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Poets, Patrons, and Professors (1962)

Poets, Patrons, and Professors

(1962)–J.A. van Dorsten–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists


Vorige Volgende

V Rogers and Sidney

Even to sixteenth-century politicians an ambassador of twenty-two must have contrasted with so grave a mission. Sidney's ostensible reason for visiting the new Emperor was to convey the Queen's condolences on the death of his father, but there is little doubt that the real motive of his first embassy was to investigate ‘the ways by which a league between the English and the Protestant Germans may be arranged to protect the safety of our religion’1. Sidney's manners were so charming that Don John of Austria, in spite of his ‘Spanish haughture’, ‘found himself so stricken with this extraordinary Planet, that the beholders wondered to see what ingenuous tribute that brave, and high minded Prince paid to his worth; giving more honour and respect to this hopefull young Gentleman, than to the Embassadors of mighty Princes’2. Even the Emperor, though ‘few of wordes, sullein of disposition, very secrete and resolute’3, was not wholly averse to an ambassador whom Languet could still introduce as ‘adhuc quidem adolescens, sed excellente ingenio’4. It is true, also, that Sidney knew the Courts of Germany, and that the late ‘Emperor had sent for him and had received him most kindly’5. But it would have been most unlike the cautious

Queen and her shrewd councillors to have sent a young man as envoy solely on the strength of his virtuous manners and continental education. In this same year Sidney was almost invariably called ‘the son of the Viceroy of Ireland’. This curious epithet, which made Sidney strictly speaking a ‘Prince’ and even a potential ‘Prorex’, was more than just a matter of decorum. For by this title he, the only ‘Prince’ in England, was able to deal directly with foreign Princes on terms of equality. Sidney was young, but he alone was qualified for such a series of Court visits. Thus he travelled round in 1577, as the Prince and promotor of a Protestant league; as such he would be remembered when returning to the northern Provinces for a second and last time in 1585.

His diplomatic business1 does not now concern us, except that it involved a decisive re-union with scholars of the continent, not as a boy and a student this time, but as an illustrious courtier. During his first week in Flanders he was accompanied by Rogers. This included the embassy to Don John at Louvain and a short stay in Brussels from where Thomas Wilson, the ambassador, had written: ‘I have provyded lodginge, and doe make my selfe readie to wayte upon hym, as he cummeth in, and I mynde to conferre with hym, and to give unto hym the best advise that I can’2. It must be remembered that Sidney's first host in the Low Countries was a typical example of the literary-minded man whom he was wont to meet. This same Wilson was author of a famous literary treatise3, and considered by Harvey to be among his ‘honourable favourers’4; he was also very familiar with the Low Countries, and a friend of Ortelius, in whose Album5,

carried by Rogers, he was in the following year ‘to have his symbol painted’1.

One of the many literary friendships which Sidney made on this diplomatic journey was with the late Emperor's poet laureate, the German Pléiadist Paulus Melissus2, and, what is clear from Rogers' epigram to Dousa of the previous year on Melissus' first edition of Schediasmata3, one of the most accomplished friends of the Leiden poets. With more than average warmth Melissus recalls his early days with Sidney:

O, Sidney, renowned for your study of the Muses, son of the Viceroy of Ireland, again you will sail down the Rhine to return to your native country along the wide waves of the vast Ocean. The illustrious Queen of your Britannia is eager to learn what you will have to report from the Imperial Court on your return as her Ambassador. O, if Nereus and the Nereids themselves were to see me as your travelling companion to share your conversation and plough the long seas in a wind-driven barge: then I should not fear the black waves, nor the monsters of the deep, nor the turmoil of Eurus when borne on the impetuous wings of Boreas or Notus; because your virtuousness, O Philip, would warrant our safety; and that voice which, by its serenity, could hold the Emperor's eyes and speech spell-bound, that same voice would stay the raging gods of the sea and the tempests of the unhappy brethren who speed across the turbulence of the resounding waters. Although the savage force of Africus might drive us to the sea of the remote Orkneys: unhurt we should beat the salt stream with victorious oars, we could set our sails in the opposite direction and merrily arrive at the intended port.
But I can only make my way now, like Myrtilus, along the hard rocks of the Alps, and the dreadful chasms of its precipices. Wherever we may go, the gods be with us both and favour us; London will soon receive you - splendid ornament for cities - in its parental embrace; I, on the other hand, led by Vaquerius, shall be welcomed by the seven hills of Rome.4

