A Defence of Poesie and Poems
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Philip Sidney >> A Defence of Poesie and Poems
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7 This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition.
A DEFENCE OF POESIE AND POEMS
Contents:
Introduction by Henry Morley
A Defence of Poesie
Poems
INTRODUCTION
Philip Sidney was born at Penshurst, in Kent, on the 29th of
November, 1554. His father, Sir Henry Sidney, had married Mary,
eldest daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and Philip
was the eldest of their family of three sons and four daughters.
Edmund Spenser and Walter Raleigh were of like age with Philip
Sidney, differing only by about a year, and when Elizabeth became
queen, on the 17th of November, 1558, they were children of four or
five years old.
In the year 1560 Sir Henry Sidney was made Lord President of Wales,
representing the Queen in Wales and the four adjacent western
counties, as a Lord Deputy represented her in Ireland. The official
residence of the Lord President was at Ludlow Castle, to which
Philip Sidney went with his family when a child of six. In the same
year his father was installed as a Knight of the Garter. When in
his tenth year Philip Sidney was sent from Ludlow to Shrewsbury
Grammar School, where he studied for three or four years, and had
among his schoolfellows Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, who
remained until the end of Sidney's life one of his closest friends.
When he himself was dying he directed that he should be described
upon his tomb as "Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth,
counsellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney." Even
Dr. Thomas Thornton, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, under whom
Sidney was placed when he was entered to Christ Church in his
fourteenth year, at Midsummer, in 1568, had it afterwards recorded
on his tomb that he was "the tutor of Sir Philip Sidney."
Sidney was in his eighteenth year in May, 1572, when he left the
University to continue his training for the service of the state, by
travel on the Continent. Licensed to travel with horses for himself
and three servants, Philip Sidney left London in the train of the
Earl of Lincoln, who was going out as ambassador to Charles IX., in
Paris. He was in Paris on the 24th of August in that year, which
was the day of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was sheltered
from the dangers of that day in the house of the English Ambassador,
Sir Francis Walsingham, whose daughter Fanny Sidney married twelve
years afterwards.
From Paris Sidney travelled on by way of Heidelberg to Frankfort,
where he lodged at a printer's, and found a warm friend in Hubert
Languet, whose letters to him have been published. Sidney was
eighteen and Languet fifty-five, a French Huguenot, learned and
zealous for the Protestant cause, who had been Professor of Civil
Law in Padua, and who was acting as secret minister for the Elector
of Saxony when he first knew Sidney, and saw in him a future
statesman whose character and genius would give him weight in the
counsels of England, and make him a main hope of the Protestant
cause in Europe. Sidney travelled on with Hubert Languet from
Frankfort to Vienna, visited Hungary, then passed to Italy, making
for eight weeks Venice his head-quarters, and then giving six weeks
to Padua. He returned through Germany to England, and was in
attendance it the Court of Queen Elizabeth in July, 1575. Next
month his father was sent to Ireland as Lord Deputy, and Sidney
lived in London with his mother.
At this time the opposition of the Mayor and Corporation of the City
of London to the acting of plays by servants of Sidney's uncle, the
Earl of Leicester, who had obtained a patent for them, obliged the
actors to cease from hiring rooms or inn yards in the City, and
build themselves a house of their own a little way outside one of
the City gates, and wholly outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction.
Thus the first theatre came to be built in England in the year 1576.
Shakespeare was then but twelve years old, and it was ten years
later that he came to London.
In February, 1577, Philip Sidney, not yet twenty-three years old,
was sent on a formal embassy of congratulation to Rudolph II. upon
his becoming Emperor of Germany, but under the duties of the formal
embassy was the charge of watching for opportunities of helping
forward a Protestant League among the princes of Germany. On his
way home through the Netherlands he was to convey Queen Elizabeth's
congratulations to William of Orange on the birth of his first
child, and what impression he made upon that leader of men is shown
by a message William sent afterwards through Fulke Greville to Queen
Elizabeth. He said "that if he could judge, her Majesty had one of
the ripest and greatest counsellors of State in Philip Sidney that
then lived in Europe; to the trial of which he was pleased to leave
his own credit engaged until her Majesty was pleased to employ this
gentleman, either amongst her friends or enemies."
