The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare Part 14

"Kneeling down, even where she stood, she thus said: O All-seeing Light, and eternall Life of all things, to whom nothing is either so great, that it may resist, or so small that it is contemned: looke upon my misery with thine eye of mercy, and let thine infinite power vouchsafe to limit out some proportion of deliverance unto mee, as to thee shall seeme most convenient. Let not injurie, O Lord, triumph over mee, and let my faults by thy hand bee corrected, and make not mine unjust enemy the minister of thy Justice. But yet, my G.o.d, if, in thy wisedome, this be the aptest chastis.e.m.e.nt for my unexcusable folly; if this low bondage be fittest for my over-high desires; if the pride of my not enough humble heart, be thus to be broken, O Lord, I yeeld unto thy will, and joyfully embrace what sorrow thou wilt have me suffer. Onely thus much let me crave of thee ... let calamity be the exercise, but not the overthrow of my vertue: let their power prevaile, but not prevaile to destruction: let my greatnesse be their prey: let my paine be the sweetnesse of their revenge: let them, if so it seem good unto thee, vexe me with more and more punishment. But, O Lord, let never their wickednesse have such a hand, but that I may carry a pure minde in a pure body. And pausing a while: And, O most gracious Lord, said shee, what ever become of me, preserve the vertuous Musidorus."[207]

Thus incidents, showing much diversity, but little order, follow each other in great variety. There are touching episodes, ludicrous and, to our modern ideas, even shocking episodes, brilliant adventures, fine pastoral scenes, and much pleasant description; Sidney had been perfectly frank and true when he had spoken of "his young head" and his "many many fancies." He allows his imagination to wander; fancies are swarming in his mind, and he is no more capable of restraining or putting them into logical order than a man can restrain or introduce reason into a dream. Arcadia is sometimes in England and sometimes in Greece; Basilius' cottage sometimes becomes Hampton Court; there are temples and churches also; heroes are Christians, but they believe in Mars; they act according to the Gospel and also according to the oracles; they are before everything men of the Renaissance. Following his vein, Sidney, after innumerable adventures, pastoral and warlike scenes, disappearances, unexpected meetings, scenes of deep love, of criminal, sweet or foolish love, comes at last to a sort of conclusion.

King Basilius drinks a soporific draught; he is given up as dead. Queen Gynecia is accused of being the author of the deed; Zelmane, who has been found out to be a man is adjudged an accomplice; both are about to be executed. At that point, fortunately, the dead king springs to his feet; there are explanations, embracings, and a general pardon. Good Basilius, who alone seems to have understood nothing of all that happened, asks pardon of his wife and of the world at large for his silly love for Pyrocles-Zelmane, and proclaims, unasked, Queen Gynecia the most virtuous woman that ever was. The Queen blushes deeply and says nothing, but finding that the ties of her pa.s.sion are now broken, she inwardly pledges herself to live in order to justify her husband's praise. She becomes the "example and glory of Greece: so uncertain are mortall judgements, the same person most infamous and most famous, and neither justly."

This might be taken as a sufficient conclusion in so loose a tale; but in that case it would mean giving up many heroes whose fates are yet in suspense. In fact, an "Arcadia" of this sort might be continued till doomsday. Unless the hand of the writer grew tired, there is no reason why it should ever end. This is, in fact, the one and only reason Sidney puts forth as an excuse for taking his leave; he makes no pretence of having finished, just the reverse; for when he has married his princes he concludes thus: "But ... the strange stories of Artaxia and Plexirtus, Erona and Plangus, h.e.l.len and Amphialus, with the wonderful!

chances that befell them; the shepheardish loves of Menalcas with Kalodulus daughter; the poore hopes of the poor Philisides," that is, Sidney himself, "in the pursuit of his affections; the strange continuance of Klaius and Strephons desire; lastly the sonne of Pyrocles named Pyrophilus, and Melidora the faire daughter of Pamela by Musidorus, who even at their birth entred into admirable fortunes, may awake some other spirit to exercise his pen in that wherwith mine is already dulled." From generation to generation the tale might as we see, have been continued for ages: so numerous were the wonderful adventures still to be told.

