On the 18th of October 1580, SIDNEY, in the confidential letter to his brother which we have printed at pages 305-309, states, "I write this to you as one, that for myself have given over the delight in the world; but wish to you as much, if not more than to myself," and refers to his delight in music in his "melancholy times." To our mind, it is clear that all through these lonely days SIDNEY'S love for the Lady PENELOPE was growing and growing through all the stages which he has so beautifully described at page 504.
1: In the military sense of sap..
Not at the first sight, nor with a dribbed shot,
LOVE gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed:
But known worth did in mine[1] of time proceed,
Till, by degrees, it had full conquest got.
I saw and liked, I liked but loved not;
I loved, but straight did not what LOVE decreed:
At length to LOVE'S decrees, I forced, agreed;
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone; and now, like, slave-born Muscovite,
I call it praise to suffer tyranny:
And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make me self believe that all is well;
While with a feeling skill, I paint my hell.
III.
Had the second Lord RICH only lived a few years longer, it
would have mattered little how useless a life; it would have
prevented a great following misery; it would have made
STELLA the happy wife of ASTROPHEL; might have kept
SIDNEY from the Dutch war, and preserved him to ripen
in the full maturity of his powers into at least a prose SPENSER, if not a
very great Poet as well; and so endowed our following ages with wonderful
pieces of genius and power.
But the Lord died, and the misery came; being heralded in by the following letter:
