Here, however, we find the fault, which prevails throughout this work; an indistinctness of description, which loses itself, in what we may term, the volubility of the pen. Had the author freed himself from some of this redundance of language, he might have found leisure to give us the fact to which he alluded. We recollect what Philip of Spain, no admirer of hereticks, declared on the death of Sidney, that " England had lost in one moment, what she might not produce in an age!"

Sidney distinguished himself as the advocate of his father, against a faction who had drawn up articles of impeachment on his administration in Ireland. His father was reinstated in the queen's favour. But the fervent spirit of Sidney, in every thing which touched his romantick feelings of honour, had nearly involved him in an open quarrel with the earl of Ormond. He chose to be sullenly silent when the earl addressed him. But the earl conducted himself more nobly, by saying, "he would accept no quarrel from a gentleman, who is bound by nature to defend his father's cause, and who is furnished with so many virtues as he knows Mr. Philip to be."

When Elizabeth's proposed mar riage with the duke of Anjou divided the nation into two parties, Sidney was foremost among the strenuous opposers of that mischievous design. He addressed a letter to her majesty, which Hume has justly characterized for its elegance, and its forcible reasoning. The head of the French faction (for even in better times, France found a faction among the dissolute and the desperate part of the nation) was the earl of Oxford, a man of ruined fortune, and blasted reputation. Some altercation ensued, in which the earl scornfully called Sidney "a puppy!" A challenge passed between them, but the queen interposed. Her argument must have mortified the haughty spirit of Sidney. It turned on "the difference in

degree between earls and gentlemen;" and "how the gentleman's neglect of the nobility taught the peasant to insult both." Sidney, with adroit flattery, converted the argument of her majesty to its own confutation, by appealing to her, who " had willed that her sovereignty should be guided by the same laws as her people.-The earl of Oxford was a great lord; yet he was no lord over him, and therefore the difference of degrees between freemen, could not challenge any other homage, than precedency." The queen was not displeased with this elevated strain from her knight. Sidney, however, incapable of submission, retired from court. Some of these particulars may be found in the narrative of Fulke Greville. They are not detailed in Dr. Zouch.

In his retreat at Wilton, the seat of his brother-in-law, the earl of Pembroke, he planned his " Arcadia,” and on the pannels of one of the apart ments several of its scenes were painted. "The Defence of Poetry" was the more perfect fruit of those happy and comtemplative days.

Languet had often seriously exhorted his young friend not to imitate his royal mistress in her preference of a life of celibacy. In 1583, Sidney married the daughter of Walsingham, whom Jonson congratulates in one of his epigrams. He was also knighted, an honour which, like all others, the queen "bestowed with frugality and choice."

Sidney had not yet obtained, what he seems to have long desired-some splendid occasion to manifest his heroick disposition. When sir Francis Drake returned from his first expedi tion, the novelty of his discoveries, and perhaps the treasures he poured into the queen's coffers, inflamed the nation. Foreigners, indeed, considered Drake as the greatest pirate that ever infested the seas; but in England, he was admired as a new Columbus. Shakspeare alludes to this temporary passion of the times: .

Some to the wars to try their fortune there;

"Some to discover islands far away." Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Weary of inaction, and inspired by a romantick fancy of founding a new empire of his own, of which sir Fulke Greville has given a most extraordinary account, Sidney secretly planned with Drake, to join him in his second expedition. Dr. Zouch tells but half his tale. Sir Fulke Greville has supplied many curious particulars. After giving a sketch of this wild design, he details the shrewd inventions which Sidney condescended to practise, to reach Plymouth, "overshooting Walsingham in his own bow;" and his bold contrivance to intercept the queen's messenger, by employing two soldiers in disguise, to take his letters from him; nor would he leave Plymouth till the queen despatched a peer to command his immediate return. These and other facts, which Dr. Zouch seems purposely to conceal in his perpetual panegyrick, are surely of importance. They let us a little into the character of Sidney-his sullen conduct to the earl of Ormond; his letter to his father's steward, threatening his life, on a rash supposition that he betrayed his correspondence; his virulent defence of his uncle; all these were the sins of his youth. His infirmity was rashness and impetuosity of temper.

An honour, less ambiguous than a West India expedition, was reserved for Sidney. His friends abroad named him as a competitor for the elective crown of Poland, in 1585. That character must approach to excellence, which could create a party among distant foreigners, uninfluenced by corruption, to offer a crown to an English knight!

The queen, however, one historian writes, was "jealous of losing the jewel of her times;" and another, that "she was jealous that any of her subjects should be kings." "I will not allow,"

"said Elizabeth, "that my sheep

shall be marked with a stranger's mark; nor that they follow the whistle of a foreign shepherd!"

