Sir Philip Sidney--styled “the Incomparable”--was his eldest son; and at Penshurst he was born, on the 29th of November, 1554. His life was one scene of romance from its commencement to its close. His early years were spent in travel; and on his return, he was married to the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, a lady of many accomplishments, and of “extraordinary handsomeness;” but his heart was given to another. The Lady Penelope Devereux won it, and kept it until he fell on the field of Zutphen. Family regards had forbad their marriage; but she was united to the immortal part of him, and that contract has not been yet dissolved. She is still the Philoclea of the “Arcadia,” and Stella in the Poems of Astrophel. It is unnecessary to follow, in detail, the course of Sir Philip Sidney’s life. There is no strange inconsistency to reason off, no stain to clear, no blame to talk away. We describe it when we name his accomplishments. We remember it as we would a dream of uninterrupted glory. His learning, his beauty, his chivalry, his grace, shed a lustre on the most glorious reign recorded in the English annals. England herself, “by reason of the wide-spread fame of Sir Philip Sidney,” rose exalted in the eyes of foreign nations. He was the idol, the darling, of his own. For, with every sort of power at his command, it was his creed to think all vain but affection and honour, and to hold the simplest and cheapest pleasures the truest and most precious. The only displeasure he ever incurred at Court, was when he vindicated the rights and independence of English Commoners in his own gallant person, against the arrogance of English Nobles in the person of the Earl of Oxford. For a time, then, he retired from the Court, and sought rest in his loved simplicity. He went to Wilton; and there, for the amusement of his dear sister, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, he wrote the “Arcadia,” between the years 1579 and 1581.[63] Again, however, he returned to Court, and his Queen seized every opportunity to do him honour. He received her smiles with the same high and manly gallantry, the same plain and simple boldness, with which he had taken her frowns. In the end, Elizabeth--who, to preserve this “jewel of her crown,” had forcibly laid hands on him when he projected a voyage to America with Sir Francis Drake, and laid her veto on his quitting England, when he was offered the crown of Poland--could not restrain his bravery in battle, when circumstances called him there. At Zutphen, on the 22nd of September, 1586, he received a mortal wound.[64]