Still less scruple has been felt in departing from the old punctuation; it has no right to be considered Bacon's; it often makes absolute nonsense of a passage; it sometimes produces ambiguities that may well cause perplexities even to intelligent readers; and its retention can only be valuable to archeologists as showing how little importance should be attached to the commas and colons scattered at random through their pages by the Elizabethan compositors."

My obligations to various scholars will be found recorded in their proper places in the Notes; but I take pleasure in bringing together, in the order of their citation, the names of Dr. J. A. H. Murray of Oxford, Mr. Ralph O. Williams of New Haven, Prof. T. F. Crane of Cornell University, Prof. Daniel G. Brinton of the University of Pennsylvania, Prof. Bernadotte Perrin of Adelbert University, and Prof. Thomas D. Goodell of Yale University.

NEW HAVEN, July 4, 1890.

A. S. C.

INTRODUCTION.

1. SKETCH OF SIDNEY'S LIFE.

(Adapted from the Chronicle in Arber's edition.)

PHILIP SIDNEY 66 was son of Sir Henry Sidney by the Lady Mary his wife, eldest daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; was born, as 'tis supposed, at Penhurst in Kent, 29 November, 1554, and had his Christian name given to him by his father from King Philip, then lately married to Queen Mary" (Wood, Athena Oxonienses). He was the eldest of three sons and four daughters. Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville, both of the same age (nine years), and afterwards friends for life, enter Shrewsbury School on the same day, Oct. 17, 1564. Fulke Greville thus testifies of his schoolfellow: "Of whose youth I will report no other wonder but thus, that though I lived with him, and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man; with such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years. His talk ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind, so as even his teachers found something in him to observe and learn, above that which they had usually read or taught; which eminence by nature and industry made his worthy father style Sir Philip in my hearing (though I unseen) Lumen familiæ suæ" [the light of his family]. "While he was very young, he was sent to Christ Church to be improved in all sorts of learning. . . where continuing till he was about 17 years of age (Wood, Athena Oxonienses). This settlement at Oxford was made when

he was 13 years old. On May 25, 1572, the Queen grants Philip Sidney license to go abroad with three servants and four horses. On May 26 he leaves London in the train of the Earl of Lincoln, Ambassador to the French King. August 9, Charles IX makes him one of the Gentlemen of his Chamber. August 24, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; Sidney, being in the house of the English Ambassador, Sir Francis Walsingham, is safe. He however soon leaves Paris, and journeys by Heidelberg to Frankfort, where he meets Hubert Languet, aged 54. He stays at Frankfort about nine months. They two then go to Vienna, where, after some trips to Hungary, Sidney leaves Languet, and spends eight months in Italy, chiefly in Venice, Padua, and Genoa. He returns to Vienna in November, spends his winter there, and, coming home through the Low Countries, reaches England on May 31, 1575, having been absent a trifle over three years, from the age of 17 till that of 20. In the same year introduced to Court by his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. July 9-27, 1575, is at the famous reception given by Leicester to the Queen, at Kenilworth. The Court moves to Chartley Castle, where Philip is supposed first to have seen 'Stella' (Penelope, daughter of Lord Essex, then aged 13; afterwards Lady Rich). The sonnets of Astrophel and Stella go on for the next five or six years. In 1577, at the age of 22, is sent as Ambassador with messages of condolence to Rodolph II, the new emperor of Germany, at Prague, and to the two sons of Frederic III, late Elector Palatine, viz., Lewis (now Elector) and John Casimir, at Heidelberg. In May of 1578, on the coming of the Court to his uncle's at Wanstead, Sidney writes a masque entitled The Lady of May. About this time Sidney becomes acquainted with Gabriel Harvey, and through him with Edmund Spenser. In August, 1579, Stephen Gosson publishes The School of Abuse, and on Oct. 16 Spenser writes to Harvey Sidney's idea of it. Soon after (Dec. 5)