The queen opened a fairer field of honour in appointing Sidney to the government of Flushing, having resolved to assist the protestant inhabitants of the Netherlands against Spanish oppression. His uncle Leicester, who afterwards disappointed England and her allies, by his want of wisdom and military skill, followed, with an army. On this intercourse of the English with the Flemish, Dr. Zouch appositely observes from Camden, that "the English, which of all the northern nations had been the least drinkers, learned, by these Netherland wars, to drown themselves with immoderate drinking, and by drinking to other's health, to impair their own." A philosophical antiquary may discover, in our continental wars, the origin of many of our worst customs, and not a few of our vices.

In this first and last campaign of the young hero, he marked his short career, by enterprise and invention— combining these ardent military qualities with that penetration and prudence, which form a great general. Before he entered into action, he warmed his soldiers by a patriotick address. He revived the ancient discipline of order and silence in his march; and when he was treache rously invited to take Gravelin, he only ventured a small detachment of his army, by which means, the rest were saved. He was the soldiers' friend, and remunerated them, in proportion to their merits, out of his private fortune.

In the hope, but scarcely having yet attained to the pride, of military fame, fell the Marcellus of his country and his age! In a skirmish before Zutphen, "so impetuous that it became a proverbial expression among the Belgian soldiers to denote a most severe and ardent conflict," Sidney, having one horse shot under him, and mounting a second, rushed for

ward to recover lord Willoughby,, surrounded by the enemy. He succeeded, and continued the fight till he was wounded by a bullet in the left knee.

The most beautiful event in his life, was his death. From the moment he was wounded, and thirsty with excess of bleeding, when he turned away the water from his own lips, to give it to a dying soldier, with these words,: "Thy necessity is still greater than mine!" to his last hour, he marked the grandeur, and the tenderness of his nature.

Dr. Zouch informs us that "an ode which was composed by him on the nature of his wound, discovered a mind perfectly serene and calm." We wish our author had been satisfied with having informed us of this fact; but he proceeds with a strange and superfluous apology for a dying poet composing an ode.

"These efforts of his expiring muse will not surely subject him to censure and reproach. It is impossible to suggest that they were disfigured by any sentiments of rashness and impiety. They were exercised on a subject of the most serious nature, on a wound which was likely to terminate in death."

This paragraph is a fair specimen of the literary merits of this work. The author is never satisfied with telling all he knows-for he seems oppressed by a flux of phrases. It is a ridiculous anxiety, to be alarmed for the piety of his hero, in writing a death-bed ode. Were not the odes

of David composed by the same feel ings, under the influence of the most trying occasions?

Other particulars are recorded of his death, which give a most interesting picture of his heroism, his philosophy, and his religion.

The night before he died, leaning upon a pillow in his bed, he wrote a short, but pathetick, note to a physician; and an epistle to a divine, in elegant Latin, which for "its pithiness of matter," was presented to the queen. He conversed on the im

VOL. II.

mortality of the soul, and compared the conjectures of the pagan philosophy with the truths of revelation. On the day he died, he affixed a codicil to his will; and called for musick, and particularly for the ode which has made Dr. Zouch so uneasy, "to procure repose to his disordered frame." With the same dignified composure he bade adieu to his brother; and exhorted him to cherish his friends: "Their faith to me may assure you that they are honest." He made an extempore prayer before his death-a circumstance which renews the doctor's uneasiness. He conjures up a question, which he cannot lay, concerning "publick worship led by a layman." "We are not hence to conclude," he writes, "that Sidney professed a religion peculiar to himself; nor that he derived any singular sentiments from Languet, &c."-by which means, we are furnished with a page of articles that we are not to conclude about.

Of the interminable narrative of Sidney's death, written by Mr. George Giffard, a preacher of the times, we should have been thankful to Dr. Zouch had he taken the pains to have read and not printed it. But to the eyes of an antiquary, there is something magical in a MS.

We regret to find that the last moments of Sidney were disturbed by fard, who never ceased "proving to the misdirected piety of this Mr. Gifhim by testimonies and infallible reasons out of the scriptures" every thing that came into his head. When Sidney was in the last agony (says the MS.) and all natural heat and life were almost utterly gone out of him; that his understanding had failed, and that it was to no purpose to speak any more to him-" then it was that the aforesaid Mr. Giffard made a long speech, and required the expiring Sidney to hold up his hand,' which we thought he could scarce have moved." Documents of this kind are more fanatick than historical; and more tedious than fanatick.

L

The manes of Sidney received every honour, publick and private, domestick and foreign. Never died an Englishman so universally lamented. All the world remembered him but his own family-and no monument was raised to his name. Men like Sidney, indeed, build their own monuments; yet we cannot admit that considerations of this nature furnish a legitimate plea for the parsimony of their heirs.

