mastery of a difficult subject, but also in his manner of handling, and as it were playing with, some of the quotations he employs. Now he changes the form of a verb from the second person to the first, in order to appropriate to himself a citation from Horace. Again for two nouns he substitutes their antonyms, that he may adapt a line from Ovid to his purpose. In these and similar cases his learning seems to be so entirely at command that he can mold and twist it to suit all the vagaries of a sportive humor. Less conclusive is his amplification of the famous apostrophe in the First Oration against Catiline (53 24, note). Here, in his endeavor to illustrate a rhetorical artifice, he appears to extend the quotation in order to make the illustration more telling. Unless the Elizabethan text of Cicero differed materially from that now accepted, this variation must be laid to the account of dishonesty or to that of a treacherous memory. No one who has formed an opinion concerning Sidney's character would accuse him of deliberate dishonesty, and hence we have no alternative except to suppose that his verbal memory was at times untrustworthy. All things considered, the accuracy of his learning could probably be impeached, and has perhaps often been surpassed, by the best of our contemporary writers; yet it is none the less true that the extent of his reading, and the degree to which he rendered the substance of books tributary to the expression of his own convictions and essential manhood, might well put to shame many who are rightly esteemed his superiors in technical and minute scholarship.

Sidney refers to numerous contemporary humanists, Italian, German, French, and English, whose names it would be tedious and unprofitable to enumerate, especially as they are all contained in the Index of Proper Names. An exception must be made in favor of the elder Scaliger, to whose Poetics Sidney's indebtedness is not inconsiderable. In Italian literature his range is from Dante to Ariosto, and in English

from Chaucer to his personal friend Spenser. How lively was his interest in Italian authors we may infer from his friendship with Giordano Bruno, and the terms in which the latter dedicates to him two of his important works. Sidney read Spanish with ease, as we may infer not only from his imitation of Montemayor, but from his use of Oviedo, though it is just possible that the latter may have been accessible to him in translation. With respect to poetry there appears to have been a substantial identity of opinion on many points between himself and Cervantes, and, in a less degree, between himself and Lope de Vega. Of his love for all that illustrated the riches of the English tongue, and of his ardent desire that the glories of its literature should be still further enhanced, these pages furnish ample proof.

Finally, Sidney was a diligent and enthusiastic student of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, both in themselves and in commentaries upon them. Not only did he endeavor to guide his life according to their precepts, but he delighted in them as literature. His appreciation of the poetry of the Bible is shown by his translation of the first forty-three Psalms, and not less by his glowing, yet reverent, estimates of the parables of Christ, the hymns of. Moses and Deborah, the dramatic poem of Job, and the lyric or didactic compositions of Solomon. In the Sacred Writings he discovered something that corresponded to every element of his manhood, and while their beauty and sublimity enthralled his æsthetic sensibility, he was ready to acknowledge in them a diviner efficacy which transcended the efforts of the human spirit to fathom, as when he exclaimed upon his death-bed, "How unsearchable the mysteries of God's Word are!" (Fox Bourne, p. 512.)

4. STYLE.

Sidney has sometimes been called a Euphuist. This term has been so loosely employed that it would be unprofitable

to examine the appropriateness of the designation without first defining what is to be understood by Euphuism. Fortunately, substantial unanimity has been reached by the competent investigators of the subject, and it is possible to utilize, without lengthy beating of the air, the labors of a scholar who is recognized as one of the foremost expounders of the modern theory of Euphuism. This authority, Dr. Frederick Landmann, has formulated the law of Euphuism in the following brief sentence (Euphues, Heilbronn 1887, Introduction, p. xv, note): "I consider transverse alliteration in parisonic antithetical or parallel clauses as the indispensable criterion of the presence of Euphuism."

