The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

Arcadia

Sir Philip Sidney, the finest type of gentleman of Elizabethan days, was born on November 30, 1554, at Penshurst, Kent, the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord-Deputy in Ireland, and grandson, on his mother's side, of the Duke of Northumberland, who was beheaded for complicity in the Lady Jane Grey conspiracy. Education at Oxford, travel abroad, diplomatic service, a wise interest in literature, and a singular graciousness of character made Sidney "a full man." He was regarded, at home and abroad, as the ideal gentleman of his time, and a heroic death, at the siege of Zutphen, on October 2, 1586, enhanced his fame. His body was brought home for a national funeral in old St. Paul's. Sidney's claims as a writer are based on both prose--"Arcadia" and "An Apologie for Poetrie"--and verse--"Astrophel and Stella." The elaborate and artificial romance "Arcadia" was written for his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, probably between 1578-80. It was left incomplete, and was not published until four years after his death. It has been described as forming the earliest model for the art of prose. In our epitome we have followed the central thread of a story which has innumerable episodic extensions.

I.--Lost and Found

It was the time that the earth begins to put on her new apparel against the approach of her lover, when the shepherd, Strephon, on the sands which lie against the island of Cithera, called upon him his friendly rival, Claius, and bewailed their hopeless wooing of the fair shepherdess, Urania, whose beauty taught the beholders chastity. As they were going on with their praises, they perceived the thing which floated nearer and nearer to the shore, by the favourable working of the sea, till it was cast up hard before them, and they fully saw it was a man. So they fell to rub and chafe him, till they brought him to recover both breath, the servant, and warmth, the companion of living. Whereupon, without so much as thanking them for their pains, he got up and cried, as he looked round to the uttermost limits of his sight, "What, shall Musidorus live after Pyrocles's destruction?" Then they, hearing him speak in Greek, which was their natural language, became the more tender-hearted towards him.

"Since you take care of me," said he, "I pray you find some bark that will go out of the haven, that it possible we may find the body of Pyrocles." So Claius presently went to a fisherman, and having agreed with him, and provided some apparel for the naked stranger, they embarked, and were no sooner gone beyond the mouth of the haven than they discerned the ship burning which had driven both Musidorus and his friend, rather to commit themselves to the cold mercy of the sea, than to abide the hot cruelty of the fire. And when they had bent their course as near up to it as they could, they saw, but a little way off, the mast, whose proud height now lay along, and upon it a young man who sat as on horseback, holding a sword aloft which often he waved, which when Musidorus saw he was ravished with joy. But now the sailors described a galley which came with sails and oars directly in the chase of them, and straight they perceived it was a well-known pirate, so forthwith they set on all the canvas, and flew homeward, leaving in that poor sort Pyrocles, so near to be rescued. And Musidorus, casting a long look that way, saw the galley leave the pursuit of them, and turn to take up the spoils of the wreck; and, lastly, he might well see them lift up the young man. But the fishermen made such speed into the haven that they absented his eyes from beholding the issue, and he could procure neither them, nor any other, to put to sea again.