I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit of these poems, because I have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name) with which W.H. takes every occasion of insulting the memory of Sir Philip Sydney.  But the decisions of the Author of Table Talk, &c., (most profound and subtle where they are, as for the most part, just) are more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and authors he has a partiality for, than on such as he has conceived an accidental prejudice against.  Milton wrote Sonnets, and was a king-hater; and it was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patriot.  But I was unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind.  The noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of character, scattered all over the Arcadia (spite of some stiffness and encumberment), justify to me the character which his contemporaries have left us of the writer.  I cannot think with the Critic, that Sir Philip Sydney was that opprobrious thing which a foolish nobleman in his insolent hostility chose to term him.  I call to mind the epitaph made on him, to guide me to juster thoughts of him; and I repose upon the beautiful lines in the “Friend’s Passion for his Astrophel,” printed with the Elegies of Spenser and others.

  You knew—­who knew not Astrophel? 
  (That I should live to say I knew,
  And have not in possession still!)—­
  Things known permit me to renew—­
    Of him you know his merit such,
    I cannot say—­you hear—­too much.

  Within these woods of Arcady
  He chief delight and pleasure took;
  And on the mountain Partheny. 
  Upon the crystal liquid brook,
    The Muses met him every day,
    That taught him sing, to write, and say.

  When he descended down the mount,
  His personage seemed most divine: 
  A thousand graces one might count
  Upon his lovely chearful eyne. 
    To hear him speak, and sweetly smile,
    You were in Paradise the while,

  A sweet attractive kind of grace;
  A full assurance given by looks;
  Continual comfort in a face,
  The lineaments of Gospel books—­
    I trow that count’nance cannot lye,
    Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.

* * * * *

  Above all others this is he,
  Which erst approved in his song,
  That love and honour might agree,
  And that pure love will do no wrong. 
    Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame
    To love a man of virtuous name.

  Did never Love so sweetly breathe
  In any mortal breast before: 
  Did never Muse inspire beneath
  A Poet’s brain with finer store. 
    He wrote of Love with high conceit,
    And beauty rear’d above her height.

Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running into rage) in the Poem,—­the last in the collection accompanying the above,—­which from internal testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke’s,—­beginning with “Silence augmenteth grief,”—­and then seriously ask himself, whether the subject of such absorbing and confounding regrets could have been that thing which Lord Oxford termed him.