than he instantly resigned it to a dying soldier, whose ghastly countenance attracted his notice, uttering these ever-memorable words—“THY NECESSITY IS YET GREATER THAN MINE *."

*It is somewhat remarkable that this memorable instance of self-denying heroism, so well calculated in all its circumstances for striking effect, should not have attracted the notice of our artists before Hayley recommended it to the pencil of Romney in the following beautiful lines:

Shall Bayard, glorious in his dying hour,

Of Gallic chivalry the fairest flower,
Shall his pure blood in British colours flow,
And BRITAIN on her canvas fail to show
Her wounded SIDNEY, Bayard's perfect peer,
SIDNEY, her knight, without reproach or fear,
O'er whose pale corse heroic worth should bend,
And mild humanity embalm her friend!
Oh! Romney, in his hour of death we find
A subject worthy of thy feeling mind.
Methinks I see thy rapid hand display

The field of ZUTPHEN, on that fatal day,
When arm'd for freedom, 'gainst the guilt of Spain,
The hero bled upon the Belgic plain.

In that great moment thou hast caught the chief,
When pitying friends supply the wish'd relief,
While sickness, pain, and thirst, his power subdue,
I see the draught he pants for in his view:
Near him the soldier that expiring lies

This precious water views with ghastly eyes—
With eyes that from their sockets seem to burst,
With eager, frantic, agonizing thirst:

It can scarcely be necessary to say, after recording this almost unrivalled instance of self-denying

I see the hero give, oh generous care!
The cup untasted to this silent prayer;
I hear him say, with tenderness divine,
"Thy strong necessity surpasses mine."

EPISTLE TO AN EMINENT PAINTER, Part ii. 1. 431.

Whether the suggestion was ever carried into execution by Romney, I know not; but, however this may have been, it did not fail to produce its full effect in another quarter; for, not long afterwards, Mr. West presented his country with a noble picture on the subject, of which the following description has been given by Mr. Valentine Green :

"The centre of the composition is occupied by the wounded hero, sir Philip Sidney, seated on a litter, who, whilst his wound is dressing by the attending surgeons, is ordering the water (which is pouring out for him, to allay the extreme thirst he suffered from the loss of blood), to be given to a wounded soldier, to whom he points in the second group to his right, who had cast a longing look towards it. Behind, and to the left of Sidney, his uncle, the earl of Leicester, in dark armour, is discovered as commander-in-chief issuing his orders to the surrounding cavalry, as engaged in the confusion of the contending armies. Among the several spirited war-horses that are introduced, that of Sidney, a white horse, is seen under the management of his servant, but still restive and ungovernable. The portrait of the artist is found to the right of the picture, the figure leaning on a horse in the foreground, and contemplating the interesting scene before him. The back-ground, and to the extreme distance of the horizon, the movements of the armies and the rage of battle are

virtue, that the period which elapsed between his wound and his departure was passed by sir Philip in preparing for eternity, with the faith and devotional fervor of a Christian. As an example which might greatly benefit others, he made a public confession of his faith to the ministers who encircled his bed; a confession which is said "to have been such as no book but the heart could truly and feelingly deliver." Nothing indeed could transcend the piety and tranquillity with which this great and amiable man awaited the approach of death. He had delighted, notwithstanding his pain and languor, to discourse with his friends on the sublimest truths of religion, on the immortality of the soul, and the state of the blessed hereafter; and such, on the day of his decease, was the perfect serenity of his mind, that, after dictating a codicil to his will, he expressed a wish for music, and particularly for the performance of a solemn ode, which he had composed on the probable issue of the accident

every where visible, enveloped in an atmosphere that has fixed upon it the true aspect of danger and dismay, as legibly as the plastic art can possibly depict their terrors to the feeling mind."-Vide Zouch's Memoirs of the Life of Sidney, 4t. p. 385.

VOL. I.

L

which had befallen him. And thus, with every faculty soothed to peace and harmony, he turned his dying eyes upon his brother, and bade him farewell, in language worthy of being held in everlasting remembrance: "Love my memory," he exclaimed ; "cherish my friends: their faith to me may assure you that they are honest. But, above all, govern your will and affection by the will and word of your Creator, in me beholding the end of this world, with all her vanities;" and having said this, he expired in the arms of his secretary and beloved friend, Mr. William Temple.

Thus perished, in his thirty-second year, one of the best and most accomplished characters of the sixteenth century; one who, notwithstanding the early period at which he was cut off, had acquired throughout Europe a greater degree of celebrity than any individual perhaps of his age. So deeply was his loss felt in England, that a general mourning, the first instance of the kind remembered for a private person, was observed for him throughout the upper ranks of society, "no gentleman for many months appearing in a gay or gaudy dress either in the city or the court."

Every honour, indeed, which could emanate

either from public or private affection, was paid to his remains. They were deposited, even with splendid testimonies of national regard, in the cathedral of St. Paul's*; and the two universities vied with each other in lamenting his loss, publishing not less than three volumes of verses in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Italian, as tributes to his memory and his virtues.

Yet, of all the eulogia which have been passed on the character of sir Philip Sidney, not one, either of old or modern date, has equalled that which flowed from the pen of Camden; a testimony the more valuable as it was written by one not prone to enthusiastic admiration, but who, whilst he enjoyed the great advantage of knowing the individual whom he described, intimately and well, was, at the same time, both as an antiquary and historian, in the habit of expressing himself with soberness and truth.

Philip Sidney, not to be omitted here without an unpardonable crime, the great glory of his fa

* " The funeral procession," says Berkenhout, after Granger, was so uncommonly magnificent as to be deemed a subject worthy of the pencil of Lant, an eminent designer. It was afterwards engraved on thirty-four plates by Theodore de Brie, a native of Liege." Biographia Literaria, p. 384.