part in the development of the action. There is the ideal maiden,
Pamela or Philoclea, type of lofty virtue, forerunner of the Clarissas
and Belindas of Richardson; the vicious Queen Cecropia recalling the
Phaedras and Sthenobaeas of Greek legend; Gynecia, the
passion-stricken wife of a respectable elderly husband, a favourite
figure in the modern French novel; the clownish Mopsa, the original,
perhaps, of Shakespeare’s Audrey; and, above all, the representative
of adventurous, unhappy, self-sacrificing love in its various aspects,
Helen, Queen of Corinth, Parthenia, and Zelmane, predecessors of
Shakespeare’s Viola, Helena, and Imogen.”
The popularity of the book, rivalling that of _Euphues_, is
illustrated by the number of editions, of which a list will be given
later. Sidney found writers eager to continue the story, and many
imitators. The argument of John Day’s _Ile of Guls_ (1606) was “a
little string or rivolet drawne from the full streme of the right
worthy gentleman, Sir Phillip Sydney’s well knowne Archadea.” Shirley
dramatised many episodes in his _Pastorall called the Arcadia_ (1640);
the story of the dispossessed king of Paphlagonia and his son is
probably the germ of Shakespeare’s episode of Gloucester and his sons
in _King Lear_, and Mr C. Crawford has found traces of copying in the
_Duchess of Malfi_ and other plays of Webster. The author of the
_Emblemes_, Francis Quarles, made a long poem out of the story of
Argalus and Parthenia (1622); and other writers linked their
compositions to the popularity and prestige of the _Arcadia_ by using
Sidney’s name as their advertisement, like the author of _Sir Philip
Sydney’s Ourania_ (1606), a philosophical poem dedicated to the
Countess of Pembroke, and the Lady Mary Wroath, a niece of Sidney, who
produced a slavish imitation in _The Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania_
{xxiii} (1621), and made great play with her pedigree on the
title-page. Excerpts and adaptations were published right down to the
late seventeenth century.
The first edition of the _Arcadia_ was published in 1590, four years
after the author’s death. He did not finish the book, which had been
begun for the amusement of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, while
he was in exile from the court and living at Wilton House, the seat of
the Pembrokes. It was Sidney’s dying request that the manuscript
should be destroyed, and the dedicatory epistle to his sister
expresses how little he valued the book as a literary performance:--
“If you keep it to yourself, or to such friends who will weigh error
in the balance of good-will, I hope for the father’s sake it will be
pardoned, perchance made much of, though in itself it have
deformities. For indeed for severer eyes it is not, being a trifle,
and that triflingly handled.”
The _Arcadia_ was entered in the Register of the Stationer’s Company
in 1588, by William Ponsonbie, the publisher of Spenser’s _Fairie
Queene_; and the first edition saw the light in a thick quarto in
1590. A photo-lithographic reproduction of this handsome first edition
was published in 1891 by Dr Oskar Sommer, to whose scholarly
bibliographical introduction I am indebted for the following list of
the various editions. The fourth and fifth books, and a portion of the
third book (57 pages), were added in the second edition, in 1593, a
folio, by the same publisher. Beyond this, there are few variations in
the text of the two editions. The third edition (1598), also by
Ponsonbie, comprised Sidney’s _Sonnets_, _Astrophel and Stella_, and
the _Defence of Poesie_; and these works were again included in the
fourth edition (misdescribed as the third) by Robert Waldegrave, at
Edinburgh, in 1599.[i02] Mathew Lownes’ edition (1605), the fifth
(miscalled the fourth), is almost a facsimile reprint of the third;
but in the next edition, described on the title-page as the fourth
(1613), we get some new “additions,” but of small importance compared
with those in the seventh (described in the title as the fifth),
published in 1621 at Dublin, which included a “Supplement of a defect
in the third part {xxiv} of this History, by Sir W. Alexander,” which
had been printed separately at Dublin the same year. In the present
edition his supplement begins on page 428 and ends on page 451, where
Sir William’s apologie for the liberty taken is duly quoted. Sir
William Alexander of Menstrie, afterwards Earl of Stirling, was a poet
and dramatist, and a statesman of genius, who died in 1610. He was a
friend of Drummond of Hawthornden. The _Dictionary of National
Biography_ states wrongly that he published this continuation of the
third book of the _Arcadia_ in 1613, the date of the so-called fourth
edition, certain copies of which have extracts from this work
inserted. The first London edition, to which Sir William Alexander’s
supplement was added, was the eighth, published in 1623; but it is
doubtful whether the additional matter was really printed as a part of
the volume, or added from the 1621 edition, or some other of which
there is no trace, to the only copy of this issue known to Dr Sommer.