Melissus, like many continental poets after him, addressed his lines to ‘one renowned for his study of the Muses’. This is

actually not only the first foreign tribute but also the earliest reference anywhere to Sidney as a poet.1

During some weeks with Languet - ‘the shepherd best swift Ister knew’ - he was back again among his old friends from Vienna. Clusius was absent but gratefully acknowledged a letter which Fulke Greville, Sidney's travelling companion, had apparently brought him on a sightseeing tour in Vienna.2 Another future Leiden Professor, the theologian Lambertus Danaeus (Daneau) whose works were already being translated into English3, joined their circle by dedicating his Geographiae Poeticae to Sidney - ‘cui Pater est Prorex’4.

When this mission, ‘the first prize which did enfranchise this Master Spirit into the mysteries, and affairs of State’5, had been completed, Sidney moved from Cologne to Antwerp, from there to Brussels, where a letter from the Queen was given to him in which he was commanded ‘to visit the Prince of Orange and attend the baptism of his daughter in her name’.6 Languet's letter is at this point incorrect, for

Sidney was to stand godfather on behalf of Leicester who had just written to the Prince of Orange:

J'ay entendu par le sieur de Melville que vous avez envoyé pardeçà, le grand honneur qu'il vous a pleu me faire, me daignant choisir, entre tant d'autres princes et grands seigneurs de vos bons amys, pour le parain de vostre jeune fille, honneur que j'estime vrayement d'aultant plus grand qu'en cela je voye une démonstration singulière de la bonne affection que Votre Excellence me porte, pour laquelle je vous en suis grandement redevable, vous asseurant, Monsieur, combien que vous avez peu choisir auquel la chose eust esté plus agréable, ny que vous en demourera pour icelle et pour beaucoup d'aultres faveurs plus fidelle et dévotieux amy at serviteur, comme Monsieur Dyer, présent porteur, gentilhomme de bien et mon fort amy, vous dira plus particulièrement de ma part: par lequel j'ay escript à mon nepveu, messire Ph. Sydney (lequel, estant en chemin de retour de la Cour de l'Empereur, viendra, comme il m'a escript de Heidelberg, descendre par le Rhin de Zéelande baiser les mains de Votre Excellence), qu'il debvra suppléer à mon absence pour ladite baptesme; mais, où il n'arrivera pas en bonne heure et que Votre Excellence ne vouldra plus longtemps différer, j'ay baillé la charge à ce dit gentilhomme, auquel je vous supplie d'adjouster foy en ce qu'il vous dira de ma part et de l'excuser, s'il vous semble un peu fascheux pour n'avoir autre langage que latin et italien.1

Sidney arrived in time, however, and there was no need for poor Mr. Dyer to feel the embarrassment of his slight linguistic talents. In the last days of May 1577 he met the Dutch leader in Geertruidenberg and accompanied him to Dordrecht. To the bystanders - Greville, Dyer, Dousa, and Marnix among them - it must have been a rare occasion to see ‘one of the ripest, and greatest Counsellors of Estate’2 with the one man who might have rightfully reserved that title for himself, the legendary William the Silent. ‘I love that Prince’, Sidney in his turn wrote to Languet, ‘and have in some way perhaps done him a greater service than he himself will have realized’.3 That service and ‘the prophesy concerning Orange which Languet had spoken of in Vienna’ remain a mystery: but there is no doubt about Sidney's

entry into the ‘Orangist party’, and the sudden, but apparently abandoned suggestion of Sidney marrying one of the Prince's sisters and thereby becoming Lord of Holland and Zeeland.1 Whether this whole confrontation was a clever move on the part of Orange to play up to the Englishman's politico-religious and social ambitions, the result remains the same: after his first appearance in the northern Provinces Sidney remained an influential agent in and for the Dutch cause - an agent to whom Dutch (poet-) politicians would naturally have an easy introduction.

 

On the strength of what Sidney reported, Rogers was sent back to the continent on 26 June 15772 to consolidate the Queen's dealings with the Protestant Princes. This was his third trip that year, but now, for the first time, he went independently as her Majesty's ambassador.

