act in the history of those great men is that they
were all men of affairs. Raleigh was a soldier, a sailor, a discoverer, a
politician, as well as an author. His friend Spenser was first secretary
to Lord Grey when he was Governor of Ireland, and afterwards Sheriff of
Cork. He has written a large treatise on the state of Ireland. But of all
the men of the age no one was more variously gifted, or exercised those
gifts in more differing directions, than the man who of them all was most
in favour with queen, court, and people--Philip Sidney. I could write
much to set forth the greatness, culture, balance, and scope of this
wonderful man. Renowned over Europe for his person, for his dress, for
his carriage, for his speech, for his skill in arms, for his
horsemanship, for his soldiership, for his statesmanship, for his
learning, he was beloved for his friendship, his generosity, his
steadfastness, his simplicity, his conscientiousness, his religion.
Amongst the lamentations over his death printed in Spenser's works, there
is one poem by Matthew Roydon, a few verses of which I shall quote, being
no vain eulogy. Describing his personal appearance, he says:

A sweet, attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel books!--
I trow, that countenance cannot lie
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.

Was ever eye did see that face,
Was ever ear did hear that tongue,
Was ever mind did mind his grace
That ever thought the travel long?
But eyes and ears, and every thought,
Were with his sweet perfections caught.

His _Arcadia_ is a book full of wisdom and beauty. None of his writings
were printed in his lifetime; but the _Arcadia_ was for many years after
his death one of the most popular books in the country. His prose, as
prose, is not equal to his friend Raleigh's, being less condensed and
stately. It is too full of fancy in thought and freak in rhetoric to find
now-a-days more than a very limited number of readers; and a good deal of
the verse that is set in it, is obscure and uninteresting, partly from
some false notions of poetic composition which he and his friend Spenser
entertained when young; but there is often an exquisite art in his other
poems.

The first I shall transcribe is a sonnet, to which the Latin words
printed below it might be prefixed as a title: _Splendidis longum
valedico nugis._

A