The sentiment he has made her express in the last line is beautiful, and too feminine and appropriate not to have been taken from nature; but, unhappily, it did not always govern her conduct. How far her coquetry proceeded, we do not know. Sydney, about a year afterwards, married the daughter of Secretary Walsingham, and survived his marriage but a short time. This theme of song, this darling of fame, and ornament of his age, perished at the battle of Zutphen, in the very summer of his glorious youth. "He had trod,” as the author of the Effigies Poeticæ so beautifully expressed it," from his cradle to his grave, amid incense and flowers-and died in a dream of glory!” His death was not only such as became the soldier and Christian;-the natural elegance and sensibility of his mind followed him even to the verge of the tomb in his last moments, when the mortification had commenced, and all hope was over, he called for music in his chamber, and lay listening to it with tranquil pleasure. Sydney died in his thirty-fourth year. Among the numerous poets who lamented this deep-felt loss (volumes, I believe, were filled with the tributes paid to his memory,) was Spenser, whom Sydney had early patronized. His elegy, however, is too labored, too lengthy, too artificial, to please altogether, though containing some lines of great beauty. It is singular, and a little incomprehensible to our modern ideas of bienséance and good taste, that in his elegy, which Spenser dedi cates to Sydney's widow after her remarriage with Essex, he introduces Stella as lamenting over the body of Astrophel, tells us how she beat her fair bosom" the treasury of joy,”-how she tore her lovely hair, wept out her eyes, And with sweet kisses suckt the parting breath At length, through excess of grief, or the compassion of the gods, she is changed into the flower, "by some called starlight, by others penthia." This might pass in those days; though, considering all the circumstances, it is strange that, even then, it escaped ridicule. The tears shed for Sydney, by those nearest and dearest to him, were but too soon dried. His widow was consoled by Essex, and his Stella, by her old lover Mountjoy, who returned from Ireland, flushed with victory and honors, and cast himself again at her feet. Their secret intercourse remained, for several years, undiscovered. Lady Rich, who was tenderly attached to her brother, was guarded in her conduct, fearing equally the loss of his esteem, and the renewal of those hostile feelings which had already caused one duel between Essex and Mountjoy. She had also children; and as all, without exception, lived to be distinguished men and virtuous women, we may give her credit for some attention to their education,-some compunctious visitings of nature on their account. During her brother's imprisonment, she made the most strenuous, the most persevering efforts to save his life; she besieged Elizabeth with the richest presents, the most eloquent letters of supplication; -she waylaid her at the door of her chamber, till commanded to remain a prisoner in her own house; -she bribed, or otherwise won, all whom she thought could plead his cause;—and when these were of no avail, and Essex perished, she seems, in her despair, to have thrown off all restraint-and at length, fled from the house of her husband. In 1605 she was legally divorced from Lord Rich; and soon after married Mountjoy, then Earl of Devonshire. The marriage of a divorced wife in the lifetime of her first husband, was in those days a thing almost unprecedented in the English court, and caused the most violent outcry and scandal. Laud (the archbishop, then chaplain to the Earl of Devonshire) incurred the censure of the Church for uniting the lovers, and ever after fasted on the anniversary of this fatal marriage. The Earl, one of the most admirable and distinguished men of that chivalrous age, who "felt a stain as a wound," found it impossible to endure the infamy brought on himself and the woman he loved he died about a year after; "the griefe,” says a contemporary, "of this unhappie love brought him to his end."* His unfortunate Countess lingered but a short * Memoirs of King James's Peers, by Sir E. Brydges. time after him, and died in a miserable obscurity. -Such is the history of Sydney's STELLA. Three of her sons became English Earls; the eldest, Earl of Warwick; the second, Earl of Holland; and the third (her son by Mountjoy) Earl of Newport. The earldoms of Warwick and Holland were held by her lineal descendants, till the death of that young Lord Warwick, whose mother married Addison. CHAPTER XVII. COURT AND AGE OF ELIZABETH. DRAYTON, DANIEL, DRUMMOND, ETC. THE voluminous Drayton* has left a collection of sonnets under the fantastic title of his IDEAS. Ideas they may be,-but they have neither poetry, nor passion, nor even elegance;-a circumstance not very surprising, if it be true that he composed them merely to show his ingenuity in a style which was then the prevailing fashion of his time. Drayton was never married, and little is known of his private life. He loved a lady of Coventry, to whom he promises an immortality he has not been able to confer. * Died 1631. How many paltry, foolish, painted things That now in coaches trouble every street, Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings, E'er they be well wrapp'd in their winding-sheet; When nothing else remaineth of these days, There are fine nervous lines in this sonnet: we long to hail the exalted beauty who is announced by such a flourish of trumpets, and are proportionably disappointed to find that she has neither " local habitation nor a name." Drayton's little song, I pr'ythee, love! love me no more; a stands unique, in point of style, among the rest of his works, and is very genuine and passionate. Daniel,* who was munificently patronized by the Lord Mountjoy, mentioned in the preceding sketch, was one of the most graceful sonnetteers of that time; and he has touches of tenderness as well as fancy; for he was in earnest, and the object of his attachment was real, though disguised under the name of Delia. She resided on the banks of the *Died in 1619. |