The style of the book is scarcely less fanciful than the stories it tells. It is only now and again that the charming prose of the "Apologie for Poetrie" is to be found in the "Arcadia." Sidney wished to remain faithful to his theories, and he believed it possible to write a poem in prose.[208] Here and there some speeches, pa.s.sionate like those of Gynecia, or n.o.ble like Pamela's prayer, some brilliant repartee, a few observations of exquisite charm are lasting beauties, always in their place in all kinds of writing. Thus we meet the witty Sidney of the "Apologie" in the description of a spaniel, coming out of a river, who shakes off the water from his coat "as great men doe their friends;"

Sidney, the poet and lover, appears in the description of Philoclea entering the water "with a prettie kind of shrugging ... like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed stars;" or in this expression in reference to the fair hair of one of his heroines: "her haire--alas too poore a word, why should I not rather call them her beams!"[209]

But, by the side of these graceful flowers, how many others are faded!

What concessions to contemporary taste for tinsel and excessive ornament! Sidney forgets the rules of enduring beauty, and with the excuse that he will never be printed, he only seeks to please his one reader. To charm the Countess, his sister, like most women of his time, it was necessary to put his phrases in full dress, to place ruffs on his periods, and to make them walk according to the rules followed in courtly pageants. When, in spite of Sidney's earnest desire, his book was published after his death, people were enraptured with his ingeniously dressed out phrases. Lyly might shake with envy without having however the right to complain, for Sidney did not imitate him.

Sidney never liked euphuism, quite the contrary, he formally condemns it in his "Apologie": "Now for similitudes in certain printed discourses I think all herberists, all stories of beasts, fowles and fishes, are rifled up, that they may come in mult.i.tudes to wait upon any of our conceits, which certainely is as absurd a surfet to the eares as is possible." But his own style is scarcely less artificial than that of Lyly, and consequently, its rules are quite as easy to discover.

They consist firstly in the ant.i.thetical and cadenced repet.i.tion of the same words in the sentences written merely for effect; secondly, in persistently ascribing life and feeling to inanimate objects. Sidney, it is true, as Lyly with his euphuism, happily only employs this style on particular occasions, when he intends to be especially attractive and brilliant. A few specimens will afford means of judging, and will show how difficult it was in Shakespeare's time, even for the best educated and most sensible men, for the sincerest admirers of the ancients, to keep within the bounds of good taste and reason. They might appeal to the Castalian virgins in their invocations, but William Rogers'

Elizabeth was the Muse that rose before their eyes.

Here is an example of the first sort of embellishment: "Our Basilius being so publickly happy, as to be a prince, and so happy in that happiness, as to be a beloved prince; and so in his private estate blessed, as to have so excellent a wife, and so over-excellent children, hath of late taken a course which yet makes him more spoken of than all these blessings." In another pa.s.sage Sidney wishes to describe the perfections of a woman; and "that which made her fairness much the fairer, was, that it was but a fair amba.s.sador of a most fair mind."

Musidorus considers it "a greater greatness to give a kingdome than get a kingdome."[210] Phalantus challenges his adversary to fight "either for the love of honour or honour of his love." In many of these sentences the same words are repeated like the rhymes of a song, taken up from strophe to strophe, and the sentence twists and turns, drawing and involving the readers in its spiral curves, so that he arrives at the end all bruised, and falls half stunned on the full stop.[211]

The other kind of elegance that Sidney affects is to be found in very many authors, and it is, so to say, of all time; poets especially indulge in it without measure; but Sidney surpa.s.ses them all in the frequent use he makes of it; this peculiar language is more apparent and has still stranger effect in a prose writer than in a poet. In his Arcady, the valleys are consoled for their lowness by the silver streams which wind in the midst of them; the ripples of the Ladon struggle with one another to reach the place where Philoclea is bathing, but those which surround her refuse to give up their fortunate position. A shepherdess embarks: "Did you not marke how the windes whistled, and the seas danced for joy; how the sales did swell with pride, and all because they had Urania?" Here is a description of a river: "... The banks of either side seeming armes of the loving earth, that faine would embrace it; and the river a wanton nymph which hill would slip from it ... There was ... a goodly cypres, who bowing her faire head over the water, it seemed she looked into it and dressed her green locks by that running river." One of the heroines of the romance appears, and immediately the flowers and the fruits experience a surprising commotion; the roses blush and the lilies grow pale for envy; the apples perceiving her breast fall down from the trees out of vexation, unexpected vanity on the part of this modest fruit.[212]

