, is a purely mythical 'Voyage of Arthur, King of Britaine, to Island and the most northeastern parts of Europe, Anno 517,' taken, like the second, the voyage of Malgo, an even lessknown British king, from Geoffrey of Monmouth and other Latin chroniclers. Real history begins in the fourth and fifth with stories from Bede. Octher's (Ohthere's, see page 20) is the fifth voyage. The following is part of Hakluyt's own preface :

For (to conteine myselfe onely within the bounds of this present discourse, and in the midst thereof to begin) wil it not in all posteritie be as great a renowme unto our English nation, to have bene the first discoverers of a Sea beyond the North cape (never certainly knowen before) and of a convenient passage into the huge Empire of Russia by the bay of S. Nicholas and the river of Duina, as for the Portugales to have found a Sea beyond the Cape of Buona Esperanza, and so consequently a passage by Sea into the East Indies; or for the Italians and Spaniards to have discovered unknowen landes so many hundred leagues Westward and Southwestward of the streits of Gibraltar, & of the pillers of Hercules? Be it granted that the renowmed Portugale Vasques de Gama traversed the maine Ocean Southward of Africke: Did not Richard Chanceler and his mates performe the like Northward of Europe? Suppose that Columbus that noble and high-spirited Genuois escried unknowen landes to the Westward of Europe and Africke Did not the valiant English knight sir Hugh Willoughby; did not the famous Pilots Stephen Burrough, Arthur Pet, and Charles Jackman accoast Nova Zembla, Colgoieve, and Vaigatz to the North of Europe and Asia? Howbeit you will say perhaps, not with the like golden successe, not with such deductions of Colonies, nor attaining of conquests. True it is that our successe hath not bene correspondent unto theirs: yet in this our attempt the uncertaintie of finding was farre greater, and the difficultie and danger of searching was no whit lesse. For hath not Herodotus (a man for his time, most skilfull and judicial in Cosmographie, who writ above 2000 yeeres ago) in his 4. booke called Melpomene, signified unto the Portugales in plaine termes, that Africa, except the small Isthmus between the Arabian gulfe and the Mediterran sea, was on all sides environed with the Ocean? And for the further confirmation thereof, doth he not make mention of one Neco an Egyptian King, who (for trials sake) sent a fleet of Phoenicians downe the Red sea; who setting forth in Autumne and sailing Southward till they had the Sunne at noonetide upon

their sterbourd (that is to say, having crossed the Æquinoctial and the Southerne tropique) after a long navigation, directed their course to the North, and in the space of 3 yeeres environed all Africk, passing home through the Gaditan streites, and arriving in Ægypt? And doth not Plinie tel them that Noble Hanno, in the flourishing time and estate of Carthage, sailed from Gades in Spaine to the coast of Arabia Fœlix, and put downe his whole journal in writing? Doth he not make mention that in the time of Augustus Cæsar, the wracke of certaine Spanish ships was found floating in the Arabian gulfe? And, not to be over tedious in alleaging of testimonies, doth not Strabo in the 2. booke of his Geography, together with Cornelius Nepos and Plinie in the place beforenamed, agree all in one, that one Eudoxus fleeing from king Lathyrus, and valing [dropping] downe the Arabian bay, sailed along, doubled the Southern point of Africk, and at length arrived at Gades? And what should I speake of the Spaniards? Was not divine Plato (who lived so many ages ago, and plainely described their West Indies under the name of Atlantis) was not he (I say) instead of a Cosmographer unto them? Were not those Carthaginians mentioned by Aristotle lib. de admirabil. auscult. their forerunners? And had they not Columbus to stirre them up, and pricke them forward unto their Westerne discoveries; yea, to be their chiefe loads-man and Pilot? Sithens therefore these two worthy Nations had those bright lampes of learning (I meane the most ancient and best Philosophers, Historiographers and Geographers) to shewe them light; and the load-starre of experience (to wit those great exploits and voyages layed up in store and recorded) whereby to shape their course : what great attempt might they not presume to undertake? But alas our English nation, at the first setting foorth for their Northeasterne discovery, were either altogether destitute of such cleare lights and inducements, or if they had any inkling at all, it was as misty as they found the Northren seas, and so obscure and ambiguous, that it was meet rather to deterre them, then to give them encouragement.

