Sir Philip Sidney Biography

Dromo's Den

SIDNEY, Sir Philip (1554–86). A celebrated English writer and soldier. He was born at Penshurst in Kent, Nov. 30, 1554, and received his education at Shrewsbury, whence in 1568 he went to Christ Church, Oxford. He left the university without a degree, but with a high reputation for scholarship. In 1572 he traveled abroad. He was in Paris when the Massacre of St. Bartholomew took place, but ran no personal risk, being under protection of the English embassy. He then visited Belgium, Germany, Hungary, and Italy, occupying most of his time in studying languages, literature, history, and politics, and cultivating the acquaintance of eminent men; and in 1575 he returned, an erudite and polished gentleman. His uncle (Dudley, Earl of Leicester) was now in the zenith of his fortunes, and for Sidney a career at court lay open. With Queen Elizabeth he was throughout life an especial favorite. In 1577 she intrusted him with a mission to Heidelberg and Prague and, though he failed in his negotiations, he was warmly commended. Three years after, he had the boldness to address to the Queen a "remonstrance" against her proposed marriage with Henry, Duke of Anjou, a union to which she seemed herself not indisposed. It is significant of his high favor that Elizabeth, imperious in temper and little inclined to brook interference, was satisfied with his short retirement from court. This interval he passed in literary work at Wilton with his sister the Countess of Pembroke. For her entertainment he wrote his celebrated pastoral romance, Arcadia, published posthumously by his sister in 1590. In 1583 he consoled himself for the marriage of Lady Penelope Devereux, to whom he had been ardently attached and who figures as Stella in his poems, by marrying Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. In 1585 he is said to have meditated sailing with Sir Francis Drake in an expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies, but to have been forbidden by Elizabeth through fear "lest she lose the jewel of her dominions." Late in that year, however, she appointed him Governor of Flushing, whither he went to take part in the war then waging between her allies, the Dutch and the Spanish. At the battle of Zutphen in Gelderland a horse was killed under him, and he received a musket shot in the thigh from which after great suffering he died at Arnheim on Oct. 7, 1586. While he was borne from the field, as he complained of thirst, a bottle of water was brought him; but when about to drink, he was touched by the wistful look of a mortally wounded soldier close by, and, taking the water untasted from his lips, Sidney handed it to his fellow with the words, "Thy necessity is greater than mine." The esteem in which Sidney was held by his countrymen was shown in the grief with which the news of his death was received. His body was brought to England and after lying in state was buried with great solemnity in the old cathedral of St. Paul's. The universities of Cambridge and Oxford issued three volumes of elegies on his death, and Spenser, in his Astrophel, mourned the loss of his friend.

The love and admiration which Sidney won from his contemporaries were a tribute to the singular beauty of his character. His short life was marked by no brilliant achievement, and his literary genius would scarcely of itself have sufficed to account for the regard he inspired. Sidney's Arcadia, overrun as it is with affectations, may still be recognized as a work of great merit, His other well-known work, Apologie for Poetrie (1579), republished in 1598 as Defense of Poesie (q.v.), will repay the attention of the reader. Many of his shorter poems, more especially some of his sonnets, are also of rare merit.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 73-74.