The pagination, at any rate, is in a confused state pointing to this.
The sixth book of the _Arcadia_ by Richard Beling (see _infra_ p.
631), first published at Dublin, in 1624, was added to the ninth
edition, miscalled the sixth, in 1627. It is not mentioned on the
title, but before this new supplement another title-page is inserted,
running as follows, “A Sixth Booke to the Countesse of Pembrokes
Arcadia: written by R. B. of Lincolnes Inne Esquire. (Sat, si bene; si
male, nimium.) London, printed by H. L. and R. Y. 1628,” thus dating a
year later than the title-page proper. After Beling’s continuation
come the _Sonnets_, the _Defence of Poesie_, _Astrophel_, etc. This
edition was reprinted in exact conformity, except that the new
title-page mentions the work of Beling, in 1629; and the five other
seventeenth-century editions, appearing in 1633, 1638, 1655, 1662, and
1674, corresponded exactly in all textual respects but the title-page,
except that in the twelfth, described as the ninth, edition (1638), an
alternative supplement to a defect in the third book is introduced by
Mr Ja. Johnstone, “Scoto-Brit,” and in addition to this the 1655
edition contained the forty-eight couplets entitled “A Remedie for
Loue,” and an alphabetical table, or clavis, forming an index to the
stories in the _Arcadia_.
Dr Sommer mentions only one edition in the eighteenth {xxv} century,
one in three volumes containing also the poetical works and the
_Defence of Poesy_, and described as the fourteenth edition, although
fifteen previous editions have now been enumerated. The title of the
first volume is dated 1725, but the other two volumes bear that of the
preceding year, the preliminary matter of the first not having,
apparently, been completed in 1724. This was a London edition, and Dr
Sommer was not aware of another seventeenth century edition, printed
at Dublin in 1739, which was a reproduction of this one: it bears the
imprint, “Dublin: printed by S. Powell, for T. Moore, at _Erasmus’s
Head_ in _Dame Street_, Bookseller, MDCCXXXIX”; and a copy has been
used in preparing the present edition.
The only edition of the _Arcadia_ in the nineteenth century, with the
exception of the photographic reproduction of the first edition by Dr
Sommer, was published by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, in 1867, and
was preceded by an introductory essay by Hain Friswell, the author of
_The Gentle Life_, who says:--
“The principle on which this edition of the _Arcadia_ has been put
through the press perhaps needs some explanation. As the sheets of MS.
left the hands of Sidney, after the first book, or perhaps two, had
been completed, they were transmitted to his sister the Countess of
Pembroke, and some of them mislaid and lost. Hence one great _hiatus_
supplied by Sir William Alexander, others by R(ichard) B(eling) and Mr
Johnstone. It is also known that the Countess of Pembroke added to the
episodes, adventures, and strange turns, at least in all the later
books. Hence there is to be met with an Arcadian undergrowth which
needs much careful pruning; and this undertaken, with needful
compression, will leave the reader all that he desires of Sidney’s
own. Growing like certain fanciful parasites upon forest trees, on the
books of the _Arcadia_ are certain eclogues of laboriously-written and
fantastical poetry, some in Latin measures, against which Walpole was
right to protest, and anent which Pope said:--
‘And Sidney’s verse halts ill on Roman feet.’
“These have been boldly removed without any loss, it is believed, to
the romance; lastly, long episodes of no possible use to the book,
which we think have been supplied by other hands than Sidney’s have,
whilst using their very words and phrases, been cut down. {xxvi}
Tedious excrescences have thus been removed, but it is to be hoped
with judgment, so that the reader gets all we think is Sidney’s, and
without curb put upon his utterance.”
In the edition now offered to the student of Elizabethan literature an
opposite method has been adopted. Rather than run any risk of omitting
anything that is Sidney’s, it has been thought advisable to give the
whole _Arcadia_, excrescences and all, especially as the additions of
those who were fellow-spirits and admirers, and belonged to the same
great epoch, cannot be without their interest to readers in the
present age, who may, at any rate, skip the contributions of Alexander
and Beling if they are so minded. The example of Hain Friswell has
been followed, however, so far as the modernisation of the spelling
and punctuation is concerned. “A Continuation of Sir P. Sidney’s
Arcadia written by a young Gentlewoman” (Mrs A. W. Weames), and
published at London, in 1651, and James Johnstone’s “Supplement to a
defect in the Third Book,” which is merely an alternative to
Alexander’s, are not included.
