He spent some time at the court of Charles IX. of France—­which, however, he left suddenly, shocked and disgusted by the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve—­and extended his travels into Germany.  The queen held him in the highest esteem—­although he was disliked by the Cecils, the constant rivals of the Dudleys; and when he was elected to the crown of Poland, the queen refused him permission to accept, because she would not lose “the brightest jewel of her crown—­her Philip,” as she called him to distinguish him from her sister Mary’s Philip, Philip II. of Spain.  A few words will finish his personal story.  He went, by the queen’s permission, with his uncle Leicester to the Low Countries, then struggling, with Elizabeth’s assistance, against Philip of Spain.  There he was made governor of Flushing—­the key to the navigation of the North Seas—­with the rank of general of horse.  In a skirmish near Zutphen (South Fen) he served as a volunteer; and, as he was going into action fully armed, seeing his old friend Sir William Pelham without cuishes upon his thighs, prompted by mistaken but chivalrous generosity, he took off his own, and had his thigh broken by a musket-ball.  This was on the 2d of October, 1586, N.S.  He lingered for twenty days, and then died at Arnheim, mourned by all.  The story of his passing the untasted water to the wounded soldier, will never become trite:  “This man’s necessity is greater than mine,” was an immortal speech which men like to quote.[25]

SIDNEY’S WORKS.—­But it is as a literary character that we must consider Sidney; and it is worthy of special notice that his works could not have been produced in any other age.  The principal one is the Arcadia.  The name, which was adopted from Sannazzaro, would indicate a pastoral—­and this was eminently the age of English pastoral—­but it is in reality not such.  It presents indeed sylvan scenes, but they are in the life of a knight.  It is written in prose, interspersed with short poems, and was inspired by and dedicated to his literary sister Mary, the Countess of Pembroke.  It was called indeed the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia.  There are many scenes of great beauty and vigor; there is much which represents the manners, of the age, but few persons can now peruse it with pleasure, because of the peculiar affectations of style, and its overload of ornament.  There grew naturally in the atmosphere of the court of a regnant queen, an affected, flattering, and inflated language, known to us as Euphuism.  Of this John Lilly has been called the father, but we really only owe to him the name, which is taken from his two works, Euphues, Anatomy of Wit, and Euphues and his England.  The speech of the Euphuist is hardly caricatured in Sir Walter Scott’s delineation of Sir Piercie Shafton in “The Monastery.”  The gallant men of that day affected this form of address to fair ladies, and fair ladies liked to be greeted in such language.  Sidney’s works have a relish of this diction, and are imbued with the spirit which produced it.