to be done,” says his pompous but sympathetic biographer Bombino, “was laid upon him.” On getting a fresh task he would ask his Superior, in a spirit of perfect humility and confidence, if he was thought strong enough to add that to the rest? and if the answer were Yes, he shouldered the new duty at once, much to the wonder of others. “I am in a continual bloom of health,” he writes gallantly to his “dearest Parsons,” who had just entered the Society; “I have no time whatever to be ill in!” Two sacred plays (six hours did it take to perform each of them!) came from Campion’s truly dramatic pen in 1577. One was on the Sacrifice of Abraham; one on the melancholy career of King Saul. It is a matter of much regret that these are lost. He seems also to have composed dialogues and scenes for his own scholars, and to have put together at this same time his spirited account of the origin of the English schism, in a narrative (in Latin) of _The Divorce of King Henry VIII from his Wife and from the Church_. It was printed by Harpesfield, long after Campion’s death. Meanwhile Rudolph II had succeeded to the imperial throne; and the “magnificently provided” Envoy who was sent to Prague, bearing the congratulations of Queen Elizabeth, was none other than Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney’s mind was set upon seeing his old friend Campion, and talking with him; but he managed only with difficulty to carry out his wishes. He went officially in the Emperor’s train to hear his friend (not yet in priest’s orders) preach, and on his return to England unguardedly spoke with delight of the sermon. Whenever Sidney visited the Continent he was supposed to become tainted with a hankering after Catholicism, though in all his public actions he was conspicuously Protestant. Campion, who knew him from boyhood and was not given to misjudgment, believed that he had almost won over the star of English chivalry: “this young man so wonderfully beloved and admired,” he calls him in 1576; a testimony doubly interesting, when we remember that Philip Sidney was then but three-and-twenty, to the effect which his short life made upon all his contemporaries. “He had much conversation with me,” Campion’s letter goes on, “and I hope not in vain, for to all appearances he was most keen about it. I commend him to your remembrances at Mass, since he asked the prayers of all good men, and at the same time put into my hands alms to be distributed to the poor for him; this trust I have discharged.” He ends by hoping that some of the missionaries then going back to England from Douay will have “opportunity of watering this plant ... poor wavering soul!” Fr. Parsons in his _Life of Campion_ tells us that Sidney “professed himself convinced, but said that it was necessary for him to hold on the course which he had hitherto followed.” Such was the sad answer of Felix to St. Paul.