Similar conceits were at that time the fas.h.i.+on not only in England, but also in Italy, in Spain, and in France. There might still be found in France, even in the seventeenth century, authors who described in these terms the appearance of flowers in spring: "There perhaps at the end of the combat, a pink all bleeding falls from fatigue; there a rosebud, elated at the ill-success of her antagonist, blooms with joy; there the lily, that colossus among the flowers, that giant of curdled cream, vain of seeing her image triumph at the Louvre, raises herself above her companions, and looks at them with contemptuous arrogance." The same author, who is Cyrano de Bergerac, calls ice "an hardened light, a petrified day, a solid nothing."[213] But contrary to what was the case in England, this style was in France, even before Boileau and in the preceding century, the style of bad authors. In England it is frequently adopted by the most eminent writers, since on many occasions it is even that of Shakespeare himself. Besides, the combinations of sound obtained by means of the repet.i.tion of words, added to the turgidness of the images, give to Sidney's language in the pa.s.sages written for effect, a degree of pretension and bad taste that Cyrano himself, in spite of his natural disposition, could never have equalled. When both kinds of Sidney's favourite embellishments are combined in the same sentence, it becomes impossible to keep serious, and it is difficult to recognize the author of the "Apologie." Sidney thus describes wreckage floating on the water after a sea-fight: "Amidst the precious things were a number of dead bodies, which likewise did not onely testifie both elements violence, but that the chiefe violence was growne of humane inhumanity: for their bodies were full of grisly wounds, and their blood had, as it were, filled the wrinkles of the sea's visage; which it seemed the see would not wash away, that it might witnesse it is not always his fault, when we do condemne his cruelty."[214] There is indeed in French literature a dagger celebrated for having _rougi le traitre_! but what is it in comparison, and ought it not in its turn to grow pale with envy at the thought of this sea that will not wash itself?

Thus men wrote in the time of Shakespeare, guilty himself of having made many a dagger blush and weep in his b.l.o.o.d.y dramas: "See how my sword weeps for the poor king's death!" says Gloucester in "Henry VI." When Brutus stabs Caesar the blood followed the dagger

"As rus.h.i.+ng out of doors, to be resolv'd If Brutus so unkindly knocked or no."

Such was the irresistible power of fas.h.i.+on. Sidney who in his "Apologie" had laughed at these extravagances in the poets and dramatists, could not himself avoid them when he wrote his romance. When they concern themselves with criticism, nearly all, Shakespeare, Sidney, and their contemporaries, are to be admired for their moderation, wisdom, and good sense; but as soon as they take up the pen to write their imaginative works, intoxication overcomes their brain, a divine intoxication that sometimes transports them to heaven, an earthly intoxication that sometimes leads them into bogs and gutters.

III.

These surprising embellishments were in no way harmful, quite the contrary, to the success of the "Arcadia." From the first it was extremely popular and widely read; Sidney, who has kept his high repute as a knight and a poet to our day, was still more famous at first, and indeed for a long time, as a novelist. He was before all the author of the "Arcadia."[215] His influence as such was very great, if not always very beneficial; for his examples, as often happens, were more readily followed than his precepts. Until the practical Defoe worked his great reform in style, the language of the novel was enc.u.mbered with images and unexpected metaphors, or distorted by a pompous verbosity; romance writers mostly looked at life and realities through painted gla.s.s. For this, Sidney is in some degree responsible.

His book was, so to speak, a standard one; everybody had to read it; elegant ladies now began to talk "Arcadianism" as they had been before talking "Euphuism." Dekker, in 1609, advises gallants to go to the play to furnish their memories with fine sayings, in order to be able to discourse with such refined young persons: "To conclude, h.o.a.rde up the finest play-sc.r.a.ps you can get, upon which your leane wit may most savourly feede for want of other stuffe, when the _Arcadian_ and _Euphuized_ gentlewomen have their tongues sharpened to set upon you."[216] When he has to represent "a court-lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit, admired by herself, and one more," her lover, Ben Jonson, in his "Every man out of his humour," makes her talk "Arcadianism." Her lover, who is quite the man to appreciate these elegancies of speech, being "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well and in fas.h.i.+on, practiseth by his gla.s.s how to salute ... can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the gingle of his spur and the jerk of his wand," thus describes the Arcadian music which falls from the lips of the lady Saviolina: "She has the most harmonious and musical strain of wit that ever tempted a true ear ... oh! it flows from her like nectar, and she doth give it that sweet quick grace and exornation in the composure, that by this good air, as I am an honest man, would I might never stir, sir, but--she does observe as pure a phrase and use as choice figures in her ordinary conference as any be in the 'Arcadia.'"[217]