Sidney returned from his embassy in June, 1577. At the time of his
departure, in the preceding February, his sister Mary, then twenty
years old, had become the third wife of Henry Herbert, Earl of
Pembroke, and her new home as Countess of Pembroke was in the great
house at Wilton, about three miles from Salisbury. She had a
measure of her brother's genius, and was of like noble strain.
Spenser described her as
"The gentlest shepherdess that lives this day,
And most resembling, both in shape and spright,
Her brother dear."
Ben Jonson, long after her brother had passed from earth, wrote upon
her death the well-known epitaph:-
"Underneath this sable herse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Learn'd, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee."
Sidney's sister became Pembroke's mother in 1580, while her brother
Philip was staying with her at Wilton. He had early in the year
written a long argument to the Queen against the project of her
marriage with the Duke of Anjou, which she then found it politic to
seem to favour. She liked Sidney well, but resented, or appeared to
resent, his intrusion of advice; he also was discontented with what
seemed to be her policy, and he withdrew from Court for a time.
That time of seclusion, after the end of March, 1580, he spent with
his sister at Wilton. They versified psalms together; and he began
to write for her amusement when she had her baby first upon her
hands, his romance of "Arcadia." It was never finished. Much was
written at Wilton in the summer of 1580, the rest in 1581, written,
as he said in a letter to her, "only for you, only to you . . . for
severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, triflingly handled.
Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose
sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets
sent unto you as fast as they were done." He never meant that it
should be published; indeed, when dying he asked that it should be
destroyed; but it belonged to a sister who prized the lightest word
of his, and after his death it was published in 1590 as "The
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia."
The book reprinted in this volume was written in 1581, while sheets
of the "Arcadia" were still being sent to Wilton. But it differs
wholly in style from the "Arcadia." Sidney's "Arcadia" has literary
interest as the first important example of the union of pastoral
with heroic romance, out of which came presently, in France, a
distinct school of fiction. But the genius of its author was at
play, it followed designedly the fashions of the hour in verse and
prose, which tended to extravagance of ingenuity. The "Defence of
Poesy" has higher interest as the first important piece of literary
criticism in our 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 horse took fright and galloped
back, but the wounded man held to his seat. He was then carried to
his uncle, asked for water, and when it was given, saw a dying
soldier carried past, who eyed it greedily. At once he gave the
water to the soldier, saying, "Thy necessity is yet greater than
mine." Sidney lived on, patient in suffering, until the 17th of
October. When he was speechless before death, one who stood by
asked Philip Sidney for a sign of his continued trust in God. He
folded his hands as in prayer over his breast, and so they were
become fixed and chill, when the watchers placed them by his side;
and in a few minutes the stainless representative of the young
manhood of Elizabethan England passed away.
AN APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE
When the right virtuous Edward Wotton {1} and I were at the
Emperor's court together, we gave ourselves to learn horsemanship of
Gio. Pietro Pugliano; one that, with great commendation, had the
place of an esquire in his stable; and he, according to the
fertileness of the Italian wit, did not only afford us the
demonstration of his practice, but sought to enrich our minds with
the contemplation therein, which he thought most precious. But with
none, I remember, mine ears were at any time more laden, than when
(either angered with slow payment, or moved with our learner-like
admiration) he exercised his speech in the praise of his faculty.
He said, soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind, and horsemen
the noblest of soldiers. He said, they were the masters of war and
ornaments of peace, speedy goers, and strong abiders, triumphers
both in camps and courts; nay, to so unbelieved a point he
proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a prince, as
to be a good horseman; skill of government was but a "pedanteria" in
comparison. Then would he add certain praises by telling what a
peerless beast the horse was, the only serviceable courtier, without
flattery, the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and such
more, that if I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to
him, I think he would have persuaded me to have wished myself a
horse. But thus much, at least, with his no few words, he drove
into me, that self love is better than any gilding, to make that
seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties.
