NOTES. 11. Edward Wotton. One of Sidney's dearest friends, whom he remembered in the will made on his death-bed, and who was one of the four pall-bearers at his funeral. 12. Emperor's. Maximilian II. (1527–1576). 13. Horsemanship. This was in the winter of 1574-75, when Sidney had just arrived at the age of 20. That Sidney profited by these lessons in horsemanship is apparent from his own statement in the 41st sonnet of Astrophel and Stella, written, as Pollard, one of his latest editors, thinks, in April or May, 1581: Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance Guided so well that I obtained the prize, Both by the judgment of the English eyes And of some sent from that sweet enemy France, The year before he had given this advice to his brother Robert: "At horsemanship, when you exercise it, read Crison Claudio, and a book that is called La Gloria del Cavallo withal, that you may join the thorough contemplation of it with the exercise; and so shall you profit more in a month than others in a year, and mark the bitting, saddling and curing of horses" (Fox Bourne, Memoir, p. 278). Cf. also Sonnets 49 and 53 of Astrophel and Stella. 16. Wit. A favorite word with Sidney. Used in the singular, 734, 826, 834, 10 14, 121, 13 35, 32 25, 37 8, 30, 31, 43 14, 44 7, 8, 18, 19, 461, 24, 502; in the plural, 34, 4 30, 5 31, 398, 42 4, 44 32, 52 17. Cf. also fine-witted, 14 13. 110. Loaden. Cf. 13 28. Dr. J. A. H. Murray kindly informs me that this form of the past participle is found as early as 1545, in Brinklow's Lamentacyon (E. E. T. S. Extra Ser. No. 22), p. 82, in the translation of Matt. 11. 28. From this time onward, for a hundred years, it is common, being found several times in Shakespeare and Milton, as well as in more obscure authors. It is still in use at the close of the eighteenth century, as, for example, in Ann Radcliffe's Journey made in the Summer of 1794. Sterne (Sentimental Journey, Amiens) even treats it as the infinitive of a weak verb: "he had loaden'd himself.” Perhaps it is at present restricted to the Scotch dialect. The Scotch steward in Robert Louis Stevenson's Master of Ballantrae speaks of a ship as being "too deeply loaden." The last three references I owe to Mr. Ralph O. Williams of New Haven. 112. He said soldiers, etc. That is frequently omitted at the beginning of object clauses. Cf. 114, 814, 97, 15 34, 32 5, 37 3, 11, 12, 40 10, 41 16, 43 31, 50 10, 12, 23, 53 7, 11, 54 6, 55 3, 13, 15. 119. Pedanteria. Piece of pedantry. 124. A piece. Or, as we say colloquially, "a bit." Cf. 45 18. Logician. See the Retr. Review, 10. 45: "Sir Philip Sidney, in the opening paragraph of his essay, gives himself out as 'a piece of a logician'; and, in fact, the Defense of Poesy may be regarded as a logical discourse from beginning to end, interspersed here and there with a few of the more flowery parts of eloquence, but everywhere keeping in view the main objects of all logic and of all eloquence, namely, proof and persuasion. It is, in fact, contrary to the general notion that prevails concerning it in the minds of those who do not take the trouble of judging for themselves, quisition, almost entirely rejecting the 'foreign aid of ornament,' and equally free from dogmatism and declamation." a sober and serious dis 125. To have wished. A construction no longer favored. 126. A horse. Sidney's humor is quiet, but unmistakable. Other instances may be found in 20 26-8, 31 11-13, 35 29-31, 3823, 4811 ff., 583-16. 127. Drave. Cf. 2 25, stale, 4 10 (Ponsonby's ed.), strave, 27 7, 41 17. 26. Unelected. Sidney, like Milton in his prose, is partial to adjectives (past participles), with the negative prefix un. See 308, 52 21. Unelected vocation. Cf. Sonnet 74 of Astrophel and Stella: I never drank of Aganippe well, Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell; Some do I hear of poets' fury tell, But, God wot, wot not what they mean by it. See also 46 3 ff. 2 10-13. As.. So. 24 22-23, 285-7, 29 32, 45 14-17, 46 9, 23, 52 6-7. For this construction, cf. 4 35, 15 7-8, 165–16, 303-4, 8-9, 32 20-23, 36 12, 38 26-7, 39 32-3, 2 15. Silly. Nearly poor, as used in 2 11. Cf. Shak., 2 Hen. VI. 1. 1. 225-6: While as the silly owner of the goods Weeps over them and wrings his hapless hands. Names of philosophers. Meaning Plato: 35 6, 40 33. 216. The defacing of it. Sidney sometimes construes the verbal noun with a following of, as here, and sometimes directly with the object, the preposition being omitted. Examples of the former are: 4 1,4 11, 5 34-5, 6 13–14, 12 1, 13 26, 16 15-16, 32 32, 33 32, 44 6, 47 16-17, 49 34. For the latter, see 3 35, 42, 5 21, 6 12-13, 11 22-23, 12 19, 27 16-17, 30 26, 30 34-35, 32 19, 55 22–23. 218. And first, etc. Puttenham's Art of English Poesy follows, for its first five chapters, with the exception of the second, much the same lines as Sidney in his opening. 2 23. First nurse. So Harington (Haslewood, 2. 121): "The very first nurse and ancient grandmother of all learning." 2 24-27. Sidney elsewhere condemns such similitudes (54 5 ff.), and is perhaps only employing them here for an humorous purpose, and in allusion to the excessive use of them by Gosson, who, in fact, introduces. the adder in his School of Abuse (p. 46): “The adder's death is her own brood." 2 25. Hedgehog. Prof. T. F. Crane of Cornell University refers me to Kirchhof's Wendunmuth, a German collection of fables (Bibl. des litt. Vereins in Stuttgart, Bd. 98), where the story is given (7. 