assigned to Sir Antonio More is on fairly good grounds identified with Sidney; it has been engraved. A very attractive half-length portrait (anonymous) is in the collection of the Earl of Warwick. Another portrait attributed to Zucchero, painted after Sidney's death, belongs to the Marquis of Lothian. A portrait labelled ‘Sir Philip Sidney who writ the Arcadia’ belongs to the Earl of Darnley. Another is at Knole. An engraving by C. Warren, from a portrait at Wentworth Castle, inaccurately attributed to Velasquez, prefaces Zouch's ‘Memoirs’ (1809); Dr. Waagen assigns this portrait to the Netherlandish school. Dallaway (Anecdotes of Paintings) mentions a portrait by J. de Critz. Among numerous engravings may be mentioned the rare copperplates by Renold Elstracke [q. v.], by Thomas Lant [q. v.] (in the account of Sidney's funeral, 1587, reproduced in ‘Astrophel and Stella,’ ed. Pollard), and by Simon Pass [q. v.] in Holland's ‘Herωologia.’ There is a stained-glass window with a full-length portrait in the hall of the university of Sydney, New South Wales.
Sidney's literary work has done much to keep his fame alive. None of it was published in his lifetime, but all of it was widely read in manuscript copies, and the reluctance of his friends to authorise its publication led to the issue of surreptitious editions which perplex the conscientious bibliographer.
In 1587 there appeared a translation from the French prose of Plessis du Mornay, entitled ‘A Woorke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion.’ This was begun by Sidney, but was completed and published by Arthur Golding [q. v.] It was at once popular, and reissues are dated 1587, 1592, 1604, and 1617.
The ‘Arcadia,’ begun in 1580 and probably completed before his marriage in 1583, was the earliest of Sidney's purely literary compositions to be printed. Within a few months of its author's death Greville wrote to Walsingham that the publisher, William Ponsonby, had told him of a forthcoming edition, of which Sidney's friends knew nothing. Greville suggested that ‘more deliberation’ was required before Sidney's books should be given to the world (cf. State Papers, Dom. Eliz. cxcv. No. 43; Arber, Garner, i. 488–9). On 23 Sept. 1588, however, Ponsonby obtained a license for the publication of the ‘Arcadia.’ In 1589 Puttenham, in his ‘Art of English Poesie,’ wrote: ‘Sir Philip Sidney in the description of his mistresse excellently well handled this figure of resemblaunce by imagerie, as ye may see in his booke of Archadia.’ But the romance was not published till 1590, when Ponsonby issued in quarto ‘The Covntesse of Pembroke's Arcadia, written by Sir Philippe Sidnei’ (copies are at the British Museum, and in the Huth, Britwell, and Rowfant Libraries). The ‘overseer’ (i.e. printer's reader) admitted his own responsibility for the division of the work into chapters, and for the distribution through the prose text of the poetical eclogues. The whole was divided into three books. Another edition, ‘now since the first edition augmented and ended,’ was issued by Ponsonby in 1593 in folio (a unique copy is at Britwell). In an address to the reader H. S. (possibly Henry Salisbury [q. v.]) stated that the work had been revised and supplemented from Sidney's manuscripts by his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. She now divided the work into five books instead of three, while changes were made in the arrangement of the poems and many new ones supplied. An edition, ‘now the third time published, with sundry new additions of the same author’ (London, 1598, fol.), also undertaken by Ponsonby under Lady Pembroke's direction, contained the previously published ‘Apologie for Poetrie’ and ‘Astrophel and Stella,’ with some hitherto unprinted poems and the masque of the ‘Lady of May.’ This is the definitive edition of Sidney's works, and it was constantly reissued. Robert Waldegrave printed an edition at Edinburgh in 1599, copies of which were unlawfully imported into England. Later folio issues of bibliographical interest were dated 1605 (by Matthew Lownes), 1613 (for Simon Waterson, with a new ‘dialogue betweene two shepherds … at Wilton’), 1621 (Dublin, printed by the Societie of Stationers, with the supplement to the third book of the ‘Arcadia’ by Sir William Alexander, originally published separately), 1623 (London, with Alexander's supplement), 1627 (with Beling's sixth book, separately title-paged). Other reissues appeared in 1629, 1633, 1638 (with a second supplement to the third book by Ja. Johnstoun), 1655 (with memoir and ‘a remedie of love’), 1662, and 1674. A reprint of 1725 of Sidney's ‘works … in prose and verse,’ in 3 vols. 8vo, was described as the fourteenth edition, and a modernised version of the ‘Arcadia’ by Mrs. Stanley was issued in the same year. No other reprint was attempted till 1867, when J. Hain Friswell edited an abridgement. A facsimile reprint of the quarto of 1590, with bibliographical introduction by Dr. Oskar Sommer, appeared in 1891.
The ‘Arcadia’ was written by Sidney for the amusement of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. It was ‘done,’ he wrote, ‘in loose sheets of paper, most of it in his sister's presence, the rest by sheets sent unto her as fast
