sorrow, although she afterwards complained that Sidney invited death by his rashness (Naunton, p. 19). ‘What perfection he was born unto, and how able he was to serve her majesty and his country, all men here almost wonder,’ wrote his uncle Leicester to Walsingham from the Hague eight days after his death. The sentiment was repeated in every variety of phrase. ‘This is that Sidney,’ wrote Camden, ‘who as Providence seems to have sent him into the world to give the present a specimen of the ancients, so it did on a sudden recall him and snatch him from us as more worthy of heaven than of earth.’ Thomas Nash, in his ‘Piers Penilesse,’ apostrophised Sidney in the words ‘Well couldst thou give every virtue his encouragement, every wit his due, every writer his desert, 'cause none more virtuous, witty, or learned than thyself.’ Both the universities published collections of elegies. At Cambridge the volume which was edited by Alexander Neville (1544–1614) [q. v.] was dedicated to Leicester, and included a sonnet in English by James VI of Scotland, with Latin translations of it by the king, by Patrick, lord Gray, Sir John Maitland, Alexander Seton, and by James Halkerston, who contributed two versions. At Oxford two volumes appeared, one edited by William Gager and entitled ‘Exequiæ | Illustrissimi | Equitis D. Philip- | Pi Sidnæi, Gratissi- | mæ Memoriæ Ac No- | Mini Impensæ,’ with a dedication to Leicester; the other, edited by John Lhuyd and dedicated to Sidney's brother-in-law, the Earl of Pembroke, under the title ‘Peplos | Illustrissimi | viri D. Philippi | Sidnæi Supre- | Mis Honoribus Dictatus |.’ The chief contributors to the latter were members of New College.
The most interesting of the poetic memorials, which numbered fully two hundred, is the collection of eight elegies which was appended in 1595 to Spenser's ‘Colin Clouts come Home again.’ The opening poem, entitled ‘Astrophel: a Pastorall Elegie,’ after which the collection is usually named, was by Spenser himself, and was dedicated to Sidney's widow, who had then become the Earl of Essex's wife. Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, Lodowick Bryskett, Matthew Roydon, and Sir Walter Ralegh are among the contributors to the collection. Other poetical tributes of literary or bibliographical interest were issued in separate volumes by Sir William Herbert (d. 1593) [q. v.] in 1586; by George Whetstone [q. v.] in 1586; by John Philip (fl. 1566) [q. v.] in 1587, dedicated to the Earl of Essex; by Angel Day [q. v.] in 1587; and by Thomas Churchyard [q. v.], dedicated to Lady Sidney (n.d.). Funeral songs with music appeared in William Byrd's ‘Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs,’ 1588, while five pieces on the same theme by the mysterious ‘A. W.’ are in Davison's ‘Poetical Rhapsody’ (ed. Bullen, i. 63–71, ii. 90–3). A charming elegy, ‘Amoris Lachrymæ,’ figures in Breton's ‘Bowre of Delights’ (London, R. Johnes, 1591, 4to), and an eclogue on Sidney in Drayton's ‘Eclogues’ (1593, No. 4).
Sidney's force of patriotism and religious fervour were accompanied by much political sagacity, by high poetic and oratorical gifts, and by unusual skill in manly sports. Such versatility, allied to a naturally chivalric, if somewhat impetuous, temperament, generated a rare personal fascination, the full force of which was brought home to his many friends by his pathetic death, from a wound received in battle, at the early age of thirty-two. His achievements, when viewed in detail, may hardly seem to justify all the eulogies in verse and prose which his contemporaries bestowed upon his brief career; but the impression that it left in its entirety on his countrymen's imagination proved ineffaceable. Shelley, in his ‘Adonais,’ gave expression to a sentiment still almost universal among Englishmen when he wrote of
Sidney as he fought
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved,
Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot.
Portraits of Sidney are very numerous. A picture containing full-length life-size figures of Sir Philip and his younger brother Robert is at Penshurst. There also is the familiar and often engraved three-quarter length, life-size, with clean-shaven face, by Zucchero, dated 1577, when Sidney was twenty-two. The miniature by Isaac Oliver, in which Sidney is represented reclining under a tree and wearing a tall hat, with the gardens at Wilton in the background, is now at Windsor; it was finely engraved by Vertue for the ‘Sydney Papers,’ to which it forms the frontispiece, and there is a good photogravure in Jusserand's ‘English Novel’ (English transl. 1890). Another miniature by Oliver, in a silver filagree frame, belongs to Sir Charles Dilke, and a third miniature (anonymous) is at Penshurst. There seems nothing to confirm the conjecture that the last reproduces the portrait, apparently lost, which was painted for Sidney's friend Languet by Paolo Veronese at Venice in 1574, and there is no means of identifying a second portrait noticed by Languet as in the possession of one Abondius at Vienna in the same year (cf. Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 308; Gent. Mag. 1854, ii. 152–3). At Woburn a portrait doubtfully
