A Defence of Poesie and Poems | Page 5

literature. Here Sidney was
in earnest. His style is wholly free from the euphuistic extravagance in
which readers of his time delighted: it is clear, direct, and manly; not
the less, but the more, thoughtful and refined for its unaffected
simplicity. As criticism it is of the true sort; not captious or formal, still
less engaged, as nearly all bad criticism is, more or less, with indirect
suggestion of the critic himself as the one owl in a world of mice.
Philip Sidney's care is towards the end of good
literature. He looks
for highest aims, and finds them in true work, and hears God's angel in
the poet's song.
The writing of this piece was probably suggested to him by the fact that
an earnest young student, Stephen Gosson, who came from his
university about the time when the first theatres were built, and wrote
plays, was turned by the bias of his mind into agreement with the
Puritan attacks made by the pulpit on the stage (arising chiefly from the
fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579 transferred his
pen from service of the players to attack on them, in a piece which he
called "The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against
Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a
Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous

exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, Natural
Reason, and Common Experience: a Discourse as pleasant for
Gentlemen that favour Learning as profitable for all that will follow
Virtue." This Discourse Gosson dedicated "To the right noble
Gentleman, Master Philip Sidney, Esquire." Sidney himself wrote verse,
he was companion with the poets, and counted Edmund Spenser among
his friends. Gosson's pamphlet was only one expression of the narrow
form of Puritan opinion that had been misled into attacks on poetry and
music as feeders of idle appetite that withdrew men from the life of
duty. To show the fallacy in such opinion, Philip Sidney wrote in 1581
this piece, which was first printed in 1595, nine years after his death, as
a separate publication, entitled "An Apologie for Poetrie." Three years
afterwards it was added, with other pieces, to the third edition of his
"Arcadia," and then entitled "The Defence of Poesie." In sixteen
subsequent editions it continued to appear as "The Defence of Poesie."
The same title was used in the separate editions of 1752 and 1810.
Professor Edward Arber re-issued in 1869 the text of the first edition of
1595, and restored the original title, which probably was that given to
the piece by its author. One name is as good as the other, but as the
word "apology" has somewhat changed its sense in current English, it
may be well to go on calling the work "The Defence of Poesie."
In 1583 Sidney was knighted, and soon afterwards in the same year he
married Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. Sonnets written
by him according to old fashion, and addressed to a lady in accordance
with a form of courtesy that in the same old fashion had always been
held to exclude personal suit--personal suit was private, and not
public--have led to grave misapprehension among some critics. They
supposed that he desired marriage with Penelope Devereux, who was
forced by her family in 1580--then eighteen years old--into a hateful
marriage with Lord Rich. It may be enough to say that if Philip Sidney
had desired her for his wife, he had only to ask for her and have her.
Her father, when dying, had desired-- as any father might--that his
daughter might become the wife of Philip Sidney. But this is not the
place for a discussion of Astrophel and Stella sonnets.
In 1585 Sidney was planning to join Drake it sea in attack on Spain in

the West Indies. He was stayed by the Queen. But when Elizabeth
declared war on behalf of the Reformed Faith, and sent Leicester with
an expedition to the Netherlands, Sir Philip Sidney went out, in
November, 1585, as Governor of Flushing. His wife joined him there.
He fretted at inaction, and made the value of his counsels so distinct
that his uncle Leicester said after his death that he began by "despising
his youth for a counsellor, not without bearing a hand over him as a
forward young man. Notwithstanding, in a short time he saw the sun so
risen above his horizon that both he and all his stars were glad to fetch
light from him." In May, 1586, Sir Philip Sidney received news of the
death of his father. In August his mother died. In September he joined
in the investment of Zutphen. On the 22nd of September his thigh-bone
was shattered by a musket ball from the trenches. His