PREFACE

THE chief documents upon which a life of Sir Philip Sidney must be grounded are, at present, his own works in prose and verse, Collins' Sidney Papers (2 vols., 1745), Sir Henry Sidney's Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham (Ulster Journal of Archæology, Nos. 9-31), Languet's Latin Letters (Edinburgh, 1776), Pears' Correspondence of Languet and Philip Sidney (London, 1845), Fulke Greville's so-called Life of Sidney (1652), the anonymous "Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney," prefixed to old editions of the Arcadia, and a considerable mass of memorial writings in prose and verse illustrative of his career. In addition to these sources, which may be called original, we possess a series of modern biographies, each of which deserves mention. These, in their chronological order, are: Dr. Zouch's (1809), Mr. William Gray's (1829), an anonymous Life and Times of Sir Philip Sidney (Boston, 1859), Mr. Fox Bourne's (1862), and Mr. Julius Lloyd's (later in 1862). With the American Life I am not acquainted; but the two last require to be particularly noticed. Mr. Fox Bourne's Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney combines a careful study of its main subject with an able review of the times. The author's industrious researches in