V Leiden and the Sidney myth

One week later a skirmish took place outside Zutphen, which many have described as heroic and some as reckless, but all as a waste of noble blood. For Sidney was seriously injured and had to be carried to Arnhem where the most skilful surgeons dressed his wounds while he displayed the equanimity and pious chivalry of which Fulke Greville has left us such a vivid account.

The news was naturally a great shock to Dutchmen and Englishmen alike. Dr. James received a letter saying:

The rumour about the wound of ‘Illustris & generosus Dominus’ Sidney has greatly upset us, and from your letter I learn that he is not yet sure to recover: but we pray God that he will restore his Honour to his former health, and long preserve him for us and our churches.1

Baudius, Sidney's cliens, happened to be at Arnhem as well, carrying letters from Dousa on some unknown commission. One was also to Dr. James, who had just perused it when

word came that the Earl of Leicester would arrive on that same day; a little later he was already reported to have entered. And thus your [i.e. Dousa's] presence would be indeed requisite for the furthering of your affairs with him.
Sidney was too ill to read your letter. We have told him the whole matter as well as we could. What of it? We have agreed, and one cannot find him more willing to grant. And so he immediately orders that young man2 to be sent in (whom I remember to have seen with you, very witty and well-educated) and tells him to prepare a letter of personal commendation to the Earl. This he makes, and gladly so because he is most eager to work for your cause. I tell you, he hopes with incredible ardour that you will deem him worthy to be named among your friends. But hearing a little later of the arrival of his Excellency, he judges writing superfluous - as you will readily understand. I shall deal

with Sidney, that he may mention your business when the Earl comes to visit him officially, and I am certain that he will do as I ask.1

Thus, even after receiving his fatal wound, Sidney was in touch with Leiden. He had letters from Dousa, held conference with Baudius, and showed himself open and helpful to the matter they discussed with him. This would not last. For there in Arnhem on 27 October, hardly more than a month after his prophetic lines to Lipsius, Sir Philip Sidney, attended by Dr. James2, surrounded by kinsmen and friends, passed away piously and peacefully, so setting the world one last example of virtue.

Sidney, while alive, had stirred the pens of numerous greater and lesser poets - foreigners perhaps more than English - as a politician, courtier, poet, patron, and friend. But after his death it was for something more than this that the Muses were inspired to honour him. Wasted youth had made the end romantic, while the cause made it heroic, and religious endurance virtuous. Writers eagerly availed themselves of so ‘poetic’ an occasion to produce unheard-of quantities of commemorative verse in the conviction that now, by his death precisely, all the classical aspects of a renaissance hero had been united in him. Students have frequently complained that these thousands of lines, though not necessarily insincere, contribute nothing whatsoever to Sidney's biography. But his contemporaries, always tending to translate the particular into the general, presented with a subject so obviously ‘universal’, would have found a personal epitaph almost absurd.

The sudden awakening of English poets to write commemorative verses results from their seizing the same opportunity. Supported by the official display of pomp and indeed deification which both the Dutch and the English government -

obviously deliberately - arranged for his transport and funeral, English poets were not slow in helping to build up a Sidney-myth. In representing him as the ideal Christian Knight, the English made him their counterpart to similar foreign myths, such as those of Orange and De Coligny. But as a glorified English hero, Sidney surpassed all alien examples in adding to his courtly virtues, and what might be called glorious death, the special distinction of being a renowned literary patron and himself a great poet.