This sentence is enigmatic in proportion to its brevity, and demands a commentary to make it intelligible. The commentary, which will be extracted from the same work, adds to the criterion already given a third peculiarity, which Landmann seems to regard as inferior in importance to the one, or rather two, comprised in the sentence already quoted (Landmann, pp. xv-xvi): "We here have the most elaborate antithesis not only of well-balanced sentences, but also of words, often even of syllables. . . . Even when he uses a single sentence, he opposes the words within this clause to each other. When we find a principal and a subordinate clause we may be sure that two, three or all of the words of the former are opposed to an equal number in the latter. This we call parisonic antithesis. ... The second class of elements peculiar to Lyly's style are alliteration, consonance, rhyme, playing upon words, and the use of syllables sounding alike. These embellishments he uses to point out the respective corresponding words in his antithetical clauses. It is not continuous alliteration as we have it in almost every writer of the sixteenth century from Surrey to Spenser, which was condemned by Wilson, Puttenham, and others, but transverse, as it has been very aptly termed by Weymouth: e.g. Although hetherto Euphues I have

shrined thee in my heart for a trustie friende, I will shunne thee heerafter as a trothles foe.' The third distinctive element of Euphuism is the tendency to confirm a statement by a long series of illustrations, comparisons, exempla and short similes, nearly always introduced by 'for as-'; these he takes from ancient history and mythology, from daily life, and, last but not least, from Pliny's fabulous natural history, translating Pliny literally in the latter case."

Landmann's opinion concerning Sidney's style is based upon the Arcadia, and it is in this, rather than in the Defense, that we should expect to find the distinctive marks of Euphuism. Notwithstanding, Landmann denies that Sidney belongs to this school (p. xxx): "But we see that Sidney avoided Lyly's artificial combination of parisonic antithesis with transverse alliteration, as well as his absurd similes taken from Pliny; in other words, the most characteristic elements of Euphuism." The statement concerning the similes from natural and unnatural history is confirmed by the quotation from Drayton, cited in the note to 54 12. In only one sentence of the Defense (2 24-27) is there any indication to the contrary, and this I surmise to have been intended as a parody of Gosson's manner (see the note on this passage).

The stylistic peculiarities of Sidney's romance Landmann comprehends under the term Arcadianism, which he thus describes (p. xxviii): "The elements of style in Sidney's Arcadia are different from those of Euphuism. In brief, they consist in endless tedious sentences, one sometimes filling a whole page, in the fondness for details, and in the description of the beauties of rural scenery. Instead of Lyly's exempla and shortened similes with 'for as— so,' we here have minutely worked out comparisons and conceits couched in excessively metaphorical language, quaint circumlocutions for simple expressions, and bold personifications of inanimate objects. Besides, Sidney is fond of playing upon words, and is not averse to simple alliteration."

Having thus distinguished Arcadianism from Euphuism, Landmann affords us no further aid in determining to what extent, if at all, the style of the Defense is Arcadian. This, however, we can readily do for ourselves. Of the characteristics noted by Landmann, we may at once dismiss all except the very last. As shown in the note on 4 11, Sidney is indeed fond of playing upon words, and occasionally indulges in alliteration. The instances of the latter are but few, and would never be remarked were it not for the verbal jingles which fall under the former head. At times this vainly repetitious form of Arcadianism is nothing but Ciceronianism of a rather indefensible sort, and any censure passed upon Sidney for his transgression of good taste is but too apt to light upon the idol of the Renaissance humanists (cf. note on 54 32). It was hardly to be expected that this stumbling-block should be altogether avoided by men who thought it a venial fault to love language in some measure for its own sake, so long at least as they were under the exclusive sway of the Latins. We must not forget that it was a besetting peccadillo of Shakespeare, and does it not too often excite the smile of pitying derision as we turn the majestic page of Milton? Nothing less than passionate reverence for the severe purity of the chastest Attic could avail to remove this blemish from modern writing. But at that time a familiarity with Greek models of composition naturally drew after it a practice scarcely less opposed to the more rigorous canons of artistic prose.

The employment of such compound words as are fitted to heighten the style of dithyrambic and other elevated poetry, was interdicted to prose on the authority of Aristotle. The formation of these compounds is alien to the genius of certain modern tongues, such as French. Yet even this native lack of plasticity was vanquished, for a time at least, by the Hellenizing impulse which swept over the sixteenth century. The stubbornness of French was forced to