But besides the foresaid uncertaintie, into what dangers and difficulties they plunged themselves, Animus meminisse horret, I tremble to recount. For first they were to expose themselves unto the rigour of the sterne and uncouth Northren seas, and to make triall of the swelling waves and boistrous winds which there commonly do surge and blow: then were they to saile by the ragged and perilous coast of Norway, to frequent the unhaunted shoares of Finmark, to double the dreadfull and misty North cape, to beare with Willoughbies land, to run along within kenning of the Countreys of Lapland and Corelia, and as it were to open and unlocke the sevenfold mouth of Duina. Moreover, in their Northeasterly Navigations, upon the seas and by the coasts of Condora, Colgoieve, Petzora, Joughoria. Samoedia, Nova Zembla, &c., and their passing and returne through the streits of Vaigats, unto what drifts of snow and mountaines of yce even in June, July, and August, unto what hideous overfals, uncertaine currents, darke mistes and fogs, and divers other fearefull inconveniences they were subject and in danger of, I wish you rather to learne out of the voyages of sir Hugh Willoughbie, Stephen Burrough, Arthur Pet and the rest, then to expect in this place an endlesse catalogue thereof. And here by the way I cannot but highly commend the great industry and magnanimity of the Hollanders, who within these few yeeres have dis

covered to 78. yea (as themselves affirme) to 81. degrees of Northerly latitude: yet with this proviso; that our English nation led them the dance, brake the yce before them, and gave them good leave to light their candle at our torch. But nowe it is high time for us to weigh our ancre, to hoise up our sailes, to get cleare of these boistrous, frosty, and misty seas, and with all speede to direct our course for the milde, lightsome, temperate, and warme Atlantick Ocean, over which the Spaniards and Portugales have made so many pleasant prosperous and golden voyages. And albeit I cannot deny, that both of them in their East and West Indian Navigations have indured many tempests, dangers, and shipwracks: yet this dare I boldly affirme; first that a great number of them have satisfied their fame-thirsty and gold-thirsty mindes with that reputation and wealth, which made all perils and misadventures seeme tolerable unto them; and secondly, that their first attempts (which in this comparison I doe onely stand upon) were no whit more difficult and dangerous then ours to the Northeast. For admit that the way was much longer, yet was it never barred with ice, mist, or darknes, but was at all seasons of the yeere open and Navigable; yea and that for the most part with fortunate and fit gales of winde.

The following is a brief specimen of the warlike and non-geographical stories the Churchills' editor disapproved :

The 26 of July 1592, in my returning out of Barbary in the ship called the Amity of London, being in the height of 36 degrees or thereabout, at foure of the clocke in the morning we had sight of two shippes, being distant from us about three or foure leagues: by seven of the clocke we fetched them up, and were within gunshot whose boldnesse, having the king of Spaines armes displayed, did make us judge them rather ships of warre, then laden with marchandise. And as it appeared by their owne speeches, they made full account to have taken us it being a question among them whether it were best to cary us to S. Lucar, or to Lisbon. We waved ech other a maine. They having placed themselves in warlike order one a cables length before another, we began the fight. In the which we continued, so fast as we were able to charge and discharge, the space of five houres, being never a cables length distant either of us from other. In which time we received divers shot both in the hull of our ship, masts, and sailes, to the number of 32 great, besides 500 musket shot and harquebuzes a crocke [large earthenware jars] at the least, which we tolde after the fight. And because we perceived them to be stout, we thought good to boord the Biscaine, which was on head the other: where lying aboord about an houre, and plying our ordinance and small shot; in the end we stowed all his men. Now the other in the flie-boat, thinking we had entred our men in their fellow, bare roome with us, meaning to have layed us aboord, and so to have intrapped us betwixt them both which we perceiving, fitted our ordinance so for him, as we quitted our selves of him, and he boorded his fellow by which meanes they both fell from us. Then presently we kept our loofe [luff], hoised our top-sailes, and weathered them, and came hard aboord the flieboat with our ordinance prepared, and gave her our whole broad side, with the which we slew divers of their men; so as we might see the blood run out at the scupper holes. After