The universities of England now for the first time imitated the continental practice of composing commemorative volumes. Perhaps it could be said that England was in need of such a hero, and that therefore Sidney would never have become so historic a figure if it had not been for the circumstances of his death. For many years a regular stream of epitaphs and elegies were to pour from the presses of London, Oxford, and Cambridge and among the host of authors we frequently find names that have appeared before in some Anglo-Dutch context. Dousa's friend Alexander Neville edited the Academiae Cantabrigiensis lacrymae (to which even King James VI contributed a sonnet); Dyer (or Greville) wrote an epitaph which first appeared in The Phoenix Nest and then together with Spenser's ‘Astrophel’; Constable composed ‘Foure sonnets to Sidneys soule’; and Whetstone, one of the earliest commemorators, published his Sir Philip Sidney, the only memorial piece with some biographical - if unreliable - data. And a Dutchman, Theodor de Bry, engraved a vast scroll representing the ‘celebritas et pompa funeris’.1

In Holland meanwhile, Sidney's death had similar literary effects but without the sense of novelty present in England. After all, no national symbol - such as Orange had been - could be extolled, and Dutch poets simply continued an established literary mode when they wrote verses on Sidney, in memoriam this time. Many mournful lines are more remarkable for having escaped attention than for being ‘new’ in

any historical sense. Verses could be long, or as brief as Baudius' chronogram:

But in tone and manner they all derived directly from earlier poems in his honour. At the same time one can say that there exists a definite body of Dutch (Latin) poetry in memory of the late Governor of Flushing. Whatever their value, curious or literary, in one respect at least they deserve closer inspection, namely that here the original scene of Anglo-Leiden contacts was set up once again as though for a final tableau.

The sad news of 27 October 1586 was received with infinite grief, it is well known. Louise de Coligny, writing to Leicester, not inappropriately compared Sir Philip's death to the loss of a brother2. Hotman, having confessed to Lipsius his inconsolable condition, added that he expected poetic condolences from him and Dousa whose praises he remembered from Sidney's own lips3. Often quoted as an example of Dutch concern is a slim volume of epitaphs printed at Leiden. These three instances already suggest that their regret was a mournful reflection on that happier scene in autumn 1585, only twelve months earlier.

One of Sidney's Dutch clientes has left us a more precise indication. It is our Leiden poet Dominicus Baudius, who was present when his patron died. A fortnight later he wrote to Dousa the Younger:

While I was here at Utrecht, my dear Dousa, I happened to run into that woman whom that most noble lady your mother had sent here to find out where your father is. She has asked me to tell you what I know about him.
I left him at Deventer, where he was in good health, on the twenty-third of this month [i.e. October4]. He had given me

two letters, one directed to Sir Philip Sidney, another to Dr. James. I carried them along; he probably expected an answer, but in vain: for my Master's condition no longer suffered him even to sign his name under a letter, and one day after my arrival in the town of Arnhem that Light of intellect, breeding, and nobility was carried off by death.
Since then I have not heard from your father any more: I am under the impression that he tarries in Deventer hoping for the Earl of Leicester's return; and since he will have been told that the Earl is to go to Utrecht, I hope he will also go, and come here. If he were here, he could complete all his negotiations in as little as one day.
I have nothing else to write, except this: I earnestly desire you to indite some poem on my Master's death, and to exhort George Benedicti on my behalf to do the same. I think I shall be commissioned to write his universa facta.
Farewell.1

This is how Leiden came to write an ‘In Memoriam’. Together, Baudius, Benedicti, and Dousa's son, three young poets of the 1585 embassy, produced 482 lines of verse divided into twenty-seven poems. But such a quantity of occasional composition did not prevent any one of them from gracing his contribution with a very individual approach.

In a curious way this could even be said of Baudius, who dedicated his longest poem - the first of his later Iamborum funeralium liber2 - to Robert Sidney, Philip's brother, in a typical attempt to kill two birds with one stone. After mourning the loss of ‘Flos Anglicanae gentis, imo totius flos orbis’, he appealed to the other Sidney to adopt his brother's cliens:

... of all most unhappy I whom in your death you have left helpless and wanting counsel, in the prime of his youth, while his heart had begun to conceive great hopes. This is all finished - unless there is room for hope in you, Robert Sidney, some promise of rescue.
For this I appeal to you, by the sublime honour of your family, and by your brother's renowned name which fills all regions with admiration: If I have faithfully served him with my honour, if he has held me worthy of his love: then I beg you, leave me not devoid of favour after the great misfortunes that befell me ...3

