against the Spaniards in the West Indies. Sir Philip Sidney helped towards the fitting of this expedition, and was bent on taking part in it himself, sharing authority with Drake after they had put to sea. Sidney went to Plymouth, but his secret plan became known, and his sailing with Drake's fleet was stayed by the queen's absolute command. Drake, therefore, sailed without him in September; and soon afterwards a daughter was born to Sir Philip Sidney, who was baptised Elizabeth, the queen standing as sponsor. Then he went to his death in the Low Countries. The seven northern provinces of Holland had declared their independence on the twenty-ninth of September, 1580. In 1584, William of Orange had been assassinated. In 1585, the ten southern provinces were conquered by the Prince of Parma. Catherine de' Medici was in that year proposing to Philip of Spain invasion of England for the crushing of heresy. Philip pointed to heretics nearer home. Protestants of the Netherlands appealed to England, and on the tenth of August, 1585, a treaty was signed at Nonsuch, stipulating that England should provide 5,000 foot-soldiers and 1,000 horse to aid war in the Netherlands, while, as security for expenses, and as headquarters for troops, temporary possession was to be taken of Flushing, Brill, and the Castle of Rammekins. Then England declared war for three objects to secure peace to all of the Reformed Faith; restoration of ancient rights to the Netherlands; and the safety of England. The English went out with the Earl of Leicester for their leader, Sir Philip Sidney as Governor of Flushing and of Rammekins, and Sir Thomas Cecil, eldest son of Lord Burghley, as Governor of Brill. Sidney went to his post in November, 1585. The earl followed in December, and spent over-much time in feasting. Sidney's heart was in his duty. He planned work in vain, and he sought in vain to protect the poor soldiers against chiefs who enriched themselves out of their pay and their supplies. In January, Leicester offended Elizabeth by accepting from the States the rank of Governor-General of the United Provinces. Sir Philip Sidney fretted at inaction. His wife joined him at Flushing. In May, 1586, Sidney received news of the death of his father. In July he had a chief part in the capture of Axel. In August his mother died. In September he joined with Sir John Norris and Count Lewis William of Nassau in the investment of Zutphen. On the twenty-second of that month Sir Philip Sidney received his death wound in a gallant assault made by a few hundred English against a thousand cavalry, and under fire from walls and trenches. "An unfortunate hand out of those fore-spoken trenches," Fulke Greville tells us, "brake the bone of Sir Philip's thigh with a musket shot. The horse he rode upon was rather furiously choleric than bravely proud, and so forced him to forsake the field, but not his back, as the noblest and most fitting bier to carry a martial commander to his grave. In which sad progress, passing along by the rest of the army, where his uncle the general was, and being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for drink, which was presently brought him; but as he was putting the bottle to his mouth he saw a poor soldier carried along who had eaten his last at the same feast, ghastly casting up his eyes at the bottle. Which Sir Philip perceiving, took it from his head before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man, with these words, 'Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.' And when he had pledged this poor soldier, he was presently carried to Arnheim." After sixteen days of suffering, when his shoulder-bones were worn through his skin by constant reclining in one posture, Sir Philip Sidney was himself first to observe signs of mortification of his wounded limb. Knowing that this foreboded death, he then made confession of his faith, and dictated his will, parting his books between his two dearest friends, Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer. Then he called for 66 music, "especially," says Greville, "that song which himself had entitled La cuisse rompue: partly, as I conceive by the name, to show that the glory of mortal flesh was shaken in him; and by the music itself to fashion and enfranchise his heavenly soul into the everlasting harmony of angels, whereof these concords were a kind of terrestrial echo." Then followed the leave-taking of his two weeping younger brothers, to whom his farewell was: Love my memory, cherish my friends; their faith to me may assure you that they are honest. But above all, govern your will and affections by the Will and Word of your Creator; in me beholding the end of this world with all her vanities." Sidney lived on, patient in suffering, until the seventeenth of October. When he was speechless before death, one who stood by asked Philip Sidney for a sign of his continued trust in God. He folded his hands as in prayer over his breast. So folded, they had become fixed and chill when the watchers placed them by his side, and in a few minutes the stainless representative of the young manhood of Elizabethan England passed away. K-VOL. IX. Sidney, Dyer. CHAPTER V. OF SOME OTHER WRITERS BEFORE 1586. ALL England mourned when the news came of Sir Philip Sidney's death; and when his body was brought home a princely funeral paid homage to the true Greville, and soul that had also reached its home. Thirty drawings, etched in 1587 "by T. L[ant], Gent. servant to the said honourable knight," were designed to show, when joined together, the whole pomp of Sidney's obsequies. The four pall-bearers were Sidney's intimate friends; the dearest of these-Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer-were shown in front; the other two were Thomas Dudley, who was of his kindred, and Edward Wotton (elder brother of Sir Henry Wotton), who had been in his younger days Sidney's friend and companion at Vienna, named by him in the first sentence of his "Apologie for Poetrie." Edward Wotton had risen in public trust, and Sidney bequeathed to him by his will, in life-long remembrance of his love, an annual present of a buck from Penshurst. Sidney's brother next to him in age followed the body as chief mourner; then his youngest brother, with knights and gentlemen; then the Earls of Leicester and Huntingdon, of Pembroke and Essex, and other lords; then a representative of each of the United Provinces of the Netherlands; and so forth. There had been a pomp to precede the body, there was a pomp to follow, and there was the love of true friends by its side. The friendship, dating from their boyhood, between Sidney, Greville, and Dyer was celebrated by Sidney in a playful pastoral with the burden— "Join hands and hearts, so let it be; Make but one mind in bodies three." He wrote the initials E. D., F. G., P. S., in the margin of this one of its stanzas "Welcome my two to me The number best beloved; In friendship unremoved. Join hands and hearts, so let it be ; Make but one mind in bodies three." Sir Edward Edward Dyer was born two or three miles from Glastonbury, Somersetshire, in the house at Sharpham Park, afterwards the birthplace also of our great novelist, Henry Fielding. The house, in a deer park of about four hundred acres, had been built by Richard Beere, who was Abbot of Glastonbury between the years 1493 and 1524. His successor, Richard Whiting, who objected to the dissolution of the monasteries, was seized at Sharpham, kept about two months a prisoner, then dragged on a hurdle to the top of Tor Hill, and there hanged and quartered for " robbing Glastonbury Church." Henry VIII. took all, without being hanged for it, and granted Sharpham to Sir Thomas Dyer, the poet's father. There, no very long time afterwards, Sidney's friend was born. Dyer was sent in due time to Oxford, left the university without having graduated, travelled beyond seas, came home, and served in the Court of Elizabeth, by whom he was employed in several embassies. In 1579 Spenser published some of Gabriel Harvey's poems, dedicating them "to the right Worshipful gentleman and famous Courtier, Master Edward Diar, in a manner oure onlye Inglishe poett." In 1580 Gabriel Harvey |