the doing justice on so ill a man, will give the lie to the whigs, who reported he was not to suffer’ (Dalrymple, ii. 115). Evelyn praises Sidney's behaviour in his last moments. ‘When he came on the scaffold, instead of a speech, he told them only that he had made his peace with God, that he came not thither to talk, but to die; put a paper into the sheriffs' hand, and another into a friend's, said one prayer as short as a grace, laid down his neck, and bid the executioner do his office’ (Diary, ed. Wheatley, ii. 424). A bishop, however, asserted that he ‘died with the same surliness wherewith he lived;’ ‘very resolutely, and like a true rebel and republican,’ was the Duke of York's description (Dalrymple, ii. 116; Hatton Correspondence, ii. 41; cf. Burnet, ii. 410, ed. 1833).
Sidney's body, as to the disposal of which he had scornfully refused to make any requests of the king, was given to his family, and buried at Penshurst (Ewald, ii. 319; North, Examen, p. 411). The paper which he gave to the sheriffs consisted of a denunciation of the injustice of his trial and a vindication of his political principles. It concluded by thanking God that he was suffered to die for the old cause in which he was from his youth engaged. The government, which had been at first inclined to suppress it as treasonable, allowed it to be printed, in the hope that it would show the world that he and his friends were confessedly seeking to restore a republic (Dalrymple, il. 17). It called forth numerous answers (Animadversions and Remarks upon Colonel Sidney's Paper; Reflections upon Colonel Sidney's Arcadia and the Good Old Cause, &c.). Several pieces of verse on his death also appeared: ‘Colonel Sidney's Overthrow’ (Roxburghe Ballads, iv. 12); ‘Algernon Sidney's Farewell;’ ‘An Elegy upon the Death of Algernon Sidney.’ The last two are reprinted in T. B. Hollis's ‘Life of Thomas Hollis,’ pp. 780, 782. An admiring epitaph is printed in ‘Poems upon State Affairs’ (i. 175).
Burnet's account of Sidney's character is substantially just: ‘a man of most extraordinary courage, a steady man even to obstinacy, sincere, but of a rough and boisterous temper, that could not bear contradiction.’ Whitelocke also speaks of the ‘overruling temper and height of Colonel Sidney’ (Memorials, iv. 351). Burnet goes on to describe him as seeming to be a Christian, ‘but in a particular form of his own; he thought it was to be like a divine philosophy in the mind; but he was against all public worship, and everything that looked like a church’ (Own Time, ii. 351). His writings show that he hated popery and intolerance, but give no positive information about his religious views (but see Life of Thomas Hollis, pp. 188, 537).
Sidney was painted as a child by Vandyck in a group with his brothers Philip and Robert. This picture is at Penshurst, together with a portrait of Sidney, by Van Egmont, painted in 1663. Another, by the latter artist, is in the National Portrait Gallery. An engraving is given in Lodge's ‘Portraits.’ A portrait by Lely belongs to Earl Spencer. A fancy portrait by Cipriani, said to be from a seal by Thomas Simon, is the frontispiece to the edition of Sidney's ‘Works’ published in 1763 and 1772 (Hollis, pp. 168, 182, 533).
Sidney's chief work, the ‘Discourses concerning Government,’ was first printed by Toland or Littlebury in 1698. This is an answer to Filmer's ‘Patriarcha,’ which was first published in 1680; and the few allusions to contemporary politics in Sidney's book show that a great part of it was written about that year. Though tedious from its extreme length and from following too closely in Filmer's footsteps, it contains much vigorous writing, and shows wide reading. Criticisms of it are to be found in Ranke's ‘History of England’ (iv. 123) and Hallam's ‘Literature of Europe’ (iv. 201, ed. 1869); an analysis is in the last chapter of Ewald's ‘Life of Sidney.’ It was reprinted in folio in 1740 and 1751. An edition, in 2 vols. 8vo, was printed at Edinburgh in 1750, and four French translations in 1702 and 1794. An edition, containing also his letters (including those addressed to Henry Savile, and published separately in 1742), report of his trial, and his apology ‘in the day of his death,’ was published in 1763, edited by Thomas Hollis, and was reprinted in 1772, with additions and corrections by J. Robertson (Life of Hollis, pp. 158, 167, 190, 446). Hollis inserted ‘A General View of Government in Europe’ (first published in 1744 in the ‘Use and Abuse of Parliaments’ by James Ralph), but doubts the justice of attributing it to Sidney. ‘The very Copy of a Paper delivered to the Sheriffs’ by Sidney appeared in 1683, fol. An essay entitled ‘Of Love’ was printed from the manuscript at Penshurst in the first series of the ‘Somers Tracts’ in 1748 (ed. Scott, viii. 612). It was reprinted in the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ January 1884. Some letters by Sidney figure in Thurloe's ‘State Papers,’ and in Arthur Collins's ‘Sydney Papers,’ 1746, Blencowe's ‘Sydney Papers,’ 1825, and in T. Forster's ‘Original Letters of John Locke, Algernon Sidney,’ &c., privately printed, 1830 and 1847.