that we cast about, and new charged all our ordinance, and came upon them againe, willing them to yeeld, or els we would sinke them: wherupon the one would have yeelded, which was shot betweene winde and water; but the other called him traitor. Unto whom we made answere, that if he would not yeeld presently also, we would sinke him first. And thereupon he understanding our determination, presently put out a white flag, and yeelded, and yet refused to strike their own sailes, for that they were sworne never to strike to any Englishman. We then commanded their captaines and masters to come aboord us; which they did. And after examination & stowing them, we sent certaine of our owne men aboord them, and strook their sailes, and manned their ships: finding in them both 126 persons living, & 8 dead, besides those which they themselves had cast overboord. So it pleased God to give us the victory being but 42 men and a boy, whereof 2 were killed and 3 wounded: for the which good successe we give God the only praise. These two rich prizes laden with 1400 chests of quicksilver with the armes of Castile and Leon fastened upon them, and with a great quantity of bulles or indulgences, and guilded Missals or Service books, with an hundred tunnes of excellent wines, we brought shortly after into the river of Thames up to Blacke-wall.

The Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles.

The sonnet is a species of lyrical poetry which the world owes to the instinct of the Italians for delicate and harmonious form. The word sonnetto gives the effect of the recurring sound of a little peal of bells, skilfully rung once to attract attention or commemorate a passing event. That the sonnet was originally an adaptation from some Provençal lyrical sequence is not doubted, but the whole essence of its merit is its conciseness and rotundity, and its escape from the loose Provençal prodigality of rhyming. The sonnet must have fourteen lines, and an exact sonnet must have five rhymes arranged according to a very precise fashion (abba abba cae cde). This precision was not known to the earliest Italian sonneteers, who, however, never varied the number of lines, and never closed with a couplet. The oldest sonnet extant is believed to be one of considerable irregularity of form, written about 1220 by Piero delle Vigne. In the next generation Guittone di Arezzo, a poet of more industry than genius, gave his attention and its final form to the sonnet. Folgore de San Geminiano, a precursor of Dante, was the first, it appears, to produce a 'cycle' of sonnets-that is, a set of consecutive pieces dealing progressively with a definite theme.

The sonnet, having thus made Italy its home, flourished there, almost unintermittently, for the next five centuries, until it became as easy for an educated Roman or Neapolitan to write a sonnet as to sign his name. Petrarch was the model of excellence to all these generations of poets, and it is to be noted that when the renaissance was complete, and so many of the medieval forms of literature were done away with, the sonnet was retained out of respect for the humanism of Petrarch. We have drawn attention on page 159

to the sonnets published in the collection which came to be known as 'Tottel's Miscellany' in 1557, in which Wyatt's and Surrey's paraphrases from Petrarch introduced the sonnet to English literature. The word 'sonnet,' however, was misunderstood, and was used for the next forty years or so, as it still is by uneducated people, to mean any lyrical poem or ballad. The French had by this time introduced several irregularities into the arrangement of the rhymes, and had invented the word 'quatorzain' to describe a poem in fourteen lines of rhymed verse, not necessarily a sonnet. We find this useful word introduced into English as early as 1582, and it is perhaps worth pointing out that the thousands of Elizabethan poems called 'sonnets' are in their vast majority merely quatorzains, and not real sonnets at all. Drayton was so conscious of this that he called his cycle of 1594 Amours in Quatorzains. That the Elizabethans were slow to comprehend the real essence of the sonnet is shown by the fact that the work which more than any other served to popularise the form in England, the Hecatompathia of Watson (1582), is composed in a form of eighteen, instead of fourteen, lines.