Wherein, if Pugliano's strong affection and weak arguments will not
satisfy you, I will give you a nearer example of myself, who, I know
not by what mischance, in these my not old years and idlest times,
having slipped into the title of a poet, am provoked to say
something unto you in the defence of that my unelected vocation;
which if I handle with more good will than good reasons, bear with
me, since the scholar is to be pardoned that followeth the steps of
his master.
And yet I must say, that as I have more just cause to make a pitiful
defence of poor poetry, which, from almost the highest estimation of
learning, is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children; so have I
need to bring some more available proofs, since the former is by no
man barred of his deserved credit, whereas the silly latter hath had
even the names of philosophers used to the defacing of it, with
great danger of civil war among the Muses. {2}
At first, truly, to all them that, professing learning, inveigh
against poetry, may justly be objected, that they go very near to
ungratefulness to seek to deface that which, in the noblest nations
and languages that are known, hath been the first light-giver to
ignorance, and first nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled
them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges. And will you play
the hedgehog, that being received into the den, drove out his host?
{3} or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill their parents?
{4}
Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show
me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing
else but poets. Nay, let any history he brought that can say any
writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same
skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some others are named, who having been
the first of that country that made pens deliverers of their
knowledge to posterity, may justly challenge to be called their
fathers in learning. For not only in time they had this priority
(although in itself antiquity be venerable) but went before them as
causes to draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits
to an admiration of knowledge. So as Amphion was said to move
stones with his poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be listened
to by beasts, indeed, stony and beastly people, so among the Romans
were Livius Andronicus, and Ennius; so in the Italian language, the
first that made it to aspire to be a treasure-house of science, were
the poets Dante, Boccace, and Petrarch; so in our English were Gower
and Chaucer; after whom, encouraged and delighted with their
excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother
tongue, as well in the same kind as other arts.
This {5} did so notably show itself that the philosophers of Greece
durst not a long time appear to the world but under the mask of
poets; so Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides sang their natural
philosophy in verses; so did Pythagoras and Phocylides their moral
counsels; so did Tyrtaeus in war matters; and Solon in matters of
policy; or rather they, being poets, did exercise their delightful
vein in those points of highest knowledge, which before them lay
hidden to the world; for that wise Solon was directly a poet it is
manifest, having written in verse the notable fable of the Atlantic
Island, which was continued by Plato. {6} And, truly, even Plato,
whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work,
though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin, as it
were, and beauty depended most of poetry. For all stands upon
dialogues; wherein he feigns many honest burgesses of Athens
speaking of such matters that if they had been set on the rack they
would never have confessed them; besides, his poetical describing
the circumstances of their meetings, as the well-ordering of a
banquet, the delicacy of a walk, with interlacing mere tiles, as
Gyges's Ring, {7} and others; which, who knows not to be flowers of
poetry, did never walk into Apollo's garden.
And {8} even historiographers, although their lips sound of things
done, and verity be written in their foreheads, have been glad to
borrow both fashion and, perchance, weight of the poets; so
Herodotus entitled the books of his history by the names of the Nine
Muses; and both he, and all the rest that followed him, either stole
or usurped, of poetry, their passionate describing of passions, the
many particularities of battles which no man could affirm; or, if
that be denied me, long orations, put in the months of great kings
and captains, which it is certain they never pronounced.
So that, truly, neither philosopher nor historiographer could, at
the first, have entered into the gates of popular judgments, if they
had not taken a great disport of poetry; which in all nations, at
this day, where learning flourisheth not, is plain to be seen; in
all which they have some feeling of poetry. In Turkey, besides
their lawgiving divines they have no other writers but poets. In
our neighbour-country Ireland, where, too, learning goes very bare,
yet are their poets held in a devout reverence. Even among the most
barbarous and simple Indians, where no writing is, yet have they
their poets who make and sing songs, which they call "Arentos," both
of their ancestor's deeds and praises of their gods. A sufficient
probability, that if ever learning comes among them, it must be by
having their hard dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet
delight of poetry; for until they find a pleasure in the exercise of
the mind, great promises of much knowledge will little persuade them
that know not the fruits of knowledge. In Wales, the true remnant
of the ancient Britons, as there are good authorities to show the
long time they had poets, which they called bards, so through all
the conquests of Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, some of whom
did seek to ruin all memory of learning from among them, yet do
their poets, even to this day, last; so as it is not more notable in
the soon beginning than in long-continuing.