Still more remarkable than this dual-purpose ‘Lessus’, more interesting also than his chronogram and an ‘In obitum fortissimi herois Philippi Sidnaei’1, is the proposed commission to write Sidney's ‘universa facta’. Was it to be a Latin prose history, or did it echo the Sidney epic which he had suggested in his poem of 1 January? One would be tempted to ignore his remark and dismiss it as another boastful phrase, had it not repeated that earlier reference; but it seems almost preposterous to think that Robert Sidney would have promised him such a commission. Moreover, not a single line of it was ever published, not a trace survives. But in spite of its doubtful aspects there remains the interesting point that a Leiden poet could seriously discuss the writing of a Complete Life of Sir Philip Sidney - a task which no English contemporary ventured to undertake2.

From a literary point of view, Dousa the Younger offered more in answer to Baudius' invitation. Two of his poems betray familiarity with the oeuvre of his subject, as we shall see, and excel as individual compositions. The other two are short, epigrammatic. One is a comparison between Sidney and Codrus, the last king of Athens, who died for his country: ‘... To fall for one's country is a great Virtue: then how much greater is it, not to shun death in defence of one's Allies?’3 The second is still more conventional: Phoebus, Pallas, and the Muses weep; ‘... therefore, is it surprising that men should make complaint in verse when the same sad concern affects the great Gods and Goddesses?’4

Like Dousa, numerous English poets struggled with the great problem of how to write a proper memorial poem without becoming monotonous. Certain rules of decorum, after all, had to be observed in this kind of composition, and the

aspects of Sidney's death could not be excluded. Dr. John Rainolds, the Aristotelian scholar, for example, organized the writing of an epitaph on Sidney by first - according to one manuscript copy1 - drafting its basic contents, then setting them in order, and finally turning them into verse. In the case of Sidney, the English writer's task could be considerably relieved by the fact that his verses could link up with Astrophel and Stella or Arcadia, both known in manuscript.

This appears to have been also the younger Dousa's solution, and he first applied it to the opening lines of the following elegy:

Like at remendous tempest in a raging sea buries Tiphys as he steers his course by the Arcadian star2; thus in a wild turmoil Sidney, who was the anchor of our wreck, is taken from us. Now it must go like a mother who has lost one of her twins, unhappy like a man who has lost one eye.
O grief! Fallen is our only hope, the Spaniard's terror, the choicest glory of his native land, Sidney, whose name and excellent virtue is recognized in the East, and recognized in the West: all Nature could not have contained his fame if Lachesis had suffered him to run his whole life's course; but sadly he died before his day, when his years were in full bloom, his youthful leg pierced by a flying dart, while he kills the savage Spaniards with a hand of lightning and deserves the wreaths of either Pallas.
Belgia bewails her helmsman, Britannia the child she bred; and justified is the grief of both for such a violent death: Troy was thrown in no less disorder when Hector's body was dragged away, and Hellas wept as much when Ajax was killed. For whom the end is never certain, life is not unlike fruits falling; some drop when they are ripe, by the force of a tempest; but others fall while they are sour, cast down by a hail of stones.
O Sidney, while you pursued our safety in battle, how little did you mind your own safety! When you first audaciously attacked the enemy, Spain gained its first honour through you. Just so did Protesilaus (since he was marked by an adverse fate) first stain the Trojan soil with blood. What use was your piety now, and the holy life you had always led, and the nobility of your father's blood?
You were raised in the two arts of Minerva; one gave you life, the other a grave: so great a virtue was not unknown to the Venetians, nor did the British Nymph keep your intellect hidden;

you were even sent to the Emperor as an ambassador, although you had hardly left your fourth Olympias1 ...

