The -Lady Penelope Devereux was married to my
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hat had happened in the long entr'acte betweenthese two letters of November, 1576, and March loth,1581 ? In 1577, Sidney had executed, with distin-guished success, a special embassy to Germany ; thenext eighteen months were passed in fighting his xiv INTRODUCTION, lather's battles at Court and eating his own heart outwith vexation that he should have to call the prime ofhis manhood his "idelest times." In 1579 thethreatened marriage of Elizabeth with the Duke ofAnjou roused him to energy. He quarrelled with andchallenged the Earl of Oxford, as much on political ason personal grounds, and at the end of this year, or thebeginning of the next, addressed to his " Most fearedand beloved, most sweet and gracious sovereign," anextraordinarily bold letter against the French match.The letter was ill-received, and Sidney retired fromCourt until the autumn, spending most of his time atWilton, the home of his sister, the Countess ofPembroke. His gifts to the Queen on New Year'sDay 1581 — a gold-handled whip, a golden chain, anda heart of gold — must be taken as symbolizing theabandonnient of an opposition to the Queen's will,which could only have been useless. From January1 6th to March i8th the House of Commons was insession, and Sidney, a hard-working member of it,serving on several committees. These details fromhis public career help us but very httle. Moreimportant for our purpose is the marriage of the Earlof Leicester to the Dowager Countess of Essex onSept. 20th, 1578. When this union of his powerful INTRODUCTION, xv uncle with the mother of the woman he himself lovedwas followed by the birth of a little cousin, Sidney'sprospects were seriously damaged. As Lord Leicester'sheir he was a match for the richest woman in England;as Sir Henry Sidney's son he was a poor gentlemanwho had great difficulty in meeting the expenses of alife at Court. The next time Philip entered the tilt-yard he bore on his shield the word Speravi crossedthrough, in token that his hopes were at an end, andamong these vanished hopes may have been that of amarriage with the Lady Penelope. If this were so,however, he had apparently made no man his con-fidant, certainly not his old friend Languet. In aletter dated January 8th, 1578, Languet had returnedto the subject of matrimony, as on the previousoccasion beginning in jest and ending in very tenderearnest. This time Sidney's answer is still extant, andwe quote it, as in the case of Languet's earlier letteras translated from the Latin by Mr. S. A. Pearsin his 1845 edition of the correspondence of the twofriends. "But I wonder, my very dear Hubert," Sidneyproceeds, after writing on other matters, " what hascome into your mind, that, when I have not as yetdone anything worthy of me, you would have me xvi INTRODUCTION, i bound in the chains of matrimony, and yet withoutpointing out any individual lady, but rather seemingto extol the state itself which, however, you have notyet sanctioned by your own example. Respecting her,.of whom I readily acknowledge how unworthy I am, Ihave written you my reasons long since, briefly indeed,but yet as well as I was able. At this present time,indeed, I believe you have entertained some othernotion, which I earnestly entreat you to acquaint mewith, whatever it may be : for everything that comesfrom you has great weight with me ; and, to speakcandidly, I am in some measure doubting whethersome one, more suspicious than wise, has notwhispered to you something unfavourable concerningme, which, though you did not give entire credit to it,you nevertheless prudently, and as a friend, thoughtright to suggest for my consideration. Should thishave been the case, I entreat you to state the matterto me in plain terms, that I may be able to acquitmyself before you, of whose "good opinion I am mostdesirous : and should it only prove to have been ajoke, or a piece of friendly advice, I pray you never-theless to let me know ; since everything from you willalways be no less acceptable to me than the thingswhich I hold most dear." INTRODUCTION. xvii De illa^ qua quam indignus sim facile agnosco : — thisilia can hardly be any other than Stella, but with thedisappearance of the letter in which they were con-tained, the allusion to the "reasons written longsince " remains only to tantalize us. In this failure of Elizabethan historians and Sidney'swn early biographers to give any clear account of hiselations with the Stella of his poems, we must fall ck on an examination of the poems themselves as only resource left us for piecing together the ty facts and allusions which we have so far 'ecorded. As regards these poems, to avoid interrupt- ng our love story by bibliography, leave is asked to postulate for the present certain facts which will be ■ully dealt with a few pages further on. Thus, with •egard to the Sonnets, we accept them, with the one exception of xxiv., as substantially in their right order. The place of the Songs we take to be so far :x)rrect that the order cannot be improved, though the I x>sitions of two or three out of the whole number have /no particular appropriateness. The reference to Stella of the selection from the " Certain Sonets " printed as an appendix is also assumed. Lastly we rely on our notes as proving that the most probable date for the composition of Sonnet xxii. is June, 1580, of Sonnet xviii INTRODUCTION, XXX., January, 158 1, of Sonnet xli., not later than May1 5 th, 1 5 8 1 , and probably a few weeks earlier. The onlyremaining time-reference is the " May then yong " ofSong viii., and this we have no hesitation in assigning toMay, 1 58 1, though with a frank confession that the pre-ference of this over the following year, is a matter oftheory, and in no wise proved.
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