Time puts out the lesser lights which burn only to light some small apartment and corner of the world, but cannot extinguish the suns which are formed to illuminate the whole earth. Sir Philip Sidney was rather a discerning patron of letters than a man of letters. He was the first patron and friend of Spenser, whom he introduced to the Queen, and their friendship endured till Sidney’s lamented death. Perhaps in the whole range of literary history, there is no incident so beautiful as the mutual friendship and familiar intercourse of Raleigh, Spenser, and Sidney. This pleasing friendship is frequently alluded to by Spenser. The ‘Faerie Queene’ is dedicated to Raleigh, whose return from his Western Expedition is celebrated in the Pastoral, entitled, “Colin Clout’s come home again;” from which we learn that it was their custom to recline “... amongst the coolly shade Of the green alders by the Mulla’s shore,” and recite to each other their poetic effusions. How beautiful a picture of the simplicity of great minds! It strikes us as a more lovely picture than the much-admired one of Chaucer, solitary among the daisies of the Woodstock meadows. Sidney inspired Spenser with no mere mercenary friendship, the affection of the client for his patron’s substantial marks of favour. When death smote Sidney on the sad field of Zutphen, Spenser invoked every Muse to weep over his untimely fall, and celebrated his virtues in the beautiful elegy “The Tears of the Muses for Astrophel.” It will perhaps relieve the dryness of our subject, to observe that the first poetical use of the Forget-me-not, (_Myosotis palustris_) as a symbol of faithfulness, occurs in this poem, and the English reader may there find a more fitting reason to esteem this little flower than the absurd German legend of a drowning knight throwing a spray of it to his ladye-love. The Astrophel of the following lines from Spenser’s Elegy, is Sidney; Stella is the name by which Sidney addressed his Mistress, who, it is feigned, was unable to survive his loss, and, “... followed her mute, like turtle chaste, To prove that death their hearts cannot divide, Which, living, were in love so firmly tied. The Gods which all things see, this same beheld; And pittying this paire of lovers trew, Transformed them, there lying on the field, Into one flowre, that is both red and blew. It first growes red, and then to blew doth fade, Like Astrophel, which thereinto was made. And in the midst thereof a starre appeares, As fairly formed as any starre in skyes, Resembling Stella in her freshest yeeres, Forth darting beames of beautie from her eyes And all the day it standeth full of deow, Which is the teares, that from her eyes did flow.