Needless to say, even Dousa the Younger continued with the ‘prescribed series’ of complimental complaints, differing from numerous others only in the liveliness of his description, and in that his ‘Dutch angle’ afforded the common subject some measure of variety. In the conclusion of his elegy Sidney's widow ends her lament and calls for

‘... the sacred torches to light the pyre of my husband, that it may burn no less fiercely here than my feelings for him now burn within me.’
She would have spoken more, but Dudley interrupted her: ‘The spirit of so great a man demands no such tears: for from the high heavens he beholds our human cares and pleasures, and enjoys the life of a heavenly being: and we, poor little creatures, what greatness is there that we can give life to? Time is never certain to wait for us. Who knows, great Sidney, whether one of us is not close upon your heels?’2

More curious still is the last poem, in which he alone among the Dutch poets used the conventions of a pastoral eclogue to convey his grief for the loss of Daphnis, the Bucolic poet, i.e. Sidney, the author of Arcadia.

One day, leaning on his rustic staff, Lycidas stood on the bank of the Thames. Many a beech-tree afforded him shade, but, alas, he was disturbed by deep sorrow and mourning: he did not tune his wonted song on the rustic pipe to lament his unhappy loves: nor did he delight in falling asleep amidst the soft rustling of leaves or in leading the tender kids to their sober provender: all this he would ban from his deepest thoughts. But neglecting his herd, his farm, and his poor field, with all his heart ‘Daphnis’ he sighed, sadly and with great emotion, ‘Daphnis, are you dead, alas?
‘Echo, who resound in secret valleys, you also lamented, almost forgetting your proper liveliness; and the swans of the river wept in mourning.
‘Speak, o Muses, speak of the shepherd's Muse, o speak: for I expect that you have also mixed sighs with songs, and that you have also loudly complained when your dear child was buried.
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, killed by cruel death, o Daphnis?

‘Thus, have you not fulfilled your hopes, nor the hopes of your friends? On the beach that day when your ship left the country, you looked forward (I remember) to your return which would be sweet to you and to your friends - but the good fortune for which you hoped has deceived you. And then you decided on delights - which could never come true - and on times to be marked with a white stone - which were to prove as vain.
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, cut off by cruel death, o Daphnis?
‘Nor was your wife cheerful when she left you, but she stifled her sorrows deep in her heart; evil omens there were, the owl with its dreadful sound, the crow gruesomely croaking in the hollow oak; ever mindful she was of her cares.
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, killed by cruel death, o Daphnis?
‘Had it not been better there to have breathed your last breath, there where the mother's milk first comforted your throat and the air first touched you with fleeting tremours, than here to die, far from your native country, a visitor to strange lands, an offering to ruinous Mars?
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, cut off by cruel death, o Daphnis?
‘On that day, alas, where was Phoebus, or Martial Pallas, when the cruel Parcae broke your vital threads? Why did they not aid you when death approached? But I am wrong: for neither Pallas could have helped nor Phoebus could have strengthened you with infusions of life; but clearly he showed his grief in a purple-black hue as he sank down into the western seas, more sadly than at other time.
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, cut off by cruel death, o Daphnis?
‘O, you who are loved by the whole country, for you Nymphs weave white lilies with violets and purple amaranthus, and prepare fragrant wreaths for your prison; and now you roam through the blessed light and the blessed field of the Elysian woodland: from there, also, you look down on mortal cares, laughing at mortal delights.
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, killed by cruel death, o Daphnis?
‘All has changed since your departure, Daphnis: for while you frequented these hills, these dewy meadows, the green hills with their thick woods seemed to smile, the springs and the lush fields smiled. But after relentless fate has carried you away, Daphnis, the trees lose their attraction and the hills are in mourning, the springs dry up, and lush fields fade. And the earth, that once displayed a gay green garb of flowers, is uninviting and now grows thistles.
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, cut off by cruel death, o Daphnis?

