"TO MY DEAR LADY AND SISTER, THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE. Here have you now, most dear, and most worthy to be most dear, Lady, this idle work of mine, which I fear, like a spider's web, will be thought fitter to be swept away than worn to any other purpose. For my part, in very truth, as the cruel fathers among the Greeks were wont to do to the babes they would not foster, I could well find in my heart to cast out in some desert of forgetfulness this child, which I am loath to father. But you desire me to do so; and your desire to my heart is an absolute commandment. Now it is done only for you, only to you. If you keep it to yourself, or to some friends who will weigh errors in the balance of goodwill, I hope for the father's sake it will be pardoned, perchance made much of, though in itself it have deformities; however, indeed for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled. Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets sent to you as fast as they were done.... Read it, then, at your idle times, and the follies your good judgment will find in it blame not, but laugh at; and so, looking for no better stuff than, as in a haberdasher's shop, glasses or feathers, you will continue to love the writer, who doth exceedingly love you, and most, most heartily prays you may long live to be a principal ornament to the family of the Sidneys. Your loving Brother, PHILIP SIDNEY." If the work was roughly completed by Philip, the duty remained for his sister, with loving melancholy, to revise and prepare it for the press after his death. It appears to have been, also, at this time that Sidney and his sister commenced their joint work of translating the Psalms into English verse, to which it will be necessary to refer later. Before alluding to the other literary labours of the Countess of Pembroke, reference may be made to the few remaining years of the life of her brother. Towards the close of the year we find him again at Court, and sitting in Parliament for his native county. Although holding the office of Cup Bearer to the Queen, he does not seem to have received any distinct marks of the Royal favour for some years. In fact, his family was neglected, and especially so his father, who had become impoverished through his disinterested devotion to the Crown. In the early part of 1583, however, Philip received from Her Majesty the honour of knighthood, together with benefits of a more substantial character. About the same time he married the daughter of the distinguished statesman, Sir Francis Walsingham.