ied of his wounds at the battle of
Zutphen, when he was not yet thirty-two years old. His prose works are the
famous pastoral romance of the _Arcadia_, written to please his sister, the
Countess of Pembroke, and the short _Apology for Poetry_, a very spirited
piece of work, immediately provoked by a rather silly diatribe against the
theatre by one Stephen Gosson, once a playwright himself, but turned
Puritan clergyman. Both appear to have been written about the same
time--that is to say, between 1579 and 1581; Sidney being then in London
and in the society of Spenser and other men of letters.

The amiability of Sidney's character, his romantic history, the exquisite
charm of his verse at its best, and last, not least, the fact of his
enthusiastic appreciation and patronage of literature at a time when
literary men never failed to give aristocratic patrons somewhat more than
_quid pro quo_, have perhaps caused his prose work to be traditionally a
little overvalued. The _Apology for Poetry_ is full of generous ardour,
contains many striking and poetical expressions, and explains more than any
other single book the secret of the wonderful literary production of the
half-century which followed. The _Arcadia_, especially when contrasted with
_Euphues_, has the great merit of abundant and stirring incident and
interest, of freedom from any single affectation so pestering and
continuous as Lyly's similes, and of constant purple patches of poetical
description and expression, which are indeed not a little out of place in
prose, but which are undeniably beautiful in themselves. But when this is
said all is said. Enthusiastic as Sidney's love for poetry and for
literature was, it was enthusiasm not at all according to knowledge. In the
_Apology_, by his vindication of the Unities, and his denunciation of the
mixture of tragedy and comedy, he was (of course without knowing it) laying
down exactly the two principles, a fortunate abjuration and scouting
whereof gave us the greatest possession in mass and variety of merit that
any literature possesses--the Elizabethan drama from Shakespere and Marlowe
to Ford and Shirley. Follow Sidney, and good-bye to _Faustus_, to _Hamlet_,
to _Philaster_, to _The Duchess of Malfi_, to _The Changeling_, to _The
Virgin Martyr_, to _The Broken Heart_. We must content ourselves with
_Gorboduc_ and _Cornelia_, with _Cleopatra_ and _Philotas_, at the very
best with _Sejanus_ and _The Silent Woman_. Again