Such was sir Philip Sidney. But was this singular character exempt from the frailties of human nature? If we rely on Dr. Zouch, we shall not discover any. If we trust to lord ORFORD, we shall perceive little else. The truth is, that had Sidney lived, he might have grown up to that ideal greatness which the world adored in him; but he died early-not without some errours of youth. His fame was more mature than his life, which, indeed, was but the preparation for a splendid one. We discern that future greatness (if we may use the expression) in the noble termination of his early career, rather than in the race which he actually ran. The life of Sidney would have been a finer subject for the panegyrick of a Pliny, than for the biography of a Plutarch. His fame was sufficient for the one, while his actions were too few for the other.

It may be useful to notice some of the aspersions of lord ORFORD on our favourite character.

"He died with the rashness of a volunteer," says he, "after having lived to write with the sang-froid, and prolixity of mademoiselle Scudery," and he quotes the observation of queen Elizabeth on Essex: "We shall have him knock'd o' the head, like that rash fellow, Sidney." On the day Sidney received his fatal wound, it appears that observing the marshal of the camp lightly armed, he threw off his cuisses, merely, according to sir Fulke Greville's account, to venture without any incqualitie." p. 143. Dr. Zouch has not

given the occasion of this act, which we see was a mere heroick bravado, which sober criticks like ourselves do not presume to comprehend. Dr. Zouch has made an ingenious observation on the defect of our military institutions in the sixteenth century, at page 336; but hehas not defended his hero from this accusation of rashness. Yet this may still be done; for the valour of Sidney was founded on fatalism, like that of many other eminent military characters. William III. used to say, that every bul let had its billet; and that this was the opinion of Sidney, appears by what he affirmed after he had received his wound: "That God did send the bullet, and commanded it to stryke him." The system of fatalism must not be discouraged among our heroes; and it will sufficiently defend Sidney from "the rashness" attributed to him by one who was no hero himself.

When lord Orford apologized, in his second edition, for having past by Sidney's "DEFENCE of POETRY," he acknowledged "that he had forgotten it; a proof," he adds, "that I at least did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired." This is mere malignity. Sidney had diligently read the best Latin and Italian commentaries on Aristotle's Poeticks, and these he has illustrated with the most correct taste and the most beautiful imagery. It is a work of love; and the luminous order of criticism is embellished by all the graces of poetry.

The ARCADIA is a posthumous and unfinished work, and was composed, as he himself tells his sister, "in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets sent unto you as fast as they were don. For severer eyes," he adds, "it is not; being but a trifle, and triflingly handled." It was his earnest request on his death bed, that the Arcadia should be destroyed. The countess of Pembroke collected and published the fugitive leaves, and

with a sisterly fondness, called them "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia." Such is the history of a work, which the gallantry of criticism should have spared.

Of this romance Dr. Zouch has given a curious and copious account. It was read with avidity and delight

in an age when pageants and pastorals were familiar to the eye and the ear. Even in the present times, congenial fancy can kindle over Arca. dian scenery; and a poet never dies, while there lives another poet of his nation.

THE misfortunes of the great never cease to interest; whether it be that there is a natural pleasure which we take in beholding our fellow creatures under affliction, when not allied to us by the ties of consanguinity or feeling; or that the sort of pleasure which arises from the contemplation of fallen grandeur, is of that tender yet consolatory cast that it seems to indemnify us for the evils of our own station in society. The mind is never wearied with reading accounts of the sufferings of lady Jane Grey, of Mary Queen of Scots, of Charles, or of Louis. They are inexhaustible themes of eloquence for the historian, of admonition for the moralist, of application for the poet. Their sufferings have been, in themselves, small, very small compared to those of private individuals; but it is comparison that aids our sympathy, and we do not sigh over the sorrows of the man, but of the prince. Philosophy would behold nothing peculiarly acute in a human being reposing on a bed of flock, with a tattered blanket thrown across for warmth, in feeding on plain fare, and enjoying but a limited extent of walk. But when we consider that he who endures this, once slept on beds of down, in vaulted chambers of golden roofs; that he rioted in the choicest gifts of nature, and his table was crowned with the produce of every clime; that he ranged at

will wherever pleasure called him, we are led to wonder how he bears the reverse, and pity him, not so much for what he suffers, as for what he has lost. To this feeling we must attribute the eagerness with which we hunt after such details; and hence the melancholy pleasure which we have felt in reading the present work. There was no studied barbarity; there was no species of despicable insult; no manner of humiliation which the French nation did not employ towards the unfortunate Louis. The most abhorred tyrant that ever disgraced the annals of society could scarcely have merited more than was shown towards one whose greatest failing was too much lenity, and whose only crime, being born the king of a people destined to murder him.

M. Hue was mentioned with honour, and in a manner that will convey his name down to posterity, by his unfortunate monarch in his will. He was an eye witness of nearly all that he describes; he acco,panied the king to the temple after the tenth of August; he suffered imprisonment for his attachment; he escaped numerous perils during the bloody proscriptions of the revolution; he accompanied Madame Royale to Vienna in 1796; and he has now given to the world, documents that will be of lasting importance to future histo. rians.