CHAPTER V. FOREIGN SCHOOLING. 1572-1575. IDNEY'S foreign schooling, of which such memorable commencement was made in Paris, was to be continued, with great advantage to him, through two and a half years. Of his occupations in the first half year we know little. In Lorraine, though it was a province of France, he was in safe Huguenot company, and he seems to have remained there some time, probably with Dean Watson, learning French. and pursuing other studies. Thence, apparently without his guardian, he went to Strasburg and down the Rhine, through Heidelberg, to Frankfort, where we find him in March, 1573, writing at any rate two letters to the Earl of Leicester.* In one, of small Philip Sidney to the Earl of Leicester, 18 and 23 March, 1573; among the Marquis of Bath's MSS. at Longleat. importance, he informs his uncle that the bearer is taking to England some choice articles which he has arranged that the Earl shall have the option of buying. In the other he asks his uncle to return the courtesy he has received from the bearer, who has employed his credit in helping him, Philip, out of the straits for money to which he was driven. This second letter also reports that he had spent last Thursday with Count Lewis of Nassau, and with a German gentleman named Schomberg, whose acquaintance, as well as the Count's, he had made at the French Court. We may assume that Sidney was drawn to Frankfort by some of the better friendships which he had started in Paris, and he was here to meet with the best friend of all. At Frankfort he lodged, during three or four months, at the house of Andrew Wechel, a printer renowned both for his careful reproducing of Greek and Hebrew books and for his generous bearing towards the studious men who visited this great centre of sixteenth-century culture. With Wechel was also lodging Hubert Languet. Languet, born in 1518, was a native of Viteaux, in Burgundy, but a true cosmopolitan. In 1547 he was a professor of Civil Laws at Padua. Two years later, being at Wittenberg, he met with Melancthon, who taught him to be a Protestant, and to whom he became so attached that he resigned his Italian chair in order that he might sit at the feet of his amiable and heroic tutor. His great learning and greater shrewdness soon secured for him a prominent place among the men who carried on, with more or 67 Hubert Languet. less purity, the work begun by Luther and Melancthon. He was the friend of nearly every leading Protestant, especially of Philip du Plessis-Mornay, and the trusted adviser and agent of the princes who, aiming at advancement of the reformed religion, had need of help from one whose clear intellect saw through the mazes of European politics and made him master of the plots and counter-plots in which the friends and foes of his party were mixed up. He it was, most likely, who wrote the famous "Vindicia contra Tyrannos," laying down the doctrine that kings who despoil the Church of God and the inheritance of his saints, who sanction idolatries and blasphemies, may and should be deposed by the open revolt of their subjects, though not by the private hands of assassins; a book much read by Englishmen in Cromwell's day. He had found some warrant for his argument in the St. Bartholomew massacre, which he watched from a hiding place with Du Plessis-Mornay in Paris. 1575] Sidney did not meet Languet in the French city; but at Frankfort a rare and beautiful friendship grew up between the two. The ripened scholar and politician of fifty-four found an exquisite freshness in the youth of eighteen who was vigorously learning to apply in life the lessons of the schools. The youth was gladly strengthened by the experienced and lettered talk of one who knew nearly everything of note then happening in the Christian world, and could tell more than most men would ever hope to read about byegone times. Thus, in his "Arcadia," -writing nine years later, under pastoral image, and speaking of himself as Philisides singing to his sheep, -Sir Philip Sidney acknowledged his debt: The song I sang old Languet had me taught― He said the music best those powers pleased And lowest sink not down to jot of ill. He liked me, but pitied lustful youth: His good strong staff my slippery years upbore : He still hoped well because I loved truth: Till, forced to part, with heart and eyes even sore, The final parting was not till 1581; but earlier and temporary separations caused sore heart and eyes to Languet who, austere bachelor though he was, soon came to feel for Philip Sidney a sort of lover-like tenderness as well as the devotion of a father to a son. They were together at Frankfort for three months or more. Then, when Languet's business took him to Vienna early in the summer of 1573, Sidney went thither with him, to see with his friend's vision *It would be interesting to have a portrait of Languet, but the only one I am acquainted with, that at Penshurst, is evidently untrustworthy. 15751 Through Germany to Italy. 69 whatever was worth seeing at the Court of the Emperor Maximilian the Second, to be introduced to all the learned and devout people there, and to be watched over with more solicitude than at that time he was as grateful for as he should have been. At their first parting Sidney seems to have resorted to a pardonable trick for slipping away from his mentor and acquiring in his own way some of the experience he had been sent from England to obtain. In August or September he left Languet in Vienna, proposing only to make a three days' journey to Presburg. But, once on the move, he stayed away for a few weeks, visiting other parts of Hungary. "Like a bird that has broken out of his cage,' Languet wrote half-complainingly, "you make merry, unmindful, perhaps, of your friends, and heedless of the host of dangers incident to such a mode of travelling. I am sorry that you have no one with you who might discourse to you in the course of your journey, or instruct you about the manners and institutions of the people you visit, conduct you to learned men, and, if need be, serve as your interpreter. I could have procured you such a companion, had you told me what you were going to do.” Returning to Vienna in October, Sidney spent about another month with Languet, and then he started on a longer journey. He wanted to see Italy, and was not deterred by his friend's unwillingness to lose sight of him or fears as to the dangers he might meet with. But it was arranged that they should write to one another every week. Languet appears to have kept to the bargain. Sidney was |