. . . for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, triflingly handled. Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets sent unto you as fast as they were done.” He never meant that it should be published; indeed, when dying he asked that it should be destroyed; but it belonged to a sister who prized the lightest word of his, and after his death it was published in 1590 as “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia.” The book reprinted in this volume was written in 1581, while sheets of the “Arcadia” were still being sent to Wilton. But it differs wholly in style from the “Arcadia.” Sidney’s “Arcadia” has literary interest as the first important example of the union of pastoral with heroic romance, out of which came presently, in France, a distinct school of fiction. But the genius of its author was at play, it followed designedly the fashions of the hour in verse and prose, which tended to extravagance of ingenuity. The “Defence of Poesy” has higher interest as the first important piece of literary criticism in our literature. Here Sidney was in earnest. His style is wholly free from the euphuistic extravagance in which readers of his time delighted: it is clear, direct, and manly; not the less, but the more, thoughtful and refined for its unaffected simplicity. As criticism it is of the true sort; not captious or formal, still less engaged, as nearly all bad criticism is, more or less, with indirect suggestion of the critic himself as the one owl in a world of mice. Philip Sidney’s care is towards the end of good literature. He looks for highest aims, and finds them in true work, and hears God’s angel in the poet’s song. The writing of this piece was probably suggested to him by the fact that an earnest young student, Stephen Gosson, who came from his university about the time when the first theatres were built, and wrote plays, was turned by the bias of his mind into agreement with the Puritan attacks made by the pulpit on the stage (arising chiefly from the fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579 transferred his pen from service of the players to attack on them, in a piece which he called “The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, Natural Reason, and Common Experience: a Discourse as pleasant for Gentlemen that favour Learning as profitable for all that will follow Virtue.” This Discourse Gosson dedicated “To the right noble Gentleman, Master Philip Sidney, Esquire.” Sidney himself wrote verse, he was companion with the poets, and counted Edmund Spenser among his friends. Gosson’s pamphlet was only one expression of the narrow form of Puritan opinion that had been misled into attacks on poetry and music as feeders of idle appetite that withdrew men from the life of duty. To show the fallacy in such opinion, Philip Sidney wrote in 1581 this piece, which was first printed in 1595, nine years after his death, as a separate publication, entitled “An Apologie for Poetrie.” Three years afterwards it was added, with other pieces, to the third edition of his “Arcadia,” and then entitled “The Defence of Poesie.” In sixteen subsequent editions it continued to appear as “The Defence of Poesie.” The same title was used...