74). It is also said to be found in Camerarius' edition of Æsop, Leipsic, 1564, and elsewhere (cf. Regnier's La Fontaine, I. 146, in Hachette's Les Grands Écrivains de la France). I have also found it in a school edition (p. 90) of Æsop's Fables, published by Ginn & Co. in their "Classics for Children." 2 26. Vipers. Referring to Pliny's Natural History, 10. 82. 2: "On the third day it hatches its young in the uterus, and then excludes them, one every day, and generally twenty in number. The last ones become so impatient of their confinement that they force a passage through the sides of their parent, and so kill her." Again used by Daniel, Apology for Rime (Haslewood, 2. 209): “But this innovation, like a viper, must ever make way into the world's opinion through the bowels of her own breeding." Cf. Englische Studien 14. 195–6. 2 29. Musaus, Homer, and Hesiod. Plato thus groups these names near the close of his Apology (41; Jowett 1. 374): “What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Museus and Hesiod and Homer?" For Musæus, see Mahaffy, Hist. Grk. Lit. 1. 14: "This Musæus was supposed to have been a pupil or successor to Orpheus." On Hesiod, cf. Mahaffy, 1. 98-99: "It is an admitted fact that, about the beginning of the seventh century B.C., the heroic epics of the Greeks were being supplanted by the poetry of real life — iambic satire, elegiac confessions, gnomic wisdom, and proverbial philosophy. The Greeks grew tired of all the praise of courts and ladies and bygone wars, and turned to a sobernay even exaggerated-realism, by way of reaction from the worship of Homeric rhapsody. The father and forerunner of all this school is clearly Hesiod." 2 30. That can say, etc. Thus Shelley, in his Defense of Poetry: "In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry." And again: "They are the institutors of laws and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion." 2 32. Orpheus, Linus. These, like Musæus, and perhaps Hesiod and Homer, are semi-mythical personages. In discussing the legends concerning them Mahaffy says (Hist. Grk. Lit. 1. 10): “But the very fact of the forging of the name of Orpheus, Musæus, and others proves clearly the antiquity of these names, and that the poetry ascribed to them was of a character quite different from that of the Epos. The very frequent allusions of Plato, on the other hand, who even in three places quotes the words of Orpheus, show clearly that he accepted Orpheus and Museus, whom he usually co-ordinates, as ancient masters of religious song, and on a par with Homer and Hesiod. This general acceptance of Orpheus as a real personage, with no less frequent suspicions as to the genuineness of the current Orphic books, appears in other Greek writers; e.g. Aristotle cites the so-called Orphic poems, just as he cites the so-called Pythagorean books. Apart from these casual allusions, our really explicit authorities are the antiquaries of later days, to whom we owe almost all the definite knowledge we possess. Pausanias, in particular, not only speaks constantly of these poets, but refers to some of their hymns which he had heard, and it is he and Strabo who afford us the materials for constructing a general theory about them." Of Linus, Mahaffy says (1. 14): "There are other names which Pausanias considers still older Linus, the personification of the Linus song mentioned by Homer, and from early times identified more or less with the Adonis song of the Phoenicians and the Maneros of the Egyptians." 31-2. Not only... but. Cf. 8 21-2, 26 12-14, 32 14-15, 33 20-21. 35. Amphion. Cf. Horace, Art of Poetry 391-6: "Once in the woods men lived; then holy Orpheus, heaven's interpreter, turned them from slaughter and their foul manner of life; hence he was said to have soothed tigers and ravening lions; hence too it was said that Amphion, founder of the Theban citadel, moved rocks to the strains of his lyre, and led them by alluring persuasion whithersoever he listed." Addressing Stella, in Sonnet 68 of Astrophel and Stella, Sidney writes: Why dost thou spend the treasure of thy sprite In the third of his Sonnets of Variable Verse, Sidney again couples If Orpheus' voice had force to breathe such music's love O stones, O trees, learn hearing, Stella singeth. 37. Beasts. Cf. 18 18, 37 19. 38. Livius Andronicus. About 284-204 B.C. Cf. Simcox, Hist. Lat. Lit. 1. 19: "The first Latin playwright, the first schoolmaster who taught Greek literature. Perhaps his most considerable work was a school-book, an abridgment of the Odyssey in the saturnian metre." Ennius. 239-169 B.C. Cf. Simcox, 1. 22: "Throughout the republican period he was recognized as the great Roman poet. Cicero appeals to him as summus poeta. Lucretius speaks of the doctrines of the world to come which he had enshrined in everlasting verse." 38 ff. Cf. Shelley, Defense of Poetry: "The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio was characterized by a revival of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the superstructure of English literature is based upon the materials of Italian invention." 3 18. Masks of poets. Cf. Mahaffy, Hist. Grk. Lit. 1. 186–7: “ While education and consequently literature were being more and more disseminated, prose had not yet been adopted as a vehicle of thought, and thus the whole intellectual outcome of the nation took the form of Much of what remains is indeed prosaic in idea. . . . The wisdom of Phokylides and of Theognis is not half so poetical as Plato's verse. |