During Sidney's journey Rogers had spent most of his time at Dordrecht with William of Orange treating ‘gravissimis de causis’. Only once had he managed to hurry across to Leiden, but Dousa, to his deep regret, was absent and there was no way of following him to Utrecht. Two letters telling of his fruitless call3 are further evidence of their regular exchange of verses, books, and literary news, with Lipsius - still at Louvain - as their closest literary companion. Though he was to meet Dousa at the Prince's Court that summer, the next few years were to leave a hiatus in their correspondence, so Rogers wrote to Ortelius in 15804.

The relatively unimportant Rogers was the Queen's representative for the Low Countries for the year 1577 in order to further her attempted league as inconspicuously as possible.5 ‘Serenissimae Reginae legatus clarissimus atque

integerrimus vir, vetus amicus utrique communis, Dominus Rogerius’, as the Dutch psalmist Dathenus (Pieter van Daeten) styled him in a letter to Walsingham1, was instructed to attend on William of Orange, whom the Queen had asked to counsel him with advice in the same letter in which she had expressed her gratitude for ‘l'honorable treictement que vous a bien amplement raccompté le ... Sieur de Sidney’2. In July he travelled with the Prince from Alkmaar to Enkhuizen accompanied also by Van der Myle, Dousa, and Marnix. Rogers did not fail to report how they had inquired after Leicester, Sidney, and Dyer.3 There, too, were Buys and George Gilpin. A summary of the whole setting which prophesied the pre-Leicesterian embassies of 1584 and 1585 is contained in a report to Leicester of 3 October - the liberation day of Leiden:

I find the Prince the most desirous in the world of your Lordship's coming over, and it is the string he daily harps on ... We fell to speak of persons to supply your room, to which I named my good Lord of Warwick, your brother, or if that might not be, Mr. Philip Sidney, both men so agreeable to his Excellency as in a world I would not have made a choice to his better contentment ...4

Rogers then went to Germany where he held, unofficially, a most prominent position at the Frankfort Convent of September 1577.5 He stayed, of course, with Languet, who had recently written to Sidney that ‘here, towards the evening, arrived Mr. Daniel Rogers, who, as soon as he said he had a letter for me made my anger [with your negligence in writing] to cool down’6. ‘Meanwhile’, he added in another

letter, ‘we enjoy his sweet company and often make mention of you’.1

It is very likely that Rogers' verses ‘on the portrait of the illustrious young man Philip Sidney’2 belong to this date, the more likely because this unique poem on so controversial a subject as a Sidney portrait3 seems to match the lost and yet so famous Veronese painting which Sidney had had specially done for Languet in 1574. Of it we know two things: firstly, that ‘the features are on the whole well drawn, but that it is far more juvenile than it should have been: you [Sidney] will probably have looked like that when you were twelve or thirteen’4; secondly, that ‘it would have been more agreeable if your expression had been more cheerful when you sat for the portrait: the artist has represented you sad and mournful’5. Rogers turns both youthfulness and sadness into some kind of a compliment, but avoids the description of Sidney as a gallant young gentleman:

Well then (may Divine Youth long encircle with soft down those cheeks wherein it resides), who painted you, o Sidney, in such a unique manner, and who spread this rosy charm lightly over your face? Who enlivened your forehead with expression, your eyes with radiant beams? Whose art has given your lips that keen expression? Has Zeuxis returned to this earth from the underworld? Have you derived that splendour from the fingers of Apelles?
But no, whoever it was that drew you with such art, he was greater than Zeuxis, he was a greater Apollo. For truly, the figure lives, and you, Sidney, live in it; who would have thought a human hand to be capable of it?
When I look at that image, so like your own nature, it looks
back at me with eloquent eyes. But oh, why is it muter than a silent fish, why does it not speak? It imitates your habits, for you are a follower of Pythagoras' praised silence, you seem to hear much and to speak little. The rest corresponds completely: the difference lies only in this, that you speak little, but that your picture is always mute.

The abundance of state papers of 1577 and the following few years bear testimony to active diplomacy between the two countries, with Rogers as an untiring go-between. The network of literary contacts was meanwhile being enlarged. One letter from Rogers to Dousa could refer, among others, to the following variety of topics: his delight to see the Prince in good health; his regret on having missed Dousa at Wechel's house for the Frankfort Fair; the intention of Willem Silvius - soon to be appointed printer to the States and to the University of Leiden - ‘to migrate to us with his printing office’1; his fear that Dousa's Basia ‘though inscribed in our name’ will not escape censure; his imminent departure to England; and dinner with the Prince's preacher Villerius (De Villiers) who reported the London printing of Buchanan's ‘Tragedia Johannis’.2

Some lines in the Album of Bonaventura Vulcanius3, future Professor of Greek at Leiden, and three poems printed in Goltzius' Thesaurus of 15794 indicate that Rogers' pen continued to produce a regular flow of verses. He also appears to have thrived as a diplomat. One important indication of this is the ad vivum painting of William of Orange which was presented to him, some time after 1 April 1578, by the Prince himself.5 Sidney exhorted Languet ‘still more to

love my Rogers for my sake’1, unnecessarily, it seems, for the two were constantly together, especially in Duke Casimir's circle. Languet sailed to England for the first time in 1579 - ‘Languet must make himself ready to pass the seas in his old days’ as Rogers put it2 - and when Casimir, who vainly requested Sidney to be his companion and counsellor, also crossed the Channel, Rogers had the honour to be with him. As early as 1577, actually, Wilson had thought Rogers fit for a prominent position: ‘I woulde wyshe upon my revocation that some choyce man myght succeade [as ambassador]. Mr. Davyson, Mr. Wyndebanke or Mr. Rogers woulde wel answer the place’3.

It is impossible here to draw a proper outline of that interchange of scholars, poets, printers, and ambassadors which took place in the Netherlands in the late seventies. This was the time between the Pacification of Ghent and the final secession of 1581, during which William of Orange held his triumphal entries in Flanders, while Louvain in the south became Spanish and Amsterdam in the north chose sides with the States. Literary events often interacted with political developments. When Duplessis - for the second time after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew - visited England in 1577/78 where ‘ses plus confidens amys estoient messire Françoys Walsingham, secretaire d'estat d'Angleterre, et sir Philippes Sidney, filz du vice roy d'Irlande, nepveu du comte de Lecestre, et depuis gendre du dict seigneur Wal-

singham, le plus accomply gentilhomme d' Angleterre’1, his aim was no doubt political. Unfortunately he left without ‘obtaining that which would have been salutary to the Christian common-wealth’2, but not before he had inspired an illustrative series of translations: Philip Sidney began an English rendering of the De la Verité de la Religion Chrestienne3 and Languet a Latin one, while Lucas de Heere, the designer of Orange's Flemish entries, also joined the ranks of Duplessis translators with the Tractaet van de Kercke, dedicated to the Prince4. At this time, too, as a result of political shifts, Lipsius moved from Louvain to Leiden, where for the next ten years his lectures were a major attraction in the Faculty of Arts. Even the writings of Marnix - to give one more example - were subject to the present tide. His English interest, to judge by the one English book in his library, Stow's Chronicles5, was almost certainly non-literary. But in 1578, the year when he drew his device ‘Repos Ailleurs’ in Dousa's Album6, the year when Leicester asked Davison:

comende me also veary hartyly to Monsieur Saint-Allagonde, and excuse me that I wryte not to him now, for I am mallincolly; and I wyshe full oft that he were here, as, yf shall seme good that any further dealing be with Hir Majestie, I wyshe he may come befor all others, as I think, if he had bin here, the matter had gonne better;7

in that same year Marnix's famous anti-Catholic satire - in its turn a manifestation of the same critical interest in church matters - was translated by George Gilpin, Rogers' successor with the Merchant Adventurers and a recent friend of Languet's8. It was published soon after as The Beehive of the Romishe Churche , and dedicated by the printer to Philip Sidney

himself. It is astounding that this general ‘migration’ concerned such a limited number of participants. In this migration we may recognize one trend out of many within the general revaluation of religious commitments among the intellectuals of those years. This was a gradual process and naturally of so private and often confusing a nature that in many cases it remains exceedingly hard to define the convictions of these men - singly or as a group - at any particular stage of this development, while a reliable indication of its necessarily great influence on their thoughts and activities is seldom found.

 

At Leiden, meanwhile, the University was beginning to show signs of life thanks in some degree to a sudden decline of both Heidelberg and Louvain. Not only could it welcome its first English student, John James1, a fellow of Trinity College Cambridge and later a physician in Leicester's household, but also the arrival of a younger contingent of Dutch students - some of whom were soon to appear in an Anglo-Dutch context.

Among them was Dominicus Baudius, who had come to read theology but was later to return to Leiden, first as a poet and law student, and then as professor of History and Eloquentia. His biographer is clearly right in assuming that ‘the eight months which Baudius spent in Leiden as a student in 1578 ... exercised a most decisive influence on his life’.2 For Baudius, a refugee's son whose mother had recently moved to Protestant Ghent, was quick to join the literary circle of Lipsius, Dousa, and Van Hout. And in making good friends with Dousa's son Janus and with Georgius Benedicti, he was already on the way to become a prominent figure in the coming generation of Leiden writers.

As one of that ‘gathering and assembly of those within the new University of Leiden who are exercising themselves in Latin or Dutch poetry’3 he shared those early days of literary trial to which only letters and some later editions of collected

verse bear testimony. Though little remains, there is reason to suspect some development, even in vernacular writing. Dousa's Album is found to contain a number of Dutch sonnets inscribed in 1578,1 the year when Van Hout started an Album of his own2 and gave it a Dutch verse-introduction; of 1578 also, a translation of Horace's ‘Eheu fugaces’ survives,3 and in 1579 Van Hout wrote a Dutch sonnet - on the dullness of Dutch wit - in Ortelius' Album4. One should hesitate as yet to talk about ‘the new poets’ in connexion with that small Leiden circle. That these poems survive only in Albums emphasizes their private and informal character.

 

There is an interesting resemblance here to the obscure beginnings of ‘new poetry’ in England. In 1578 Harvey penned his flattery of the poet-courtier Sidney in a little book which, probably because it included an early poem of Dousa,

was circulated even in Leiden.1 At that time the literary discussions of the English group will have assimilated the poetic theory which Sidney was soon - after Gosson's Schoole of Abuse in 1579 had provided the occasion - to formulate in the Apologie for Poetrie. The Shepheardes Calendar was the only contemporary English poem mentioned in the Apologie - as having ‘much Poetrie in his Egloges, indeed woorthie the reading, if I be not deceived’ - not, perhaps, because it had been dedicated to Sidney, but because Spenser had already put some principles of the theory into practice. The English circle was probably even less of a formal ‘school of poetry’ than that of the Leiden writers whose literary status was on the whole more professional.

The absence of anything like a record of their literary discussions at Court makes it difficult to grasp the actual setting for ‘the new poetry’ in England, but fortunately one useful account survives. This unique document, a long Latin elegy by the well-informed Rogers, outdoes Harvey's ῖ both in length and in its personal touch. In more than one respect this only contemporary, though brief, ‘Life of Sidney’, deserves a more careful examination than its poetic qualities would warrant.2 It is more than a happy coincidence that Rogers wrote his ‘To Philip Sidney, a young man of renowned wit and virtue’, in the then political centre of Dutch Protestantism, Ghent, on his last day there with Hubert Languet, 14 January 1579. There is reason to imagine that Rogers wrote it in the presence of Languet, and that he showed the result to those near and interested - Casimir, Marnix, and probably quite a few others.

The elaborate opening and its typical concern with the divine representation of Eliza's Court speaks for itself, and may recall an actual pageant on the Queen's birthday, possibly in 1578 when Rogers was at Court:

Now you reside at Richmond with its golden tapestries, the noble work of King Henry VII, adorned with its row of varied turrets, washed by the eddies of the Thames as the water runs past. There the curved ceilings shine with gold leaf, there an opulent refinement fills every room. And there, o Sidney, when the Queen keeps Court and celebrates her birthday, there - I am happy to say - you share the pleasures of ethereal life and see the heavenly choruses coming and going.
First you see how Religion comes to keep Divine Eliza company, graciously occupying the space by her right side. On the left She sits who rules with equal scales, the dear keeper of our parental soil. Prudence stands in front and gives good counsel of life: they both temper the passions. Then comes brave Constancy who fortifies the mind and holds forth the laurel wreath towards victorious heads. Meanwhile you will see the Graces competing with the Muses in making sweet melodies, with their voices, or on strings and flutes.
In their midst she sits who embraces these divine beauties, Eliza, and her love takes nourishment from their nectar. It is worth hearing this singing of goddesses and letting the attentive ear drink in their sacred hymns.
Need I speak of the bevy of illustrious Heroines, ready o Royal Nymph, at your command? Outstanding among them, o Sidney, your mother1 and sister2 on both of whom the Queen bestows the greatest care. With them is the Countess of Sussex,3 remarkable for her fine wit; to you she is almost another parent in proximity. And also among these Nymphs is Lady Huntington,4 faithful sister of your mother, and a second mother to you. But with what beauty does Lady Russell5 surpass them all: she is the goddesses' equal in wit, features and manners.
Let me remain silent about the others who are yours through friendship or the closer bond of consanguinity. Their gifts are so great that I fear our Thalia may only lessen their great virtues.
For who could celebrate you with due praises, Lady Knollys,1 who are second in beauty only to the divine sceptre-bearer? Who can properly sing your praises, Lady Howard,2 noble ornament of the House of Norfolk? No one could aptly speak of your qualities. Lady Stafford,3 for unequalled you flourish in gifts of grace and beauty - If Naso lived, he would sing of these ladies in triumphant verses, Naso, first laurel of the Pelignian land; and that Albius [Tibullus], knight of the Ausonian nobility, would not prefer his mistress Nemesis to such beauties, nor would you, refined Propertius, have always been concerned with Cynthia alone if you had seen such as these. My Muse has often urged me to speak of them, but sounds halt in my mouth, and fade.

This deviation leads up to a compliment for Sidney's own poetic gifts: it is of interest not only that the first item in Rogers' enumeration of Sidney's qualities should concern ‘the poet’, a not so common appreciation of that time, but also - to be examined later - because of the way Rogers discusses it.

Worthy they are, I think, to be celebrated by the voice of Phoebus, or of you, Sidney, or of you, Dyer. For yours is not a body without a heart,4 nor were you only born in an illustrious family.
Jupiter has inspired you with a rare genius, the eloquence of Suada has taught your tongue. Whether you wish to speak out in Latin, or prefer the accents of Gallia, or rather express your feeling in Italian speech, nobody could do it more gracefully or better than you. But when your [poetic] passion seizes our arts, then how abundant are the streams in which your wit flows forth.
What did the Weird Sister sing as she spun the first threads of your life? Allow me briefly to touch on the things which the one Parce once ventured to speak as she stood by your cradle.

Before the most interesting part - an account of the past six years - Rogers, adopting the accepted epic introduction, brings in an emphatic prophesy of Sidney as the puritan leader.

It would be you, she prophesied, who, born of great ancestors, would surpass your great descent by the nobility of your mind; whom every goddess would honour with her own special gift, and who would be sacred to Virtue, the Muses, and the gods.
Here the man is born, she said, who will travel to many countries, who will become familiar with the manners and minds of the world; who will be master of the arts of peace and war alike, who will ever, at pleasure, control both powers. Under his leadership Religion, dressed in modest rites, will firmly and with a pure voice establish God in his churches! With his support Themis will protect equality of rights: and he will win the esteem of Queens and Dukes. Him, Virtue and Fortune will raise in common agreement, and him they will place in the highest position.
Thus she spoke: and so as to make the words she had uttered come true, she offered your lips pure kisses as a libation.
Those words have indeed come true, and the Parce has not spoken in vain: every word has been fulfilled as prophesied. When you had only just been born, a swarm of bees took you from the cradle and poured their honey on your lips. Then the eloquent Muses shaped you with their own hands: they cultivated your tongue and your manners. Each vied with the other to adorn you with her gift, to leave all her tributes in your cradle. Gracious Venus gave you beauty, the Graces wit, and Pallas took care of your judgement and eloquence. Hence all those remarkable rich gifts of your heart, at which old men stand amazed in great admiration.

Rogers makes no reference to Sidney's life before the beginning of his period abroad, the Grand Tour in terms of a continental Protestant education.1 Apart from one of the very few extant allusions to Sidney at Paris during the Massacre, the passage reveals quite definitely where Sidney met Languet and what Languet taught him at Vienna.

Then the Genius took you to distant countries, and taught you what to gain from the regions of France: here, too, you were when malicious Gallia allowed her own father, Coligny, to be killed by an unholy woman [i.e. Catherine de Medici], when the town of Paris raged at the children, girls, mothers, and old
men, who were her own offspring. But when you were exposed to such great dangers, the Gods commanded you to go and visit the states of Germany. There you heard what arts are taught by holy Sturmius, the leader and father of the Aonian herd. Full of which, you wished to view the land of Italy, in order to learn whatever the Latin states could teach you. Then you stayed with great fascination in Austria, and with wandering eyes you have seen the country of Bohemia. In those regions you began your friendship with Languet, Languet with his firm knowledge of law. He guided you through the histories and origins of states, he was the tutor who determined your judgement.
I think that you might even have thought of visiting the Antipodes if the Queen had not recalled you to your native soil.

Rogers proceeds to describe Sidney's intended life of action (before his difficulties with the Queen over Anjou), and sheds new light on Sidney's military ambitions in an evocative representation of his life at Court. Perhaps one should not read ‘Stella’ into his ‘mixing with Stars’, but the revealing passage on Sidney and the foreign ambassador compensates for the absence of Penelope Rich.

All the things which you have seen in your early manhood have been added to your subtle senses, you blessed man: they have made you the more welcome at powerful Courts, and the more esteemed in your opinion, o Royal Eliza.
Need I speak of how the Queen selected you when you were in the very flower of youth, selected you alone among numerous grown-up men. To pronounce her words before the face of the great Caesar she sent you, and to you she confided the deepest secrets of her mind. Even Germany was no less amazed at your accomplishments than your own country had been - and rightly so. Leicester himself could not have loved you better than Casimir, the Palatine, loves you. When he was about to lead his powerful phalanxes to war, he asked you to be the sharer of his fortunes. For your blood does not freeze in a sluggish heart, but you are skilful in the duties of war and peace alike. We know with what immediate enthusiasm you wanted to be her soldier when the Queen fitted out her fleet against the enemy. We also know at what great expense the spirit of war made you choose armour so that Duke Casimir would be able to proceed to the Netherlands - for truly, a spirit of greater constancy than would be in so tender an age rose up in you, and wisdom flowed forth with fine eloquence.
Must I speak of how warmly, on your return from the Roman Emperor's Court, you were welcomed by the whole realm - which, recently your country, had now almost become your house -
while the Queen commanded you to remain in her presence: and so, whether she walks with wandering steps through the green fields which one sees from the nearby Court of Richmond, or whether she takes a walk through the sunny gardens, you are there, faithfully ready to wait upon her Majesty. If it pleases the goddess to ride into the gay fields, you will mount your horse and presently keep your Mistress company. And when an ambassador from a distant country arrives she first commends him to your good care. And whatever you are doing, you must be close to the Queen, whether she is seriously occupied or pleases to be merry. O fortunate man, who as the servant of Eliza can mix with Stars - yea, goddesses. And need I speak of how often she merrily chirps with you, and of how that Royal Nymph delights the company with her ready wit. By condescending to favour your wishes, how much your obedient services must please her.
Let me add how ready both your uncles are there to smooth your path to the true height of great honour: Warwick's zeal for Mars, Leicester's for Jupiter, both of them fathers and reliable supporters of their country. These two cast their light, like twin Stars, before their nephew, and shine like the Lesser Bear on your ship's stern. Yea, there, also, is your father, the leader from the land of Inverna; so that nothing is left for you to wish for. Whatever number of accomplished men are with you, warriors and scholars, the Court beholds none greater than these three.

He refers next to Dyer and Greville as Sidney's best friends, showing that their friendship was based on more than common literary interests. What is more, Rogers does not even record the arts as an item of their discussions, but only law, religion, and moral philosophy: although poetry as defined in the Apologie is the obvious next step and synthesis of their philosophizing.

Nor are you without a faithful and happy circle of companions in whom, in close friendship, there abounds a pious love. In divine virtue Dyer, keeper of judgement, storer of wit, excells. Next comes Fulke whom you have known since the earliest days of manhood, Fulke, dear offspring of the House of Greville. With them you discuss great points of law, God, or moral good, when time permits these pious studies. You are all ornaments of the Court, its favourites almost - the Royal Court (Nemesis be my witness) is therefore dearer to me.
If you were to allow us to be loved as one of them, that were enough, that is the culmination of my wishes.
But where does my love for you drag me in my simple verses? Desist, Muse, such matter should properly resound in heroic verse. But it is because I, while executing the Queen's commands in this part of Belgium, have joined Languet - your Languet,
and also mine. Frequently we talk of you, Sidney, and love commands me to write to you of our talks about you.
Am I wrong, or do you also - in spite of distant separation - feel the same, and does it sound from here agreeably in your ears? But I conclude and leave the rest to the Muses so that you will not say I cannot bear my happiness.

Not as a poet, therefore, but by means of his poetry do we find Rogers in a sense entreating admission to the courtly sessions of Sidney, Greville, and Dyer. The request is so bold that one has good cause to wonder whether it had not already been granted. At any rate, this Ghent Elegia suggests that Daniel Rogers was particularly familiar with Philip Sidney during some of the most interesting years of the literary development of both countries.


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