e same sentence, it
becomes impossible to keep serious, and it is difficult to recognize the
author of the "Apologie." Sidney thus describes wreckage floating on the
water after a sea-fight: "Amidst the precious things were a number of
dead bodies, which likewise did not onely testifie both elements
violence, but that the chiefe violence was growne of humane inhumanity:
for their bodies were full of grisly wounds, and their blood had, as it
were, filled the wrinkles of the sea's visage; which it seemed the see
would not wash away, that it might witnesse it is not always his fault,
when we do condemne his cruelty."[214] There is indeed in French
literature a dagger celebrated for having _rougi le traitre_! but what
is it in comparison, and ought it not in its turn to grow pale with envy
at the thought of this sea that will not wash itself?

Thus men wrote in the time of Shakespeare, guilty himself of having made
many a dagger blush and weep in his bloody dramas: "See how my sword
weeps for the poor king's death!" says Gloucester in "Henry VI." When
Brutus stabs Caesar the blood followed the dagger

"As rushing out of doors, to be resolv'd
If Brutus so unkindly knocked or no."

Such was the irresistible power of fashion. Sidney who in his
"Apologie" had laughed at these extravagances in the poets and
dramatists, could not himself avoid them when he wrote his romance. When
they concern themselves with criticism, nearly all, Shakespeare, Sidney,
and their contemporaries, are to be admired for their moderation,
wisdom, and good sense; but as soon as they take up the pen to write
their imaginative works, intoxication overcomes their brain, a divine
intoxication that sometimes transports them to heaven, an earthly
intoxication that sometimes leads them into bogs and gutters.

III.

These surprising embellishments were in no way harmful, quite the
contrary, to the success of the "Arcadia." From the first it was
extremely popular and widely read; Sidney, who has kept his high repute
as a knight and a poet to our day, was still more famous at first, and
indeed for a long time, as a novelist. He was before all the author of
the "Arcadia."[215] His influence as such was very great, if not always
very beneficial; for his examples, as often happens, were more readily
followed than his precepts. Until the practical Defoe worked his great
reform in style, the language of the novel was encumbered with images
and unexpec