‘Truly, this was the reason why we at your departure said “farewell, dear friend” and moistened our cheeks with sad tears - by chance, or an evil omen?
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, killed by cruel death, o Daphnis?
‘O, if next summer you could see the mallows and other herbs blossom again where they have faded: but we, presumptuous little men, are never allowed to return whence we have once departed.
‘Must you lie so, o Daphnis? so miserably, alas?
Must you lie so, Daphnis, killed by cruel death, o Daphnis?
‘But though your body is dead, Daphnis, oblivion will never extinguish your memory in our hearts. I shall often address you in my verse, and my sorrows will remain day and night. And when I shall thrice call your name in a loud voice, then your sacred image will leave the forests and fields of lush Elysium to address us thus:
‘“Shepherd, once the object of our love, now of sorrow and anxiety, my death does not demand these sighs; leave such sighs for them whose impious souls are left to eternal punishment, and for their torturing, to the flames of Phlegethon. But for me, whom God himself has admitted among his Celestial Citizens and enlisted in the Ranks of the Blessed, why should there be so many tears, why such heavy sighs?”
‘This, and more, you will say to me; but never can our sorrow be driven away, never our grief be driven away.’
- While Lycidas flung such words at the vacant skies and Titan immersed his sizzling lamp, Thyrsis arrived; Lycidas saw Thyrsis, and said: ‘To morrow my pipe will repeat you my wonted song.’
Thus he spoke, and then returned with Thyrsis to his rustic abode.1

Of all the Sidney poems produce dat Leiden, this was certainly the most successful. Janus Dousa the Younger, whose Eclogue almost reads like a companion poem to the Astrophel collection, made the required three elements blend with great ease and charm. Dutifully bearing in mind what essential points were to be raised, the Dutch Lycidas carefully framed his complaint in the supremely appropriate setting of a Thames-side Arcadia which he enlivened with some subtle touches of private concern and experience. As a poet he proves capable of dealing with this hazardous genre and of

bringing his effusion, as the only one among his compatriots, so amazingly close to the new pastoral trend in English poetry.

The volume of Epitaphia in mortem Philippi Sidneji1, published at Leiden in 1587, was not, strictly speaking, a university anthology comparable to those of Oxford and Cambridge as is often assumed; and indeed it was not printed by the Academiae Typographus Raphelengius, but by Jan Paedts. Nor were Lipsius and Danaeus responsible for them2, but Benedicti3, whose generous compliance with Baudius' request had produced so unusual a publication.

If the verses of Baudius and Dousa the Younger showed the author's characteristics well, so did Benedicti's twenty epitaphs. In their informal triumvirate, he was perhaps the most ‘academic poet’. His project of a separately produced collection may have been influenced by Neville's Lacrymae from his own Alma Mater. At any rate, avoiding both plain suits for patronage and doleful effusions, he produced a strictly academic series of epigrams. Each of them gave a special turn to one aspect of Sidney's death. Thus, for instance, the fifth epigram:

When death approached, Philip is reported to have said: ‘Lo, God, Dutch soil is holy to thee. I have received a wound, I do not regret it, the cause is good. To this, if life is given me again, it will again be given.’ O voice of Sidney, truly Cygneian: for both holy he once lived, holy he now dies.4

Another example may be found in:

If you believe that Philip has died a miserable death, then you are ignorant of what it is to live, and what to die. Life is a short

death, death is life again: Philip has the latter, had the former: lives he, or has he died?1

Put together, Benedicti's twenty ‘points of wit’ provided a reader - and, who knows, other writers? - with a complete set of applicable conceits.

In Benedicti's approach, especially in his first ten epitaphs, one recognizes, more clearly than in most other writers, a deliberate attempt to find the heroic formulation as referred to above. He actually makes the point that the Sidney myth could not have come into existence without the circumstances of his death:

When Sidney, killed by generous Mars, returned to England, to be buried ceremoniously in native soil, then how much honour to his country, and also how much grief returned! - Both were great, but the latter went surpassed by honour.
Britain saw the wound, and mourned for it: but the glory acquired by that wound was a solace. For more praise flowed from it than blood; and praise made its way to the stars, filling the great orb.
There the Hero joins the celestial throng of Heroes, and in triumphant manner sings of blissful delights.
O happy Hero! At one time you came to Holland as a man worthy of his country, thus you now return from it more worthily.2

In these and similar terms Benedicti contributed to the glorification of Sir Philip Sidney - ‘who went to heaven; and why, do you ask? Because the earth could not contain him.’3 His Epitaphia could be seen as the official tribute of the one foreign university with which Sidney had been most intimately connected: they had a Leiden imprint, and were anonymous, except for a dedicatory verse signed by the author.

