And the third, a period of widening separation, when the lover, 'forced by Stella's laws of duty to depart,' sinks deeper and deeper into depression and discouragement. Joy, hope, delight, even tears, have forgotten him :

'Only true sighs you do not go away:

Thank may you have for such a thankful part;

-Thankworthiest yet when you shall break my heart!'

Last of all, we may imagine, comes a sudden call to action, perhaps connected with the schemes of colonisation which we know to have been occupying his mind in 1582, and Sidney writes the 107th sonnet, the last but one in the series as printed, probably the true conclusion of the whole according to Sidney's plan.

'Sweet for a while give respite to my heart,

Which pants as though it still should leap to thee,
And on my thoughts give thy lieutenancy

To this great cause, which needs both use and art.
And as a queen who from her presence sends
Whom she employs, dismiss from thee my wit,
Till it have wrought what thy own will attends-
O let not fools in me thy works reprove,

And scorning say, 'See what it is to love!'

Scattered up and down these three divisions as the sonnets stand now, are sonnets which have no special fitness to one or other division, and others again that are clearly misplaced. Still, in the main, the story of the poems runs on unbroken, a living continuous whole growing step by step more real and more tragic. With very few exceptions, the Astrophel and Stella sonnets cannot be fairly judged apart from their context. Each sonnet depends upon those before and after it, and it is in the cumulative effect of the whole that Sidney's genius is most clearly felt. Other contemporary series of sonnets will bear unstringing without injury. A stray sonnet taken at random from Delia or Lodge's Phillis or from Drummond's love-sonnets will often compare favourably with one taken at random from Astrophel and Stella. But the weak sonnets in Sidney are like the weak places in some of Wordsworth's finest work, descents to commonplace which taken alone would be intolerable, but which in their proper context rather heighten than detract from the realistic and passionate effect of the whole. In order to preserve this general effect as much as possible, the plan of the present selection has been to take from each period a certain

number of representative sonnets, which reproduce the original whole at least in outline, adding to these two specimens from the Astrophel and Stella songs, eleven in number, which were originally printed after the sonnets, but were interspersed among them in the Arcadia of 1598. The two sonnets beginning 'Thou blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare,' and 'Leave me, O Love which reachest but to dust,' which a recent editor has arbitrarily placed for the first time at the end of Astrophel and Stella, have been here care.ully distinguished from that series. In some ways, in spite of their grand flow of verse and phrase, they are inferior to the majority of the Astrophel and Stella sonnets in workmanship, and also slightly different from them in plan. Sidney was probably not inclined to assign to them finally so conspicuous a place, and they were first published with other miscellaneous sonnets in the Arcadia of 1598. But that they were written towards the close of the Stella episode, perhaps about the time of the poet's marriage with Frances Walsingham, is certainly very likely, and their consonance with all that we know of that philosophical and high-minded Sidney in whom Elizabeth found an unwelcome counsellor, and Languet saw the hope of the Protestant cause in Europe, makes it justifiable to regard them as fit successors to any selection from Astrophel and Stella, and especially as closely connected with the 107th Sonnet.

Of the rest of Sidney's poetry it is not necessary to say very much. The Stella poems brought him his contemporary fame, and upon them and the Apology for Poetry his claim to live in English letters must always rest. His other poems have the youthful faults which mar even Astrophel and Stella, only in far greater abundance. Mere 'thin diet of dainty words,' ingenuity unrelieved by a single touch of true feeling, the stock phrases and themes common to the hundred-and-one second-rate rhymers of the day, this is all that the voluminous verse of the Arcadia, with the exception of a few passages here and there, has to offer. The two songs quoted below from the 'Certain Sonnets-never before printed,' of 1595, belong to the great lyrical growth of the time, and are specimens of Sidney's freest and most spontaneous manner. One of them, the passionate dirge beginning 'Ring out ye bells, let mourning shews be spread,' has a swing and force which ought long ago to have rescued it from oblivion.

MARY A. WARD.

ASTROPHEL AND STELLA.

I.

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,

That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,

Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burn'd brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite ;

Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart, and write.

5.

It is most true that eyes are form'd to serve
The inward light, and that the heavenly part
Ought to be King, from whose rules who do swerve,
Rebels to nature, strive for their own smart.

It is most true, what we call Cupid's dart

An image is, which for ourselves we carve,

And, fools, adore in temple of our heart,

Till that good god make church and churchmen starve:
True, that true beauty virtue is indeed,

Whereof this beauty can be but a shade,

Which, elements with mortal mixture breed:

True, that on earth we are but pilgrims made,
And should in soul up to our country move:
True, and yet true-that I must Stella love.

18.

With what sharp checks I in myself am shent
When into Reason's audit I do go,

And by just 'counts myself a bankrupt know
Of all those goods which heaven to me hath lent;
Unable quite to pay even Nature's rent,

Which unto it by birthright I do owe;

And, which is worse, no good excuse can show,
But that my wealth I have most idly spent!

My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toys;
My wit doth strive those passions to defend,
Which, for reward, spoil it with vain annoys.
I see, my course to lose myself doth bend;

I see and yet no greater sorrow take
Than that I lose no more for Stella's sake.

23.

The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness
Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes,
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise,
With idle pains and missing aim, do guess.
Some, that know how my spring I did address,
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies;
Others, because the prince my service tries,
Think that I think State errors to redress:
But harder judges judge ambition's rage-
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place—
Holds my young brain captived in golden cage.
O fools, or over-wise: alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start
But only Stella's eyes and Stella's heart.

26.

Though dusty wits dare scorn Astrology,
And fools can think those lamps of purest light-
Whose numbers, ways, greatness, eternity,
Promising wonders, wonder do invite-

To have for no cause birthright in the sky
But for to spangle the black weeds of Night;
Or for some brawl, which in that chamber high,
They should still dance to please a gazer's sight.
For me, I do Nature unidle know,

And know great causes great effects procure;
And know those bodies high reign on the low.
And if these rules did fail, proof makes me sure,
Who oft foresee my after-following race,
By only those two stars in Stella's face.

30.

Whether the Turkish new moon minded be
To fill her horns this year on Christian coast?
How Poland's king means without leave of host
To warm with ill-made fire cold Muscovy?
If French can yet three parts in one agree?
What now the Dutch in their full diets boast?
How Holland hearts, now so good towns be lost,
Trust in the shade of pleasant Orange-tree?
How Ulster likes of that same golden bit
Wherewith my father once made it half tame?
If in the Scotch Court be no weltering yet?
These questions busy wits to me do frame:
I, cumbered with good manners, answer do,
But know not how; for still I think of you.