Page:Men of Kent and Kentishmen.djvu/137

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AND KENTISHMEN.
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seas." In the same year he was despatched on the expedition in which he terminated his brilliant existence. This was to operate in the Netherlands, in aid of the Protestants, against the Duke of Alva. The story of his wound before Zutphen is well known. He died at Amheim, 7th Oct., 1586, at the early age of thirty-two. He was buried at S. Paul's, 16th Feb., 1587, and the whole country went into mourning. "He was a gentleman finished and complete," than which there can be no higher praise. His virtues have been the subject of panegyric by all writers of the time. Spencer commemorated him under the name of Astrophel, and Sir Walter Raleigh calls him the English Petrarch. "He trod from his cradle to his grave amid incense and flowers, and died in a dream of glory." Besides his "Arcadia," he has left many poems, songs, sonnets, and miscellaneous writings. The latter were collected and published by Gray in 1829.

[See "Zouch's Memoirs and Histories of the Period.]


Mary Sidney,

POET,

Sister of Sir Philip, was born probably at Penshurst in 1556. She married in 1576 Henry, Earl of Pembroke. It was for her amusement, it is said, that her brother began his "Arcadia." She possessed a talent for poetical composition, which she assiduously cultivated. She died September 25th, 1601, and was interred in Salisbury Cathedral, where her epitaph by Ben Jonson best records