Receiver of the dedication was William Cecil's eldest son Thomas, Governor of another cautionary town. The Brill, and therefore Sidney's immediate colleague. Other reasons, too, must have suggested his patronage to Benedicti. There appears to have existed some definite relationship between Leiden and this Englishman whom Benedicti exhorted to imitate Sidney in uniting warfare and letters. Lipsius, in an epistle

dated 11 April 1590, was to dedicate his Epistolarum centuria secunda to him, and Baudius wrote him a poem in 15871 in which he mentions Dousa, Lipsius, and even Rogers. Perhaps Thomas Cecil was considered eligible and prepared to take over Sidney's Leiden patronage.

With the return of names like Dousa, Lipsius, and Rogers, perspectives widen. The scene opens up with the re-appearance of the ‘older generation’ in this context, although not a single epitaph by them has survived. It is not unlikely, however, that some were written, particularly after Hotman's earnest request.2 The same may be said of Leiden's vernacular poets whose verses were almost invariably buried in oblivion. But as it widens, the general picture is, in a sense, also narrowed down.

From what has come down to us, one general conclusion is immediately apparent. In spite of Sidney's fame abroad - of which we have constantly been reminded - no foreign poems on his death are known except those of his Dutch admirers. His loss was a disaster that affected all the Provinces of the Republic: but no commemorative verses are recorded in, for example, Utrecht or Amsterdam or Zeeland. Leiden, therefore, was the only foreign town where a literary circle indited poems in his memory. The reactions to Sidney's death prove his special place in Anglo-Leiden relations.

One exception - invariably recorded in Sidney studies - remains to be discussed, namely the ten-line epitaph which Groslotius composed, supposedly in 16093. Some have taken it as evidence that France still celebrated Sidney twenty

8. Sir Philip Sidney, the hero.
From Baudartius, Afbeeldinghe van alle de Veld-slagen, Amsterdam, 1616, f. 535, the engraving showing Prince Maurice and Sidney at the taking of Axel in 1586.

years after his death1, or, conversely, as ‘un témoignage curieux et à peu près unique de la renommée de Sidney en France avant la traduction de l'Arcadie’2. It is true that our quadrumvir wrote it - but at a much earlier date. On 12 December 1586 he sent off a letter to Dousa the Younger in which he declared:

... it is most necessary that you endure this audacity of mine which so impudently troubles you with some of my ungraceful verses on the death of Sir Philip Sidney, which have written themselves by force of bitter grief - much against the will of the very Muses, who deservedly bar such a profane man from their sanctuary, which is unlocked for you only, yea, itself locked up in such sacred hearts.
Of these I send you one copy only, which I should like you to share with Benedicti, because I have no time to write them out for each of you. Besides, this is more than enough for such trifles. I have added a French epitaph, not to please you - who, I think, understand no French - but only for your father who, I know, is familiar with our forms of wit. And although the other things are not much good, yet I shall hot forbid you to show them to him, if you like.
You will perhaps praise my good will and endeavour, but not the thing itself: you will not, however, judge it on its own merits, but purely by my affection. Hence, I expect no fame, nor fear infamy. This is what I have desired, and indeed what was due: to perform these last and sad duties of piety for the divine Manes of so great a man and such a friend; I have wanted you to be witnesses of the proper fulfilment of these duties ...3

Then followed the epitaph4, supported by another, unrecorded, epitaph, the one in which Groslotius specified Sidney's literary accomplishments5. A French sonnet concluded the letter, for Dousa only:

It was only proper that a French sonnet in the traditional mode should have been written, considering that both Sidney and the Dutchmen to whom it was sent were deeply indebted to the French schools of poetry. It was equally appropriate that it should have been written by one of the 1585 quadrumviri for another member of that circle: for this makes it possible to see even the Frenchman's contributions as part of the Anglo-Leiden line of literary exchange in which the late Governor of Flushing had figured for so long.