There was a modernised edition of the _Arcadia_ published in 1725,
under the title, “Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, Moderniz’d by Mrs
Stanley, London, Printed in the Year MDCCXXV”; and there were extracts
from the book, like the abstract entitled, “The Famous History of
Heroick Acts or the Honour of Chivalry,” London, 1701; and two
versions of the episode of Argalus and Parthenia, the first, “The
Unfortunate Lovers: the History of Argalus and Parthenia” (fourth
edition, 1715), and “The History of Argalus and Parthenia. Being A
Choice Flower Gathered out of Sir Philip Sidney’s Rare Garden,” c.
1770 and 1780. Dr Grosart included all the poems occurring in the
_Arcadia_ in his edition of “The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney,”
in three volumes, in 1877. Students of our old texts owe an immense
debt to Dr Sommer for the pains and industry lavished on his sumptuous
facsimile editions of Caxton’s _Malory_ and Sidney’s _Arcadia_, in
both of which the comparison of all the extant readings has been
carried out with microscopic thoroughness, and done once for all.
E. A. B.
_January_ 1907.
THE LIFE OF
Sir PHILIP SIDNEY, Kt.
{xxvii}
[_From the Dublin edition, 1739._]
This Marcellus of the English nation, Sir Philip Sidney, the
short-lived ornament of his noble family, hath deserved, and, without
dispute or envy, enjoyed, the most exalted praises of his own, and of
succeeding ages. The poets of his time, especially Spenser,
reverenced him, not only as a patron, but a master; and he was almost
the only person in any age, I will not except Mecaenas, that could
teach the best rules of poetry, and most freely reward the
performances of poets. He was a man of a sweet nature, of excellent
behaviour, of much, and, withal, of well-digested learning, so that
rarely wit, courage, breeding, and other additional accomplishments of
conversation, have met in so high a degree in any single person.[i03]
Sir Henry Sidney, his father, was a man of excellent natural wit,
large heart, sweet conversation; and such a governor as sought not to
make an end of the state in himself, but to plant his own ends in the
prosperity of his country. Witness his sound establishments, both in
Wales and Ireland, where his memory is worthily grateful unto this
day.
On the other side, his mother, as she was a woman, by descent, of
great nobility (the Lady Mary, eldest daughter of John Dudley,
Duke of Northumberland), so was she by nature of a large ingenious
spirit.[i04] He was born at Penshurst, in the county of Kent, on the
29th day of November, in the year 1554, and had his Christian name
given him by his {xxviii} father, from King Philip, then lately
married to Queen Mary. While he was very young, he was sent to
Christ Church College in Oxford to be improved in all sorts of
learning; where continuing till he was about seventeen years of age
under the tuition of Dr Tho. Thornton, canon of that house, he was,
in June 1572, sent to travel; for on the 24th of August following,
when the massacre fell out at Paris, he was then there, and at that
time, as I conceive, he, with other Englishmen, did fly to the house
of the ambassador from the Queen of England.[i05] Thence he went
through Lorraine, and by Strasburg and Heidelburg to Frankfort, in
September or October following, where he settles, is entertained agent
for the Duke of Saxony, and an underhand minister for his own king.
Lodged he was in Wechel’s house, the printer of Frankfort.[i06] Here
he was accompanied by the famous Hubert Languet; and in the next
spring, 1573, Languet removed to Vienna, where our author met him
again, and stayed with him till September, when he went into Hungary
and those parts. Thence he journeyed into Italy, where he continued
all the winter following, and most of the summer, 1574, and then he
returned into Germany with Languet; and the next spring he returned
by Frankfort, Heidelburg, and Antwerp, home into England, about May
1575.
In the year 1576 he was sent by the Queen to Rodolph, the Emperor,
to condole the death of Maximilian, and also to other princes of
Germany; at which time he caused this inscription to be written under
his arms, which he then hung up in all places where he lodged:--
“Illustrissimi et generosissimi viri
Philipi Sidnaei, Angli,
Pro-regis Hiberniae filii, Comitum Warwici
Et Leicestriae Nepotis, serenissimi
Reginae Angliae ad Caesarem legati.”
The next year, 1577, in his return, he saw that gallant Prince Don
John de Austria, Viceroy of the low countries for the King of Spain,
and William, Prince of Orange; by the former of which, though at
first he was lightly esteemed {xxix} upon the account of his youth,
yet, after some discourse, he found himself so stricken with him that
the beholders wondered to see what tribute that brave and high-minded
prince paid to his worth, giving more honour and respect to him, in
his private capacity, than to the ambassadors of mighty princes.
In the year 1579 he, though neither magistrate nor counsellor, did
show himself, for several weighty reasons, opposite to the Queen’s
matching with the Duke of Anjou, which he very pithily expressed by a
due address of his humble reasons to her, as may be fully seen in a