The demand for Sidney's book continued long unabated. It was often reprinted during the seventeenth century,[218] and found imitators, abbreviators and continuators. Among its early admirers it had that indefatigable reader of novels, William Shakespeare, who took from it several hints, especially from the story of the "Paphlagonian unkind king," which he made use of in his "King Lear."[219] Books were published under cover of Sidney's name, as "Sir Philip Sydney's Ourania";[220] others were given away bearing as an epigraph an adaptation of two well-known verses:

"Nec divinam _Sydneida_ tenta Sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora,"[221]

no insignificant compliment, considering the word which had to make room for "Sydneida." Works without number were dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, not only because she was what she was, and a poetess of some renown, but because she was the Mary Sidney of Arcadian fame.

As Sidney had stated that he did not consider his novel finished with the marriage of his heroes, and the reconciliation of his royal couple, continuations were not wanting; writers who did not consider their pen "dulled" as he had declared his own to be, volunteered to add a further batch of adventures to the "Sidneyd." Thus we have the "English Arcadia alluding his beginning to Sir Philip Sidnes ending," by Gervase Markham, 1607; a "Sixth booke to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, written by R[ichard] B[eling] of Lincolnes Inne," 1624; or again a "Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia: wherein is handled the loves of Amphialus and Helena ... written by a young gentlewoman, Mrs. A. W.," 1651. Dramas were built upon incidents in the "Arcadia"; Shakespeare we have seen made use of it in his "King Lear"; John Day wrote after Sidney's tale, "The Ile of Guls," 1606, "the argument being a little string or rivolet drawne from the full streme of the right worthy gentleman, Sir Phillip Sydneys well knowne Archadea."[222] Some years later, in 1640, s.h.i.+rley put Basilius and his court again on the stage in his "Pastorall called the Arcadia."[223]

Authors of poems also took their plots from stories in Sidney's novel, one of the most popular among those stories was the adventures of Argalus and Parthenia; it was constantly reprinted in a separate form, and was the subject of a long poem by the well-known Francis Quarles, the author of the "Emblemes." "It was," says he in his preface, "a scion taken out of the orchard of Sir Philip Sidney of precious memory, which I have lately graffed upon a crab-stock in mine own.... This book differs from my former as a courtier from a churchman." Not less did it differ from his later books, among which the "Emblemes" were to figure; but the pious author eases his conscience about it by alleging "precedents for it." It cannot be denied that if Quarles' "churchman"

was very devout his "courtier" was very worldly. He goes far beyond Sidney in his descriptions of love, of physical love especially, and uses in this matter a freedom of speech and a bantering tone which reminds us much more of the Reine de Navarre than of the author of the "Emblemes." Such as it is, however, this poem remains, so far as literary merit goes, one of the best Quarles ever wrote. He scarcely ever reached again this terseness and vivacity of style, and this _entrain_. Having for once shut himself out of the church, and not for long, he wanted it seems to do the best with his time, and if he was sinning, at least to enjoy his sin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARGALUS AND PARTHENIA READING A BOOK IN THEIR GARDEN, 1656.]

His contemporaries enjoyed it greatly; "Argalus and Parthenia" went through an extraordinary number of editions;[224] some of them were very fine, and were even ill.u.s.trated with cuts. We give an example of them showing the newly married couple sitting in their garden to read a story:

"Upon a day as they were closely seated, Her ears attending whilst his lips repeated A story treating the renown'd adventures And famous acts of great Alcides, enters A messenger whose countenance did bewray A haste too serious to admit delay."

Is there any necessity for reminding the reader of the cause of the messenger's haste? Is it possible that such world-famous adventures can be now forgotten? The messenger was sent by King Basilius, who was sorely pressed by his arch-enemy Amphialus. The young hero rushes to the rescue of the Arcadian king, but he is piteously slain in a duel with Amphialus. Then Parthenia dresses herself as a knight, and fights her husband's conqueror. With more verisimilitude than is usually the case, she too is piteously slain. And this is the end of Argalus and Parthenia.

But there was still more than this, and like Lyly, Sidney had direct imitators who copied him in prose, and tried to fas.h.i.+on novels after his model. All the peculiarities of his style and of his way, or rather want, of composition, are to be found minutely reproduced in: "The countesse of Mountgomeries Urania; written by the Rt. Hon. the Lady Mary Wroath, daughter of the Rt. n.o.ble Robert earle of Leicester, and neece to the ever famous and renowned S^r Phillips Sidney Kt. and to y^e most excelent Lady Mary Countesse of Pembroke late deceased."[225] This pedigree-shaped t.i.tle is enough in itself to show what we may expect from the performance. It is a complete and pious imitation of Sidney's manner, especially of his defects, for they were more easily attained.

Thus we have those repet.i.tions of the same words which were so pleasant to Sidney's ear, and Lady Mary Wroth has a felicity of her own in twisting the idea into the words, screw-wise, with a perfection her model had scarcely ever attained: "All for others grieved; pittie extended so, as all were carefull, but of themselves most carelesse: yet their mutual care made them all cared for." A very true and logical observation. Lady Mary is also fond of giving sense and feeling to inanimate objects, and scarcely, again, can Sidney, with his sea that will not wash, or Cyrano with his proud giant of curdled milk, suffer comparison with this description of a burning tower into which a woman throws the head of her enemy: "For her welcome [Dorileus] presented her with the head of her enemy, which he then cut off and gave unto her, who like Tomeris of Sithia, held it by the haire, but gave it quickly another conclusion, for she threw it into the midst of the flaming tower, which then, as being in it selfe enemy to good, because wasting good, yet hotly desiring to embrace as much ill, and so headlongly and hastily fell on it, either to grace it with the quickest and hottest kisses, or to conceale such a villanous and treacherous head from more and just punishments."[226]

As to the story, it is, like the "Arcadia," a tale of shepherds who are princes, and of shepherdesses with royal blood in their veins; there are eclogues, dialogues, and if not much poetry at least much verse. The events take place in Greece and in the Greek islands; people go to the temple of Diana and to the temple of Venus. In the last-named place they get married. These wors.h.i.+ppers of the deities of old are dressed as follows. Here is the description of a man's costume: "Then changed he his armour taking one of azure colour, his plume crimson, and one fall of blew in it; the furniture to his horse being of those colours, and his device onely a cipher, which was made of all the letters of his misstrisses name, delicately composed within the compa.s.se of one." Here is now a description of the costume women wore in Lady Mary's Greek land: "She was partly in greene too; as her upper garment, white buskins she had, the short sleeves which she wore upon her armes and came in sight from her shoulders were also white, and of a glistering stuffe, a little ruffe she had about her neck, from which came stripps which were fastned to the edges of her gowne, cut downe equally for length and breadth to make it square; the strips were of lace, so as the skinne came steallinglie through, as if desirous but afraide to bee seane, knowing that little joy would moove desire to have more." This clever young person had been "sworn a nymph," which prevented her getting married for some years. Waiting for that auspicious date a lover was offering his addresses to her, and as Lady Wroth's Arcadia is an Arcadia with a peerage, we are informed that this sworn nymph's lover was "the third sonne of an earle."[227]

No less a man than Ben Jonson proclaimed himself an admirer of Lady Mary; he dedicated one of his masterpieces, "the Alchemist," to "the lady most deserving her name and blood, Lady Mary Wroth," and in his "Epigrams" he addressed her as follows, his only but sufficient excuse being that the "Urania" was not yet written:

"Madam, had all antiquity been lost, All history seal'd up and fables crost, That we had left us, nor by time nor place, Least mention of a Nymph, a Muse, a Grace, But even their names were to be made anew Who could not create them all from you?"[228]

The eighteenth century began, and Sidney's romance was not yet forgotten; his book was still alive, if one may say so, when the novel a.s.sumed its definite shape, style and compa.s.s with Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Addison notices its presence in the fair Leonora's library, among "the some few which the lady had bought for her own use."[229] It continued then to be fas.h.i.+onable, and a subject of conversation. No wonder, therefore, that between the date of "Robinson Crusoe" and the date of "Pamela" two more editions of the "Arcadia" were given to the public. One of them contained engravings after drawings by L.

Cheron.[230] The other was "moderniz'd" and was published by subscription under the patronage of the Princess of Wales.[231] Sidney's novel continued to act on men's minds, and many proofs of its influence on eighteenth-century literature might be pointed out. That Sidney was Richardson's first teacher in the art of the novel is well known; that Cowper read the "Arcadia" with delight is well known too, and he confers no mean praise on our author when he speaks of

"those golden times And those arcadian scenes that Maro sings And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose."[232]

Examples of Sidney's style are also to be found in several authors of that time. Consciously or not, Young sometimes adopts all the peculiarities of Sidney; for example, when he writes:

"Sweet harmonist! and beautiful as sweet!

And young as beautiful! and soft as young!

And gay as soft! and innocent as gay!

And happy (if aught happy here) as good!

For fortune fond had built her nest on high."[233]

Sidney's popularity did not, of course, last so long without encountering some opposition. For Milton, and no wonder, the "Arcadia"

was nothing but "a vain amatorious poem," though he is fair enough to add that it is "in that kind, full of worth and wit."[234] Horace Walpole was very hard upon our novelist: "We have a tedious, lamentable, pedantic pastoral romance," says he, in his "Royal and n.o.ble Authors,"

"which the patience of a young virgin in love cannot now wade through."[235] It is sad to think that the once famous "Castle of Otranto," though twenty times shorter, requires now no smaller dose of patience.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "See the fond youth! he burns, he loves, he dies, He wishes as he pines and feeds his famish'd eyes."]

None the less, the "Arcadia" was popular in the last century, and, at the same time as it attracted the attention of fair Leonoras, it also interested and delighted a much commoner sort of readers. It was several times printed in an abbreviated form, and circulated, with engravings, as a chap-book. Sometimes the whole of the "Arcadia" was compressed into a small volume, sometimes only an episode was given to the public. The story of Argalus and Parthenia was especially popular.[236] The engravings, it is needless to say, were very coa.r.s.e; and if Sidney had taken little trouble to be historically or geographically accurate, the wood-block makers took even less, and they offer to our eyes an extraordinary medley of fifteenth-century knights, Roman soldiers, gentlemen in flowing wigs and court swords, all of them supposed to have at one time adorned with their presence the groves of Arcady. A few specimens of these engravers' art are here given; no doubt the reader will be pleased to know what the famous Argalus and Parthenia were supposed to have been like, how the bathing of Philoclea in the Ladon was represented, and the sorts of fetes and courtly dances that enlivened the marriage of that princess.

More striking even than these tributes to Sidney's merits as a novelist is the treatment awarded him in France. The famous Du Bartas in his second "Week" names Sidney as one of the "three firm pillars of the English Speech." This speech, according to the French poet, is mainly supported by Thomas More and Bacon,

"Et le milor Cydne qui cygne doux-chantant Va les flots orgueilleux de Tamise flatant; Ce fleuve gros d'honneur emporte sa faconde Dans le sein de Thetis et Thetis par le monde."[237]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HOW THE TWO PRINCESSES PAMELA AND HER SISTER PHILOCLEA WENT TO BATH THEMSELVES ... AND WHAT AFTER HAPNED."]

Besides this, Sidney's romance received in France an homage very rare at that epoch: it was translated. A Frenchman possessing a knowledge of the English language was then an extraordinary phenomenon. As late as the year 1665, no less a paper than the "Journal des Scavans" printed a statement to the following effect: "The Royal Society of London publishes constantly a number of excellent works But whereas most of them are written in the English language, we have been unable till now to review them in our pages. But we have at last found an English interpreter through whose offices it will be henceforth possible for us to enrich our publication with the best things appearing in England." As for Sidney, not only was he translated, but what is not less strange, the fact provoked in France one of the most violent literary quarrels of the time. Two translations of the "Arcadia," now entirely forgotten, were published simultaneously, both in three volumes, both adorned with engravings.[238] As soon as a volume appeared, each of the translators profited by the occasion to write a new preface, and to repeat that his rival was a mere plagiarist and did not know a word of English. The other replied offering to prove such a rare knowledge; had it been a question of Chinese or of Hindustani they could not have boasted more noisily of their unique acquaintance with so mysterious an idiom. Each appealed to his patroness, who was, in either case, no ordinary woman: the one had dedicated his work to Diane de Chateaumorand (D'Urfe's Diane), who had indeed the right to judge of Arcadias; the other invoked the authority of the Queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, by whose express command he had carried on his work.

Baudoin, who had been the first to turn the "Arcadia" into French, published it in 1624, prefixing to it this remark, flattering to Sidney's memory, but which shows how very little his language was known in France: "Merely the desire of understanding so rare a book caused me to go to England, where I remained for two years in order to gain a knowledge of it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE GLORIOUS ENTERTAINMENTS THAT GRACED THE HAPPY NUPTIALS."]