vallies, whose base estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers:  medowes, enameled with all sorts of eie pleasing flowers; thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so too, by the cheerfull disposition of manie well tuned birds:  each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober securitie, while the prettie lambes with bleating oratorie craved the dammes comfort:  here a shepheards boy piping, as though he should never be old:  there a young shepheardesse knitting, and withall singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to worke, and her hands kept time to her voice’s musick.  As for the houses of the country, (for manie houses came under their eye,) they were all scattered, no two being one by th’ other, and yet not so farre off as that it barred mutuall succour:  a shew, as it were, of an accompanable solitarinesse, and of a civill wildeness.

Amid such scenes dwell Basilius and his wife, whose two daughters are described by Sidney in language unsurpassed for delicacy and charm.

Of these two are brought to the world two daughters, so beyond measure excellent in all the gifts allotted to reasonable creatures, that we may thinke they were borne to shew, that nature is no stepmother to that sexe, how much so ever some men (sharp witted onely in evill speaking) have sought to disgrace them.  The elder is named Pamela, by many men not deemed inferiour to her sister:  for my part, when I marked them both, me thought there was, (if at least such perfections may receive the word of more,) more sweetness in Philoclea, but more majestie in Pamela:  mee thought love plaied in Philoclea’s eies, & threatened in Pamela’s; me thought Philoclea’s beautie only perswaded, but so perswaded that all hearts must yield; Pamela’s beautie used violence, and such violence as no heart could resist.  And it seems that such proportion is betweene their mindes; Philoclea so bashfull, as though her excellencies had stolne into her before she was aware, so humble, that she will put all pride out of countenance; in summe, such proceeding as will stirre hope, but teach hope good maners.  Pamela of high thoughts, who avoids not pride with not knowing her excellencies, but by my making that one of her excellencies to be void of pride:  her mother’s wisdome, greatnesse, nobilitie, but (if I can guesse aright) knit with a more constant temper.[71]

The description of an envious man in the second book,[72] which suggested to Sir Richard Steele his essay in the nineteenth number of the Spectator, is another good example of Sidney’s ability in delineating character.  The passage in which Musidorus is represented showing off the paces of his horse,[73] a subject especially adapted to excite the best effort of the author, is a very remarkable effort of descriptive power, for the insertion of which, unfortunately, space is wanting here.  Sidney might have quoted his description of Pamela sewing, to justify his belief that “It is not rhyming and versing that maketh poesy”: