Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature

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Chapter XXXII Philip Sidney

Hardly any place in the Netherlands is more interesting, more tragic, and more sacred to travelers, who are acquainted with English literature, than the spot on the heath near Zutphen, where on the chilly and misty morning of September 22, 1586, Sir Philip Sidney was fatally wounded, while fighting beside the Dutch sons of liberty, against the soldiers of the Spanish tyrant. Splendid is Sir Philip Sidney's name in English literature, everlasting is the admiration of the civilized world for the author of the Defense of Poetry and of Arcadia, but more than that is the wonderful halo that surrounds his name by reason of his lovely, and beautiful character, and the noble spirit with which without fear he stood for the best cause in literature, as well as on the battlefield. It was that last cause, the deadly struggle for liberty, that forever connected the name of Sidney with that of the Netherlands. Eight years before his death, Sidney was sent by his Queen to the Prince of Orange at Delft to compliment him on the birth of his son, and during that visit the Prince received such a noble impression of him, that later on he sent the English embassador Fulke Granville to Queen Elizabeth to report to her his opinion ‘that her Majesty had one of the ripest and greatest counsellors of estate in Sir Philip Sidney that at this day lived in Europe; to the trial of which he was pleased to leave his own credit en-

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gaged until her Majesty might please to employ this gentleman either amongst her friends or enemies.’¹. At the time Sidney traveled through Germany and France, he enjoyed the company of Hubert Languet, for a time the private secretary of the Prince of Orange, and most probably the author of the famous ‘Vindiciae contra Tyrannos,’ and perhaps even the author of the ‘Apology’ of the Prince against Philip the Second. When, during the last year of his life Sidney was governor of Flushing, he had under his command the young Roger Williams, about whom he writes to his uncle Leicester, at that time Governor of the Netherlands: ‘Roger Williams beseechest your Excellency to pass him his sergeant-majorship general, with such allowance as shall seem good unto you. Of all nations they do desire him; he is fain to be at charge at Berghen. Your Excellency shall take care of few men that more bravely deserve it, as I hope he will.’².

One of his songs, which was probably written during his abode in the Netherlands, bears the inscription: Song ‘To the tune of Wilhelmus van Nassaue,’ the Dutch national hymn written by Marnix van Sint Aldegonde, who at that time was at Middelburg under the protection of Sydney, and whom he mentions in his letters to Leicester. Sidney knew what it meant to stand at the side of William the Silent, and to fight for the cause of liberty after that great prince had been murdered. He was himself in Paris during the horrible night of St. Bartholomew, on August 24, 1572; his own eyes had seen the massacre of the Huguenots. Nobody was more true to his queen, nobody more frank with her, and from nobody

1 J.A. Symonds, Life of Sidney, p. 41.

2 William Gray, The Miscellaneous Works of Sir Philip Sidney, p. 376.

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else would Queen Elizabeth have accepted such frankness; so that in the most critical moments, as for instance when the queen had almost accepted the hand of the Duke of Anjou, Sidney's advice was more courageous and more influential, than that of any one else. He had a personal acquaintance with almost all the leaders of Protestant Europe; he saw the deadly struggle in all its immensity; in his breast, as in that of William the Silent, beat the very heart of Protestantism, and when he fell in battle, it was a loss, not only for England, and for the Netherlands, but for the cause of Protestantism as a whole. He died at the moment when more than ever before he was uniting his own life and fate with that of the Dutch people, in their heroic struggle for freedom and toleration.

The people in the Netherlands had great confidence in Philip Sidney and after his death they begged to be allowed to keep his body, and promised to erect a royal monument to his memory, ‘Yea, though the same should cost half a ton of gold in the building.’ But this petition was rejected. His body was brought over to England in a ship, called occasionally the Black Prince, and buried with pomp in St. Paul's cathedral. And the whole nation went into mourning, and for many months it was counted a sin for any gentleman of quality to appear at Court, or in the City, in any light or gaudy apparel.¹

‘Sidney's death sent a thrill through Europe. Leicester, who truly loved him, wrote in words of passionate grief to Walsingham; Elizabeth declared that she had lost her mainstay in the struggle with Spain; Duplessis-Mornay bewailed his loss not for England only, but for all Christendom’² and the common peo-

1 J.A. Symonds, Sir Philip Sidney, p. 174 and 175.

2 Idem., p. 173.

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ple remembered his love and kindness towards them, by his last words to one of his dying soldiers on the battlefield, when he himself, deadly wounded, called for drink, but seeing the soldier, gave the bottle to him with the everlasting words: ‘Thy necessity is greater than mine.’