But since the authors of most of our sciences were the Romans, and
before them the Greeks, let us, a little, stand upon their
authorities; but even so far, as to see what names they have given
unto this now scorned skill. {9} Among the Romans a poet was called
"vates," which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or prophet, as by
his conjoined words "vaticinium," and "vaticinari," is manifest; so
heavenly a title did that excellent people bestow upon this heart-
ravishing knowledge! And so far were they carried into the
admiration thereof, that they thought in the changeable hitting upon
any such verses, great foretokens of their following fortunes were
placed. Whereupon grew the word of sortes Virgilianae; when, by
sudden opening Virgil's book, they lighted upon some verse, as it is
reported by many, whereof the histories of the Emperors' lives are
full. As of Albinus, the governor of our island, who, in his
childhood, met with this verse -
Arma amens capio, nec sat rationis in armis
and in his age performed it. Although it were a very vain and
godless superstition; as also it was, to think spirits were
commanded by such verses; whereupon this word charms, derived of
"carmina," cometh, so yet serveth it to show the great reverence
those wits were held in; and altogether not without ground, since
both the oracles of Delphi and the Sibyl's prophecies were wholly
delivered in verses; for that same exquisite observing of number and
measure in the words, and that high-flying liberty of conceit proper
to the poet, did seem to have some divine force in it.
And {10} may not I presume a little farther to show the
reasonableness of this word "vates," and say, that the holy David's
Psalms are a divine poem? If I do, I shall not do it without the
testimony of great learned men, both ancient and modern. But even
the name of Psalms will speak for me, which, being interpreted, is
nothing but Songs; then, that is fully written in metre, as all
learned Hebricians agree, although the rules be not yet fully found.
Lastly, and principally, his handling his prophecy, which is merely
poetical. For what else is the awaking his musical instruments; the
often and free changing of persons; his notable prosopopoeias, when
he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His majesty; his
telling of the beasts' joyfulness, and hills leaping; but a heavenly
poesy, wherein, almost, he sheweth himself a passionate lover of
that unspeakable and everlasting beauty, to be seen by the eyes of
the mind, only cleared by faith? But truly, now, having named him,
I fear I seem to profane that holy name, applying it to poetry,
which is, among us, thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation. But
they that, with quiet judgments, will look a little deeper into it,
shall find the end and working of it such, as, being rightly
applied, deserveth not to be scourged out of the church of God.
But {11} now let us see how the Greeks have named it, and how they
deemed of it. The Greeks named him [Greek text], which name hath,
as the most excellent, gone through other languages; it cometh of
this word [Greek text], which is TO MAKE; wherein, I know not
whether by luck or wisdom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in
calling him "a maker," which name, how high and incomparable a title
it is, I had rather were known by marking the scope of other
sciences, than by any partial allegation. There is no art delivered
unto mankind that hath not the works of nature for his principal
object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so
depend as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature
will have set forth. {12} So doth the astronomer look upon the
stars, and by that he seeth set down what order nature hath taken
therein. So doth the geometrician and arithmetician, in their
diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician, in times, tell
you which by nature agree, which not. The natural philosopher
thereon hath his name; and the moral philosopher standeth upon the
natural virtues, vices, or passions of man; and follow nature, saith
he, therein, and thou shalt not err. The lawyer saith what men have
determined. The historian, what men have done. The grammarian
speaketh only of the rules of speech; and the rhetorician and
logician, considering what in nature will soonest prove and
persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which still are compassed
within the circle of a question, according to the proposed matter.
The physician weigheth the nature of man's body, and the nature of
things helpful and hurtful unto it. And the metaphysic, though it
be in the second and abstract notions, and therefore be counted
supernatural, yet doth he, indeed, build upon the depth of nature.
Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted
up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into
another nature; in making things either better than nature bringeth
forth, or quite anew; forms such as never were in nature, as the
heroes, demi-gods, Cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as
he goeth hand in hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow
warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his
own wit. {13} Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry
as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful
trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-
much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only
deliver a golden.
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