Volume 1

Athenae Oxonienses : An exact history of all the writers and bishops who have had their education in the University of Oxford. To which are added the fasti, or annals of the said University / By Anthony A. Wood.

Anthony Wood

Date:: 1813-20

Credit: Athenae Oxonienses : An exact history of all the writers and bishops who have had their education in the University of Oxford. To which are added the fasti, or annals of the said University / By Anthony A. Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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$did shew himself, for several weighty reasons, op- posite to the queen's matching with the duke of Anjou, which he very pithily expressed by a due address of his humble reasons to her, as may be fully seen in a book called' Cabala. The said address was written at the desire of some great personage, his uncle Robert (I suppose) earl of Leicester ; upon which a great quarrel happened between him and Edw. Vere earl of Oxford ^ This, as I conceive, might occasion his retire- ment from court next summer, an. 1580, wherein perhaps he wrote that pleasant romance called Arcadia. In 1581, the treaty of marriage was renewed, and our author Sidney with Fulk Gre- vill9 were two of the tillers at the entertainment of the French ambassador; and at the departure of the duke of Anjou from England in Febr. the same year, he attended him to ' Antwerp. On the 8 Janu. 1582 he with Peregrine Bertie re- ceived the honour of knighthood from the queen, and in the beginning of 1585, he designed an ex- pedition with sir Francis Drake into America % but being hindered by the queen, (in whose opi- nion he was so highly^prized that she thought the court deficient without him) he was in Octob. following made governor of Flushing, about that time delivered to the queen for one of the cau- tionary towns, and general of the horse. In both which places of great trust, his carriage testified to the world his wisdom and valour, v/ith addition of honour to his country by them ; and especially the more, when in July 1586 he surprised Axil, and preserved the lives and honour of the English army at the enterprize of Gravelin. So that whereas (through the fame of his high deserts) he was then, or ratlier before, in election for the crown of Poland, the queen of England refused to further his advancement, not out of emulation, but of fear to lose the jewel of her times. What can be said more ? He was a statesman, soldier, and scholar; a compleat master of matter and language, as his immortal pen shews. His pen and his sword have rendred him famous enough. He died by the one, and by the other he'll ever live, as having been hitherto highly extolled for it by the pens of princes. This is the happiness of art, that although the sword doth atchieve the honour, yet the arts do record it, and no pen 7 Part 3, p. 201. ^ [A full account of this quarrel, in which sir Philip Sidney behaved with equal spirit and propriety, may be fo und in Collins's Memoirs of the. Sidneys, which has been reprinted in the British Biblwgrap/ier, i. 84.] ^ Vid. Annul. Cumbtleni. sxih an. 1581. ' Ibid. an. 1582. ^ [lie bad also some idea of undertaking a voyage with sir Humphrey Gilbert, (of whom sec coll. 493—496) as ap- pears fruiu the (oliowing extract from a letter dated July 21,1584, to sir Edward .Stafford. ' We are haulf perswaded to enter into tha juurney of sir Humphrey Gilbert very eagerlij wi ereunto your Mr. Hackluit hath served for a very good trumpet.' Collins, Letters and Memorials of blate, 1746, i. 298.] hath made it better known than his own, in that book called Arcadia. Certain it is, he was a noble and matchless gentleman'; and it may be justly said without hyperbole or fiction, as it was of Cato Uticensis, that he seemed to be born to that only which he went about. His written works are these. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Several times printed at London in quarto and fol.* Which being the most celebrated romance that was ever written, was consecrated to his noble, virtuous and learned sister Mary, the wife of Henry earl of Pembroke,' who having lived to a very fair age, died in her house in Aldersgate- street in London 25 Sept. 1621, whereupon her body was buried in the cathedral church of Salis- bury among the graves of the Pembrochian family. This Arcadia, tho' then, and since, it was, and is, taken into the hands of all ingenious men, and said by one living at, or near, the time when first published, to be a book most famous for rich con- ceipt and splendor of courtly expressions, yet the author was not so fond, as B. Heliodorus was, of his amorous work, for he desired Mvhen he died (having first consulted with a minister about it) to have had it suppressed '\ One who writes himself G.M.'' wrote the second and last part of the first book of the said Arcadia, making thereby a com- pleat end of the first history. Lond. I6l3, qu. And in the eighth edit, printed at Lond. 1633, sir W.A. knight made a supplement of a defect in the third part of the history, and R. B. [Richard Belling] of Line, inn, esq; added then a sixth book thereunto^. In 1662 came out the said ^ [Anthony a. Wood has been accused of treating poetS' with injustice, and their claims with contempt: but can this charge against our honest antiquary be assented to by such as read this plain, yet spirited eulogy of sir Philip Sidney? The indifferent writers of the age he treats with severity; but the more accomplished, he mentions with a praise little short of vent ration.] [The Arcadia has been printed at least fourteen times. The first edition, 4to. 1690 ; second, folio 1593 ; third, 1598 (Bodl. Godwin, 276); seventh, 1629 (Bodl. M. 4. 7. Art.) It was modernized by Mrs. Stanley, and printed Lond. 1725. (Bodl. N. 2. 7. Th.) The Arcadia has been severely cen- sured by Horace Walpole, afterwards lord Orford, but the right honourable critic seems to have looked for faults only, and to have overlooked beauties, in an ardent zeal to differ from the rest of the literary world. It may be re- marked, that the same author who found nothing to admire in the character of sir Philip Sidney, was a strenuous de- iender of the life and reign of Richard the third !] 5 See Edw. Leigh's Treatise of Religion and learning. Lond. 1656, fol. 5, p. 324. [He condemned his Arcadia in his more retired judg- ment to the fire, which vi'ise men think will continue to the last conflagration. Lloyd, Statesmen and Favourites, edit. 1665, p. 315.] ' Perhaps Gervase Markham, qu * [I doubt the accuracy of our historian as to the con- tents of the different editions here cited of Sidney's Arcadia, having examined that of 1613 (not in 4to. but folio) v/hich from the middle of lib. iii. is said to be supplied out of the author's own writings and conceits, and is carried unto * the end of the fifth and last booke,' without any initials$