Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Humanists' Library: The Defence of Poesie &C
Xiimost ended his travels on the Continent, where he had imbibed language, literature and know ledge in many kinds, to return home fitted to be come one of the best masters of learning in the kingdom, and well on in the journey. His curi osity was unbounded; he was as inquiring as he was observant; and his mind had singular adhe siveness, -everything stuck to it. He had more than intelligence; he was as quick with sensibi lity and imagination. He was more than assimi lative; he was naturally imitative, and a creator in his turn. He was a stimulating presence, an agitating in?uence; everything, where he was, became a living question. He was no anachro nism lingering super?uous on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; no fading knight, the afterglow of things and ways departed from the stirring world, the player of a half asthetic part. Sidney was a man of power. He showed this in inferior ways; he was proud, quick to rebuke, loud-voiced to ?ing back an earl's insult; and in superior ways he showed it by the equivalence of really great matters in his thoughts. He was a man of affairs, but he still habitually moved in the whole of life; and to him there was a like importance in the discovery of the Americas, the consolidation of Protestant power, the growth of an English stage or even the refinement of the vernacular so as to make its broad syllables yield up their organ notes and its light vowels their ?ute-like move xu1ment. His in?uence was at all points enlivening, and he had Shelley's instinc't for putting his first thoughts and new loves to immediate use and prac'tice. So, though young, he expressed him self fully. In the Arcadia he unveiled his tem perament, in Astrophel and Stella he laid bare his soul alike in its mortality and its immortality, and in The Defence of Poesie he gave us the clear stamp of his mind.
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