The fourteen-line limit, however, had been properly laid down in 1575 by Gascoigne, who, unfortunately, prescribes 'cross metre and the last two rhyming together,' heresies unknown to the Continental poets. Such rules did not affect Sir Philip Sidney, who is to be taken as the real introducer of the Petrarchan sonnet into English. As Mr Lee has said, the publication of his Astrophel and Stella gave the sonnet in England ‘a vogue that it never enjoyed before or since.' Sidney was the scholar of Petrarch in this matter; but he had a closer and more familiar relation with his own French contemporaries, especially Ronsard and Du Bellay. It has recently been put forward that Sidney owed much as a sonneteer to Desportes ; but dates make this improbable. As a matter of fact, Sidney died but a few months after Ronsard ; he is affiliated as sonneteer to the original cenacle of the Pléiade. His sonnets were probably composed about the year 1580; they were posthumously published in 1591, and immediately set the fashion for cycles of sonnets. Mr Sidney Lee, in an appendix to his learned Life of William Shakespeare, has analysed the output of sonnets in England between 1591 and 1597. The result is surprising; he estimates that during that time far more than two thousand sonnets of various kindsamatory, congratulatory, philosophical, or religious -were actually published in this country. These post-Sidneian 'sonnets' were, almost without exception, quatorzains closing in a couplet.

The influence of Desportes, if we cannot detect it in Sidney, is obvious in these later Elizabethans. In 1592 came the first flight of English sonnetsequences, with Constable's Diana and Daniel's Delia, both of them dipped in the conventional sweetness of Desportes. In 1593 the cycles of sonnets were like flights of locusts, with Barnes,

Constable, Lok, Giles Fletcher (the elder), Watson, and Lodge, whose Phillis contains some very musical, experimental measures. Among the publications of 1594 deserve mention Drayton's Idea, Percy's Calia, a curious anonymous volume entitled Zephyria, Chapman's Coronet, and Barnfield's Italianated perversity called The Affectionate Shepherd. The year 1595 was made illustrious in the sonnet world by Spenser's series of eighty-eight Amoretti; 1596 produced Griffin's Fidessa, Linche's Diella, Barnes's Divine Century, and the Chloris of William Smith. This was the culminating year of the Elizabethan sonnet, and after this the fashion began rapidly to fade away. It is to be noted that several collections of sonnets probably belong to this short period of six years (1591-97), although they were not then published. Shakespeare's Sonnets is by far the most illustrious example of this temporary suppression; but with it must be compared, and to the same period attributed, the Calica of Lord Brooke, the Aurora of Sir William Alexander (the Earl of Stirling), the love-sonnets of Campion, and a comic cycle of Gulling Sonnets by Sir John Davies.

The sonnet continued to be cultivated more fitfully after the Elizabethan age was over. John Davies of Hereford and William Browne were less successful than Drummond of Hawthornden, who went back to the rigorous Petrarchan model with considerable adroitness. Donne composed two rycies of Holy Sonnets and La Corona, which were not published until a generation later. After this the form fell into a disrepute from which it did not recover until, in Milton's hands, 'the thing became a trumpet.'

It is not to be supposed that this extraordinary manufacture of short poems, all made after the same pattern, could display much individual originality. The sonnets of Shakespeare-puzzling as they are, and formed to mystify the commentator --are at least of a most thrilling sincerity, and are inspired by an original exercise of high imagination; but if from Shakespeare to Sidney and Spenser, as sonneteers, the descent is considerable, from these latter to the general herd of cyclewriters it is immense. In the average Elizabethan sonnet we find some picturesqueness of diction, much sweetness, a tiresome abuse of pedantry, an elegance which has something affected about it, a passion so covered up with the ashes of an alembicated preciosity that it is often doubtful whether it burns at all. The monotony of the Elizabethan sonnets, their vague allusiveness, the instability and dimness of the images they evoke, do much to lessen our pleasure in reading them. Yet it must not be forgotten that, even if Sidney, Shakespeare, and Spenser were removed, there would be left a body of graceful, melodious poetry, all of which helped to give distinction to average poetic style in England, and some of which possessed positive merit of a high lyrical order.

EDMUND GOSSE.

Sir Philip Sidney seemed destined to take a very prominent part in the evolution of English poetry. In considering his work in verse, we have to recollect that at the age which Sidney had attained when he fell beneath the walls of Zutphen, Spenser had published nothing but The Shepherd's Calendar, and Shakespeare was principally known as the author of Venus and Adonis. Sidney was no less painfully working out his way through linguistic and traditional difficulties towards the open light of a perfect style; but the poisoned bullet cut short his chances of achieving a Faerie Queene or a Hamlet. When critics speak of the 'coldness' and 'affectation' of Sidney's poetry, they are forgetting the conditions under which he laboured, and are neglecting the evidence that he was rapidly surmounting those conditions. Perhaps, if the truth were known, Philip Sidney was one of the most notable 'inheritors of unfulfilled renown' the world has ever seen. He studied the art of poetry so closelyhe had such an expanding and mounting sense of its capacity-he was learning so to 'look into his heart, and write,' that everything seemed to point to his becoming one of the great English poets. That he never became; but the charm, the romantic pathos, of the imperfect verses he did write is perennial.

Sidney began to study verse at a time when the particular kind of poetry he enjoyed among the Italians and the Spaniards was unknown in England. He conceived a British variety of Petrarchan art, a species of lyrical songs and sonnets, which 'might be employed, and with how heavenly fruit, both private and public, in singing the praises of the Immortal Beauty.' But in doing so he was aware of the necessity of avoiding the insipidity and insincerity which had fallen upon such poetry on the continent of Europe-the vain repetitions, the languid conceits, the preposterous frozen compliments. In opening a new literature he desired to avoid falling immediately into the errors of an old, and indeed exhausted, literature, like that of Italy. Hence Sidney starts with a divided aim; he wishes to introduce the psychology of love, with its delicacies and its refined analysis of emotion, into the rough and awkward English tongue, but at the same time he wishes to escape the pitfalls into which those descend who 'poor Petrarch's long-deceased woes with new-born sighs and denizen'd wit do sing.'

The early numbers in the Astrophel and Stella show us the adventures of Sidney's spirit when this design of regenerating English lyrical poetry first occurred to him. He studied 'fine inventions' and Continental models, oft turning others' leaves.' He tried hard to reproduce his emotions, but the effect merely depressed him; he was conscious that what he composed was harsh and pedantic, and that his speech bore no relation to his glow of inward feeling. The words came forth halting, and he became aware that study was driving away

invention. Then it was that, 'great with child to speak, and helpless in his throes,' Sidney was biting his pen and beating his bosom, when ""Fool!"" said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and write.' Accordingly, look in his heart he did; but to eyes unaccustomed to the blaze of nature the white light of the heart at first only blinds and bewilders. Hence, in the poetry which Sidney began to write about 1575 and onwards (for to this date we may, perhaps, attribute his determination to reform poetry in England) we find at first much that seems to us dry and displeasing, much empty fluency, much flatness, and even some insipidity. But Sidney advances in skill; he gains more and more command over the medium; and before the Astrophel and Stella is finished, we find that the young poet has secured the power of copying for mankind the emotional language which a living passion has written on his heart.

