whatever her personal faults--and they were
many--as a monarch, she was not unworthy of their allegiance.

SIDNEY.--Before proceeding to a consideration of Spenser's great poem, it
is necessary to mention two names intimately associated with him and with
his fame, and of special interest in the literary catalogue of Queen
Elizabeth's court, brilliant and numerous as that catalogue was.

Among the most striking characters of this period was Sir Philip Sidney,
whose brief history is full of romance and attraction; not so much for
what he did as for what he personally was, and gave promise of being.
Whenever we seek for an historical illustration of the _gentleman_, the
figure of Sidney rises in company with that of Bayard, and claims
distinction. He was born at Pennshurst in Kent, on the 29th of November,
1554. He was the nephew of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the chief
favorite of the queen. Precocious in grace, dignity, and learning, Sidney
was educated both at Oxford and Cambridge, and in his earliest manhood he
was a _prud' homme_, handsome, elegant, learned, and chivalrous; a
statesman, a diplomatist, a soldier, and a poet; "not only of excellent
wit, but extremely beautiful of face. Delicately chiselled Anglo-Norman
features, smooth, fair cheek, a faint moustache, blue eyes, and a mass of
amber-colored hair," distinguished him among the handsome men of a court
where handsome men were in great request.

He spent some time at the court of Charles IX. of France--which, however,
he left suddenly, shocked and disgusted by the massacre of St.
Bartholomew's Eve--and extended his travels into Germany. The queen held
him in the highest esteem--although he was disliked by the Cecils, the
constant rivals of the Dudleys; and when he was elected to the crown of
Poland, the queen refused him permission to accept, because she would not
lose "the brightest jewel of her crown--her Philip," as she called him to
distinguish him from her sister Mary's Philip, Philip II. of Spain. A few
words will finish his personal story. He went, by the queen's permission,
with his uncle Leicester to the Low Countries, then struggling, with
Elizabeth's assistance, against Philip of Spain. There he was made
governor of Flushing--the key to the navigation of the North Seas--with
the rank of general of horse. In a skirmish near Zutphen (South Fen) he
served as a volunteer; and, as he was going into action fully armed,
seeing his old friend Sir W