SIDNEY 420 SIDNEY had given the royal party, he refused to return and remained an exile for 17 years. At length, in 1677, the influence of his friends procured him permission to return to England. After the death of Shaftes- bury in 1682, he entered into the confer- ence held between Monmouth, Russell, Es- sex, Hampden, and others, and on the discovery of the Rye House Plot he was arrested and sent to the Tower on a charge of high treason. He was tried before the notorious Chief Justice Jeff- reys, and his trial was conducted with a shameless absence of equity which has conferred on him all the glory of a mar- tyr. He was executed on Tower Hill, Dec. 7, 1683. His "Discourses Concern- ing Government" were first printed in 1698. SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP, an English writer, soldier and man of affairs, born in 1554, the eldest son of Sir Henry and Lady Mary Sidney. As a child, he im- pressed all who knew him for such "lovely and familiar gravity as carried grace and reverence above greater years." He at- tended Christ Church, Oxford, completing the course at 17. In 1572 he went abroad to study the governments of Europe. At the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholo- mew he was in Paris. The blackness of the deed, which sent a shudder through all England, affected Sidney very power- fully, and he became identified with the party that held it to be the duty of the English Government to espouse the Prot- estant cause throughout Europe. He was interested in the political theories of the French Huguenots, and later met Languet in Frankfort, who exerted a great influ- ence on his political ideas. His travels extended through Hungary, Italy, Ger- many, and the Low Countries. By 1575 he was at home again, and attended the Princely Pleasures at Kenil worth given by his uncle, the Earl of Leicester, who hoped by the entertainment to win the hand of the queen. Soon after, he wrote a sonnet cycle, "Astrophel and Stella," telling his love, after approved court fashion, for the Lady Penelope Rich. In 1577 he again went abroad, this time to Germany, on diplomatic business. On his return he met the young poet Spenser, and became his patron. To him Spenser dedi- cated his first important series of poems, the "Shepheard's Calender" (1579). Sidney wrote a powerful protest against the projected French marriage, and for his pains was exiled from the court for a time (1580), using his enforced leisure by writing a long pastoral romance, "Ar- cadia." This romance, which conformed to the ideas of poetry obtaining at the time, was a prose counterpart to Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and exerted considerable influence upon it. It is heroic, dealing with the education and character of the ideal prince; it contains many allegories, part of them being ethical and religious, others directly applicable to persons of the court; and it is related also to the political conditions of the time. It be- came the most famous of all Elizabethan literary works, excepting only the "Faerie Queene." Soon afterward Sidney wrote a "Defense of Poetry," which is a survey of the state of literature in England at about 1581, an application of Platonic doctrine to the theory of poetry as the loftiest of human disciplines, and an eloquent defense of poetry against the attacks of Gosson and other Puritan defamers. All these literary activities were in ac- cordance with the idea of the time con- cerning the true courtier. The idea was that of complete and many-sided develop- ment. The courtier must excel in war, in all manly sports and exercises, in knowl- edge of men and affairs, in statecraft, and in music, art, poetry, and all the learning of the time. Many books were written, in Italy, France, and England, on the subject, and it was carried out in practice in schools founded on true hu- manistic principles. In "Astrophel and Stella," in "Arcadia," and in his volumi- nous correspondence, Sidney bears witness to the influence of this ideal as the con- scious aim of all his self-training and ac- tivities. No small part of his tremendous influence, therefore, lies in the way in which his personality and achievement incarnated the highest cultural ideal of the time. The story of his life and opin- ions, as related by his friend Fulke Gre- ville and as revealed in his letters, shows the high seriousness, the intelligent patri- otism, and the extent of his studies of political conditions in Europe at a time when England's destiny hung in the bal- ance. Thus to his love of literature was added his patriotic service to his prince as a true courtier. He carried the ideal farther than this. He was actively inter- ested in Raleigh's colonizing ambitions, at one time being prevented from going to America only by the express injunction of the queen. He served in Parliament. He held with Leicester and Spenser and Raleigh the view that English safety re- quired active opposition to Philip of Spain, and that it was the duty of Eng- land to the world to assume the leader- ship of the Protestant cause throughout Europe. At length the long fight to in- duce Elizabeth to intervene in the Low Countries was won. Sidney went with the expedition sent by the queen. In Septem- ber of 1586 he received the wound at Zut- phen from which he died twenty-six days later, young in years but with a record