Hence the careful reader of Sidney's sonnets, who has at first found them a little colourless and dim after the far richer poetry of the succeeding generation, learns to appreciate in them that very quality which the eighteenth, and until lately even the nineteenth, centuries were unable to detect in them, their rigorous sincerity. When once the author has surmounted the difficulty of speaking in verse, of using the language of literature-as soon as he has gained confidence in his own observation and in his own judgment of values-he sings 'with his eye upon the object;' so that, although a species of archaism makes the Astrophel and Stella seem old-fashioned among the Elizabethan sonnetcycles, it will yet be found to be more interesting, because more sincere, varied, and circumstantial, than any of its successors, except that of Shakespeare. All the time that he was writing so earnestly, an invincible modesty kept Sidney in the background of the poets-'Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit,' he calls himself. But this simplicity gave him a realistic vitality. His genius was planted firmly on experience. The highway, along which his horse's feet went trampling, was his Parnassus. His sheep were thoughts, which he pastured, far from the haunts of men, on the 'fair hills of fruitless love.' Other men might be 'victors still of Phoebus golden treasure.' Sidney poetry was never the main object of life, never life itself; but he adorned the paths of love, war, patriotism, religion, all that led through the wide fields of his beautiful, practical chivalry, with the roses and lilies of fragrant, flowery verse.

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As a consequence of his not 'taking himself seriously' as a poet, when once his verse was written he ceased to care what became of it, and it might very easily have entirely disappeared. It is probably to the piety of his admirable sister, the Countess of Pembroke, who had the courage to ignore her brother's dying command that the MS. of his Arcadia should be destroyed, that we owe the preservation of

Sidney's prose and verse. He published nothing in his lifetime; three editions of Astrophel and Stella belong to 1591, and his miscellaneous poems were added to the third edition (1598) of the Arcadia. Some sonnets appeared for the first time with Constable's poems, in 1594. A great mass of rather interesting verse, probably belonging to Sidney's early and unemancipated years, is embedded in the Arcadia itself (1590); so that the effect which was made on the public by the poetry of Sidney did not belong to the period of his career, but was wholly posthumous, and was postponed to the last decade of the sixteenth century. With so extreme a rapidity was literature then developing, that in 1595 poetry of the most startling originality written in 1575, even by Spenser and Sidney, wore a faded air; as a consequence of this the influence of Sidney, which was for a few years immense, soon passed away, and did not, in fact, survive the death of Queen Elizabeth. EDMUND GOSSE.

Sidney was born, 30th November 1554, at Penshurst, in Kent, son of Sir Henry Sidney (who usually spelt the name Sydney, while his son preferred Sidney or Sidnei). Philip studied at Shrewsbury and Christ Church, and after spending nearly three years on the Continent returned to England, an accomplished writer, in 1575, and was introduced to the court by his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. He was present at the famous reception given by Leicester to the queen at Kenilworth in the summer of that year. At first a favourite of the queen, he was sent in 1577 on missions to the Elector Palatine, the Emperor Rudolf, and the Prince of Orange. Elizabeth was ungrateful towards his father for his exertions as Lord Deputy in Ireland, and Philip wrote in his defence; he also addressed the queen against her projected match with the Duke of Anjou. Elizabeth frowned on him; and his mother's brother, the once powerful Leicester, fell into disfavour. Sidney retired (1580) to his sister Mary, now Lady Pembroke, at Wilton, where, probably, most of his Arcadia was written. In 1583 he was knighted, and married Frances, daughter of Sir F. Walsingham. His arrangement (1585) to accompany Drake on one of his buccaneer expeditions was defeated by Elizabeth's caprice and Drake's treachery. Sidney was ordered to accompany Leicester, chosen by the queen to carry her half-hearted support to the Netherlanders in their struggle against Spain. After one small brilliant exploit, he received, on 2nd October 1586, his death-wound under the walls of Zutphen-where five hundred and fifty Englishmen made a gallant but ill-judged attack on nearly three thousand Spaniards-and died on the 17th.

His work in literature may be placed between 1578 and 1582. Widely celebrated as it was in his lifetime, nothing was published till after his death. His brilliant character, his connections, his generous patronage of men of letters, with the report of those