[1] "Annual Review," iv. 547.
[2] Who does not recognise a well-known passage in SHAKESPEARE,
copied too by COLERIDGE and BYRON, in these words of SIDNEY--"More
sweet than a gentle south-west wind which comes creeping over flowery
fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer." Such
delightful diction, which can only spring out of deep poetic emotion,
may be found in the poetic prose of Sidney.
"Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour."--
Shaks. _Twelfth Night_, act 1, sc. i.
"And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,
O'er willowy meads and shadow'd waters creeping,
And Ceres' golden fields."--
Coleridge's _First Advent of Love_.
"Breathing all gently o'er his cheek and mouth,
As o'er a bed of violets the sweet south."--
_Don Juan_, canto 2, verse 168.
[3] Sidney alludes to all that secret history of Leicester which
Parsons the Jesuit pretends to disclose in his "Leicester's
Commonwealth." This challenge was found among the Sidney papers, but
probably was not issued.
[4] See "The Arcadia," p. 267; eighth edition, 1633.
[5] See Coleridge's "Table-Talk," ii. 178.
[6] Richard Barnfielde's "Affectionate Shepherd" forms such a
collection of sonnets which were popular. The poet bewails his
unsuccessful love for a beautiful youth, yet professing the chastest
affection. Poets, like mocking-birds, repeat the notes of others,
till the cant becomes idle, and the fashion of style obsolete.
[7] A lady who has become enamoured of the friend who is pleading for
her lover, and suddenly makes the fatal avowal to that friend, thus
expresses her emotion--"Grown bolder or madder, or bold with madness,
I discovered my affection to him." "He left nothing unassayed to
disgrace himself, to grace his friend."--p. 39.
[8] In the late Mr. Heber's treasures of our vernacular literature
there was a copy of "The Arcadia," with manuscript notes by Gabriel
Harvey. He had also divided the work into chapters, enumerating the
general contents of each.--"Bib. Heberiana," part the first. A
republication of this copy--omitting the continuations of the Romance
by a strange hand, and all the eclogues, and most of the
verses--would form a desirable volume, not too voluminous.
[9] This summary of the character of Sidney I wrote nearly thirty
years ago, in the "Quarterly Review."